Old/New Baby

We Say...

Review by Yancey Strickler

Luke Winslow-King was born in Michigan and moved to New Orleans a decade ago, a familiar migration for many a Midwestern boy, its loose women, all-night jazz and free-flowing drink a kept promise to hungry-eyed dreamers everywhere. Post-industrialization, it's the reason why anyone moves to a city: boredom. A limited gene pool for procreation. A life defined by family, clergy, teachers, coworkers, boyfriends, whoever. Not defined by you being what matters.

The adopted home of New Orleans defines Old/New Baby, Luke Winslow-King's incredible new record for eMusic Selects. Its Dixieland and ragtime jazz — stronger beacons than any lighthouse — don't just influence these songs, they direct them. Winslow-King is familiar with M. Ward and the other indie singer-songwriters of the day ("All the Same" and, structurally, "The Sun Slamming the Highway" in particular exhibit familiar traits), but both the root and the dressing of all twelve songs come from the parishes. There's banjo, sousaphone, washboard, trumpet, trombone, slide, clarinet, accordion, viola, cello, you get the idea, all of it played, arranged and recorded expertly. (Engineer Earl Scioneaux — through whom we discovered this album — deserves tremendous credit.)

As you might expect, the music itself is intensely likeable. From the tuba huffs of "As April Is to May," it's non-stop charm: sly horns, jazz guitar, a housebroken little slice of New Orleans culture. Sometimes the band gets hot — "Birthday Stomp" especially — and they tumble all over each other, jockeying for prime microphone position. The arrangements add to the feeling, the structure simultaneously cohesive and loose, the kind of feat only the skilled can pull off consistently.

Broadly speaking, Old/New Baby breaks down into two distinct song types: songs to regale the whole family while the prized daughter gets dressed upstairs, and songs to get her undressed later on. Give this man a ukulele and he is as likely to sing a goofy song about being sleepy ("Never Tired") as he is to sing about a boat gone-a-rockin' ("St. Andrew's Ferry"). This was once the province of traveling men, the troubadours and bluesmen fathers wisely warned their daughters about.

There's something of that traveling troubadour to Winslow-King, that romantic notion of the wandering soul whose songs reveal deep truths and faraway lands. He's spent the past few years playing the New Orleans streets, and now he makes his bid for this little internet neighborhood of ours called eMusic. We hope he never leaves.