#tim bluhm

Album Review: Nicki Bluhm - To Rise You Gotta Fall

When songwriting, arrangements, performance and production come together for Nicki Bluhm, the singer/songwriter is virtually untouchable.

Such is the case on the girl-group tribute “How Do I Love You” and, especially, the swampy, 1970s soul of the title track to Bluhm’s solo debut, To Rise You Gotta Fall.

The quality of these tracks make the balance of the LP - a raw breakup album spawned by her divorce from Tim Bluhm, her spilt with the Gramblers and her move from California to Tennessee - so disappointing.

The emotions on display in songs like “I Hate You,” “It’s Ok Not to be Ok” and “Last to Know” could make for seriously deep material. But as these titles suggest, the songwriting - even with assistance from Ryan Adams on “Battlechain Rose” - is relatively shallow; the performances derivative of 40-year-old balladry and proto-soul.

Saddled with gold/cold/hold rhyme schemes and references to rivers of tears and touching the sky, the songs fail to penetrate even when Bluhm - who possesses a fetching voice that sounds like a less-robust, more-vulnerable Susan Tedeschi - sings such heart-wrenching lines as: You stopped loving me/I can’t stop loving you.

There just isn’t enough there here.

Grade card: Nicki Bluhm - To Rise You Gotta Fall - C-

Song Review: Nicki Bluhm - “To Rise You Gotta Fall”

In recent years, Nicki Bluhm split from the Gramblers, split up with husband and the Mother Hips frontman Tim Bluhm and split California for Tennessee.

Bluhm took the resulting pieces and fashioned them into a new solo LP, To Rise You Gotta Fall, out June 1.

”These songs are the conversations I never got to have, the words I never had the chance to say and the catharsis I wouldn’t have survived without,” she said in a statement.

Cut live in the studio in the heart of country music, the title track is a swirl of soul with splashes of psychedelia and owes nothing to Nashville. Full of cheeky non-sequitors, the lyrics flirt with silliness but never cross the line.

You don’t brave the rain until you’ve had a drought/ … you’re gonna have pain in your way to pleasure, Bluhm sings with a slight rasp that betrays her creeping resignation.

Despite its lack of originality - “To Rise You Gotta Fall” is an undisguised rewrite of the Gramblers’ “Little Too Late” - the lead single is a groovy little number and a good choice to whet appetites for the forthcoming record.

Grade card: Nicki Bluhm - “To Rise You Gotta Fall” - B-

Tim Bluhm playing “California Way” at the Troubadour Sessions at High Sierra Music Fest on 7-1-10. Zach Deputy sitting in.

Steinbeck’s Eden is dry and dusty The windrows grown of greener days The well-pump handle is long since rusty Windfall, rain and valley haze

Just keep going wild honey Somewhere northward of Monterey Up above the fog it’s sunny One more wonderful summer day.

Let There Be Talk – #259:Tim Bluhm/Singer,Songwriter for The Mother Hips

On this Episode of LET THERE BE TALK one of my favorite musicians ever Mr Tim Bluhm of The Mother Hips stops by and talks about life. Tim has been playing music for a living since 1991 traveling all over the globe. The Mother Hips are 1 of my favorite bands of all time and a huge influence on me in more ways than one. Do not miss this episode Check all their music on iTunes The Mother Hips http:/…

US Elevator new single 'Dangerous Love' is grungy and psychedelic track.

We got tipped off to US Elevator a few weeks ago leading up to Coachella and was told to keep an eye out for them. After we set our Google Alert, we waited and waited until we saw a song released. This week via KCRW we got a chance to listen to their track Dangerous Love. US Elevator consists of Johnny Irion — musical partner and husband of Sarah Lee Guthrie.

The single ‘Dangerous Love’ is the…