All of those components come together to make Porcupine Easton’s finest album yet. “The Young Girls”, the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee-honoring “Stormy”, and “Northbound” all celebrate the prowl and thump at the heart of the blues. Elsewhere, he shares heart-earned wisdom (”There’s only two things left in this world/love and the lack thereof”) on “Broke My Heart”, an amazingly appealing riffy rocker, and performs the verbal tricks necessary to rhyme “turpentine” and “Argentine” with “porcupine” on the title track.

There are a couple notes from the road too, in the form of the blood-stained postcard “Baltimore” (putting him in the company of Harlan Howard, Randy Newman, and perhaps his closest musical kin, Peter Case, as artists with a song by that title) and the album-capping “Goodbye Amsterdam”, an orchestral-pop farewell in three movements. Among those supporting Easton on his journeys are producer Brad Jones, New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown, and Kenny Vaughn, who was a guitar hero long before that term got trademarked.

“Woke up this morning with an old song in your head,” Easton sings to kick off the record. Then he makes a dozen new songs feel and connect like old songs. And, yep, that’s a good thing.

On the first half of this assured debut, Alabama-raised and Austin-based Nakia (last name Reynoso, but he goes by just the first) echoes various definitions of soul from over the years, some irrefutable and some fringe. “Choose Your Poison” is reminiscent of Eric Burdon’s beat-heavy work with War. “World Of Love” doppelgangs Derek & the Dominos’ slice of denim soul, “Bell Bottom Blues”. The whistled opening of “On The Bus” (click here for free track download) seems to pick up right where Otis Redding’s whistled ending to “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” leaves off – a rather brazen move for a rookie.

The title track recalls the recordings made by R&B belter Barrence Whitfield in his second and third acts with Tom Russell and the Mercy Brothers, respectively. And “Make Love Mine Tonight” builds a bridge from Memphis to Detroit by imagining the husky, hooky work of Otis Clay at Hi smoothed a tad by an undercurrent of Smokey Robinson. I heard it. I know it.

Most of the second half of the record sticks close to those five flavors, with the payback number “Elizabeth Lee” a dead ringer for recent Whitfield, and “Outta My Head” another Hi-Smokey showcase for Nakia’s rock-of-my-soul pipes. And as a bonus, the songwriting holds its own (with half of the ten songs written by fellow Austinite Michael Fracasso), touching on social issues as well as the personal. And for those still not converted, Nakia ends the album with the gospel number “Safe Inside”. The arrangement is standard; the vocals are far above. Did you hear it?

In short: goosebumpy. In Emerald-speak: the hypnotic pulse of U2’s “Bad” (which Bloom has previously covered) with a skittering, folk-jazzy Astral Weeks undercurrent, and the kind of rich vocals over top that you could imagine sparking a young Damien Rice. Plus, among the contributing players are ex-members of Hothouse Flowers and the Frames. In other words, the song is just Sinead O’Connor and Feargal Sharkey cameos away from being a near-perfect encapsulation of the last 40 years of non-trad Irish music.

But don’t misunderstand. No one is hanging the derivative tag on Bloom. As much as anybody operating in the guy-with-guitar world, he’s always carved his own path (which, at one memorable point, left-turned him to a cover of LL Cool J’s “I Need Love”). “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Light That Shines Within You” just feels so expansive that there’s plenty of room for echoes.

Nor is this to say that the previous Ten Songs are merely steppingstones for this finale, as grand as it might be. “There Is A Time” (with Bloom holding court on Spanish guitar), the pedal-steel-blessed country number “I’m On Your Side”, and the appropriately chugging “Eastbound Train” all stand out. Others, such as the restrained trio of “I Hear Her, Like Lorelei”, “See You Soon” and “Everyman”, fall and rise in stock depending on whether you’re heading out in search of a Saturday night or waking up carefully on a headache Sunday morning.

Still, when Luka In Bloom: His Greatest Hits is someday assembled, look for “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Light That Shines Within You” in the spotlight position.

Thus, it’d be easy to assume that this new album’s “Wild Boy”, with its talk of a jungle child crashing civilization, is a nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most famous creation or to Francois Truffaut. However, when you consider that this is Harding’s first album in five years, the song’s “come and join the circus” chorus could just be Harding’s sly way of announcing his return to the music world big top. And who better to join Harding in the center ring than the Minus 5 (last seen backing kindred spirit Robyn Hitchcock), an outfit that’s to musical wit what Harding is to lyrical wit? The result is an exercise in well-planned and expertly delivered style-hopping.

“A Very Sorry Saint” and “Your Mind’s Playing Tricks On You” showcase Harding’s gentle melodic touch, while the pulsating “Sick Organism”, one of three songs co-written with Candy Butcher leader Mike Viola, is as close to joyous cacophony as Harding has ever wandered. “Someday Son” is Springsteen’s “My Hometown” from a different perspective, with a backbeat and GEAR-iges instead of garages. “Top Of The Bottom” is a talking-folk pseudo-memoir, with just enough truth morsels (despite its very-Britishness, “A businessman with a very young dolly bird/Talked through the set, liked what he thought he heard” rings realistic) to go along with the over-the-top details – unless, that is, Harding’s necrophilia arrest and his stepping in for Ted Neely in a Jesus Christ Superstar revival were under-reported.

Best of all is “The End”, which features a boundless list of things synonymous with finality (from “a coin on each eye” to “children chanting goodbye”) and an exclamation mark of a hook that’s visible from Jupiter. That song, of course, does not end the album; that’d be too predictable. If we’ve learned one thing from Harding’s wanderings – did you see Trad Arr Jones coming? – it’s that you should never try to anticipate his next move.

Here’s one from mine: New Jersey expatriate Joe Romeo has been in Carrboro, North Carolina, for over six years now, long enough to have seen two of his bands come and go – the mod-leaning Fake Swedish and an Americana outfit called Pawnshop Ruby – and long enough to stockpile a record’s worth of terrific songs in search of, well, a record. After a label deal fell through, Romeo and Mitch Collman, a cardiologist on the faculty of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and a fervent fan of local music, crossed paths. Fast forward six months, and the self-titled debut from Joe Romeo & the Orange County Volunteers becomes the first release on Collman’s fledgling Robust Records.

It’s a feel-good story, and an almost tangible air of goodwill and all-is-right-with-the-worldness permeated the CD release show for the album. Recalling any number of guys who traffic in guitars and well-chosen words (from Neil Young and Ray Davies to fellow Jersey-ite Bruce Springsteen and Freedy Johnston) while aping not a one, Romeo led the Volunteers through a well-paced program of album cuts and choice covers as well as a couple new songs. Guitarist Scott McCall continued his quest to find the common ground between Richard Lloyd and Reggie Young as Romeo’s right-hand man, a slot he’s held down for local heroes Tift Merritt, John Howie, and Kenny Roby (not to mention, sporadically, cult hero Michael Hurley). The other Volunteers also served admirably, with keyboardist Alex Bowers claiming left-hand-man status and a couple of smartly placed solos.

Highlights from the disc’s fare included “Fight For You” (a jittery rocker with a soul-stomp chorus), the character-driven “Crazy Larry”, and the emotion-overdriven “Train Tracks”. That last one, an ode to a friend now gone and the album’s closer, found Romeo exchanging his acoustic guitar for an electric, with the ensuing scorched-earth duel between him and McCall representing the kind of internal clear-cutting that you hope catharsis, in the form of a blistering rock song, brings.

Covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Lover Lover Lover” and John Prine’s “In Spite Of Ourselves”, with guest Shannon Windsor (Romeo’s duet partner at a weekly coffee shop gig) singing the role of Iris DeMent on the latter number, were nifty diversions. And a pair of terrific new songs, “The Youngest Girl In The Old Folks Home” and “It Never Gets Better (You Only Get Used To It)”, suggested Romeo already has some strong building blocks for record #2. He introduced the former, an instant anthem, as being about someone who’s afraid to get in when the getaway car arrives. For the latter, he latched on to the whole optimism thing, albeit in this case a tongue-in-cheek form born of the acceptance that some things you just can’t change.

But the night’s highest point was the delivery of “Wearing Me Out”. the best cut on the record, and in Romeo’s catalogue. “There’s a lot of things we owe the world/A song is only one,” he sang, sounding like he was tapping into the soul-weariness that plagued him while writing the song right before his move to North Carolina many years ago. Sure, understood. But on occasion, a song and its public unleashing is just cause for jubilation, and for a couple hours well spent in optimism’s welcome company.

The first steps were taken in Chandler’s longstanding New York City outfit the Raunch Hands, a raucous ensemble that would surround a James Brown song with surf music and ’50s obscurities, then further detour into R&B originals and pure country. The Raunch Hands recorded “What’s The Matter Now?” (a traditional song put on the map by the Swan Silvertones and also covered, post-Raunch Hands, by the Oblivians), and onstage they’d play other gospel tunes. But Chandler would tend to hedge his bets, and, true to the band’s name, they’d raunch things up a bit.

“I always wondered how to put the gospel music into what we were doing in the Raunch Hands, how to make it salable,” he offers. “We did a lot of gospel numbers and changed the lyrics to be something a little unsavory. But I came around to the fact that to do gospel music the way it’s meant to be, you’ve got to leave God in it.”

Enter the Lost Crusaders, and a gradual, even hard-fought, change in mindset for Chandler. “When I listen to my favorite gospel artists, the ones who are influential to me, for the longest time I was listening for, ‘How does he sing this? How does the drummer play this? What makes the music be this and that?’” says Chandler. “And when I would hear them say, ‘I’m not ashamed of the way I feel about God; I’m unashamed, and I’ll stand up in front of everybody and proclaim it’ – I said, ‘Wow, could I do that?’ That’s something I really had to overcome.”

Among other things, then, you can call Have You Heard About The World? the sound of overcoming. When Chandler rewrites a standard these days, such as the jubilation-sax-driven “Downward Road,” the holy message remains intact. And the originals, the majority team-written by Chandler and fellow Crusaders Brian McBride and Joey Valentine, honor both spirit and Spirit as they careen between classic sentiments and modern settings. For instance, “Whose Name Will I Call?” has the lyrical feel of a salvation song that people have been singing for a century, while its immediate neighbor on the record, “Where Did I Go?”, finds the saved protagonist casting aside credit cards along with pills and liquor to earn passage on the heaven-bound express.

When crafting the music for Have You Heard About The World?, Chandler took inspiration from groups such as the Swan Silvertones and the Blind Boys of Alabama, but he leaned more heavily on Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis and their ability to take the gospel form and mold it into rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll. The results provide a lesson in how to blur genres while somehow maintaining focus.

Chandler had only ever heard the trad title track presented a cappella, so he took the opportunity to create a full-band arrangement – twice, as a matter of fact. One version kick-starts the record in a rush of handclaps and harmonies; the second is a country take featuring duet vocals from Laura Cantrell, lap steel from Matt Verta-Ray, and piano from Hans Chew that splits the difference between Methodist hymn book and saloon. (”A ’70s throwback if there ever was one,” Chandler says of the reprise.) Those same guests turn a cover of “Too Late”, from husband-and-wife gospel duo the Consolers, into triumphant country-soul. One more borrowed song, Keith Carradine’s Nashville singalong “It Don’t Worry Me”, makes a fitting closer in both theme and vibe, its eleven-strong gang vocals on the chorus perfectly encapsulating the album’s congregational nature.

“One of the things I’m best at is putting people together in the right place,” Chandler says when discussing the Lost Crusaders’ sprawling lineup. “As a singer, I wonder how talented I actually am. But when it comes to putting people in the same room who are gonna do good things together, I think that’s one of my strengths.”

In this case, the room was a recording studio, and in Chandler’s vivid recounting of the whirlwind process, the front door might well have revolved: “Someone would come in, do something he hadn’t even rehearsed. As he’s walking out, the next guy’s walking in asking, ‘OK, which horn do I use?’ And he’s done, and someone else is walking in with a pair of maracas.”

Chandler is quick to praise all those involved in the recording, and the subsequent handful of shows the Lost Crusaders have done. In addition to the players mentioned above, the roster includes primary instigator Buffi Aguero of Atlanta’s Tiger! Tiger!, master of a thousand guitar licks Johnny Vignault, Raunch Hand survivor Mike Edison, saxophonist Steve Greenfield, and producer Dean Rispler. Jon Spencer and the Fleshtones’ Keith Streng have earned special-guest status. And if there’s a secret weapon on the record, it’s Jermone Jackson, organist for Harlem’s Kelly Temple Church of God in Christ – a guy brought into the fold via that most 21st-century of recruitment tools, Craigslist.

Keeping the Lost Crusaders alive while juggling schedules – each member, it seems, has at least two other musical affiliations – and coming to terms with rehearsing only three hours in a good week is a challenge. In fact, the whole affair was originally envisioned as a one-off, but an interesting thing happened: Folks remained committed. In that regard, just as in other key aspects, the project has defined itself, and Chandler acknowledges he is not the chief navigator of his own journey. “When I think I have control over it, it makes its own decision,” he says. “People tell me that’s beautiful art.”

Have You Heard About The World? was released on Spain’s Everlasting Records, making physical copies a little tough to come by. Get Hip Recordings has some has copies, and it’s also available digitally via eMusic, iTunes and Rhapsody. Chandler is also selling them directly via mail-order for $12.99 (shipping included) at the following address:
The Lost Crusaders
c/o Michael Chandler
302A West 12th St. #311
New York, NY 10014-6025

The Gourds have gone on to make a whole bunch more records for people who don’t like anything. And conversely – thanks to a no-filters blend of country of both the cosmic and classic varieties, folk, gospel, ribs of both the spare and shiny varieties, zydeco, punk, cover songs, weed, rock, and soul – for people who like everything.

Kevin Russell, who plays guitar and mandolin for the Gourds and writes the songs that his bandmates Jimmy Smith and Max Johnston don’t write, laughs when this fuzzy recollection is shared. “Yes, the curmudgeon’s curmudgeon,” he says of Rubin. The two go back a ways, back to when Russell’s country-punking pre-Gourds outfit the Picket Line Coyotes shared a scene in late-’80s/early-’90s Dallas with Killbilly, a rock/bluegrass experiment in which Rubin did time. Russell describes that era as “the heyday, or dark days, of the white funk movement.” The Picket Line Coyotes had started in Shreveport with a lineup that included Robert Bernard, future Damnations guitarist and older brother of Gourd-in-waiting Claude Bernard, and then moved on to Big D. Shortly after, the Coyotes added a young, green, naive kid from the suburbs of Plano named Jimmy Smith. That’s how Russell puts it, anyway.

The next relocation was to Austin, coaxed there by John Croslin after the Coyotes opened a few shows for Croslin’s band the Reivers. Once there, they kept their cool-connections streak alive by opening shows for Alejandro Escovedo at Waterloo Ice House during Escovedo’s days working at the similarly named record store next door. When the Coyotes faded, Russell and Smith continued to play together, and with Claude Bernard they formed the initial incarnation of the Gourds in 1994. Those three, along with drummer Charlie Llewellin, released Dem’s Good Beeble in 1996, and followed it the next year with Stadium Blitzer, a big ol’ slice of Texas impressionism. The current lineup was established in ‘98 when Keith Langford left the Damnations to take over drumming duties, and multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston signed on after stints with Uncle Tupelo and Wilco.

The rest is history – nine more albums’ worth, in fact, if you count both the odds & ends collection Gogitchyershinebox and the expanded, even-more-covers-heavy edition Shinebox as well as the brand new Haymaker! At the very least, in terms of longevity, it’s an historic surprise. “It’s shocking,” says Russell of the Gourds’ staying power. “I mean, I know I’m going to be playing music my whole life. I knew I was a lifer from the time I was a little boy; that’s all I ever wanted to do. But the Gourds, I just didn’t think we’d take it that far. It was just really for fun. We were nowhere near as serious about the Gourds as we were about the Coyotes. You know, we really tried in the Coyotes. It’s still a mystery to me how these things work out.”

One possible key to the mystery is a certain consistency to the way the Gourds approach the recording process. “We make guerrilla records,” Russell says; by that he means they’ve always done everything in two weeks – recording and mixing – and done so on shoestring budgets. “We’ve never had a concept or an idea before we went in to make a record. It’s really just going in and flying by the seat of our pants,” he explains. “Well, we always have songs written, and most of the songs are fairly arranged. But often there are songs that aren’t fully realized until we’re in the studio.”

The goal might seem obvious – get the best performances of the basic tracks in the studio – but the results have a truly live feel. “That’s it, really,” offers Russell. “From there, we just sort of make it up, be playful with it, be as spontaneous as we can.” Even with those unconventional methods, the Gourds have gone over budget only once, on 2002’s Cow Fish Fowl Or Pig. Stuart Sullivan of Wire Recording studio was the engineer; the Gourds played his wedding, and Sullivan called it even. The rock ‘n’ roll barter system.

The records that emerge are all clearly Gourds records, all clearly descendents of Dem’s Good Beeble. Yet it’s not like the Gourds keep making the same record. There’s enough different about each one, a shifting of emphasis on ingredients from that long list perhaps, to dodge such charges and give each release its own personality. On Haymaker!, gospel rhythms and country comfort play a bigger role than on the last couple of albums. The more ornate chord progressions that decorated several numbers on 2007’s Noble Creatures are set aside in favor of more basic settings, a couple even plucked from Russell’s side-project, Shinyribs.

Russell’s Haymaker! contributions include kissing cousins “Country Love”, a jolly ode to getting a way from it all, and “Country Gal”. The latter, which sounds like a tune that got booted off the The Basement Tapes for having too much country funk, sports the line, “She’s like a ruby rolling round in a bucket of dimes.” (”There was this guy in Missoula, this African-American guy, who used to run a club we played at there,” says Russell. “I remember one time he referred to himself as a raisin in a sugar bowl. So it’s really a variation on that. I’m always thinking of variations of that line.”) There’s also “The Way You Can Get”, a rowdy gospel number that presents a spiritual problem without ever providing a solution, and “All The Way To Jericho”, which just might describe a journey to that missing answer.

Russell is most proud of “Shreveport”, which he calls the true story of his late-teenage years in Shreveport, Lousiana. In an economical three verses, he nails the whole experience. Verse one is a kid soaking in the freedom, and potential loneliness, that comes with a night license: “Roaches in the ashes, truck jamming “Limelight”/Looks like it’s gonna be just me and Geddy Lee tonight.” The harsh second verse takes a look around and concludes, “Fuck a bunch of hairdo boys and their spandex britches/And their big titty, fancy drunk ass bitches.” In sharp contrast, the concluding verse gets tender, as the night ends with two friends singing by the grave of one’s mother. It’s American Graffiti, Shreveport ‘86 style.

Among bassist/guitarist Smith’s songs are two standouts. Lyrically, “Luddite Juice”, like many of Smith’s creations, requires a decoder ring and/or a hell of a buzz. Musically, it’s Booker T. & the M.G.’s, with Claude Bernard playing the part of Booker T., by way of Elvis Costello. In other words, it could be a great, lost Get Happy!! track (and, risking charges of blasphemy, I’ll nominate it as potentially the fourth best song on that record). In a similar vein, Smith’s “Fossil Contender” is all soul chord progressions and Warren Zevon-style chugging rhythms. On an album where almost every song is elbowing for space in your head, it’s the one that will claim the biggest and best spot. But the wildest card is the album-closing “Tighter”, written and sung by Johnston. It’s as close to a pure pop song – we’re talking La’s territory here – as the Gourds have ever done, and perhaps will ever do.

So yeah, as always, there’s that aforementioned country/gospel/rock/pop/soul/et al. blend. And also as always, going all the way back to Dem’s Good Beeble, the two most obvious reference points remain The Band and Doug Sahm. The interesting thing is that the influence and inspiration of that iconic pair has been more gradual than most listeners would think. Russell acknowledges that he’d heard The Band’s big hits and seen The Last Waltz and probably heard some of Sahm’s more popular songs, but he didn’t own a Band record until fairly late in the game, and didn’t know who Sahm was until moving to Austin.

(The Gourds covering Doug Sahm’s “Nitty Gritty”)

“By playing this music and then talking to writers and other musicologists, they’d ask us, ‘Do you know Doug Sahm or do you know these people?’ And we were like, ‘No, I don’t think so,’” Russell says with a laugh. “And they’d say, ‘Well, you should listen to them because you sound a lot like them.’ Which is kind of a neat thing. It felt like we came across it pretty honestly.” He adds, “We then started listening to a lot of their music because we found a kinship with it and learned a lot from it. And Doug Sahm definitely became a big hero of ours.” (The Gourds’ cover of Sahm’s “Nuevo Laredo” will be included on a Sahm tribute album due on Vanguard this spring.)

In a roundabout way, maybe this starts to get at why the Gourds were put on earth and continue to flourish. In a world where Sahm and Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, and Johnny Cash, Ronnie Lane, and D. Boon, are all gone and not coming back no matter how hard we wish, the Gourds provide a kind of comfort by, knowingly or otherwise, echoing their sounds and honoring their restless spirits. And the results feel downright curmudgeon-proof.

Sure, Barr has a name that’s launched a thousand “Stewart’s Pub” jokes. But he also possesses a songwriting perspective that’s as comfortable traveling inward (hearts and minds are a specialty) as it is road-tripping to the Vatican, as in “Heart Of Rome”, the epic centerpiece of All The Great Aviators Agree. That song and its Aviators kindred spirit “Don’t Get So Heavy” carry the same musical tone and mysterious profundity as such favorites as Warren Zevon’s “Mohammed’s Radio” and the immortal “The Weight”. Something important is going on, but you can’t quite put your finger on just what it is.

Scotland Barr & the Slow Drags perform “Heart Of Rome” live.

Those two cuts, when placed alongside the story-song “Mexican Blanket”, the bittersweet “Come To Bed” and the knowingly self-destructive “The Burden”, showcase Barr’s range as a writer. Equally rangy is the music that accompanies the words. It wanders from country-rock to soul-informed pub-rock – from Gram to Graham, if you prefer – with stops at what seems like every honky-tonk and pub on the Americana trail from the Pacific northwest to Austin, Texas. It’s a sound that Barr, borrowing from Kurt Vonnegut, describes as “unstuck in time.” Yeah, the work of Scotland Barr & the Slow Drags is roots-rock at heart, but it’s a heart that’s clearly free to wander.

Their first full-length musical collaboration – a home-studio effort heavy on guitar riffs, effects and atmospheric keyboards, and driven by a dual engine of quirky chops and charm – feels crafted partly by seasoned pros and partly by giddy honeymooners. It’s an engaging blend, with touch points bouncing from Lee & Nancy and Ira & Georgia to Mickey & Sylvia and Mitch & Mickey.

The woozy, Joe Meek-influenced “Another Drive-In Saturday” finds Goulden waxing nostalgic and quoting Mott The Hoople and Carly Simon, while the twin-voiced “First Mate Rigby” soars, dips, and flat-out fuzz-rocks. “Please Watch Over Her” and the stripped-down, psyched-up “Astrovan” – love notes to daughters and, well, an Astro van, respectively – are genuinely touching. Best of all is “Round”, which boasts both a clever record metaphor and a permanent-ink guitar hook. The album ends with a guitar-and-synth take on “I Still Miss Someone” that Goulden has called “the Seekers on substances.” I call it the icing on a post-pub-folk-rock post-wedding cake, home-baked with love.

Saying Mitty Collier “returned to the church” is a bit of an understatement. The Reverend Collier has her own ministry in Chicago these days, and as a small part of this calling, she served as a musical mentor for soul upstart Eli “Paperboy” Reed, who was the Minister of Music at Collier’s church during his stint at the University of Chicago.

Collier’s best-known recording, a soothingly voiced, soaring-strings reworking of the Reverend James Cleveland’s “I Had A Talk With God” under the title “I Had A Talk With My Man”, is justifiably considered a classic. And the talk is evidently a convincing one, because it ends in a marriage proposal. The 23 other Chess A-sides and B-sides surrounding that signature moment also tell a convincing, and complete, tale: Collier was an exceptionally versatile vocalist, equally comfortable with the brass-and-sass number “Git Out”, the Muscle Shoals-born country-soul of “Everybody Makes A Mistake Sometimes”, and the blues-based “I’m Your Part-Time Love” (an answer to Little Johnny Taylor’s “Part-Time Love”).

Maybe best of all is “Miss Loneliness”, which beat “I Had A Talk With My Man” to the post by a year – and, it’s worth noting, Otis Redding’s “Mr. Pitiful” by two. As Collier’s wounded vocals – represented by the law firm of deep, raw, and urgent – and some expressive drumming embrace the buzzing horns on the chorus, “Miss Loneliness” presents early rock and soul as strangely comfortable bedfellows.