A to Z Album and Gig Reviews
Yes, I know NetRhythms usually draws the line at pop, but here we do believe in covering reissues of classic albums, especially when they're done as well as this one. But the original album was arguably one of the classiest pop records ever made anyway, so a deluxe edition complete with bonus tracks in the shape of rarities will always have been on the cards and eagerly awaited by fans. In this instance, the standard album, as released in 1976, contained three top-drawer smash hits (Dancing Queen, Knowing Me Knowing You and Money Money Money) alongside a further seven potential hit singles. Arrival was the group's fourth LP, and represented the zenith of Abba's artistry and production expertise, and hey, let's not knock Abba for their commercial success, for their music was well-crafted in the extreme and has proved endurable in the tradition of the very best pop. The bonus tracks on this deluxe edition comprise both sides of the roughly contemporaneous hit single Fernando, together with two further versions of that same A-side (one by Frida solo, in Swedish, and one in Spanish), and Spanish-language versions of the first two hits mentioned above; all worth having. The second disc in this deluxe edition is even more valuable, for it takes the form of an outstanding DVD containing nothing but items previously unreleased on DVD. Pride of place goes to the legendary 1976 TV special Abba-dabba-doo!, but the majority of the rest of the menu is almost as enticing: the feature on Abba In London (November 1976), some rarely-seen footage from the Dancing Queen recording session, sundry clips from West German and Swedish TV, the TOTP Fernando video, two TV commercials promoting the album and finally (the least interesting item, admittedly) a worldwide picture-gallery of Abba-related record sleeves. This deluxe edition is an object lesson in repackaging, one might say, and a welcome addition to the fan's collection.
David Kidman December 2006
Pete's a singer and songwriter who's well regarded over in the wild hinterlands of Saddleworth (right on the Lancs-Yorks Pennine cusp), where he has a very healthy following indeed; it was at the celebrated Saddleworth Folk Festival a few years back when I first saw Pete perform, and I was won over by his quiet yet beautifully judged singing and playing style and his simple yet deeply felt songs, matched by an equally quiet assurance and modesty, almost a deep-seated reticence to admit to his talent. For such can it be with some of the folk scene's finest performers. For his first CD, a well-chosen set of mostly original songs with three choice covers, Pete had engaged Ken Nicol as producer and co-participant, which made for a fine combination of like-minded talents. But for his second, Against The Wall, Pete finally gets to fully realise his dream "to have the best musicians I could find take part in the recording sessions", so in addition to re-engaging Ken, Pete has been able to recruit Joe Broughton, Maartin Allcock, Clive Leyland, Neil Marshall and Paloma Trigas. The result is a very likeable record indeed, which Pete half-jokingly says is "best listened to in a horizontal position". (Hmm - whatever…!) There are three covers this time round (Jimmy McCarthy's oblique No Frontiers being definitely the best-known), besides which the CD's replete with accessible and satisfying songs of Pete's own making, characterised by genuinely positive thinking and a realistic yet in the end optimistic outlook. The beautiful Lancashire Rose and the forthright The Innocent One are but two of the standout compositions here, and we learn that a further two (Another Evening In and Almost A Year) have already been recorded by fellow singer-songwriter Anthony John Clarke, whose pivotal role in encouraging and inspiring Pete does not go unrecognised. Production-wise, Ken's own role has proved equally pivotal, for his arrangements are very classy indeed, with nicely-choreographed bursts of electric guitar embellishing the basic acoustic guitar/s-piano-occasional violin-percussion texture to just the right extent. (Pete has repaid the compliment by recording one song each by Ken and AJC here.) I would describe this CD as "nice", but using that word not in the least pejoratively, for the whole album has an air of easy – but evidently not easily-won – accomplishment, I thought much in the same unassuming way as some early Ralph McTell, and Pete's songwriting is definitely worth your getting to know.
David Kidman
A solo album by Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans, is not perhaps something you'd expect to find among these reviews. But, produced by Sparklehorse supremo Mark Linkous, this is a gorgeous, roots-infused shimmer of a record. It opens with the dreamy Frequent Flyer, a melancholic song about the inability to make commitment, lap steel and wurlitzer guiding it towards its exquisite ache and surely a place among the classics. I Can Buy You bumps up the country flavours, its string arrangements pointing thoughts more in the direction of Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell than Handsome Family.
And so the tone's set. There's variations and deviations. The Julie London-esque drug is the love torchy Such A Bad Comedown with its crunchy metronome beats, the claustrophobic narcotic rock swagger of Hard As Stone with its blaring sax and Plastic Ono sensibility, a fever-sweat bluesy The Same Old Song with its rotting sweetness chorus, and, at the most extreme, The Oddness Of The Lord which tunnels up from a cavern of pulsing, stroboscopic techno like the psalm of some subterranean church. Mostly though it curls and caresses, seeping into the sadness of the heart with its constant themes of defiant losers and lovers on the margins (Song For The Leftovers), striking its finest notes on The Bluest Eyes In Texas from the soundtrack of Oscar winner Boys Don't Cry, a wonderful cover of Paul Westerberg's Rock 'n' Roll Ghost and, had they got the scheduling right, what could have been the real long hot summer hit, Algebra.
Mike Davies
Australian Achison releases his second UK album. It seems to me that Australia is currently producing a conveyor belt of excellent musicians and Geoff Achison is firmly on that belt.
From the opening quaintly named, sing along If The Washing Don't Get You The Rinsing Will with its Cajun accordion to the eight-minute epic closing title track this is as well crafted an album as I have heard this year. Achison takes all of the guitar work and handles it admirably. His precision is highlighted in the slow blues of Help Me. You may just spot a little Joe Cocker style vocals in there as well.
Cover versions are to the fore and Albert King's Wrapped Up In Love is given a funky treatment. Two less expected covers are Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour and The Box Tops The Letter. Both are slower than the originals but are carried off with much aplomb. On the latter, Achison brings back in the Joe Cocker vocals. I think that Cocker did a version of this song himself - you should compare the two. On Midnight Hour he brings in a horn section and lets the guitar rip.
What'd You Hope To Gain is one of my favourites. It is a straightforward blues with some fantastic guitar playing. Roger Hubbard provides some excellent slide guitar on this track and a couple of others. The other musicians on the album are equally adept on their instruments. Ian Jennings, of Robert Palmer and Jeff Beck fame, on double bass and percussionist Mike Thorne.
Achison quotes Jorma Kaukonen as his mentor and he plays a fingerpicking extravaganza by way of a tribute to him on Jorma's Ranch. This is one of two self-written songs on the album and stands up well against the covers. The other, Each Long Day follows the upbeat Can't Get You Off My Mind and features the strings from the Sydney Opera Orchestra. The complete album was recorded in two days but sounds as if it was months in production. It is a professional, proficient and practised album worthy of any collection.
David Blue
Geoff Achison And The Souldiggers - Souldiggin' In The UK (Powerhouse Records)
"He's got a way with women ... and he just got away with mine," sings Geoff over his snappy, acoustic guitar on this raw, live album recorded at the Bottleneck Blues Club, Kent. It's a jokey start to a seriously good album of blues. Aussie Geoff is a terrific guitarist and individual singer. If he was a Brit, his singing accent might be called transatlantic. As he's from Oz, does that make it transpacific?
The first half is just just Geoff and his acoustic Gibson, but he later goes electric and is joined by a tasty trio of UK-based but international-sourced musos: Brit Sam Kelly (drums and percussion); New Yorker Dave Clark on bass and Irishman Dave Lennox on keys. The programme is real grab-bag of excellent numbers, some self-penned by Achison and others from the likes of the Neville Brothers (Voodoo), Jimi Hendrix (Castles Made Of Sand) and Robert Johnson (Walking Blues), and all are given a tweak.
Fans of tight and intricate acoustic blues will love Geoff's complex yet powerful playing at the beginning of the album and, once the band kicks in, the whole thing shifts several gears and becomes an amazingly funky and downright fun experience. This album is a little gem.
Phil Widdows
I was favourably impressed by this bright Newcastle duo's first CD Welcome To... (2005), which concentrated on studio recordings of ten original songs penned jointly by Andy and Cath Higgins themselves. In contrast, The Oban Sessions is an attempt to present the duo's live sound and represent more accurately the balance of material featured in their live sets. This time, therefore, just four of the album's eleven tracks are original compositions: uniformly attractive, accessible and with a natural lyrical flow that carries the listener along. Just occasionally I feel the accompanimental chordings are "over-strummy", but the melodies are invariably interesting and Cath's voice carries the argument with assurance. The remaining seven tracks comprise cover versions, of a reasonably wide repertoire that spans Steve Earle, Neil Young, Dougie MacLean, Steve Knightley, Bob Dylan, Gallagher & Lyle, Lennon & McCartney and Elvis Presley... (the latter's an instrumental version of Heartbreak Hotel capped by Sean Keane's adaptation of Cliffs Of Moher, while Neil Young's Don't Let It Bring You Down is combined with what sounds like a Scottish strathspey). Not as inconsistent as it might sound, this selection works well here when replicating the context of a typical Acoustica club set - you wouldn't walk out of the gig disappointed! The duo's renditions reflect their love of the material, and mostly fall into the "straightforward, confident, pleasing and highly competent" category though without necessarily having anything radical or new to say about the songs (I must emphasise that in my opinion this is a plus rather than a minus in an age where so many folk-club cover versions are just pale and uninvolving workthroughs by artists who perform songs because they feel they should rather than because they really respond to them). The one inconsistency of The Oban Sessions is that, for all the duo's deliberate aim to stay close to their live sound, there's a modicum of multitracking and producer Tony Patterson is co-opted to play "additional instruments" here and there - albeit fairly unobtrusively. And I must admit the track sequence doesn't entirely convince me. But on a purely musical basis, the album does its job admirably in showcasing Acoustica as a persuasive live act.
David Kidman February 2008
Acoustica - Welcome To ... (Organic Soup Records)
Good-looking, good-sounding Newcastle-based duo Andy and Cath Higgins have been performing around the north-east region for almost a decade, only becoming known as Acoustica since their return in 2003 from a self-enforced family-raising break. For Welcome To…, Acoustica have chosen to showcase ten self-penned songs (although I'm told that live they mix these with quite a few covers). On this evidence, a blind-tasting of a hitherto unfamiliar act as it were, I'm tempted to say that this was a wise decision, for this CD presents an attractive set of jointly-composed songs that are couched in a pleasingly rootsy folk vein, covering their chosen subject-matter with a well-judged lightness of touch. Vocals are shared out roughly equally, and between them Andy and Cath can be heard to play an impressive range of acoustic instruments (guitars, mandolins, bouzouki, violin, dobro, accordion and bass), all rather more than merely competently and in an accessible and nicely unflashy style. Their playing skills transfer well to the actual arrangements, which are managed with an enviable degree of good taste and creativity. So, although you notice that there's a lot going on instrumentally, the arrangements are genuinely song-enhancing, being largely unobtrusive and allowing the lyrics to breathe due to their intrinsic restraint and sensitivity. The already rich acoustic tapestry is filled out just a little further by the flute playing of Tony Patterson (on loan from prog-rock band ReGenesis) and percussion from Finn McArdle on a couple of tracks. Overall, I rather liked the duo's accomplished approach and their wholly natural and confident feel for their craft, even if two or three of the songs still haven't made much of an impression on me even after several plays - and despite a nagging familiarity that washes over me on hearing songs like From The Lighthouse in particular; but worry not, in this game c'est la vie! (The CD is available from the website or from Newcastle retail outlets JGWindows and Roots2music.)
David Kidman
David Kidman
Rather perversely perhaps, this début album from British songwriter and music maker Keith is released on a US label! It's a strange little album (if far too short at just 28 minutes), which has a gawky and understated charm that I find very appealing. Keith, although a new name to me, has been making music for half a decade or so; his band Zuno Men crafted angular experimental pop in the late 90s, releasing two albums and a number of singles, but Keith went solo and released his own first single in 2001. For Sunshine Loft, Keith's intention was to record his songs in a rough, down-at-home style, a kind of experiment in purity; thus it was recorded live in a loft with just one stereo microphone. Keith was accompanied by a handful of mates - a drummer, bass player and a multi-instrumentalist - and the result is quite intoxicating in its own peculiar way. The gauche, wilful weirdness of Keith's songs and delivery contains elements that can sometimes and variously recall Robyn Hitchcock, Syd Barrett, Andy Partridge, Ray Davies, even Jonathan Richman or maybe Beck in his acoustic mode, but instrumentally the ethos is more DIY-punk with distinctly off-the-wall touches like musical saw and over-amplified glockenspiel. Songs like Deserve It and Open My Eyes even have the feel of packing-case rockabilly or rough-hewn Hank Williams tryouts, whereas Drift comes over more like a lean 'n' hungry Britpop equivalent of a garage-punk demo and Murmur reminds me of a kind of hybrid of Autumn Almanac and Lazy Sunday. Then there's the backward-tape trickery of the oblique final track… So the verdict? I'm really glad to have heard this album, and I like it a lot, though I realise it may not be everyone's poison; for me it deserves a place on the shelf alongside those other celebrated maverick talents; in other words, file under "most promising" and see what happens next time round .
David Kidman
While ever prolific, churning out albums by the truckload or making mountains of stuff available for download, his myriad of influences and styles has meant Adams hasn't always been consistent in the quality stakes. This though, finding his sober and again working with The Cardinals as his backing band, is arguably his best and most sustained work since Gold, drawing primarily on The Grateful Dead and Neil Young as blueprints for his melancholic Americana.
Indeed, the opening Goodnight Rose sounds like a Jerry Garcia sitting in on Only Love Can Break Your Heart while Two, on which Sheryl Crow croons backing vocals and pedal steel weeps, is the sort of resigned mournful love song you might have expected to find Young stopping shows with on his recent acoustic tours.
There's a fair amount of wistful aching ballads here, from the old fashioned Gram-like honky tonk waltzing Tears Of Gold with his slightly off beat drum patterns to the wonderfully wearied harmonica introed confessional of I Taught Myself How to Grow Old (or, as some might have it, I Taught Myself To Play Old Man) and the gently tumbling acoustic cascading Off Broadway where he adopts the falsetto of A Man Needs A Maid.
But he's not neglected his inner stadium rocker either, cranking it up with the swaggering chime and, is that tubular bells, of Halloween Head which, playful devil, heads into the e-bowed guitar solo with Adams announcing, er, 'guitar solo', while Two Hearts was clearly built with images of cruising open roads with the hood down.
There's a variety of Adams voices on display too, the gentle folk singer of Oh My God, Whatever, Etc, the husky bar hound of The Sun Also Sets, the sweet burr adopted on the unadorned These Girls where, in a pithy childhood image, he talks of burning matchbox cars in the back yard, and, of the banjo plucking bluegrass Pearls On A String, the moonshine swilling, straw-chewing back porch good old boy. And, the good news is that, having emerged from the fog of booze and drugs that once threatened to make Adams another rock n roll casualty, all of them sound like a man who's reassessed, taking control of and is now living his life with the confidence that he has nothing to prove.
Mike Davies July 2007
Ryan Adams - 29 (Lost Highway)
Working without the Cardinals this time round, he's in decidedly less of a country mood than Jacksonville City Heights, opting instead for a spare bluesy approach to nine songs that address issues of regret, confession, redemption and personal resurrection. Reminiscent of Canned Heat, the opening Twenty Nine announces the thematic and musical agenda with a chugging train rhythm boogie riding the rails of slide guitar as Adams's adopts high pitched vocals to unfurl an autobiographical tale of living in New York, "loaded on ephedrine looking for downers and coke". He strips things down to acoustic blues for Strawberry Wine, a downbeat eight minute number about not succumbing to stasis and forgetting to 'let the daylight in before you get old'. The contemplative mood's maintained on the late night piano and brushed percussion jazzy torch of Nightbirds with its infestation of inner demons and the spare piano ballad Blue Sky Blues where, evocative of Randy Newman, he begins to strive to 'let go of the pain'.
Storytelling (and a brief reprise of country stroll) arrives with Carolina Rain's tale of unfulfilled loves, loss, and murder while Starlite Diner feels infused with the spirit of Thornton Wilder. While somewhat of a tonal sore thumb with its amped up Spaghetti Western stylings and resonating guitar, The Sadness still warrants its place on the album for providing what can only be described as Orbison Gothic. Apparently about a friend's miscarriage but equally read as a desolate sad song of lost love, Elizabeth You Were Born To Play That Part is an achingly lovely piano ballad blues that calls to mind the cracked emotions of Mark Eitzel while the closing Voices is a frankly somewhat surreal drugs delirium song of pulling back from death with images of whispering willows turning into fanged statues. A farewell to his 20s and their often self-destructive wildness, it bodes thrillingly well for Adams's next decade.
Mike Davies, January 2006
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Jacksonville City Nights (Lost Highway)
Without doubt Ryan Adams has been one of the most challenging, enigmatic and best Americana artists of the last few years.
As he builds up an impressive catalogue of work, he is placing himself alongside the greats of the genre, he must surely soon be bracketed with the likes of Neil Young.
Perhaps the challenges he sets are why he is, depending on your point of view, frustrating, a genius or a bit of both. Like Young there is not a typical Adams album and on Jacksonville City Nights there is not a typical Adams song, if such a creature ever existed.
The album opens with A Kiss Before I Go, which is Adams paying due homage to the tortured country souls of the past.
But he is very much his own man and The End acts as bridge between Adams and Van Zandt, once that bridge is crossed it is all about the talent of Ryan Adams.
While he is a prolific artist, the core quality of the songs rarely dips. However on the hymn-like Dear John he achieves much, much more. With Norah Jones joining him, the song reaches heights of emotion that both could only have dreamt would happen.
Jacksonville City Nights will surely enhance further an already stellar reputation but Ryans Adams is also to be celebrated for time and again providing moments of pure magic. His cover of Always On My Mind is one such and it's only available on the UK release.
Michael Mee
Ryan Adams @ Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool 22nd January 2004
Well, that was a very "different" evening.
I got to the Royal Court just after 7, because the tickets uselessly had just the dors open time of 7pm on them, which indicated kick-off might be 7:30 or 7:45, but in fact it was 8pm.
Ryan's protege Jesse Malin opened up as support. Now he was pretty excellent, and I started to think that Ryan was a brave man to allow himself such a quality opener, because Jesse's got a good voice and can really play guitar too. But then it gets more surreal. Jesse is joined on stage by "a band I found at the Cavern this afternoon". Now the drummer of said band is acually one Ryan Adams, disguised under his new, longer ginger hair and a pair of heavy rimmed glasses, as can be seen on some publicity photos with Jonathan Woss buried deep in his website. I got the impression not many of the audience actually got who this was, even though Jesse says that "the drummer will be playing with Ryan Adams later". Excellent drumming, so possibly Ryan could help Oasis out with their self inflicted little local difficulty!
Jesse, who obviously has a big Liverpool fan bases eventually finishes and there's then the usual interminable fannyings around to reset up the stage, even though Jesse just came with an asortment of acoustic guitars and doesn't need a lot of clearing away.
Eventually at 9:25, on comes Ryan Adams properly. He blasts everyone for about 30 minutes with really noisy tracks from Rock 'N Roll, which was fine as far as it went, but not the best showcase for his voice. He then moves over to play some stuff from Love is Hell, much more quietly and eventually ends up doing a longish solo set, just him and a guitar which was really ace, moving on onto stuff from Gold, all sung and played beautifully, and what most people have really come for. Then the band returns, and Ryan goes clambering up the huge speaker stack on the left of the stage to perform the one about swimming naked standing on the top, so he's up level with us in the balcony. That's brave, I thought, only John Otway is normally stupid enough to climb speakers. Anyway Ryan then perhaps thinks better of this and moves down a level and sits down to finish the song, after which he returns to the stage.
In between, several members of the audience in front of me are ejected from the front of the circle by security because they are completely tanked up and acting more like they are at Anfield, jumping up and hugging each other after every song, but even worse bellowing for different songs in the middle of quiet songs, while over on the other side of the circle a fight breaks out and further drunk scousers are also thrown out. You don't get that at Joan Baez at the Phil, I hasten to add.
It's now about 10:55 & I start to worry about how much of the show I am going to miss to catch the last train to Chester at 11:30, but that turns out to not be a problem. Ryan's behaviour all night has been a bit odd, summoning drinks on stage (and kicking them over), taking the odd fag break not speaking to the audience much (which I'm told is unusual), and giving an impression of being more than a tad boozed up, even though it isn't effecting his singing or playing. But now comes a piece de resistance worthy of Jim Morrison. Ryan walks forward singing into a radio mike, looking up into the circle and balcony, completley misjudges the boundary of the stage and falls over the edge. Unlike the late Jim however, below him are not adoring fans ready to catch him (they are behind a security barrier), but a 3 foot plus drop into the orchestra pit. There is a horrible crack as he hits the deck, but amazingly keeps singing to the end of the verse. He then scambles back up onto the stage, looks decidedly distressed and hobbles off left. The band plays to the end of the song, and then the drummer says "that's probably the last gig for a while" and lobs his sticks into the audience, and the lights go up.
It's now 11pm, so I go down the stairs. As I walk past the stage door a car pulls away right by me, with Ryan leaning over in the passenger seat at a very strange angle looking very much the worse for wear and probably off for a visit to Accident & Emergency at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary. The assembled gathering of fans giving him the applause he didn't wait for before leaving the stage!
My assumption is he's very bruised even if he hasn't actually break or dislocate anything, but I think the drummer may be right. The next bit of the tour is supposed to be on the continent, but he's planned to return to the UK in a couple of weeks, which may be in jeopardy
An excellent evening's music, but a very strange ending!
Keith Taylor
Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell Part 1/Part 2 (Lost Highway)
Quite how Adams manages to have a life outside the studio is a source of constant amazement given the torrent of recordings he's been producing since breaking the work rate barrier of Heartbreakers. There's even rumours that he's putting together a 5 disc box set of unreleased post Gold material. The 19 tracks gathered over the course of these two albums are, as you'll undoubtedly be aware, the ones his label (cast here as the stroppy killjoy) refused to release as his planned third album, allegedly because it wasn't sufficiently upbeat, prompting Adams to go off in a sulk and bash out Rock n Roll.
The fact that they've now emerged, not via some artistic rescue mission by a more sensitive label but through his current recording home, makes you wonder just how much credence to give the original story, but whatever the ins and outs the fact is they're finally out there. Certainly not brimming with sunshine of Rock n Roll was Adams showing off his 80s record collection here he's steeped his heartbreak in the soul of Lennon, Thom Yorke and Otis Redding.
Part 1's the more countrified of the pair, low key lo fi noodling melancholia scuffed with the smell of rain washed streets that moves from Political Scientist's attack on emotional pollution through the frozen lives and relationships of Afraid Not Scared, This House Is Not For Sale, The Shadowlands and, yes, taken at a more ringing guitar pace, Love Is Hell. A regular feature of his live set, his version of Wonderwall finally makes it to disc, albeit with a spooked arrangement and depressive sheen the Gallaghers surely never envisioned. There's been sniffy carping about him wallowing in broken heart gloom, but it's hard to agree when you're presented with something as impressive as World War 24 and the aching piano ballad Avalanche. To be honest I'd take that laceration over the closing skip-heel Paul Simonesque jollity (as jolly as a song about helping a recovering walking car wreck can be) of Halloween anyday.
Pt 2 doesn't get much cheerier, though My Blue Manhattan does dress up the twilight urban melancholy in lovely string section colours. Please Do Not Let Me Go welcomes a yearning pedal steel to the party as Adams adopts a Loudon Wainwright at his self-immolating best phrasing while I See Monsters couches neurosis in a voice as sweet as Nilsson, Dylan's summoned up for English Girls Approximately on which Marianne Faithfull provides backing as he gives the finger to Beth Orton for dumping him while that's surely the ghost of Lennon sitting in his cracked bluesy throat on the slow swaying R&B Chelsea Nights.
Ignore the gainsayers, this is marvellous stuff that again confirms Adams as both a profilic talent and one of the finest contemporary chroniclers of the human heart. Not, of course that he can't screw up from time to time and it must be said that the addition of the squalling distortion of F*** The Universe and scuzziness of Twice As Bad As Love as bonus tracks on the International edition of Pt 2 definitely an incentive to seek out an American import in the hope they're not included.
Mike Davies
Ryan Adams - Rock n Roll (Lost Highway)
It is, he says, his 80s rock album, which probably accounts for the T Rex Get it On guitar chugs on Shallow, the Simple Minds stadium ringing of So Alive, the choppy Rick Springfieldisms of Wish You Were Here and the general mix of Guns n Roses and Alice Cooper most everywhere else. "It's all a bunch of shit" he sings, adding that it's all totally f***ed up'. Anyone expecting Gold 2 might well agree having been greeted by its heavy metal power pop boogie and hairband anthems, but once you get over the initial shock this, while no masterpiece, isn't actually bad.
Burning Photographs rolls and tumbles on a catchy melody line as he bemoans being bored with his girlfriend, Note To Self:Don't Die is a Lennonesque blues nailed to an Aerosmith sweat riff, Anybody Want To Take Me Home is perfectly fine jangly pop that could have dined out at The Breakfast Club, Do Miss America is Tom Petty at his best while Drugs slopes off into psychedelia and Hypnotixed fixes up a date with Lou Reed and the Jesus & Mary Chain. And, just to show what a perverse bugger he is, the title track itself is a spare ballad with just Adams and a skeletal piano. Probably not a favourite on the Lost Highway board room juke-box, but as strops go it's a very listenable tantrum.
Mike Davies
Ryan Adams - Demolition (Lost Highway)
Adams obviously doesn't like to sit round twiddling his thumbs. Not the official studio follow up to Gold, this is actually a gathering together five sessions worth of demos laid down between Dec 2000 and Oct 2001, each session yielding an album's worth of material with this basically a harvesting of the best.
As you might expect, it's a musically diverse collection that reflects his determination to keep ringing the changes. Thus the dreamy summery pop of Nuclear and Tennessee Sucks, acoustic lullaby Tomorrow and the edge of the ocean hushed wash of Jesus (Don't Touch My Baby), contrasting with the more Tom Pettyyish chugger Starting To Hurt and the frankly highly disposable Replacements-esque Gimme A Sign from the two Nashville sessions recorded during his band's garage alter-ego period as the Pinkhearts. Then there's the rootsy 48 Hours songs from Hollywood that saw Adams aiming for a John Wesley Harding/Workingman's Dead flavour and which have produced the Byrdsian country folk-rock of the gorgeous Hallelujah, a twangy Chin Up, Cheer Up which sounds like Dylan singing Steve Goodman, and the quiet Springsteen-like Desire with its organ, acoustic guitar and aching harmonica.
You Will Always Be The Same is the only contribution from the Stockholm recordings, the most recent of the set, a delicate little marriage of guitar, cello and weary vocals. The remaining and earliest three stem from what was originally called The Suicide Handbook, a 21 song collection of 'miserably sad' songs recorded in Nashville with former Dylan lap steel sideman Bucky Baxter. Six of the recordings, Answering Bell among them, wound up on Gold, now you get to savour the forlorn beauty of Cry On Demand, the melancholic Dear Chicago and She Wants To Play Hearts, a Tom Joad bare bones number that sees Ryan trying out his Loudon Wainwright III hat.
Mike Davies
If Adams ever finds a true and steady girlfriend then the music world is going to be short one hell of a singer-songwriter. His bitter solo debut, Heartbreaker, documented his emotional tearing apart and now the swift follow up sees him chasing down another likely bruising but so caught up with the exhilaration of falling in love he's prepared to 'burn up hard and bright' as he sings on the Dylan-referencing Firecracker. "I'm giving myself a chance to look at everything around me and not just be the victim," he says of the album's more upbeat mood. It's a quest that takes him from the opening New York New York (a punched up bundle of exploding energy) in which those Loudon Wainwright III comparisons come tumbling out to the closing weary piano accompanied stroll through LA for Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard, a song that clearly illustrates why Elton John finds the man so impressive.
Moving beyond his Gram Parsons box set, there's journeys through the rest of his record collection too Answering Bell (featuring Adam Durwitz) is Van Morrison, Rescue Blues slaps Let It Bleed on the turntable and taps the same vein for the gospel building epic You're Nobody Girl that also mixes it up with Bob and The Band. The mournful side of Neil Young gets his turn with When The Stars Go Blue (and isn't the Big O in there too?) and Harder Now That's It Over, a wryly painted tale of the police breaking up a barroom spat between feuding lovers.
But if he wears his heroes on his sleeve, he still cuts his material from his own forlorn romantic cloth, his yearning voice and gorgeous melodies turning the hurt and longing into regenerating beauty. Less successful on the messy Street Walkin Blues, a ragged Enemy Fire (moving his Young at heart from Tonight's The Night to Re-Act-Or) and the choppy Whoisms of Only Gonna Make Me Love You More, but when he gets into his plaintive ballad strides, such as the love in rust of La Cienega Just Smiled or the sparse mournful piano ache that is Sylvia Plath's sad wish of a wildly romantic love affair, then Gold is on lustrous mettle indeed.
Mike Davies
There will also be few muscians who are as prolific as Ryan Adams. Superstardom beckoned after the universal praise which greeted the release of Gold and Heartbreaker, his solo CDs after leaving Whiskeytown but instead of taking two years and cherrypicking songs, Adams has chosen a much more honest route. He releases his full body work as it is at that time.
The massive plus is that over time you will build up a complete picture of a seminal Americana artist, the perceived drawback is that these are warts and all recordings, containing the great and the merely good ( Ryan Adams doesn't do average).
Colod Roses follows a straight line from Gold and Heartbreaker, it is an intense study of country/rock but there's good country rock and there's the herd. Ryan Adams is a skilled writer of warm melodies, bringing to those melodies some introspective and searching lyrics.
In keeping with the whole Adams philosophy, everything is low key and underplayed on Cold Roses Adams takes the listener into his confidence instead of preaching to him.
You could say that honesty and Ryan Adams are as much to blame for the slightly mixed reviews that have greeted Cold Roses. He's raised the bar of expectations pretty high and then turned his back on a relentless search for fame. But you can't argue with a musician who has put integrity before commercial success, enjoy Cold Roses for what it is, an album of superb country rock.
Michael Mee
C.C. Adcock is undoubtedly one of those brilliant talents that seem to just happen along once a generation. They change the way we think and look at what they do and, when they are done, move on. The fingerprints of Lafayette Marquis will be left all over popular music from now on.
If the definition of originality is 'impossible to categorize' then Adcock more than matches the criteria.
It is only when you learn that he left his native Louisiana for the neon lights of LA's sunset Strip, that you can start to make any sense of this hybrid. Lafayette Marquis combines the lush, humid and sweaty blues of his native Louisiana and the garish, harsh and unforgiving rhythms of the city. Stealin All Day hits you with the same piledriver force that announced the arrival of Prince's Sign O The Times, it's a song that's full of foreboding and malevolent rhythms.
But, having tasted city life, including a stint as backing guitarist for the great Bo Diddley, Adcock returned to Louisiana and reabsorbed the steamier but no less potent feel of Louisiana. The clash of these opposing cultures, most notably on Runaway Life, makes Lafayette Marquis both country cousin and city slicker.
But the album is centred on the vision of C C Adcock not merely geography. It allows him to absorb environment and then return it as something uniquely his own.
Lafayette Marquis is a continually restless album, even the oozing, swampy blues of All 4 The Betta never stands still and, like most of the album, it never quite finds a constant groove, the slightly off-kilter feel gives the album a definite edge.
Adcock obviously decided early on that he wasn't about to give the listener an easy ride with this. Slangshotz N Boom-R-Angz illustrates perfectly the dark and brooding undercurrent that runs through it all.
Then again who wants easy when you've got the magnificent C C Adcock.
Michael Mee
I have to admit to a soft spot for King Sunny Ade. He was the first artist I heard that might be categorised as 'world music'. In the late 70s, Island Records had had a huge success with Bob Marley bringing reggae music to a worldwide audience. They decided that King Sunny Ade's Ju Ju Music from Nigeria could make a similar swoop across the music scene in the early 80's. It never quite worked out but, in hindsight, it can be seen as the first attempt to popularise a local African music in the UK and elsewhere. The legacy left us was a series of a lbums containing some classic moments from this musical genre.
Those good folks at Wrasse Records have sensibly pulled together this collection with the assistance of King Sunny Ade himself. As I sat listening to King Of JuJu, happy memories of musical investigations at a friends flat in Bristol came flooding back. The guitar work from those first releases, JuJu Music and Synchro System in particular, parallel dub reggae with its plentiful use of effects and production techniques.
Unlike dub, which can sound heavy in mood, these early records have a lighter feel which is less frantic than the Zimbabwean or Soukous guitarists but is equally airy. Interestingly, there is a parallel between the careers of King Sunny Ade and Carlos Santana with its sometimes magnificent, sometimes uncomfortable compromise of originality and commerciality. Indeed, it is a cover of Santana's Gringo performed with Manu Dibango which highlights how this can become a problem. The net result is a historical artefact of 75 minutes length that is a fair summation of a career with trailblazing early tracks and some occasional later moments where the commercial pull affected the quality of the music.
Steve Henderson
Hasil Adkins - The Wild Man (Norton Records)
Originally recorded in 1986, this is the first time that this album has been available on CD and it comes with five bonus tracks, four of which were previously unreleased. Hasil Adkins is described as ?the world's greatest one man band? and that this album sees him ?at his noggin loppin, tube steak munchin' shoot 'em up most wild ass best?. Even if that does not prepare you for what you are about to hear then maybe some of the titles will. Just try Punchy Wunchy Wickey Wackey Woo, Do The Scalp and Chicken Flop and maybe you'll be just starting to get what Hasil Adkins is all about.
The aforementioned Chicken Flop opens the mayhem and in amongst the manic psychobilly there is some structure, believe me. The title track is rock and roll gone mad, this guy is way out there. He sticks to the rockabilly theme on Big Red Satellite and he plays this as straight as he can and, as with the other tracks, it is just guitar, vocal and drums. Pond Fork River is Jerry Lee Lewis taken to the next level of insanity before Hasil drops in a slow one! Still Missing You is that slow one and this fractured country song shows that he can play it relatively seriously if he wants to.
It's a return to the high octane levels for Punchy Wunchy Wickey Wackey Woo and confirms that Adkins is a whirlwind that enters your life, messes with your mind and then leaves. Foggy Mountain Top is country, has yodelling and continues in that relentless pace that you may now have become accustomed to. This just gets faster and faster as the song goes on. There's more country music on I Don't Want Nobody and he's come onto a game with the last few tracks. Unfortunately, this is very short. There's more high pace guitar on She'll See Me Again and the slower country vocal laid over it is very effective.
Matchbox is rock and roll/rockabilly and he still manages to get a few screams in there. There are more hollers and breakneck thrashing of guitar on Do The Scalp, but little else. More rockabilly on Haunted House and this is probably the most conformist song on offer. I don't know how his guitar stands up to the punishment as he launches into Wild Wild Friday Night but it gets some respite on the standard country offering Turning Off A Memory and this song suits his voice perfectly. Ellen Marie is incomparable rock and roll but Don't Start Cryin' Now sees him playing it pretty straight.
Only the second slow song, Midnight Moan is as close to a ballad as you're going to get from Hasil Adkins. Two diverse songs to finish, the quirky rockabilly of Everybody Loves Somebody and the almost blues of California Blues/ T For Texas. The latter of these throws up some yodelling in a country blues style before speeding up towards the end - the man just can help himself. You will either love Hasil Adkins or hate him, I shall say no more!
David Blue
Here's a disc from an unjustly maligned branch of folk culture – sea songs and shanties – which purports to cater for the true maritime enthusiast. Richard Adrianowicz is a regular shanty-singer at San Francisco's Hyde Street Pier (part of the SF Maritime National Historical Park), who acknowledges as inspiration and influence both Stan Hugill and Jon Bartlett. For around 15 years Richard was part of (largely a-cappella) trio Out Of The Rain, but latterly he's concentrated more on nautical music, and Time Ashore Is Over, on which he's accompanied by a chorus drawn from a pool of ten Bay Area shanty singers, is the resultant CD. Two-thirds of the album comprises shanties: probably the most familiar is Away Susanna! (the "shanghai" version of New York Girls, which enjoys lively accompaniment from Peter Kasin's fiddle), whereas the rest is an enterprising selection of mostly halyard and capstan shanties, including several new to me; these are trawled from various sources ranging from Hugill (Heave Away Cheerily-O) and Carpenter (Ilo Man) to the West Indies (Roll Boys Roll). The insert note avers that the performances were recorded live and "not overly arranged", and they sound all the better for that; they do indeed "preserve the spontaneity and edge that … work songs should have", retaining an essential rhythmic impetus, yet also exercising a certain restraint and keeping a sensible perspective in the delivery, so one can easily forgive the occasional raggedness or lapse in intonation. A moment of repose comes with the beautiful, if brief Morning Shanty (composed by Sharyn Dimmick in 1986), which is led by Suzanne from OOTR; both Marla and Suzanne join in with Richard on the two Humber (John Conolly) classics Grimsby Lads and Time Ashore Is Over (the latter more credibly phrased than the former I feel), and the collection is completed by three sea songs, which Richard sings unaccompanied. This release is indeed one for the maritime connoisseur, and any shanty singer worth his salt (!) will, like me, relish the chance to get to grips with those less familiar examples recorded here.
David Kidman
Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (RealWorld)
David Kidman
In a way, it's unbelievable to think that it's seven whole years since Afro Celt Sound System burst onto the scene, fusing West African rhythms with Irish traditional and cutting-edge dance grooves. On Seed, the original innovators (core members Simon Emmerson, Martin Russell and James McNally and their collaborators) have truly come on "further in time" with a slimmed-down band name and a more organic approach to the fusion experiments they pioneered all those years ago. This greater coherence undoubtedly stems from their development of the craft of playing together as a live band, with all the real interaction of musical personalities that involves, and moving away from the reliance on programmed beats that had marked (some say marred) those early efforts. There's also less dependence on "guest names" – there's still a few (Martin Hayes, Eileen Ivers, Brazilian singer Nina Miranda, rocker Mundy, Canadian flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook), but by and large this is a rounded group effort – and it feels and sounds like it. The leisurely ease with which the individual tracks flow this time round, their reluctance to overstay their welcome (especially good since the majority of the tracks clock in at well over five or six minutes) is impressive. The writing is strong, with a more defined emphasis on lyricism and melodic song than hitherto (reflected in vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird's greater presence on this album). And the various musical influences are even more believably integrated now, flowing naturally out of each other as opposed to sounding bolted on for the sake of effect. Standout tracks include Ayub's Song/As You Were, Deep Channel and the title number. Perhaps, however, the Afro Celts' greater live cohesion has been achieved at the expense of that "thrill of the new" that characterised their early (admittedly, flawed) experimentalism. Just a slight nagging feeling there – no real criticism intended, for any coming-of-age is bound to be beset with compromises of some kind!
www.afrocelts.com
www.realworldrecords.com
David Kidman
The Afternoons - My Lost City (Dockrad Records)
There's a definite West Coast feel about this Welsh quintet, who produce a sound that takes you back to those hippy drippy days of Flowers In Your Hair and Burt Bacharach and suchlike - it's all about the Richard Griffiths' earnest vocals and the at-timesfrenetic backing that reprises the kind of Mjo dancing hedonism of a vanished era, filtered through - naturally enough - modern technology and 21sy century pop sensibilities. By that I mean they take the best bits from the past, scuzz them up a bit and give birth to a slightly skewed 'perfect world' pop music, all plangent chord sequences, traces of French horn for that heartstrings tugging moment, ladled with more than a decent helping of Prefab Sprout, whether they realise that or not. When it works, it's sublime - Rollerskates In The Park is lovely; when it doesn't - the faux country ballad Bee-stung sounds like a parody (perhaps it is, who knows?) - it's time to hit the skip button. But, on repeated listening, My Lost City becomes quite an enchanting little album. Almost gossamer-like in places; in others it has a nursery-rhyme like innocence., like in Gonna Stay Together.
If you manage to find a copy going cheap in a second hand record store, dig deep. It's worth a fiver of anyone's money. And I'm sure Dockrad Records, created by two Bank of Wales clerks David Lloyd and Phil Mytton who wanted to do more with their lives and established Dockrad as a means of giving unsigned/unknown Welsh aritsts a platform, will be very happy.
John Stacey
So it's not a choir, and they don't do gospel ... now you just expected that, right? ... Instead, the AMGC's a cranky, uncompromising four-piece outfit from Canada who are steeped in the ethos of no-frills primitive Delta blues. Their music's raw and twisted, often raucous (think Tarbox Ramblers with rather rougher edges maybe), sandpaper-abrasive like proto-early-Beefheart but a stage further back in the timeline and without quite the same psychedelic gloss to their weirdness. AMGC music's from a more outfacing byway of hardcore gutbucket moonshine territory, with edgy, warped overtones of bold, unadulterated mountain music. Which is probably why the opening cut on Fighting And Onions (which turns out to be the band's second album) is a pithy 38 seconds' worth of scrawny solo lonesome fiddling that serves as the instrumental counterpart to the closing vocal version of the number, Stay Here For Awhile. Track 2, Buried Them In Water, is a breakneck Hayseed-Dixie-style punk bluegrass tryout, then it's down to the mean 'n' dirty blues for a pacey, shitkickin' rendition of Skip James' Special Rider complete with unorthodox primeval percussion kit and hard-ringin' guitar. The Depression-era austerity of the mutant-skiffle-meets-Tom-Waits vibe pervades a few other cuts too, and it's probably the most distinctive feature of the AMGC's music: often bruised and bloody, but as perversely attractive and refreshing as a blow to the skull might be! The band (Judd Palmer, Bob Keelaghan, Jay Woolley and Vlad Sobolewski) obviously feel all their sources real deep, and keep the faith with serious reverence – and so who cares if a few notes go astray in the fray?! With all the eccentric energy of pure old-time religion, the Agnostics' world is one where Delta slide collides head-on with weird Doc Boggs banjo tunings punctuated by clangy, clanky percussion and slap-bass. Son House's Preaching Blues is given a gloriously thrashy roadkill runthrough with severely skewed soloing, while the Rev Gary Davis chestnut Death Don't Have No Mercy broods awkwardly darkly with all the portentousness of true backwoods gothic, and Come Along With Me serves up a native chant round the campfire of ancestral memory. The basic, minimal-overdub, defiant heavy-lo-fi feel of the recording - made in winter of 2005 during a harsh cold snap – is another contributory factor in the compelling nature of the record. I love it to bits, man.
David Kidman Sept 2006
Here's some good old-fashioned prog-rock with a distinct leaning towards electric folk. It's sturdy stuff, exciting and full of passion in the time-honoured manner of the genre. Bearing in mind Ahab's lineup (female vocal backed by violin, electric/acoustic guitars, bass, drums), you might feel that early Blue Horses would be a useful musical reference point, but actually I find Ahab's sound (specially in terms of instrumental blend) is probably more reminiscent of early-70s legends High Tide. In fact, for much of the time Ahab sound rather like they could be a lost band from that era, newly rediscovered (and I mean that as a compliment not a criticism). Ahab hail from the Lake District (well, Cumbria if you insist!), and their present incarnation came about nearly two years ago, although their members all have masses of experience in a range of diverse musical disciplines from playing support for big names in the folk world through to punk and rock bands, choreography and traditional singing.
Leviathan turns out to be Ahab's debut CD, and was recorded before violin player Kevin Hamel was replaced by former Tryksterite Mark Newport, but it's still pretty much representative of their overall sound. It certainly possesses a healthy quality of freshness, a loose yet controlled energy that's invigorating and appealing, as well as a mild dose of the inevitable "they're not quite there yet, but they've heaps of promise" reaction that a debut release tends to bring. Just over the half of the material on Leviathan is Ahab's own (presumably "composed by committee"?) - it's stirring stuff, drawing upon many influences but always with a keen sense of proportion. The opener Dance With Me is probably atypical, being a deceptively gentle folk-waltz, but thereafter things hot up nicely with trademark driving, cascading rhythms (djembe and bodhrán supplementing the standard drumkit), pounding bass, swooping violin, soaring vocal, rockin'-up (though at times surprisingly restrained) guitars.
The group compositions mostly come to the fore on the second half of the CD, prior to which we get four tracks that are the band's original prog-folk-rock arrangements of traditional folk repertoire (or at least that's what the credits claim - it's unfortunate that, in a rare lapse, Andy Barnes' song The Last Leviathan, here retitled Lament For The Leviathan, is miscredited as trad.). By and large these are enterprising and work well, particularly the intriguing take on The Gardener and the extended workout that segues Bonny Ship The Diamond into Last Leviathan. The playing has a strong sense of togetherness that's mirrored by the strength of Jane Barrett's strident vocal work, which at times displays definite tinges of both Siouxsie Sioux and Grace Slick; and the band's arrangements have an innate sense of drama that recalls acts like Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. Guitarist Dave Livingstone takes over the lead vocal for the album's centrepiece Ahab, one of the strongest cuts, which incidentally features variety in texture with the involvement of a guest harpist (Mary Lawson). In keeping with the band's prog-sensibilities, several of the tracks extend over an honourable mini-epic span, but none outstay their welcome.
Maybe there are a couple of less successful moments: first, the violin line on Hope And Vanity sounds somewhat unsure and even detuned, and secondly, there are times when the overall sound balance isn't quite ideal, and doesn't quite bloom with the body and texture that befits a full six-piece, but those are minor points really and shouldn't put anyone off investigating Ahab's music. And I'm being a bit picky perhaps, but hey, the snatch of birdsong introducing She's Like The Swallow is decidedly non-hirundine! But it's back to the positives with a vengeance for the final track (Heaven's Cloths) which is an emotion-charged setting of W.B. Yeats' poem He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven – though after this (rather pointlessly and inexplicably) you then need to sit through (or fast-forward through) over 12 minutes of silence before discovering the "hidden track" (a brief soundscape comprising chiming clock, country ambience and electronica). So, those minor irritations (indulgences?) aside, this is an extremely impressive CD, which I've enjoyed a hell of a lot. And by the way, the artwork's stylish, simple yet striking. Ahab's obviously a great act live, too, and they evidently had a whale of a time making this CD (sorry! – I'd better not blubber on any more.… )!
David Kidman
Label mates to fellow Norwegians St Thomas and comprising songwriter-singer Patrick Lundberg, theology student bassist Bosse Litzheim and singer Mona Mørk (headmistress to an island school of 8), this is the Bergen trio's debut for the label after two previous albums and the first to get an official UK distribution.
Imagine a hushed alt-country equivalent of The Kings of Convenience after immersing themselves in Cowboy Junkies albums, then dress them in minimalist and miserabilists clothes with barely there percussion, funereal keyboards, tentative introspective guitars and the occasional accordion colouring and you get a reasonable idea of what's in store. Lyrically nothing makes much sense, the opening Mountains and Castles murmuring on about Robin Hood, scary little rooms, and comedians, Elvis talking of Cinderella and cockpits flying away and Different Strauss with its complaining albatross and sneeze rhyming with knees is about as intelligible as it gets. It could get you some strange looks singing along, but it doesn't make these or other tracks like Hopscotch and Revolution Gray any the less beguilingly hypnotic or melodically entrancing.
Those looking for a lifeline of comprehension will be pleased to learn they also do a wonderful ramshackle cover of 40s song Where Is Your Heart, aka the Theme From Moulin Rouge, its gorgeous accordion intro conjuring the cobbled streets of Paris, the Eiffel tower and Maurice Chevalier at some corner cafe before Mona steps in to the waltz and the instrumentation whippoorwills away in the background. Quite possibly as mad as a hatter, but lovely with it.
www.racingjunior.com/aiphoenix
Mike Davies
Alabama Slim (from Alabama, surprisingly) and his contemporary, Mississippian Little Freddie King are two of the biggest names in blues (in the case of Slim this is quite literal as he is almost 7 feet tall) and when they get together, people take notice. Both lost all of their possessions during Hurricane Katrina and had to flee to Dallas, Texas. Their trials and tribulations have manifested themselves on The Mighty Flood. The eponymous title track opens proceedings and is a graphic description of the New Orleans flood via a Chicago blues. Please Leave My Money Alone is a slow, rhythmic blues but they return to the Chicago fold for Crack Alley. This has the first introduction of Slewfoot's harmonica and although the song is pretty standard stuff, it is very earthy. The pace on Way Down In The Bottom is still quite sedate and this is a slow heartbeat of a song. I Got The Blues lifts the pace a little. It's a tale of lose job, lose woman, get the blues with reverb guitar for the soundtrack. I love the way that they get maximum returns for the economy of effort. Going Upstairs keeps up the pace and even increases it by a bit - simply another tale of broken relationships.
The dulcet tone of Slim's spoken lyric on Mr Charlie makes for a great tale and there are more of those dulcet tones on Coming Home. John Lee Hooker influences can be heard throughout the album but none more than on this with just guitar and voice. This is music made up of the most base of elements. His voice has more of a strained quality on Waiting On You and again there is nothing too fancy - they just get on with the job. The two guitars are independent but they are together at the same time. They swap vocalists with great aplomb and King takes over for Lord, I'm Good For Something, which heralds the return of the harp and has a drumbeat for about only the second time so far. This organic Gospel is top drawer. King keeps the vocal for I Don't Know What To Do and it is all over the place, even with drums again, but does come together in the end. The main point to push here is the passion of the artists and it is this passion that conquers all, especially in the vocal. They reprise the title track as an acoustic blues to finish with and have the harmonica wailing for New Orleans and the same deep vocal as the opener.
These guys need to be heard and appreciated - do it!
David Blue December 2007
Alabama 3 - Last Train To Mashville Vol 2 (One Little Indian)
Forged in the cauldron of gospel, Deep South Americana, and techno dance, the fairly fluid eight piece don't play by the usual rules, so you'd not expect them to turn out the standard best of compilation. So what they've done is pick 11 of their favourites songs, strip out the techno beats and re-record them as acoustic country blues versions that put the emphasis on the fiddles, harp and slide guitars. Not that it make a huge amount of difference to their Sopranos theme Woke Up This Morning, but now things like U Don't Dance To Tekno Anymore and Let The Caged Bird Sing let their Dr John and Hank Williams influences shine through while the sparser takes throw their tales of urban paranoia, corporate and multi-national corruption, anarchy, mental breakdown, and ghetto tragedy into starker relief.
I'm not sure about their galloping bluegrassed rework of Speed of the Sound Of Loneliness, but the swamp fever Too Sick To Pray and the now far more apparent pastiches of Tom Waits and Randy Newman on Bullet Proof and the fabulous Disneyland Is Burning make this far more than just some unplugged exercise. Oh and no, there wasn't a Vol 1.
Mike Davies
(Ed: A reader has emailed to say, "The review of Alabama 3's Last Train To Mashville Vol. II states that there were no Vol. I. This is erroneous, but the release was only sold at gigs.". It's now available from the A3 website shop.
Another "what it sez on the tin" record, but a very good one (although it arrived too late for the festive season!). The band lineup proves every indication that we're in for a treat: Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol, Kellie While and Simon Care, with Rainbow Chaser Ruth Angell guesting on violin. The arrangements are acoustic-based, sensible and uncluttered, with unerring taste and an easy and natural internal balance yet no lack of fire. The material is an archetypal Hutchings "thematic mixture", with fascinating obscurities alongside simple but affecting treatments of well-loved carols and suchlike. The sparkling opening Somerset Carol leads perfectly naturally to a fine Kellie While rendition of The Bitter Withy, which is followed by a slice of John Clare reminiscence spoken against a Christmas waltz composed by Simon Care, then it's back to Kellie again for a lovely version of Alan Hull's Winter Song… you get the drift. The sequence continues through All Hail To The Dayes (which is given a delicious neo-classical string arrangement), Joni Mitchell's River, some concise readings (Dickens, Bridges, Tennyson, Bob Copper), a Holly And The Ivy with a real spring in its step, though perhaps tailing off a bit towards the end of the disc where some material is less to my taste and one or two of the treatments seem a little routine by comparison. But all is performed without a whiff of Xmas cash-in, and should give much pleasure.
David Kidman February 2007
This is a reissue of this early-80s disc on which the expanded Albion Band lineup performed a selection of music from the National Theatre adaptation of Flora Thompson's evocative trilogy. The drama was unfolded during the course of two separate but linked plays, Lark Rise and Candleford, which were produced in March 1978 and November 1979 respectively, and this CD attempts to convey to the listener the experience of being in a theatre with others, of how the narrative flowed from speech to music and back again and how one built upon the other. Fades and segues are but two of the devices used, and the whole disc certainly makes a credible aural tapestry. The pioneering Albion lineup used here was the extended "family" that arose out of the Steeleye lineup that included both Ashley Hutchings and Martin Carthy, which had forged a link with the National Theatre and broken down barriers by bringing the action of the plays right into the audience. By the incorporation of a range of elements such as speech and popular song, music-hall, hymn-tune and ritual, the plays and their music examined our nation's relationship to the past. The roll-call of Albionites is enough to give you a flavour of the spirit of these recordings: the band nucleus of Hutchings, Carthy, John Kirkpatrick, John Tams, Graeme Taylor, Howard Evans, Michael Gregory, Steve Saunders and Doug Morter, supplemented here by Bill Caddick, Shirley Collins, Pete Bullock, Brian Protheroe, Martin Simpson... the epic big-band lineup in its final proto-Home-Service throes. And what a mighty sound they make at full strength, as on The Day Thou Gavest and Dare To Be A Daniel - although the more intimate moments also give considerable pleasure too. Shirley's contribution to the tale of Witch Elder, John Tams' renditions of Tommy Toes and Snow Falls, Bill Caddick's Abroad For Pleasure, Martin Carthy's All In A Row... all these, along with the rousing Jacob's Well, provide moments of notable interpretation. For verily, as we can hear, the theatre hummed with music and dance...
David Kidman
The Albion Band - Albion Heart On Tour (Talking Elephant)
Continuing Ashley's trawl through the treasure-trove of hitherto unreleased live concert recordings emanating from various incarnations of the Albion Band, here Talking Elephant present us with one of the Albions' all-time classic latterday lineups (Chris While, Julie Matthews, Simon Nicol and Ashley himself) performing 15 songs from their repertoire recorded at various times during 1995. Some of the recordings were made onto cassette from the mixing desk and are slightly variable in quality, but this is a very minor matter indeed and all bar possibly one or two of the recordings are at worst very acceptable while many are excellent. This particular team was always one of the most fruitful in terms of artistic success, as regards both performance and writing, and the then-developing catalogue of Julie's creations was enriched permanently during this period with such strong (and well contrasted) songs as Jewel In The Crown and Albion Heart, Colours Of Love and The Devil In Me, Get Up And Do It Again and Love Is An Abandoned Car shining out there on the stage in the company of Chris's Long Long Road and Sister Moon. At the same time, this particular foursome showed they could still cut traditional with a lovely version of Flandyke Shore, also turn their hand to covering contemporary writing with Beth Nielsen Chapman's Dancer To The Drum. At the risk of sounding mildly uncharitable, Ashley's own compositions Crocodile Line and Appalachian Front-Porch Game seem very much the poor relations in that illustrious company. Performances are intense and deeply felt, and the whole band just knew it was on a roll it seems with this lineup that made such a virtue out of acoustic simplicity allied to superb songwriting. This CD can be treated as a companion volume to the almost equally fine Acousticity On Tour release (which presents live performances from the year, and band lineup, prior to Albion Heart), and will no doubt prove an essential acquisition for Albion aficionados; even so, if newcomers to the music can't find the original Albion Heart album in the shops then this live collection is likely to prove an even better proposition than the second-choice substitute that a live album would normally be.
www.ashleyhutchings.com
www.talkingelephant.com
David Kidman
This is a very nice collection of just over an hour's worth of what are described as "newly-recovered" live recordings, taken from Albion Band concerts during 1993 and 1994 in various locations. The common factor is the lineup - in Albion terms one of the classic band incarnations that had everything going for it, and comprising Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol, Chris While and Ashley Reed, with concomitant strengths in all departments (leadership, guitar, vocal, fiddle and songwriting). On Tour's being marketed, and with more than some justification, as an essential complement to the studio Acousticity album - in fact, the only actual duplication is We Lie (though one isolated tune appears within a medley elsewhere on the album). The variety of the band's repertoire is well illustrated, with quality original songs interspersed with equally quality covers (including Dave Goulder's Faraway Tom in a superlative unaccompanied rendition by Chris, and Richard Thompson's Rainbow Over The Hill), sparkling tune sets and some spoken-word pieces. Overall, the sound quality's a bit variable (most of the recordings were cassette-transfer mementoes courtesy of the mixing-desk!), but the emotional intensity of the performances and the excellent group dynamics of this short-lived lineup shine through on every track.
David Kidman
David Kidman
The family tree of acts that have branched out from the stout trunk of The Albion Band is a fine testament to the bands leader, Ashley Hutchings. Members of the band come and go but don't think that this is simply a Folk kindergarten. No, this is a first class finishing school. So, what of the class that has produced 'Road Movies'?
Ken Nicol is well known as a superb musician who turns his hands to electric and acoustic guitar as fits his traditional compositions like 'Press Gang' and the instrumental 'Dental Excursion'. However, it is Joe Broughton who is the revelation here. His fiddle features strongly and is pleasingly free of gimmicks in this setting. Added to this, he pops up contributing in compositions showing wit ('Cookery Is The New Rock'n'Roll') and sensitivity ('She Still Waits'). The sensitivity being further developed by the delightful vocals of Kellie While who squeezes work with The Albion Band in between vocal duties with E2K and her own solo work. A superb voice which is maturing quickly and will no doubt provide memorable moments for years to come. Ashley provides the bass and Neil Marshall adds a strident drum to complete the rhythm section. All in all, Ashley can be proud of yet another fine crop of musicians and another record whose quality maintains the high Albion Band standards.
Steve Henderson
Pete Alderton is the son of an American G.I., born in the UK and living in Germany so it is not so surprising that he has a diverse musical outlook. Living On Love begins with It Seems Strange, a short explanation of the blues, before Alderton launches into Evil Was Her Name which is a classy, jazzy blues. Song For David is a strange one. No, it's not about me, it's for David Blaine. It's hard to categorise but anyone who gets Blaine into a song deserves a listen. Have The Roses Gone Dry and I'm Sad are sentimental ballads and little more and the title track is acoustic, like most of the others, but not very inspiring. Jesus In A Bottle is one of the best tracks on the album and could easily be a big end rock song or, as it is here, an acoustic burner. A Fool For Her Body (skit) is a short spoken interlude that leads into Witching Hour but it's of no real purpose and the aforesaid Witching Hour has the welcoming introduction of harmonica but is standard fare nonetheless.
Pete turns the Whitesnake song, Give Me All Your Love into an acoustic effort but doesn't really do the song any favours. He then launches off into another of his skits, this time I Still Remember. This is his ramblings on his love of the blues beat and gives us an insight into the man. A Taste Of The Blues is a tenuous link to the blues and, although it is well executed, is nothing to get too excited about. The album is taking a bit of a downturn by this time and the acoustic AOR of Baby I Love You and the tedious The Loved do little to halt the slide. Evil Was Her Name (Full Edit) shows itself to be one of the albums highlights and could have been further enhanced by a screaming guitar solo – it was just crying out for one but Pete played it safe and remained too laid back. It's hard to get the balance between sentiment and over-sentiment and Passing Ships confirms that Pete Alderton hasn't really managed to nail it on this album. He finishes with some more musings on The End Of The Day - we're all living on love, apparently!
www.songways.de
www.Pete-Anthony-Alderton.com
David Blue November 2006
Popularly credited as the only person to have been covered by The Stones, Beatles, Dylan and Presley, despite a warm voice strikingly reminiscent of Sam Cooke the Alabama-born Alexander never enjoyed the same acclaim as a soul singer as he did a songwriter. Or at least not until 1993 when, after having giving up music in 1980 in disillusionment to drive a bus and work a centre for disadvantaged kids in Cleveland, he was persuaded to record again and released Lonely Just Like Me on Nonesuch with Ben Vaughn behind the controls and featuring musicians who'd played on his albums in the 60s and 70s.
Featuring reworks of classic nuggets Go Home Girl (famously covered by Ry Cooder on Bop Til You Drop), Every Day I Have To Cry (did you know the pre-fame Bee Gees did this), Johnny Heartbreak (recorded by an unknown Otis Redding) and In The Middle of It All alongside new material such as the country-soul If It's Really Got To Be This Way and forgotten demos like Genie In The Jug and the TexMex flavoured title track which could easily have been a hit for The Drifters.
The album was greeted with the acclaim he'd been long overdue, but then fate played a cruel hand and he died of a heart attack just days after its release. With no artist to promote it, the album kind of faded away, so plaudits to Hacktone for rescuing it from the dusty shelves and reissuing it in an extended version. Along with the original album, the package now features four live radio recordings from the 1993 NPR Fresh Air broadcast during his promo tour, interview bites interspersed between four songs, including a version of the Stones hit You Better Move On, a 1991 live at the Bottom Line recording of the classic Anna (as covered by The Beatles) and four never before heard demos of Genie In The Jug, Lonely Just Like Me, Johnny Heartbreak and his own splendid cover of Neil Diamond's Solitary Man, captured in a Cleveland hotel room. With both the original and new liner notes, a tribute by Vaughn, photos and even a copy of the funeral service and obituary, it's the final chapter of a story that fully deserves the retelling.
www.myspace.com/arthuralexander
www.hacktone.com
Mike Davies February 2008
You know how it is, you turn on the radio, you surf the stations and suddenly you hear something that stops you dead in your tracks. But you have no idea who it is or what it's called. Case in point here. I was driving home in Birmingham one evening and flicking through the dial trying to find something worth listening to. I found I'd tuned in to local Muslim radio station Unity FM and was listening to a voice that sounded like a cross between Cat Stevens and Art Garfunkel singing a lovely lullaby that, I guessed, was called Songs of Innocence, a song of hope and promise to a sleeping child, of peace in the Prophet, with rippling hand percussion and a melodic chant chorus.
Utterly enchanted, I tracked it down and bought the album, discovering Talib was born in London, grew up in Manchester where he trained with the Manchester Boy's Choir and, after 10 years in South Africa, now lives in Birmingham where he works as a psychiatrist and spiritual teacher. An author of three books on Islamic spirituality and ethics, a poet and performer of inshad (Islamic religious singing), in 2004 he was encouraged to compile a collection of English-language spiritual songs, the result being this album. The opening Salat al-Badriyya is traditional Arabic, the rest (save for one lyric) being either newly composed by Talib or reworked from words and melodies he'd written in the mid 90s. Naturally, they concern love of Allah, the teachings of the Prophet and religious poetry but are also imbued with a spirituality and a sense of grief and hope that is universal. Whatever your faith, the cascading melody and double tracked harmonies of Beloved Nabi, Allahu's tribal rhythm and infectious chorus, and the sentiments of Together's wish for peace for our children are wonderful listening.
www.thenasheedshop.com/artists/talib-al-habib
www.habibiyya.org/talibMike Davies February 2007
It makes a change to find a girl band who want to be The Bangles rather than either the next Spice Girls or some variation of Destiny's Child. Stand up then and be counted Dubliner Audrey Nugent, Glasgow's Amy Lindop and, no really, Charity Hair (she's from Florida so I guess she's got an excuse), a trio who made Vogue before they made the charts and can already count festival slots with Alanis, Dylan and Neil. You might suspect a whiff of hype, marketing a glamorous trio for whom guitars are just six string jewellery, but there's musical credibility anchoring them behind which the fact they look pretty damn good and wear low cut/raised high dresses that expose cleavage and legs is a bonus not the prime selling point.
The jangling acoustic AOR folk-pop (most typically Lights Are Changing and the Byrdsy One Day At A Time) underlines the Bangles reference points (and Ten Year Night and Nothing On But The Radio also ably caters to those Natalie Imbruglia getting down and dirty fantasies), but January's Child indicates they've listened to Lou Reed too while Now That You Love Me has the Morissette phrasing down, Angel calls to mind Stevie Nicks and Everything I'm Looking For has hints of the younger Ms Vega too. They presently lack the breakthrough killer song (and Tambourine Song - 'baby I love you like a tambourine song' - suggests some lyrical self-criticism wouldn't go amiss), but the harmonies are impeccable and there's depth enough to the likes of Annie and January's Child to indicate it's not all about sun, cowboy boots and driving with your best boy in their thrift shop.
Mike Davies
All Blacked Up is one of the country's premier ceilidh bands, with over 20 years' experience of playing at most of the main folk festivals and ceilidh clubs in England. Theirs is a particularly distinctive sound, and their ranks include original members melodeonists Lisa McDermott and Baz Parkes and sax supremo Alistair Gillies, with the estimable Bill Caddick recently added on sundry guitars and vocals, all bolstered by a sturdy rhythm section (Ray Archer and Nick Beck). What an interesting and satisfyingly full sound they make too, with the traditional ceilidh-band squeezery (and harmonica, recorders and whistles) spicily supplemented by more jazzy saxophonics and from time to time some not-so-subtle R&B-type inflections. Their stock-in-trade inevitably contains some of the well-worn ceilidh favourites such as Off To California, Pepper In The Brandy and Scan Tester's, but for every well-known tune there's likely to be appended a delightful new composition by the likes of Messrs Gillies or McDermott. Another feature new to this latest incarnation of All Blacked Up is the Caddick-steered pairings of Soldier's Joy with Over The Hills And Far Away and Tufty Swift's Gaspe Reel with Rambling Soldier ("shame to waste such vocal talent"!), while the slide-geetar-led Homecroft marks a departure from the accepted ceilidh-band norm. A further refreshing feature of the ABU sound is the spruceness of the rhythms, always great fun and decidedly non-lumpy - and there's even an almost Cajun feel to the Oxbol Polka, despite its Danish origin! The provenance of the various tunes is discussed entertainingly in the liner notes (mostly the work of caller Baz, we're told). By the way, those allergic to "twangling instruments" need have no fears, for although some guitars (and a hammered dulcimer!) were used in the making of this record, none were harmed in any way and the disc shouldn't damage delicate sensibilities: the "tempestuous" (in the Shakespearean sense) title of this disc is definitely tongue-in-cheek!
David Kidman November 2007
All Jigged Out is possibly what you'd first imagine a listener to feel after playing through this exhilarating hour-long parade of instrumental dexterity - though I wouldn't want to "wish hill" of anyone in the process (pardon the unnecessary aitch!), for it's not in any sense an ordeal! The tight, often purposefully funky jazz vibe that AJO instigate and propagate gives them a fairly unique sound, one for which the concepts of crossover and fusion might well have been invented. The AJO history is impressive too: founder members Philippe Barnes (flute) and Ben Lee (violin) reached the finals of the Young Folk Awards in 1999 as teenagers (and came second!), since when they've amassed a diverse array of credentials for their individual CVs, while the AJO band made a big impression at last year's Sidmouth Folk Week. Philippe has toured with the Irish Folk Ballet Company, Candela and Licence To Ceilidh, as well as releasing a duo CD with another fellow-AJO-member, pianist Tom Phelan; while Ben, an RCM graduate, has (already!) worked with all manner of acts from the Arctic Monkeys to the Jazz Heritage Orchestra. Drummer Ollie Boorman completes the main lineup, with Dan Dotor and André Fry sharing out the bass duties here on the album sessions. The musicians take responsibility for their own creativity, with highly intelligent and innovative arrangements of traditional tunes (on less than half of the tracks) seamlessly integrated into and alongside original compositions by (mostly) Philippe and/or Ben. These demonstrate a stunning level of assuredness and breadth of musical scope, with a concomitant blend of improvisatory fluidity and high-level structuredness that inevitably stems directly from their jazz experiences and leanings - not many ensembles manage to bring this kind of stuff off, but AJO sure do - and take it further than most in the process! All the musicians involved play with a startling degree of accomplishment that (despite the fact that the pieces are all very consciously arranged) is not in any sense auto-pilot. Instead, their playing (solo and ensemble work alike) has a vital edge and drive, and proves to be more musically aware than the average note-spinners of the session world or the more strictly folky players might wish to embrace in their experimenting. Ben's playing in particular is extraordinary, also quite unconventional even in jazz or folk terms, transcending the usual sonic boundaries or stylings of those genres: he switches between "normal" acoustic and electric instruments with enviable facility, and once or twice I had to check to make sure it wasn't actually a keening electric guitar I was hearing! On a couple of other tracks, Gerard Mapstone and Robin Jones appear as guest guitarists (classical and electric respectively, while Philippe himself contributes a rather fine uncredited acoustic guitar part to Vauxhall Lasses. There are so many great ideas here (for instance I'd defy anyone to recognise Blow The Wind Southerly in this new guise!) that every track's a gem in its own right - and that idea-rich quality extends to the often cheeky track-naming. The sparkling encore, a bonus live track, is a show-stopping triptych of reels (Mitton's Set) that even takes in some boogie-woogie along the way. Though textures are busy, the whole is admirably crisply recorded, perfectly reflecting what I might call the musicians' exemplary instrumental diction in phrasing, and the recording has a superb presence too. Very satisfying indeed.
David Kidman April 2007
This is a wholly refreshing, expectedly eclectic new offering from the man with the extra "A", a veritable "cook's tour" through the world of roots musics that's destined to end up on everyone's A-list playlist (at least, that's my own "serving suggestion"!). Over a stunning 30-year career so far, Maart's been in the lineup of countless folk and folk-rock bands (Fairport to Tull to Waz!) and played alongside more musicians than you could probably name - and that's not even mentioning his session work! So you wouldn't expect a solo album of Maart's to be anything other than supremely creative, stylistically wide-ranging and betraying a healthy mix of influences and inspirations. And so it proves, for over the course of nigh on 50 minutes Maart romps effortlessly through folk-roots, taking in storming Roumanian folk-dance tunes (Murfatlar), a driving hard-rock anthem (Everything Changes, with a suitably gutsy, strident lead vocal from Gilly Darbey), a fine, laid-back rendition of Brooks Williams' We Will Dance Someday (if ever one was made for Fairport to cover too!), a gentle, Satie-esque waltz (Armelle) and an evocation of an Austrian mountain view via techno-electropop with more than a dash of 10cc (Hafelakar). There's also several solid and inventive excursions into rocked-up arrangements of tunes (the pick of which are probably the kickass Tull-like New Breton, the grandly moody triumvirate of Hornpipes, and the Breathnach Reels set with its exhilarating key-change and Chris Parkinson's dynamic accordion playing).
Maart's gathered himself a grand little crew of musos altogether, but special mention must go to Paul Burgess and John Coghlan for some mighty drumming, and Chris Leslie for assorted violineries. And happily, we're not shortchanged on a large helping of Maart's own expertise on every stringed instrument imaginable, while even better, we also get to hear him singing two of his own compositions (the thoughtful and tenderly personal And There You Are and the lovely, simple Lullabye which forms an ideal album-finisher). But much as I heartily enjoy, nay adore, the jolly folk-rock japery of a hectic headlong rush through a set of Kerry polkas and all the tremendous instrumental shenanigans elsewhere on this disc, guess what's fast becoming my favourite track? A deeply affectionate re-creation of the eerie early King Crimson classic Moonchild, that's what! But hey, let's not quibble with the squiggle - this is all in all the best and most consistent set yet from Mr Allcook the Master Chef and ultra-talented musician, and what's more it should also appeal to a very wide spectrum of musical palates.
David Kidman
OX15 is the postal code of the adopted home of the Manchester-born Maartin Allcock whose fine musicianship has seen him accepted in the "Folk-Rock Belt," as that area of north Oxfordshire is known by those in the know.
The album opens with a finely bowed refrain from Chris Leslie's violin which is quickly joined by Allcock's piano, Simon Mayor's mandolin and then Allcock's muscular guitar. Called Daichovo Chara it is the first track on this, Allcock's second solo album, and the first of several instrumentals. From that fiddle intro, the track builds and builds - helped in no small part by the uillean pipes of Troy Donockley and Gerry Conway's always impressive drumming - producing a memorable melody.
Second track in starts with some fierce guitar riffing and, in addition to Allcock's first vocal of the album - one of only two - Whenever we see the dark features the oh so distinctive flute of Ian Anderson. While this is ostensibly a solo album, Allcock is joined throughout by a handful of muso pals, past band-mates and even, on one track, the wife on vocals. Anderson was Allcock's boss during the time he spent touring the world as Jethro Tull's keyboard player and both Leslie and Conway are current members of Fairport Convention, a band with which Allcock spent ten fruitful years.
The highlight of the album is a tremendous version of The Allman Brothers' Jessica - for so long associated with the BBC TV motoring programmed Top Gear - featuring the duelling fiddles of Chris Leslie and Chris Haigh. It's a joyous, uplifting reading of this classic rock song and clearly audible are the smiles of the Chris Brothers - as Allcock refers to them - as they fill the place occupied in the original version by the twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickie Betts.
Untiled is the clever title of a tune written by Allcock to help raise funds to pay for a new roof for Deddington Church in Oxfordshire; starting with chiming church bells the track spirals irrevocably upward to some fine chiming guitar-playing by its composer. Revered Indian singer Najma Akhtar shares the writing credit with Allcock on A dream. She has been making a name for herself in this country through her collaborations with the likes of Robert Plant and Jethro Tull and, in Allcock's words: "We come from totally different backgrounds but share a kindred musical spirit." She lends an Eastern mysticism to a gentle track which does, indeed, conjure up dream-like visions.
In the sleeve-notes, Allcock states: "OX15 is a great place to live. We've been here for 12 years now and it really is home." This album, made with obvious love, skill and no small degree of fun, seems to reflect his fondness for an area the only drawback of which is the fact "it's a long way from the sea . . ."
Fred Hall
Here's a straight reissue of the Texas visionary maverick's 1985 magnum opus, a commission for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in San Francisco. It's an oddball experimental piece that's less a sequence of songs than - in Terry's own words - one "song", one track 35:44 long, for which he hopes that "the listener can sit down and listen. Flat out. That's how it's meant to be heard".
It's an extraordinary, if elliptical achievement, a kind of loose stream-of-consciousness narrative which takes the form of a continuous doomy Southern-Gothic tale of love, sex and death on the road, a story loosely based on an actual steel-guitar player (one of the first to use the instrument for rock'n'roll) who wandered Texas and New Mexico in the late-60s/early 70s. It conjures up a powerful atmosphere through simple devices, from the gentle ubiquity of chirping crickets to the lazy tuning of guitar strings and the fizz of the highway. A heady trip, set to a stunning and intensely logical parade of musical references and excerpts which easily incorporate passages of country hobo balladry, mariachi brass, Native American chant, heavy fuzz-sodden guitar and cascading drums, radical jazzy horn work and characteristically plaintive pedal-steel, with interpolated beat poetry and B-movie-style dialogue as well as short sections of straight screenplay narrative. And with musicians like Lloyd, Donnie and Kenny Maines, Butch Hancock, Richard Bowden and Bobby Keyes on board, Terry's Panhandle Mystery Band is no casual pickup ensemble.
Sure, there are times when it can all seem a mildly uncompromising listen, but keep at it, for it's one of those strikingly individual creations that deserves your attention and thanks to this fine new reissue it can at last be accessed properly and repeatedly and evaluated as the richly imaginative work it is.
www.terryallen.com
www.sugarhillrecords.com
David Kidman, July 2006
David Kidman
Terry Allen - Juarez (Sugar Hill)
Originally released back in 1975, Allen's first album was actually put together as part of an art installation. Already a noted artist, he'd been invited to Chicago to do some lithographs. The printer had heard some of the songs and wanted to release then on record. So Allen did a series of prints using images from the story and recorded the album at 9am in the morning in San Francisco with his cousin, the road manager for Jefferson Airplane. A limited edition box set of album and 50 prints was pressed up along with 1000 ordinary LPs. It served to launch Allen on what would later be called the Americana circuit and would prove to be an ongoing project, subsequently developed into a radio show (Return To Juarez) which in turn he and David Byrne turned into a full-scale stage musical. He's even added two new tracks, the TexMex accordion jaunty list song El Camino and a more funereal fiddle scraped instrumental of the same name for this reissue.
A tale of sex, drink, obsession and murder, it involves a Mexican prostitute, a Texan sailor on shore leave, a Juarez born Pachuco (a flashy young Mexican-American) and his rock writer girlfriend, two couples on separate journeys to Cortez, Colorado where one pair murders the other before fleeing to Juarez.
If Brecht and Weill had been Texans, this is what they might have written, its journey from a seedy Tijuana bar, through East Los Angeles to a Colorado trailer park and a Mexican cantina serving as metaphor for the album's themes of the volatile nature of Mexican/American border relationships and the legacy of colonialism.
Recorded with just the bare bones of a guitar, piano and Allen's throaty growl and spoken links it's aged well, sounding even more cinematic these days (though perhaps now more for a Tarantino or Rodriguez than the Mallick or Hopper that was likely part of the original influences), Allen introing the suite with Texican Badman before providing a prologue that introduces the characters and brief synopsis. A story of dislocation and disappointment, it's rich in images and imagery as it unfolds the backdrop history of colonisation on the Neil Young-like Cortez Sail and paints pictures of the barroom losers sucking a Dos Equis in the Border Palace and the doomed anti-heroes breaking loose out of Dogwood.
Whisky breath raw folk country it breaks out into boogie blues with Writing On Rocks Across The USA and the biting There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California before giving way to the bruised and leathered romance of What Of Alicia and Honeymoon in Cortez in the eventual run up the cornered god forsaken motel room suicidal despair of La Despedida. Ultimately both tantalisingly ambiguous and squalidly specific, heading into the realms of mysticism as the Pachuco character and his girlfriend merge into symbolic figures, the stark poetry of the music and the lyrics make this an enduringly potent work in the canon of contemporary American mythology.
Mike Davies
Sugar Hill continue their admirable programme of reissues of early and long-unavailable albums by that maverick Texan Terry Allen with this real curio, aptly described in David Byrne's brand new insert note as "an odd record, and a good one". Recorded in 1984/85 by Terry with his Panhandle Mystery Band (Lloyd, Kenny and Donnie Maines with Richard Bowden and Mark Murray), it purports to be a film soundtrack for a film that is no longer available. Terry actually visited South-East Asia to make the record, and some tracks were recorded in Bangkok with Thai (Laotian) musicians. For these cuts, Terry drew in part on on indigenous Thai musical tradition, but the juxtapositions are less false than you might imagine and the end product is an intriguing if uneasy blend of deep west and deep east, even though it doesn't quite transcend movie soundtrack functionality in its musical substance. The remainder of the cuts are songs which give Terry's personal response to the blowback from decades of the US presence in South-East Asia and the repercussions of globalisation, whereby both the Asian psyche and that of the Americans were irrevocably changed thereafter. Terry ends the soundtrack on a note of hope, Let Freedom Ring (a version of My Country 'Tis Of Thee with interpolated Thai lyrics). Amerasia may not be an absolutely essential record within the Terry Allen canon I suppose, but it's of interest nevertheless and worth acquiring before it disappears from the catalogues again. (Now Sugar Hill, let's have Juares please!)
David Kidman
Tony Allen - Home Cooking (Wrasse Records)
Though many soul and dance DJs have been picking up on Fela Kuti over the past few years, the smart ones know that the Afrobeat style was made by Tony Allen's idiosyncratic drumming style. Indeed, it still peppered the solo releases from Allen immediately after the demise of Fela Kuti. However, Home Cooking finds him pushing the boundaries of the style much further. The opening track has Ty from Ninja Tune providing a rap over the fat and funky rhythm. Yes, Damon Albarn is there, too. Though the contribution of the latter isn't obvious, it shows the extent to which Allen has opened up to other influences. The Home Cooking title track is an Afrobeat appreciation of culinary delight with a slice of soul. Indeed, this typifies the 'what goes around, comes around' feel to the record. Just as Tony Allen has influenced the soul scene, the latter is now being absorbed back into his music. Woman To Man takes on some scratching and checks Anita Baker's Rapture as it piles up the evidence of Allen's widening influences. Calling takes it down in a way that reminds you of Bobby Womack with a nod to George Clinton in its funky rhythm. But it's not all crossover, there's some African beats in 'Don't Fight' which remind you of those Fela Kuti days and 'Crazy Afrobeat' is just what it says