UB40 - 5 CLassic Albums

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Excellent value

There's no doubt that this box is excellent value - you get five of UB40's albums with good sound and decently packaged. The albums are:
Present Arms (1981)
Labour Of Love (1983)
Baggariddim (1985)
Labour of Love II (1989)
Promises And Lies (1993)

All this for under a tenner (at the time of writing) is a real bargain. How "classic" these albums are is a matter for debate. Many people love them and UB40s later, more pop-orientated style was extremely popular in the 80s. For me - and this is just a personal view - they were a truly great band when they made Signing Off in 1980, with its genuine originality and bite. I saw them live in 1983 (the time of Labour Of Love) and they still had some of that, but it faded over the next few years and my interest rather faded with it, so it's been interesting to revisit some of their later albums which for me remain decent but nothing special.

That said, two of these albums went to No.1, two more were Top 10 and even Baggariddim was Top 20, so you're getting proper, big-hit stuff here and it's probably wrong of me to carp. Not many people share my view of UB40, and certainly if you like UB40 in Red Red Wine mode, this is an excellent box of hit albums in good quality at a bargain price.

Ana Egge - Road To My Love

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Exceptionally good

I think this is exceptionally good.  Ana Egge is a fine songwriter and a distinctive singer with a wonderfully expressive voice.  She brings both of these qualities to this album and the result is something rather special.

The music can be loosely categorized as Americana, but it's varied, haunting and infectious.  For example, the opener, Storm Comin', is quite a driving number with a subtle but powerful beat, while the extraordinary Bully Of New York is a quieter, contemplative song but both have an exceptionally haunting quality about them.  This is true of every song here, I think, and it's due to the fine quality of Ana Egge's songs themselves, the well-judged arrangements for her excellent, tight band and especially to her terrific vocals.  She has a rather husky voice with a way of often hitting a note slightly off-centre and sliding onto it, which produces a really powerful emotional effect.  It's a world away from the uniform, auto-tuned mediocrity in a lot of commercial music these days and I find it quite mesmerising much of the time.

There are a lot of very fine female singer-songwriters producing excellent stuff at the moment, and I think Ana Egge is up there with the best of them.  This is a very fine album indeed, in my view, and I can recommend it very warmly.

Eric Bibb & JJ Milteau - Lead Belly's Gold

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific stuff

I think this is terrific stuff.  It's a mixture of Lead Belly and traditional songs, played and sung with a mixture of blues, gospel and Cajun infulences which gives them a brilliance that really makes them shine.

The playing and arrangements are simply excellent.  There's nothing flashy or extravert about it, and in fact it sounds deceptively simple at times, but there's genuine, quiet virtuosity in abundance from the whole small band.  To my ears, everything is perfectly judged: we get some infectious stompers, quietly melancholy songs and some really biting political protests, too, and every one is just great.  It really takes something to make well-worn songs like Swing Low, Pick A Bale Of Cotton and Goodnight Irene sound fresh and original, but Bibb and his band do just that.  Brilliant.

People have been recommending Eric Bibb to me for some time now, but I've only just got around to hearing him and I've plainly been badly missing out.  This is a bit of real class, I think, and a hugely enjoyable album which I can recommend very warmly.

Michael Chapman - Journeyman

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine live album

I think this is a brilliant live album.  Michael Chapman has been an inspiration to me ever since I first heard him, well over 40 years ago.  He's a terrific guitarist and a very good songwriter, with a distinctive vocal style which I have always loved.

This is a recording of a concert in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 2003 and, to be honest, it's a very welcome reminder of why I love the man's music after Pachyderm, which did nothing for me whatsoever.  Here we get plenty of brilliant guitar playing in some less familiar pieces, and some of Chapman's fine, well-loved songs in excellent performances.  His mumbling, slurred delivery is well in evidence ("It ain't so" comes out in places as something like "Iddain-n-n dzho-o-w-n", for example), and personally I love it.  From a technical point of view it's dreadful, but there's something about it which makes these songs really speak, I think - this version of One Time Thing  makes me feel the most powerful, piercing melancholy, for example.  Some of that's nostalgia for student days and old girlfriends in the Rainmaker era, of course, but other songs here were just as evocative, while others – especially the instrumental work – make me smile, and sometimes make me shake my head in admiration. 

It's always a tough balance to strike on a live album between having enough chat between songs to convey the atmosphere while avoiding making it a bit tedious for repeated listening.  Chapman chats a good deal to the audience and most (perhaps all) of it is preserved here.  It's great first time around, but after a couple of listens it gets just a bit much and I'd have preferred a little trimming.  That's just my judgement, though, and it doesn't spoil the album at all.

The sound quality is very good, and it's just a great listen.  This is a fine album by an underrated artist who has been producing quality work for decades, and I can recommend it very warmly.

(Note that this is a review of the digital download, so I can't comment on the DVD or packaging.)

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas

Rating: 5/5

Review:
One of his best

This is a truly great Leonard Cohen album in my view - something I've not been able to say for too many years. The music often sounds delicate but has a laid back robustness about it, too, with his trademark simple melodies and a very welcome varied sound and style, with elements of country, blues, gospel and rock. There are also the beautiful and familiar female backing vocals, and some simply magnificent work from a varied band - the trumpet on "Amen," for example, is unexpected and absolutely spellbinding.

Cohen's voice these days has passed through the Whisky & Cigarettes stage and is well on the way to a Chronic Bronchitis sound, but he still has that fabulous depth and resonance beneath the weariness and the creaks. He hovers between singing and speaking for much of this album even more than previously, but as a friend once said to me, "No one can sing a Leonard Cohen song the way Cohen himself can't." How true. He is miked very close so, particularly when listening on headphones, it really feels as though he is present and whispering into your ear.

All this is perfect for the songs here, whose lyrics are Cohen at his best: thoughtful, allusive, melancholy, witty and sometimes provoking. The religious imagery he has always used so brilliantly is well in evidence, and it is striking how much of it is now specifically Christian. Broken relationships, suffering and death have always been in the corner of Cohen's eye whatever he is writing about. They are often in plain sight here and are treated with insight, resignation, compassion and beauty. The old witty twinkle and his self-deprecatory streak are still there, though, and shine through what is often a very elegiac atmosphere. He still has that fantastic ability somehow to get to the heart of things both when he's speaking straightforwardly and even when direct meaning is elusive. These are songs to take into your heart, nurture and allow to grow there.

I think that several of these songs, including Amen, Show Me The Place and Different Sides are likely to become Cohen classics, but there is nothing to be sanitized and exploited by talent-show winners here and if you don't like Leonard Cohen this album certainly won't convert you. However, those legions of us who know that he was born like this, he had no choice, he was born with the gift of a golden voice will be delighted and deeply satisfied that that voice, both in what he writes and how he performs it, has lost none of its magnificent lustre.

I recommend this album wholeheartedly. I suspect that it may be a masterpiece.

The Band - Live at Watkins Glen

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not a real live album

This isn't bad – of course it isn't, it's The Band – but be warned that it was put out by capitol without any involvement of an band members and it's basically a fraud.  Two tracks were actually recorded live at Watkins Glen: Too Wet To Work (an organ solo by the great Garth Hudson) and Jam.  The rest are all studio out-takes with audience noise overdubbed to give the impression of a live performance.  They're OK, but the record company's cynical fakery really gets in the way for me and I can't listen to them without being put off by it.

Personally, I don't think this adds much to The Band's very distinguished canon.  There's nothing actively bad here, but there's nothing sensational, either.  For a genuine and really fine live album by The Band I would recommend the excellent Carter Barron Amphitheater album, recorded in 1976 and released in 2014, which knocks spots off this.  I'd say this was one for completists and really serious fans. (Guilty, Your Honour.)

Melanie - Stoneground Words

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a good album

I risked this out of nostalgia because I remembered the album fondly from its first release.  I've discovered that some albums I remember fondly from 40 years ago I should just have been left in my memory where they still sounded good, but this has held up very well, I think.

Melanie's output was variable and, let's face it, some of it was pretty vacuous pseudo-profound lyrics set to forgettable music, but this album isn't like that on the whole. There are good, memorable songs here; the lyrics are definitely of their time and sound dated now, but they're pretty decent of their type and musically it's still surprisingly good.  It's tuneful, harmonically quite interesting and well sung in that distinctive, husky Melanie voice which rather bewitched me as an adolescent.

I'm glad I went back to this album.  It's far more than just a period-piece and I've played it a good deal with genuine pleasure.  Recommended.

Jools Holland & Ruby Turner - Jools & Ruby

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album, but not quite a brilliant one

I like this album, but it's not quite as brilliant as I'd hoped.

Jools and Ruby is a good album, no doubt about it. The orchestra are on good form and there's a smile-inducing rockin' feel to the whole thing with (as you'd expect) some fine gospel-tinged singing from both Ruby Turner and the backing singers, who are excellent. But you know that sense you sometimes get where you think "Yeah, nice. It's just..."

Jools Holland and Ruby Turner are both terrific musicians and I though Ruby's brilliant contributions to the excellent Sirens Of Song album were among the very best  .Both are good here, but overall the album lacks just a little of the zing and sparkle I was really hoping for. It's hard to put my finger on it; it may be that some of the material is a little weak, perhaps Jools's piano work is just a little too jokey and not quite gutsy enough…I'm not sure.

I don't want to go on too much because it's a personal feeling and there's some fine music here. You'd have to have a musical heart of stone to dislike this album and many people may not share my slightly reserved feeling about it and may well love it. My advice is to try it, but my recommendation comes with a slight reservation.

Canned Heat - Songs From The Road

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A disappointment

I'm afraid I don't think this is very good.  There's some decent blues and boogie playing here, but it's nothing that special and in places this is frankly pretty poor.

I think the problem is partly that I don't regard this band as the genuine Canned Heat.  Fito de la Parra and Larry Taylor are certainly part of the classic line-up, and they still form a very solid rhythm section.  I know that several people can claim to be a genuine Heat lead guitarist so I wouldn't absolutely insist on Henry Vestine, even if he is my favourite…but no Bob Hite or Alan Wilson?  Hmmm.  I think it was those two who lifted Canned Heat above being a good blues outfit and into the ranks of Great Bands, so without either of them it's a bit ordinary.  Dale Spalding and John Paulus are very good musicians, but The Bear and Blind Owl they ain't, I'm afraid.

So, overall it's a bit ordinary but might have rated four stars if it weren't for the Crimes Against Humanity which Fito perpetrates as singer  on  On The Road Again and Goin' Up the Country.  He sings in a falsetto to try to emulate Wilson, and it's simply dreadful.  There's no power or feeling and he hits so many terrible bum notes it makes me physically wince.  Great songs and a tribute to a fallen hero they may be, but these performances should never have made it on to a record.

At least the recorded sound is good (which is a relief after some of the terrible historic recordings which have recently been foisted on us), but as an album I found Songs From The Road a disappointment.  I'm sorry to be critical, but I can't honestly recommend this.

Aretha Franklin - The Atlantic Albums Collection

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Incomplete but still fantastic

This box contains Aretha Franklin's greatest early work – and therefore her greatest work, in my view.  The woman is a phenomenon and is rightly loved and respected by millions (including me) as a genuine giant of music.  This box contains some of the best and some of the most important and influential soul music ever recorded and further comment from me on the music itself would be irrelevant and probably an impertinence.

What you may like to know is that the box is not a complete collection of Aretha's Atlantic recordings.  For clarity I have listed the contents at the end of this review.  Five post-1974 albums are missing: With Everything I Feel In Me, You, Sweet Passion, Almighty Fire and La Diva.  It's debatable how much of a loss this is, but it does seem like a missed opportunity to issue a definitive, complete collection of Aretha's entire Atlantic output.

Nevertheless, this remains a magnificent collection.  (And it comes as a welcome reminder after last year's frankly dismal Great Diva Classics album.)  The sound quality seems fine to me, so if like me you want CD versions of your old vinyl albums and you want to fill in some gaps in your collection, or if you just want a box of superb music by one of the true Greats of the last 50 years, I can warmly recommend this.

The albums:

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Aretha Arrives

Aretha Now

Lady Soul

Aretha in Paris

Soul ’69

This Girl’s in Love with You

Spirit in the Dark

Live at Fillmore West [Deluxe]

Young, Gifted and Black

Amazing Grace: The Complete Recordings

Let Me in Your Life

Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of The Sky)

Sparkle

Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul

Oh Me Oh My: Aretha Live in Philly, 1972

The Wainwright Sisters - Songs in the Dark

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but not great

I like this album, but I can't get quite as excited about it as some other reviewers.  I love Lucy Wainwright Roche's work and I was looking forward to this collaboration with Martha very much.  It's good, but not quite as special as I had hoped.

The performances are great.  Both sisters sing beautifully and the combination of Lucy's pure soprano and Martha's slightly breathier, darker-toned voice is simply lovely throughout the album.  There are some very nice harmonies and the minimal backing suits the atmosphere very well, so the overall sound of the album is really nice. 

My reservations lie in the material, and a slight sameness of sound throughout.  There's a very similar feel to many of these songs – five tracks have a title containing the word lullaby and several others are cradle songs of one sort or another.  There is variety in the tone of the lyrics, but I could have done with a bit more variation in musical tone to go with it, even if there is that overall theme.  Even Long Lankin, the traditional bloodthirsty murder ballad, sounds rather gentle and lovely; it's beautifully performed, but I'm not sure the setting is right for the content.  End Of The Rainbow is one of Richard Thompson's bleakest, most pessimistic songs (which means it's *really* bleak and pessimistic) and perhaps some of its impact is lost because of the very beautiful treatment it gets here.

I know it seems perverse to complain about how beautiful everything sounds; it's just that although individually each song is very lovely, after a few tracks I really do begin to yearn for a little variation and as an entire album I think this doesn’t quite get it right.

Don't let me put you off.  Plenty of people love the whole thing and it's certainly a very classy piece of performance and production.  I'd suggest you try it and judge for yourself, but as a whole album I didn't find this quite as great as I had hoped.

Sara Syms - Way Back Home

Rating: 3/5

Review:
OK, but nothing special, I'm afraid

I took a chance with this.  I hadn't heard Sara Syms before but I listened to some samples and liked what I heard enough to try the whole album.  Sadly, it didn't really live up to its promise.

Sara Syms has a good voice and sings very well.  She has a good band here, too, but the whole thing sounds just a bit ordinary.  I think the problem is really in the material, which is Americana with a country tinge.  They are perfectly decent songs, but to me they sound a bit generic, so nothing stands out either melodically or lyrically.  As a result, this just rather fades into the background for me with nothing really to hold my attention for long.

There's nothing actually wrong with the album; it's well performed and produced, it sounds perfectly decent and I doubt whether anyone with an interest in this genre would dislike it.  I certainly don't dislike it, but it just doesn't stand out in any way. There's a lot of good Americana around at the moment and we are very blessed with excellent female singer-songwriters on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment;  I find this very ordinary by comparison, I'm afraid.  Others may well like this more than I do, but personallyI can only give it a very qualified recommendation.

(Just in case anyone's interested, these are just some of the albums from female singer songwriters in the last two or three years which I think have been really outstanding.  They are in no particular order:

Mary Gauthier - Trouble & Love
Thea Gilmore - Regardless
Amy Speace - How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat and That Kind Of Girl
Emily Barker - Dear River and The Toerag Sessions
Natalie Merchant - Natalie Merchant and Paradise Is There
Olivia Chaney - The Longest River
Amy LaVere - Runaway's Diary
Sharon van Etten - Are We There
Eliza Gilkyson - Nocturne Diaries
Sarah Jarosz - Build Me Up From Bones
Amanda Shires - Down Fell The Doves
Laura Marling - Short Movie
Alela Diane - About Farewell

Buffy Sainte-Marie – Power In the Blood
Kris Delmhorst - Blood Test

Ana Egge – Bright Shadow

Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Series and Tales From The Realm…
Patty Griffin - American Kid and Servant of Love
Anais Mitchell - Young Man In America
Lori McKenna - Massachusetts
Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer, Different Park and Pageant Material

Ruth Moody – These Wilder Things)

Suzanne Vega - In Concert (1993)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine 1993 live set

This is excellent.  Suzanne Vega is a genuinely great singer and songwriter and she is a very fine live performer.  This is a 1993 recording of a concert in California and a glance at the track list will tell you most of what you need to know: great songs from the time which are very nicely arranged and well performed by a good, tight band.  Vega herself is in excellent voice and the recording quality is good – clear and well balanced with a well-judged level of audience noise to give a feel of the live atmosphere without being too intrusive.

My only slight reservation about this is whether I really need another live Suzanne Vega album after the excellent 2012 Barbican album and the recent release of the 1985 Speakeasy concert.  (Not to mention the brilliant Close-Up series which have a live feel much of the time.)  I probably do, actually, but I'm not sure that this really adds much to the Suzanne Vega canon in that there's not much here in the way of performances or insights which we don't already have available.

This is still a 5-star album for the quality of its material, performances and sound, so it's a personal matter, really, and no-one will be disappointed with this.  Oh, go on – you know you want to.

John Renbourn - The Attic Tapes

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good early Renbourn

This is a very good album of early John Renbourn, compiled from tapes found in a mate's attic, apparently.  Nice find!  Renbourn is on fine form and the sound is surprisingly good.

A look at the track list will probably tell you most of what you need to know – classic 60s guitar work, several pieces soon to be made more famous by Bert Jansch, like Anji and Blues Run The Game.  It's fascinating to hear Renbourn's take on them, and to realise that his and Jansch's styles, while still distinct, were much closer together in the days before Renbourn's deepening interest in traditional and renaissance lute music began to give him such a brilliantly distinctive sound.

These recordings come from a variety of sources, some live in front of an audience, some probably home-made in private.  The sound has survived the years very well and has been well cleaned up and transferred and it's a lovely record of a revered and loved guitarist's early years.  What it comes down to is this, I think:  if you like Renbourn you'll like this, and I can recommend it warmly.

The Specials - Specials (2015 re-issue)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A great reissue

Just to add my voice to the chorus of praise for this excellent re-release.  Like a lot of people, I remember when the original came out (on vinyl, of course) and the electric effect it had on me.  This is an excellent repackaging of that landmark album with very good digital transfer of the sound and a lot of very valuable extras.  It also now stands as a fine tribute to the great Rico Rodriguez whose magnificent trombone playing did so much to define The Specials' sound.

A great reissue, warmly recommended.

Natalie Merchant - Paradise Is There

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Magnificent

I think this is quite wonderful.  Natalie Merchant has re-recorded the songs from her 1995 classic Tigerlily here; it could be a disastrous move to mess with such fine, well-loved songs, but it works brilliantly.  In her brief, thoughtful notes about this recording Natalie Merchant describes the profound impact which the originals of these songs had on many people, describing them as "small, courageous things that spoke about being human, about being flawed, betrayed, devoted, and bereaved."  That's exactly what they are, and their character is beautifully served by the arrangements and performances here.

The arrangements are beautiful, I think – superbly balanced, largely acoustic and very sensitive to the material.  The band is excellent throughout.  Many songs feature strings, but this is a world away from the overbearing string-wash which swamps so many arrangements with what is effectively acoustic filler; there is just a string quartet who play superbly, and what they play is genuine music.  In The Letter, for example, Natalie is accompanied by just the quartet, and what they play reminds me in places of the magnificent slow movement of Beethoven's A minor quartet Op.132 which I think is among the greatest of all music, so we're getting very, very good stuff here.

Natalie's singing is just magical.  She is one of those rare artists who can combine music, lyrics and performance to break your heart with a single phrase, and she's on superb form here.  That haunting voice is full of simple sincerity and she has the skill to make these 20-year-old songs speak freshly. At one point, for example, her voice fades and almost breaks up on the words "seven years."  The effect is heart-piercing, and it's a brilliant and courageous decision not to re-take it with a more conventionally acceptable delivery.  The album is shot through with of such moments and I find these performances absolutely spellbinding.

I simply cannot fault this album.  I was a pretty dubious before I heard this about what is effectively a remake of a classic album, but I was quite wrong - it's a very worthy successor to her brilliant self titled album, which I thought that was one of the best albums of 2014.  I think this is among the best of 2015.  It's truly excellent, and very warmly recommended.

Kevin Brown - Book Of Skies

Rating: 3/5

Review:
OK, but nothing special

I hadn't heard of Kevin Brown before but was persuaded to try this album by a rave review by Terry Roland on No Depression which said that Book Of Skies was "a strong contender for one of the best releases of Americana music by a singer-songwriter this year."  I'm afraid that for me it certainly isn't.

This is an album of nice, tastefully arranged songs: acoustic guitar, gentle fiddle, subtle banjo, a bit of pedal steel…you get the picture.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of it, but it's just rather ordinary.  The material is OK, with the odd decent line; High Horse, for example, deals with the damage done by entrenched political attitudes.  It's not bad, but it lacks much in the way of real bite either lyrically or musically, and I felt the same pretty well throughout the album.  At a time when there's so much decent Americana around, this certainly didn’t stand out from the crowd for me. 

In a year which has seen the release of really fine work by people like Jason Isbell, Emily Barker, Patty Griffin, Ana Egge and plenty of others, I'm afraid this is nowhere near contending for best Americana album.  I think it's OK but nothing more, and I can only give it a very lukewarm recommendation.

Edie Brickell & Steve Martin - So Familiar

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good but not brilliant

This is a good bluegrass album although to me it doesn't quite have the quality of Edie Brickell and Steve Martin's previous album, Love Has Come For You.

Most people are aware by now that Steve Martin may be most famous as a comedy actor, but he's a genuine, high-class bluegrass banjo player, too.  His skill has been clear on previous albums and is evident here, too, with some very fine picking.  Edie Brickell is a terrific singer and has a perfect voice and delivery for this material, I think: very slightly husky but absolutely clear and with the skill and experience to put a song over very well indeed.  The Steep Canyon Rangers are invariably excellent and provide tight, solid backing here.

My reservations lie chiefly in the material, which I think is just a little…well…bland, I suppose.  Previous work has had real, rootsy feel and a very distinct character.  This album is good, but the material sounds rather similar to quite a lot of other stuff around at the moment, with little in the way of real distinctness.  This isn't helped by a slightly generic feel to the production which further nudges this back toward the middle of the road.

I don't want to be too critical – this is an album of decent music played by very good musicians, but I don't think I'll be playing this as often as Love Will Come For you or the live album.  For me, So Familiar is good but not brilliant.

Lauren Auerbach & Bert Jansch - After The Long Night

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not Bert's best work

This is a welcome issue on CD of two albums which Auerbach, Jansch and a small band cut in the mid 80s. Only 1000 copies of each were pressed and it is good to have these rarities available. My guess is that you're interested in this because, like me, you admire Bert Jansch very much and that, like me, you'll want this in your collection whatever it's like, but I do have my reservations about it.

I find this album a slightly odd period piece - odd, because the songs and the vocal style seem to me to belong more to the late 60s or early 70s. The songs are largely penned by producer Richard Newman, and are generally pleasant, forgettable tunes of the generic type found on lots of albums by folky duos and groups in the 70s, with an accompaniment often sounding a bit like Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well, Part 2. The lyrics feature a lot of hackneyed "sorrow/tomorrow" sort of rhyming and have that familiar, almost meaningless pseudo-profundity in places: Days And Nights, for example contains the lines "The mountains make love/And an angel descends from Heaven above." There's a lot of this sort of thing, which I'd have loved when aged 17 and reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but it's hardly enduringly insightful.

Lauren Auerbach's vocals go very well with the lyrics. They are breathy and fragile, and multi-tracked to give them quite a haunting quality - again a style very popular in the early 70s. Bert Jansch's guitar work is very good (of course) but it's from a time when he was drinking very heavily and to me lacks any real bite or originality. The rest of the band are competent but rather ordinary, and the whole thing adds up to an inoffensive, pleasant piece of background music, acceptable for late student nights after a few non-proprietary cigarettes but not much more.

It's not Bert's greatest work by a long stretch. However, it's pleasant enough stuff and a nice record of his first meeting with the woman who became his stabilising rock and whom he ultimately married. As a fan, I'm glad to have it in my collection, but I can't see me playing it much and I can only really give it a rather lukewarm recommendation.

Tracey Thorn - Solo

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
An excellent compilation

This is an excellent compilation of some of Tracey Thorn's best work as a solo artist or in collaboration with other artists and bands – notably Massive Attack.  The set is arranged in two halves stylistically rather than chronologically, which I think is an excellent idea; the first disc is her more acoustic, singer-songwriter work and the second her more electronic, dance-orientated material.

For me, it is the first disc which really shines with originality and excellence.  The more dancy material is very good of its type, but I think Thorn's real talent for creating fine, intelligent listenable songs is in her more solo work.  There are some genuinely great songs here, from the brilliantly told story told in the masterpiece which is Singles Bar, through the wise and penetrating study of a mother-daughter relationship in Hormones to Follow Me Down (from the outstanding 2015 Songs From The Falling EP) which is almost entirely haunting and beautiful atmosphere.  It all shows what a very, very fine talent Tracey Thorn is, both as songwriter and performer, and it's an excellent collection.

Plenty of people may well prefer her electronic/dance music, and fair enough.  This is an eclectic collection which reflects Thorn's wide musical taste and talent and we will all have our favourites.  As an album it's quality from start to finish and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

Blondie - In The Flesh

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine concert

This is a very good recording of a fine radio concert from 1977.

Blondie were still a slightly raw, slightly punk-ish band at this time, and their performance is true to form: driving, slightly angry and very, very good.  Debbie Harry is in fine voice and Clem Burke's drumming is especially brilliant, I think.  It has the slight warts-and-all feel of a live show with Harry not quite hitting some of her notes in the middle – especially some of the less emphatic, transitional notes, which aren't great in places – but that's what I like about a live recording: it's real, without studio tricks and you get a real sense of the musicians themselves.  The sound quality is pretty good, thank heavens, and it's a fine set list.  Debbie Harry chats a little between songs but not much and the sense of New Wave urgency comes over well. 

I was nervous trying this, because there have been some disgracefully poor-quality releases of archive recordings of bands recently (Canned Heat at Carnegie hall is a particularly terrible example) but this is very good.  If you like Blondie, or just music of this period, don't hesitate – you'll really like this.

Jeffrey Foucault - Salt As Wolves

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine album

This is a really good album.  I've only heard bits and pieces of Jeffrey Foucault until now and thought them OK but nothing special; I took a punt on this album for the not-very-good reason that I love his wife's work (the excellent Kris Delmhorst.)  I'm very glad I did.

This is an Americana-type album with its feet firmly planted in the blues.  It's an album of solidly composed and very well performed songs with Jeffrey Foucault's haunting, world-weary voice putting them over excellently.  The bad is solid and tight and the production is excellent, making every song shine with real meaning and sometimes genuine passion. Foucault is a Northern man but there are echoes here of Tony Joe White and JJ Cale in the sometimes swampy beat and subtle lead guitar with a lovely, fluid touch.

There is an awful lot of pretty good Americana around at the moment, but I think this stands out from the crowd by quite a long way.  I'm surprised by how much I like it and I've been playing it repeatedly for a few days now – always a good sign.  My advice is to try a couple of samples.  If you like the sound of them, don't hesitate; it's a quality album of good songs, well sung and I can recommend this very warmly.

I would also strongly recommend Kris Delmhorst's work.  Strange Conversation is outstanding, I think, and the more recent Blood Test is also very good.)

Alela Diane and Ryan Francesconi - Cold Moon

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A difficult album

I love Alela Diane's work to date, and I think that About Farewell was one of the finest albums of 2013.  I was really looking forward to this, but the truth is that I don't like it much.

My problem may be just personal taste, but the songs here lack the quirky but melodic lines that Alela Diane is so very good at, and lyrically they just don't reel me in as songs like Colorado Blue did (and still do).  I have tried, really I have.  I've listened a lot, I have tried to let it sink in and to find what I may have been missing, but it's just not there for me.  It all reminds me of Joni Mitchell's most difficult, tuneless songs.  I love and deeply respect Joni Mitchell's music but there is some that I just can't relate to at all, and I'm sorry to say that Cold Moon seems like a whole album of that sort of stuff to me.

I find it very hard to give a star-rating to this album.  On pure personal reaction it would be two stars, probably – but a review and a rating should be about more than just "I didn't like it".  It would be like giving two stars to some of Joni Mitchell's work, which is plain wrong: what it comes down to, I think, is that this album isn't to my taste but it's well done for what it is.  I can see that it has genuine musical merit and that others with different taste may like it very much, so I've given it four stars on that basis because I don't want to condemn it.  To be honest, I still don't know whether that's right, but it makes me less uncomfortable than a two-star rating and three stars would just be an insulting, wishy-washy cop-out..  My advice is to try it; Alela Diane is a class act and you may well like this.  It makes me sad to say that I don't.

Honey Dewdrops - Tangled Country

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

This is a very enjoyable country/Americana album. It's not earth-shakingly original, but it's a set of very good, well-crafted songs which are very well sung and played.

The overall sound reminds me of a slightly less intense Civil Wars, with minimal acoustic backing (of the just a guitar or two with occasional mandolin), lovely plaintive harmonies and very good singing in particular. Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish are both fine musicians and they produce rather a beautiful album here, excellently arranged and produced.

If you like this genre, you couldn't possibly dislike this album and you may well love it. It doesn't break new ground, but it's a very good album; I've been going back to it a lot and enjoying it every time. I can warmly recommend this.

Loudon Wainwright III - Album I

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
Still a very good album

This, Loudon Wainwright's first album, remains fresh over 40 years on. There are some enduring songs here like Schooldays and Glad To See You've Got Religion and plenty of the wry, witty, incisive and sometimes self-excoriating lyrics which have made Loudon Wainwright one of the best singer-songwriters of my generation.

I admit that I have a special affection for this album and for Album II because I spent more pocket money than I could afford on the album in 1970, went to see him when he toured the UK for the first time a short while later and still have my signed vinyl copies from that time. Even allowing for that, they are both very good albums still and I would recommend them not only to those who like LWIII but to anyone who appreciates a good song, well sung.

Jethro Tull - Original Album Series

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A great box

This is an excellent box of five of Jethro Tull's albums from the post-Aqualung/Thick As A Brick era.  In my view, they never quite hit the magnificent heights of those two albums again, but they were a very, very good band all the same and these five are all well worth having – especially for those of us who remember them first time around, still have our old, scratchy vinyl LPs and want CD versions as well. 

The five albums are:

Songs From The Wood (1977)

Heavy Horses (1978)

Stormwatch (1979)

A (1980)

The Broadsword & The Beast (1982).

They are all in remastered versions from 2005 and sound very good to my ears.  No-one, thank heavens, has messed with the originals and added "bonus material" – you just get the albums as they were intended.  The packaging is adequate, too, so if you want some really good Tull at an exceptionally low price for five albums just snap this up.  It's a great box.

Loudon Wainwright III - Older Than My Old Man Now

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very fine LWIII album

I think this is one of Loudon Wainwright's very best albums - which for me is really saying something. I have been a fan since hearing him play "School Days" on the BBC over 40 years ago and rushing out to buy Album I. He has never made an out-and-out bad album, in my view, but not all have been great. This one is.

Wainwright is musing on past life, aging and death here with the insight, the excoriating self-examination and the wit which have marked his work from the very beginning. The music is still relatively simple, generally tuneful and always very listenable. The songs range from the genuinely hilarious My Meds and the funny but poignant I Remember Sex (a duet with Dame Edna Everidge) to the lovely and tender In C and the exceptionally moving Somebody Else. All are songs with genuine heart and real musical content, even when the music is used to light-hearted effect. His four children (Rufus and Martha included) appear at various points on the album and the overall effect is emotional and moving with quite a few laughs along the way.

I have had a long, long affection for Loudon Wainwright and this has only increased it, which I cannot say for all his work. I warmly recommend this album.

Leonard Cohen - Popular Problems

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but not great

I think this is a good Leonard Cohen album, but not a great one. I've listened to it many times now, and although I like it, I think it lacks some of the lyrical depth and musical richness of Old Ideas, which I thought was a masterpiece.

I have always found Cohen at his best when he's looking at things obliquely and sounding obscure and allusive; he seems to have a genius for conveying profound things while not making it at all obvious what he's saying. Often in Popular Problems, he's being much more direct in his language which for me – perhaps perversely – robs it of some of its power. For example, Almost Like The Blues (one of the best tracks on the album, I think) opens with the lines, "I saw some people starving/There was murder, there was rape/Their villages were burning/They were trying to escape." Now, this is important stuff and certainly worthy of Leonard Cohen's attention, but as song lyrics they're pretty crude. I'd expect something a good deal more subtle and therefore evocative from a poet of Cohen's quality, and I felt similarly in quite a lot of places throughout the album.

In fairness, he does produce some great moments, including his usual twinkling self-mockery ("There's torture and there's killing and there's all my bad reviews…" for example) but it's inconsistent, and songs like My Oh My sound like filler by Cohen's standards.

I feel similarly about the music. It's OK, I like it overall, but it's pretty ordinary. The production is rather pedestrian and the impact of Amen, the wit of Different Sides or the genuine beauty of Lullaby are much harder to find here. There is almost a sense of re-hash in places, too – the opening of Samson In New Orleans is remarkably similar to Show Me The Place, for example – and there's little here which moves me in the way that some great Leonard Cohen albums have.

I don't want to sound too harsh. This is a perfectly decent album which bears a lot of the Cohen trademarks that we know and love, but it's not the superb album Old Ideas is – not by some distance, I'm afraid. If, like me, you're a decades-long Cohen fan you will want this and I think you'll like it. I like it, too; I just don't love it.

Applewood Road at Union Chapel 10 Oct 2015

Applewood Road at Union Chapel 10 Oct 2015

I don't usually do reviews of gigs, mainly because I can't get out to many, but I have just returned from seeing Applewood Road at Union Chapel in London, and they were sensational.  Applewood Road is a trio of very fine singer/songwriters in their own right: Emily Barker, Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace.  I have been a big fan of both Emily Barker and Amy Speace for some time now (and I will certainly be investigating Amber Rubarth's solo work very soon), and together they produce something very special indeed. (There is an audience video of the whole concert on YouTube now, with pretty decent sound here .)

I expected this concert to be good, but it was simply stunning.  All three women have lovely voices, each distinct in its way, and they blend fabulously.  They are also all superb singers; technically they are brilliant with impeccable intonation and a wonderful engagement with each other, and they brought real feeling and impact to every song in a varied set.  These were all new songs from their forthcoming album (with one exception) and they were terrific, from the atmospheric opener Applewood Road, via stunningly lovely and powerful stuff like I'm Not Afraid Any More and love songs to good ol' Country stompers which made everyone smile from ear to ear.  I was spellbound from start to finish.

There were two or three false starts to songs as all three forgot how the beginnings of their own material went, but they were all handled with immense good humour and actually increased an already fine rapport with the audience, and once into a song they were invariably magnificent. A special highlight for me was their cover of Losing My Religion.  Covering such a great song whose original is simply one of the finest tracks of the last 30 years or so is, let's face it, a brave move.  This was beautiful, powerful and hauntingly melancholy – and it moved me almost to tears.  (And it's now available on YouTube here .)

Quite simply, if you get a chance to see Applewood Road live, just GO!  It really is something special, and I don't say that lightly.

Do look out for their album which is out in February 2016.  You will find my reviews of some of Emily Barker's and Amy Speace's albums on this blog, or here:

Emily Barker - The Toerag Sessions 

Emily Barker - Dear River 

Amy Speace - How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat
Amy Speace - That Kind Of Girl 

Steve Martin & Edie Brickell - Love Has Come For You

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine bluegrass album

This is a fine bluegrass album by two very good musicians. I tried it because I loved (and still love) Edie Brickell's Shooting Rubber Bands At The Stars all those years ago and although it's nothing like that great record, I still enjoyed it a lot.

The album contains 13 compact songs featuring Brickell's vocals, Steve Martin's banjo and some very discreet percussion, plus some richer string arrangements at times. The songs are original and listenable, and many tell a story as bluegrass songs so often do. They are all original compositions with Martin's music and Brickell's lyrics and are unpretentious and straightforward but have genuine quality about them. Melodies and words are interesting and at times arresting, and the performances are very good indeed.

It has been said before but it's worth repeating that Steve Martin is genuinely a very good banjo player and musician. Edie Brickell, too, is a terrific singer with an individual style which I love, and she writes thoughtful, quirky and intelligent lyrics. This adds up to good songs, very well performed. My only reservation is that, somehow, I found that listening to the whole album at once got a bit much and I could have done with a little more variety to leaven the experience, but in smaller batches of a few songs at a time it's really good.

Recommended to anyone who likes original and intelligent bluegrass music.

Cliff Richard - 75 at 75

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent compilation

The trouble with Cliff is that, desperately uncool as he may be, he has made some absolutely cracking records.  A lot of his early stuff especially is quite brilliant, and tracks like Move It, Batchelor Boy, Summer Holiday, Please Don't Tease and so on implanted themselves in my young, growing bones and have stayed there ever since.  Even later in his career when I found a lot of his output repellently schmaltzy (oh come on, you know what I mean – stop pretending you don't!) there were still some really good, well produced and well sung songs; I have always had a huge soft spot for Carrie, for example, and there are plenty of others which, uncool or not, I have always liked.

This is a great collection of the great, the decent and the frightful which to me makes up Cliff's career, and an excellent way to have a fine, comprehensive representative sample at a very reasonable price.  The sound quality is excellent (the remastering has been very well done) and it's a very good selection.  For me, the skip forward button needs to be on hand to avoid stuff like Daddy's Home, the endless succession of awful Christmas singles and so on, and if I hear Congratulations one more time I will not be responsible for my actions, but everyone will have their own likes and dislikes.  This is an excellent set spanning an extraordinary career and I can recommend it.