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.

Lucy Wainwright Roche - There's A Last Time For Everything

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent album

I think this is a terrific album. I hadn't heard Lucy Wainwright Roche's work before and took a punt on this for the not-very-good reason that I've been a fan of her father Loudon for over 40 years. It turns out to be an excellent disc.

Lucy Wainwright Roche writes lovely, tuneful songs. They are generally of love, loss and yearning and have a very haunting quality, with fresh, thoughtful lyrics. She has a slightly spare guitar style and a very attractive voice which are set off by some excellent production and arrangements. For example, in the brilliant Call Your Girlfriend the production is often minimal with just her very haunting guitar and some beautiful, sparingly-used harmony and just a single, quiet, deep drum in places. I find the impact stunning, and it's similarly well-judged throughout the album.

I was genuinely surprised at how good this album is, and I warmly recommend it to anyone who likes intelligent, well-written songs, well sung and performed. I think it's a real little gem.

Lucy Ward - Single Flame

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Remarkably good

This is a remarkably good album. Lucy Ward writes and sings original and very good songs which have real musical and lyrical substance and are also very good to listen to. Some, like For The Dead Men, have direct and stark political lyrics rather like the young, angry Billy Bragg. Others - Icarus, Honey and Velvet Sky among them - deal with relationships and more personal matters and are very beautiful, and some, like The Last Pirouette, are surreal and allusive but are no less powerful. There are also some strong echoes of traditional English folk in places, including a couple of traditional songs. It's excellent, varied material and it has a real depth to it.

Lucy Ward has a fine voice and can put over a song with genuine passion and emotion. Personally, I love hearing her strong Derbyshire vowels and am delighted that she hasn't adopted the bland, mid-Atlantic performing accent which is so prevalent in the pop world. She's a good guitarist and the production here is excellent; it is quite rich at times but always to the service of the song, and it allows the material to really shine.

I think this is an album of real quality, and it's one which I will be playing and enjoying for many years, I think. Very strongly recommended.

Maddy Prior - 3 For Joy

Rating; 5/5

Review:
Terrific stuff from Maddy Prior

This is an excellent album. I have rather lost track of Maddy Prior in recent years, but I stumbled across this and decided to give it a try. I am very glad I did.

Maddy Prior is still a great singer. Her voice has matured a little in the forty-odd years since I first heard it and is slightly fuller and more husky - and all the better for it, in my view. It has lost none of its power when needed and she can still give real meaning to a song. She has chosen two fine musicians in Giles Lewin and Hannah James to join her on this record and their fiddle, accordion and singing really add something special.

The songs are an eclectic mix, and the effect is great. The traditional English songs took me right back to the time I spent more pocket money than I could afford on Hark! The Village Wait and played it incessantly. Others are from elsewhere or newly written and all are very good. Several songs are from Eastern Europe and are simply magical: Nantine is sung in a capella harmony and has the deeply moving feel of a Slavonic liturgy. Ganiko Horo, by contrast, is a brisk instrumental with slip-rhythms and gypsy, almost klezmer-sounding melody and harmonies. It makes a great programme when played as a whole and the album never drags or begins to sound samey.

This album was a revelation to me - it's terrific stuff, superbly performed. Very warmly recommended.

Mary Gauthier - Live at Blue Rock

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
A brilliant live album

This is a terrific album. Many of Mary Gauthier's finest songs are here in excellent, stripped down but very powerful versions and they really add something to the studio versions, which is by no means the case with a lot of live albums.

The small band are terrific and there is some quite amazing fiddle work from Tania Elizabeth. Mary Gauthier herself gives phenomenally powerful performances both on guitar and in her vocals. Blood Is Blood, for example, is quite stunning, and it amazes me that she has the emotional strength to keep giving so much of herself in performance. (And the guts to introduce and sing Karla Faye as she does in Texas, incidentally.)

I often find with live albums by artists whose music I love that, although I'm glad to have heard them and am pleased to own them, I don't play them nearly as much as the studio albums. Not with this one. It's a real gem - superb, honest performances, very well recorded. Very warmly recommended.

Chvrches - Every Open Eye

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking album

I think this is a cracking album.  I have only recently come across Chvrches after listening randomly to their performance of Leave A Trace on Radio 1 Live Lounge, which was excellent (and is available on YouTube, by the way) – and was enough to persuade me to try this album.  I am very glad I did.

These are very well crafted melodic songs which remind me strongly of some of the great synth bands of the 80s – OMD and Vince Clarke's various outfits came strongly to mind, and the songwriting is approaching Vince Clarke's standard, which is very high praise.  The songs are often singable but certainly not trivial, with a musical depth and intelligence behind them.  Lyrically they are very good, too -  slightly off-beat and allusive some of the time which I like a lot.  Lauren Mayberry is a good singer with a deceptively breathy, rather little-girly voice which she uses with real skill and genuine power sometimes, the synth work from Ian Cook and Martin Doherty is very impressive and the production is excellent.

In short, this is a fine album of very good songs, very well performed.  I'm delighted to have discovered Chvrches even if I am a bit late on the scene, and I can recommend this album very warmly.