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.