Wailin' Jennys - Firecracker

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

Just to add my voice to the chorus of praise for this excellent album.  It's a set of really good songs, beautifully sung and played by three very fine musicians.  I have retro-discovered the Wailin' Jennys after loving Ruth Moody's These Wilder Things, and I think this is just as good.  No-one with any interest in this genre could possibly be disappointed; it's a bit of real class, I think, and warmly recommended.

Blind Willie McTell - Scarey Day Blues

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Great Blues

This is a very good album of recordings by one of the great old bluesmen.  Blind Willie McTell doesn't really need a critique from me, but plays and sings superbly here.  Bob Dylan said in his tribute song to the man: "And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell."  Enough said, I think.

These tracks were all recorded in Atlanta, Georgia between 1927 and 1931 and they sound really good.  I don't know what cleaning-up has been done or by whom, but they've made a really good job of it.  It still sounds authentic but the sound is clear and distinct so Blind Willie's singing and particularly his playing really shine out.

Quite simply, if you like the Blues, don't hesitate.  This is a very good set of recordings of great performances.  Very warmly recommended.

Rolling Stones - Grrr!

Rating: 5/5

Review:
I like it, like it, yes I do...

This scarcely needs a review because after 50 years practically everyone will know whether or not they like the Stones and most people considering this collection will know all the tracks on it very well indeed. It is worth saying, though, that this is a great collection. Obviously, any compilation like this will have some tracks you love and some you don't like so much, and some of your favourites will be missing (What - no Sister Morphine or Star...er...Star?) but as a "Best Of" collection I don't think you can do better. It is well selected and sounds fantastic: the digital transfers of the early stuff are particularly good and bring real life to the tracks without interfering with their original sound.

I suspect that quite a lot of people considering whether or not to buy this will be in the same position as I am: I have a lot of Stones music on LP and cassette and for me this was a good way of getting some of the best of it on CD. You certainly get plenty of great stuff, and personally I found listening to this was like running my life on fast forward from the age of about 10, with pretty well every track conjuring up where I was at the time. It's also great to hear the evolution of the band from the early covers, through finding their distinctive identity around the time of Satisfaction and through all their phases since. Although I haven't always liked the direction they have taken, this is a reminder that the Rolling Stones really are one of the finest bands of the last 50 years and that Jagger and Richards are a truly great songwriting team. The full range of classics is here, from the storming rockers like Jumpin' Jack Flash through to the hauntingly beautiful Angie. Also included is their new (November 2012) single Doom And Gloom which I think is excellent - a real Stones belter and one of their best tracks in ages.

The question, of course, is "Do I need another Stones Greatest Hits album?" the answer to which will depend on your own view and the state of your music collection. For me it's a great summary of their career containing some of my favourite ever tracks, and has made them available to me in CD format. If you want a good, well put-together collection of The Rolling Stones, you can't go wrong with this set.

In short, it's only rock 'n roll, but...

Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, if not great, Springsteen album

I suspect that most people looking at this page will be long-term Springsteen fans like me who will already have ordered this no matter what any reviews say, but for what it's worth I think this is a pretty good album: not a Springsteen classic but well worth having. I thought it might just be some previously rejected, sub-standard old stuff cobbled together but it's a lot better than that.  I was pretty unimpressed on first hearing, but it's improved a lot with repeated playing.

It's hard for Bruce to follow the excellent Wrecking Ball because that was such a passionate, heartfelt album. Tracks like Death To My Hometown came from deep in his heart and it showed. Here, there's not so much of that and I think there are a couple of pretty weak tracks, but there are some fine songs and a few real belters - a fine out-and-out Springsteen rocker in Frankie Fell In Love and a terrific, driving, full-rock-band version of The Ghost Of Tom Joad, for example. American Skin has grown on me a lot and I think it may be among my list of Bruce classics in the end. He sounds rather like JJ Cale in Harry's Place and very like Dylan in Hunter Of Invisible Game, both of which are very good songs... I'd describe it as a varied and interesting set with some great highlights.

Springsteen's lyrics have always been a real strength. His fine, heartfelt stories in natural-sounding language have made songs like The River, Racing In The Street and dozens of others genuine classics, and he also regularly comes up with simple but brilliant couplets like,
"Somewhere along the line I stepped off track -
One step up and two steps back..."
This is not so much in evidence here. For example, there are no rhymes in either High Hopes or Just Like Fire Would (the weakest track on the album for me). This is hard to pull off in a rock song and doesn't really work here. There are some fine lyrical moments on the album - notably in The Wall and American Skin - but there's not that much in the way of real classic stuff.

I'm also slightly dubious about some of the production, which strays more toward pop than rock values at times. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it sits all that well with Springsteen's style in a lot of songs. For example, in Down The Hole the vocals begin in a compressed down-a-phone-line effect and then suddenly (and quite randomly) become normal - it just seems like a pointless and gimmicky trick to me which diminishes a good song.

I don't want to carp too much - the good far outweighs the poor here and I doubt that any of Bruce's fans will be disappointed. He sings with real heart most of the way through and there's no doubt that the man has still got it. This isn't up there with his genuine classic albums and it's not as good as Wrecking Ball, but it certainly doesn't disgrace a truly great songwriter and performer and I'll still be playing a lot of it for years to come, I think. My advice is to buy it and play it a lot - I think you'll like it.

Dion - New York Is My Home

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album from a great man

Dion DiMucci is one of the greats of Rock & Roll.  He's probably less well-known than he should be, but he sang and wrote some of the greatest songs of the Rock & Roll era and has made some very solid stuff since, with some fine highlights - I've always loved King Of The New York Streets from his 1989 Yo Frankie album, for example.  He's heading toward 80 now, but he's still producing…well, solid stuff with some fine highlights.

New York Is My Home fits that description.  It is a good album of blues rock, with most tracks being twelve-bar in structure and with a variety of styles within the genre.  It's good stuff, and even if most of it isn't that distinctive or earth-shaking musically, there's some fine playing and singing here making a very enjoyable album.  For me, there are also two tracks which stand out as being pretty special: the title track, which is a tuneful, haunting celebration of New York City with an appearance by the great Paul Simon, and Can't Go Back To Memphis, the sort of swampy blues for which I'm an absolute sucker.  They are both very classy pieces of work and make this album worth getting on their own, I think.

This, in short, is a good album from a very good songwriter and performer.  There's a lot here to enjoy and some things which genuinely thrill me.  Warmly recommended.

Dori Freeman - Dori Freeman

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good first album

I think this is a good album.  I took a risk on it after good reviews and because Teddy Thompson produced it, and I like it.

Dori Freeman has a lovely, pure voice and sings very well.  The music is at the Country end of the Americana spectrum really, with some songs sounding pretty pure Country and it's good material with nice melodies and very good production.  The sound is generally fairly restrained with a variety of moods from the upbeat, almost rocky Fine Fine Fine to the classic Country sound of heartbreak in Go On Lovin'.

I don't think this is an earthshaking album and I doubt whether it will become a classic – but then very few albums do.  It's a good solid album from a very good singer. I'd suggest listening to a few samples – if you like what you hear then try the album; you won't be disappointed.  I can recommend this, and I look forward to hearing more from Dori Freeman.

Susan James - Driving Toward The Sun

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Rather uninspiring

I'm afraid this album didn't do much for me. Susan James has a nice voice, there is some enjoyable twangy guitar and she has a more-than-competent band behind her, but the material really isn't up to much. The songs have amiable but forgettable tunes and lyrically they are pretty weak, with lots of repeated lines which really don't bear repeating either musically or lyrically.

I think there is a slight air of Judy Tzuke about this album, but it's like listening to a whole album of Judy Tzuke's weakest material (which really was pretty weak) with nothing of the class of For You or Stay With Me Till Dawn. It's all perfectly unobjectionable, but there's nothing of any real substance here either, and I can only give this a very lukewarm recommendation.

Applewood Road - Applewood Road

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific album

This is terrific.  I was already a big fan of the work of both Amy Speace and Emily Barker and this album, with third member the excellent Amber Rubarth, is something special from three very fine singer-songwriters in their own right.

The music here is thirteen very fine, varied songs written by the members of the band either together or individually.  They range from the lovely, atmospheric title track and Home Fires, through beautiful love songs like Give Me Love, the sensational, almost anthemic I'm Not Afraid Any More to good ol' Country stompers like Lovin' Eyes which just make me smile every time I hear them. 

It's excellent material, brilliantly performed.  The three members sing in beautiful close harmony with minimal backing – usually just an acoustic guitar or banjo with occasional other instruments.  It's excellently judged and is effectively live, with the three of them (and a few guest musicians occasionally) around a single analogue microphone, recorded onto analogue tape.  This gives a lovely, warm, spontaneous feel to the whole thing.  It doesn't have the gloss and sometimes insincere sheen of a high-tech modern recording, and the voices aren’t always absolutely perfectly balanced, but it has an intimacy and a genuineness which I love – and the musicianship is superb.

I have seen Applewood Road perform live and they are stunningly good – as well as being natural and very engaging.  If you get the chance, do go and see them because it's a delightful and musically brilliant experience.  This album captures much of that, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.  It's a real gem.

Applewood Road at Rough Trade West, 10 February 2016

I managed to get out to see Applewood Road at Rough Trade Records yesterday evening, and they were fabulous.  This was a tiny gig in a small (if legendary) record shop, with the band by the sales counter and an audience couple of dozen people looking over racks of vinyl and CDs.  It was wonderfully intimate, and I was lucky enough to sit very close by – an incautiously expansive gesture by Emily would probably have had my eye out – and at that range there's nowhere to hide.  You're either really good or you're not and it shows plainly. 

Applewood Road were really good.  Really, really good.  They are Emily Barker, Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace - three very fine singer/songwriters in their own right, and together they are something quite special.  They write and perform great, varied material, play very well and sing quite wonderfully.  Their three distinctive voices blend beautifully, the harmonies are lovely and they have the skill and technical excellence to make the whole thing seem effortless so they perform with simple, wholly engaging enjoyment. 

Quite simply, they are a class act.  I wrote a more detailed review of a performance at Union Chapel HERE; you can see a video from that show on YouTube HERE, and videos from the album recording HERE.  Their album is out on 12^th February - I am waiting with keen anticipation and a little frustration for mine to arrive via Pledge Music.  Expect a review here in the near future.

Applewood Road are currently (February 2016) touring small venues in southern England.  It's a wonderful musical experience, they are happy to mingle with the audience afterward and are all extremely personable and charming.  The list of venues is HERE.  Do go to see them if you can – they really are exceptional, I think.

Amelia White - Home Sweet Hotel

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album

I like this album.  It's quite gritty and punchy in places and has a genuineness about it which gives it something extra.

Amelia White is a new artist to me, but I'm glad to have found her work.  She writes very decent songs on varied themes, but they generally have a rather world-weary air about them – which is fine by me.  She has been compared to Lucinda Williams, but in her sound she seems to me to be much closer to Eliza Gylkison – which I think is a very good thing.  She sings well and the band and production set the songs off well.

This doesn't stand out massively from the large crowd of very good Americana around at the moment (especially from women), but it's a very decent album of good songs, well sung.  If you have any interest in this genre, I can recommend this – it's good.

(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)

Don't Tell Johnny - Better Late Than Never

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good debut

This is a very decent album by a good band.  It's not going to set the world alight, but then very few albums do; this is a collection of solidly written and performed songs which form an enjoyable collection.

Don't Tell Johnny (I can't say I'm bonkers about the name, by the way) are a four-piece folk outfit from Wales and the West Country who write and perform their own music here.  The songs are varied and nicely crafted, both lyrically and musically.  They range from songs of regret in love like the opener Second Chance to Caitlin's Daughter, a slightly soft-jazzy lament for Dylan Thomas and the lovely, almost traditional-sounding Myn Mawr.  It's all good stuff, very nicely performed.  Sam Brown has a lovely voice and can use it to great effect, the harmonies are lovely and well-judged, and the production is usually exactly right to set the songs off well.  (The bass in the first two tracks has a slightly dominant quality which I didn't think helped things, but it's fine for the rest of the album.)

On this evidence, I'm not surprised that Don't Tell Johnny are liked and respected in their home region, and I hope they develop more widely from here.  I can recommend this to anyone who likes a good, folk-based collection of songs. 

Sarah Pierce - Barbed Wire

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Competent but nothing special

This is a perfectly decent Country album, sometimes with a rockier feel than some, but especially at a time when we are very blessed with brilliant women producing a lot of very fine Country/Americana, it's nothing very special, I'm afraid.

Sarah Pierce has a good voice, she can put a song across well and her band is skilful and tight, so the overall sound is pretty good.  However, the material isn't all that much to shout about.  The songs are competently crafted musically without managing to be particularly memorable or original, and the lyrics are pretty clunky.  Sarah Pierce sings of familiar Country themes – celebrating the life and people in small town America, or the toughness of Country women, for example, but there's little of the finesse or originality which characterises the best Country songs, which can create a vivid, complex picture in just a couple of lines.

Others may like Barbed Wire more than I do, and there's certainly nothing actively wrong with it but I can only give it a very qualified recommendation.

Various - Songs Of Separation

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Fantastic

I think this is fantastic.  You'd expect it from this line-up, of course – and they really have created something special, I think.  Ten of the finest folk musicians in Scotland and England today have collaborated on this album of traditional and co-written modern folk songs.  They are all women, but they don't need the qualification "ten of the finest female folk musicians" – they are among the best we have and that's that. 

The result is a fabulous album of superbly performed music.  There's great instrumental work and magnificent singing throughout, incorporating elements of many of the wonderfully diverse traditions of these islands.  All these musicians have their feet firmly rooted in tradition, they love and respect it and also look forward to produce fine new songs in a traditional style, sometimes with a very modern seasoning.  It's just great, so we get, for example, the modern, politically angry Poor Man's Lamentation immediately followed by the traditional, hauntingly beautiful S Trom an Direadh.  If you're familiar with the work of Lady Maisery or the great Laylam album you'll know what I mean – and this is the equal of them.

Forty-five years ago I began to sit in smoke-filled folk clubs and dance the Morris.  I can't do any of that any more, but it really does an old folkie's heart good to know that our traditions are in such brilliantly capable hands, both treasuring them and developing them.  This fabulous album shows some of the very best of  current British folk music, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

Warren Zevon - Accidentally On Purpose

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Great music, adequate performance, dodgy sound

This is a recording of a broadcast concert from 1978, with a set list consisting of the magnificent Excitable Boy album, plus a few extras.  I love Warren Zevon's music and Excitable Boy remains one of my favourite albums of the 70s, but I have my reservations about this disc.

If you're looking at this page you won't need a long critique fro  me of Zevon's music.  Suffice it to say that it is often brilliant, and that this was probably his best period, with tuneful, witty and insightful songs, often brilliantly performed.  Anyone who can write lines like:

"You'd better stay away from him,

he'll rip your lungs out, Jim –

Huh! I'd like to meet his tailor…"

gets my vote, and on the same album are the angry and hilarious Lawyers, Guns and Money, the truly lovely Tenderness On The Block and loads of other great songs.  At his peak Zevon was a genuinely great, original songwriter and performer, and we get some of his best work here.

However…the performances aren't that brilliant, to be honest.  They're fine in their way, but Zevon sounds a bit weak-voiced to me, and there's a slight sense of slogging through the set.  I'm glad to have a recording of him performing, but to me there's nothing here which improves on or throws different light on the originals.

Part of this may be the sound quality, which isn't good.  It's muddy and poorly balanced, with very dominant bass and sometimes guitar but indistinct vocals which are much too far back in the mix.  It's even difficult (sometimes impossible) to hear what Zevon is saying when he speaks to the audience.  Any performance would struggle to sound good in these circumstances, and it's a shame.

So – one for the fans only, I'd say.  I'm pleased to have this and pleased to have heard it, but I can't see me playing it very often.  I'll be sticking to my dearly loved, scratchy old vinyl copy of Excitable Boy, I think and I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.

[This has nothing to do with this album, but I cannot resist saying that in 1980 I went to meet some friends for a Chinese meal in central London one evening and genuinely found myself walking through the streets of Soho in the rain, looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's.  It is a memory which still makes me smile – and when I got there, of course, I didn't even look at the menu before ordering.]

Wolf Larsen - Quiet At The Kitchen Door

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A lovely album

I think this is a very fine album.  It was recommended by a friend and I approached I without real expectation, but it turns out to be thoughtful, intelligent and very beautiful.

Wolf Larson writes quiet, generally rather mournful or contemplative songs with very good, intelligent lyrics which are evocative and thoughtful.  She sets them to equally evocative tunes, she sings with a lovely, slightly aetherial alto voice - often multi-tracked – and sets the music with resonant acoustic guitar and excellently judged strings which combine to give a quite wonderful effect.  If I Be Wrong is simply spellbinding throughout its 7 minute length, for example, and others are just as good including the lovely, wistful title track.  It's great stuff which can just wash over you in a wave of lovely, lovely sound but which really repays careful listening, too.

We are blessed with a lot of very fine female singer-songwriters at the moment, and I think this album belongs with the best.  I can recommend it very warmly – it's a hidden gem.

Aoife O'Donovan - In The Magic Hour

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

I have always liked Aoife O'Donvan's work, but I felt that her first solo album, Fossils, had just a bit too much smooth corporate gloss over it to really speak to me.  Here, she speaks from the heart, her songwriting and performing is natural and unadulterated and she has a superb band.  It makes for a very good album, I think.

This album is a sort of elegy for her Irish grandfather who died aged 93 as O'Donovan was conceiving the album, and is also an exploration of her Irish roots and ties.  It has a thoughtful, elegiac atmosphere and much of it is very lovely.  There is often quite a striking contrast between O'Donovan's slightly breathy, aetherial delivery and the emotional punch in her music and lyrics, and that is very effective here – I find the whole thing both beautiful and affecting.

Partly this is because of the wonderful collaborators she has assembled here.  Both the brilliant Chris Thile and the entirely wonderful Sarah Jarosz are in the band, and the rest of the musicians are just as good.  It's virtuosic, musically intelligent stuff and this time the production is pitch-perfect, I think, so the whole thing sounds as though every note means something.

In The Magic Hour has both beauty and depth to it.  I like it a lot and I can warmly recommend this album.

(I can also strongly recommend Sarah Jarosz's album Build Me Up From Bones, which is a firm favourite of mine.)