Neil Young - Earth

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very decent album from Neil Young

I almost didn't bother with Earth.  I thought The Monsanto Years was so poor that I wasn't keen to revisit the experience in live form, but this is far, far better, I think. 

It's partly down to the material, which is selected from albums as far back as 1970, so we don't just get Neil yelling random eco-slogans at us but some very decent songs – including a very lovely version of After The Goldrush.  More than that, though, the performances are terrific.  Despite my fears, he really has still got it.  OK, the voice may not be quite what it was, but it's actually in pretty good form here (which it really wasn't on The Monsanto Years) and the band and Neil's guitar work are very good.  As a live performance, it's tight, musically very good with some fine harmonies and genuinely exciting in places.

Even if you've despaired of Neil Young ever making a decent album again, I'd recommend giving this a try.  The animal sounds between tracks are a bit ho-hum, but that aside there's lots to enjoy here and – against my expectations - I can recommend this warmly.

Court Yard Hounds - Amelita

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album with some great highlights

At its best this album is terrific, but I'm not sure the material is consistently good enough to warrant five stars.

Martie and Emily are fine musicians and singers, and there is a lot of stuff here which is as good as The Dixie Chicks' best - which is high praise indeed. The singing is great, there are lovely and very well-judged harmonies, the instrumental work is excellent and the production very good indeed, allowing every song to work to its best. There is a good variety and some great songs: as examples, the opener "Sunshine" is a brilliant, rocking denunciation of a smug, sneering twerp, "Phoebe" is a real bluegrass-based cracker and "Divided" is a lovely, haunting break-up song. However, I thought "Rock All Night," for example, was very ordinary and only just redeemed by good performances and production. I won't go through the whole album, but and there are a couple of other weakish songs among the real quality.

Don't get me wrong - this is a good album and I wouldn't want to put anyone off. Certainly by comparison with Natalie Maines's (to me) rather disappointing Mother it's very good and I'd still recommend it as a very enjoyable and engaging album by very fine musicians which has some (but not quite consistently) terrific songs.

Eliza Gilkyson - paradise Hotel

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant stuff

Just to add my voice to the chorus of praise this excellent album has received. Eliza Gilkyson writes terrific and often quite remarkable songs and has a fine, slightly husky voice to sing them with. They vary here from the hard-driving Man Of God (a merciless attack on George W. Bush) through the more conventional but beautiful Calm Before The Storm to the extraordinary and haunting Jedediah 1777 (a setting of letters from a soldier in the War of Independence). Every track is very fine and Gilkyson and her band perform them superbly.

I have only relatively recently discovered Eliza Gilkyson's work and am now wondering where this woman has been all my life. This is a really first-rate album and is very warmly recommended.

Case, Lang, Viers - Case, Lang, Viers

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

Although I can see that they're all really good, I know that many people love their work and they're all people I'd expect to like I've never quite got into the music of any of these three, somehow.  However, I like this combined effort very much.  There's all the songwriting skill and musical excellence they have shown individually, and this time it really speaks to me.

The sound is generally harmonic, rich and atmospheric without being over-produced.  It's also quite varied in style, which I like a lot.  To choose a few tracks almost at random, Delirium sounds something like a cross between Pentangle and The Mamas & The Papas, and the 60s are often close at hand with an almost psychedelic feel in places.  1000 Miles Away is more jazzy and Sade-like, Supermoon has the feel of contemporary Americana from largely acoustic singer-songwriter and Why Do We Fight reminded me strongly of The Carpenters – which is just fine by me.

I'm enjoying this album very much (and far more than I expected to).  It's thoughtful, beautifully crafted and very listenable and I can recommend this warmly.

Sarah Jarosz - Undercurrent

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very fine album

Sarah Jarosz is a class act.  She's a fine musician, an excellent songwriter and a very good singer, all of which are in evidence here. 

I thought her last album, Build Me Up From Bones was one of the best of 2013.  Undercurrent (quite an apt title, I think) is rather different in character – quieter and more contemplative overall, with several tracks featuring Sarah Jarosz playing and singing solo.  It takes a bit of getting into, I found, because it doesn’t always have the immediacy of, say, Over The Edge or Gone Too Soon, but after half-a-dozen listens, I'm hooked.  These songs are beautifully crafted musically, and often have very good lyrics.  They are personal and varied, with tender celebrations of love, harsh break-up songs (the excellent House Of Mercy) and yearning hints at reconciliation in the lovely, haunting Lost Dog.  There are some excellent collaborations, including with Aiofe O'Donovan on Still Life (returning Sarah's appearance on Aiofe's fine album Magic Hour). Production is restrained but spot on for these songs, I think, allowing each one to speak as it should and the more I listen to this album, the better I like it.

I saw Sarah Jarosz live at London's Bush Hall a couple of years ago.  She was brilliant, performing superbly, making it look effortless and plainly putting everything into the music.  You can't fake that sort of quality, and Undercurrent is a worthy next step.  It's an album of real quality and it's a great listen.  Very warmly recommended.

Robert Plant - Lullaby and...The Ceaseless Roar

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A really good album from Robert Plant

I think this is a really good album. I wasn't all that impressed on first hearing, but I have been playing it a lot and it has grown on me hugely. It is a pleasure to listen to and there is real musical quality here.

Plant these days is much more in Raising Sand mode rather than full-on Zeppelin blazing. He is subtle and controlled (although there is still plenty of power there when needed) and I think this makes him a very fine singer indeed. He brings genuine depth to this material which is pleasingly varied, with elements of blues, Celtic music, rock, Bluegrass, gospel and various African styles all evident. It is quite rhythm-driven with percussion shaping almost every song, but it's varied and very well done so never becomes tedious or samey.

The Sensational Space Shifters are simply brilliant, playing their variety of instruments with real virtuosity. They complement and incorporate Plant's vocals beautifully, helped by impeccable production which to me makes this album shine with beauty, excitement and interest throughout. Rainbow and A Stolen Kiss, for example, are simply lovely in their own ways while Up On the Hollow Hill is modal, rhythmic and hypnotically involving. I don't think there's a duff track on the album and some are quite wonderful.

This is a work of depth and maturity with fine songs, musicianship and production which I think has the quality to last for many years. Warmly recommended.

James Taylor - Georgia On My Mind

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, if not great, live album

This is a recording of a broadcast from 1981 of a concert by James Taylor and his band on the Dad Loves His Work tour. It is a good live album in many ways although to me it doesn't quite capture what I think is really special about James Taylor's music and performances.

The set list is very familiar to long standing Taylor fans (like me), with a sprinkling of Greatest Hits like Fire and Rain and You've Got A Friend, and solid album tracks. J.D. Souther joins him for Her Town Too, which works very well live, and there's plenty of good singing and guitar from Taylor throughout, with fine work from the band on every track. The recording and remastering is excellent and the engineers tread a good line by capturing the excitement of a live show while not overdoing the crowd noise at the expense of the music. As a record of a very good performance it's excellent.

My reservations are purely personal. This is a pretty rocky, heavily band-orientated performance throughout. That's fine in a way, but what makes James Taylor such a fine artist for me is the brilliance of his acoustic guitar work and the lovely tone and sensitivity of his singing voice. Neither is strongly in evidence here and while it's a very professional and musically high-quality performance, it just doesn't really shine or stand out from the crowd of such live shows in the way that some of his later solo acoustic performances have.

I do like the album in spite of this, and you may well not share my taste or reservations and love it. Any James Taylor fan will want this and will enjoy it; it's just not one of his greatest, in my view.

Tom Odell - Wrong Crowd

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good album

I have to say that I wasn't all that keen on Tom Odell's debut, Long Way Down, but I saw him give a magnificent performance of Magnetised on Radio 1 Live Lounge (still available on the BBC iPlayer and YouTube and well worth catching, along with his incredible cover of I Took A Pill In Ibiza from the same set.)  That persuaded me to try Wrong Crowd.  I'm glad I did, because it's a good album with some cracking highlights.

This is a more highly-produced and slightly less grindingly downbeat album, and it benefits from both, I think.  There are certainly intense songs and plenty of heartbreak, but the atmosphere is one of poignancy and insight rather than pure poor-me misery, and it's a very powerful listen in places.  The title track and the superb Magnetised get the album off to a great start, as does Concrete, which has a great stripped-back, beaty sound and shows a really nice witty but tender side to Tom's lyrics:

"I'd sleep

On a bed that's made of

Concrete,

Just the two of us and

No sheet,

Just your feet

Rubbing up against mine…"

Not all of the lyrics are so good, mind you; Sparrow's lyrics are fey and very cliché-ed, even if it is rather a lovely song, for example.  I also found the production just a bit samey and over-reliant on mixed-forward percussion, and I could have done with a bit more variety of sound.  However, as an album I like it a lot – and the closing track of the Deluxe Edition, I Thought I Knew What Love Was, is an absolutely heartrending piece of brilliance, I think.

A very good album, then, and very recommendable.  I'm looking forward to more Tom Odell; he's very good now and on this evidence I think he may develop into something really special.

Mary Gauthier - The Foundling Alone

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another excellent, intimate works from Mary Gauthier

This is a stripped-down, acoustic version of Mary Gauthier's album The Foundling. I thought The Foundling was brilliant and I like this one very much, too. If you haven't yet heard the original, I would suggest that you try The Foundling first. If you have and you liked it, then this may well be for you.

The songs are a raw story of Mary Gauthier's life having been given up for adoption as a baby. Many of these work exceptionally well as solo works with just her and her guitar, as one might expect from such intimate personal material. Oddly, the two central (and in my view most moving) songs on the disc, Blood Is Blood and March 11, 1962 don't have quite the impact of the originals for me, but the overall, cumulative effect of this album is exceptionally emotional and moving.

It seems that a lot of people didn't share my enthusiasm for The Foundling, and if you are one of them then I doubt whether you'll like this either. However, if you loved The Foundling as much as I did then I suspect you'll love this raw, intimate and musically excellent album.

Cat's Eyes - Treasure House

Rating 4/5

Review:
An enjoyable album

This is rather a good album, I think.  It was a random punt for me, but I was interested by talk of classical training and unusual instrumentation.  A few samples persuaded me to try it, and I'm glad I did.  It's very enjoyable, with good tunes, fine arrangements and production and both a modern and retro feel.

These are tuneful, often lyrically interesting songs which, while they have a sound of their own, keep reminding me of the music of my teens and twenties.  I detected shades of Roy Harper, The Crystals, Al Stewart, Bananarama, Pink Floyd and plenty of others in various places – with the spirit of Bach in the background at times.  There's often a slightly quirky lyrical feel.  I like this, for example:

"Be careful where you park your car

There's no telling what she will do

'Cos she never had the chance to hurt you too.

And if you're asking why

You looked a little too pleased when you saw her cry…"

Set to an almost Iko Iko-like beat and with a sort of Shirelles vocal sound, it just sounds great and raises a smile every time with me.

With rich modern production, interesting instrumental arrangements and good vocals, this album makes a very pleasing listen.  I'd suggest listening to a few samples as I did and if you like what you hear, give it a go.  It's probably not a classic - very few albums are – but it's a good piece of work with enjoyable, varied and well-crafted songs and I can recommend it.

The Henry Girls - December Moon

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Can't be wounded 'cos...

I'm afraid this won't be a popular view, but I'm not that keen on this album. It's pleasant-sounding and decently performed and produced but I got tired of it fairly quickly, probably because I don't think there's much to it besides a nice sound.

I like the idea of a mix of genres, The Henry Girls can certainly sing and generate good, rich harmonies and I'll listen to anything which features a cover of Elvis Costello's great Watching The Detectives (which is why I tried this). However, for all its eclectic mix and the odd adventurous choice of song, what we end up with is rather a bland pop album with an amiable overall effect but - a bit like the character in Watching The Detectives who can't be wounded - it's got little in the way of real heart.

I'm sorry to be critical, but for all its pleasant surface, I don't think this adds up to all that much musically and I can only give it a lukewarm recommendation.

Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine album from Paul Simon

I'm pleased to say that this is a very good album; it's varied, unexpected in places and contains some very good tracks.

Paul Simon has always been a very fine musician who has developed and experimented throughout his career.  He once, for example, set himself the challenge of using every note of the chromatic scale in a single song: the result was Still Crazy After All These Years, which is a magnificently beautiful song and a true classic.  Not all his challenges have been met so successfully and I'm not sure that there's anything of quite that stature here, but this is a fine album nonetheless.

Simon incorporates all sorts of styles including rap, jazz and many others.  Several tracks are very rhythm-driven (like Wristband and The Werewolf), but beautiful melodies are still in evidence in the title track and Proof Of Love, which I think is a truly lovely song.  The album is very varied in instrumentation, feel and style and I'm delighted to see Simon still stretching the boundaries in his seventies – but this is still recognisably a Paul Simon album and collection of really good songs.  His voice is still in good shape and he's a real master at putting a song across.

Simon's lyrics have always been outstandingly good, and they are as sharp as ever here.  There is a good deal of rage against social injustice as well as profound expressions of personal emotion.  Take this, from the Werewolf, for example:

"The fact is most obits are mixed reviews
Life is a lottery, a lot of people lose
And the winners, the grinners with money-coloured eyes
Eat all the nuggets, then they order extra fries

…

Ignorance and arrogance, a national debate
Put the fight in Vegas, that's a billion dollar gate
Revenues, pay per views, it should be pretty healthy
The usual deductions, and it all goes to the wealthy…"

Strong stuff – and it's good to see that real social bite still remains in at least one veteran songwriter.

I've loved Paul Simon's music since Kathy's Song was among the first songs I learned to play and sing, almost half a century ago.  He hasn't always hit the spot with every album, but this is a really good one and I like it a lot.  I don't know whether everyone will agree – I have always thought Hearts and Bones was quite brilliant, but it wasn't one of Simon's biggest hit albums, for example – but I think there's real quality here, and I would recommend it warmly.

[By the way, the Deluxe Version contains "bonus material" which is actually well worth having, including a fine live rendition of Duncan and the excellent title track  from Dion's (also good) recent album New York Is My Home, which Dion and Simon sang together.  It's not always worth getting the Deluxe Version of albums, but I'd recommend this one.]