Richard Harris - A Tramp Shining

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Pretty dull

Like a lot of people, I tried this album because MacArthur Park is a fantastic track and I thought I’d see what the rest was like. The answer is that it’s not very good.

A Tramp Shining is an album of Jimmy Webb songs. Webb certainly wrote some genuine classics (MacArthur Park among them) but he also wrote a colossal amount of pretty generic, forgettable stuff and that’s what makes up the bulk of this album. Richard Harris was a singer of real character and he does a decent job, but the material combined with some pretty schmaltzy 1960s production really doesn’t make a good listen for me.

Other reviewers plainly like this album but my personal advice is to buy MacArthur Park and don’t bother with the rest.

Kate Wolf - Back Roads

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well worth hearing

This album was my introduction to Kate Wolf. It’s not bad; it does get a bit samey after a while, but she is worth persevering with.

Kate Wolf wrote and sang nice, quite tuneful songs, often with a strong story. They are on the border between folk and country; she sings very well and the production is good and the overall sound is very pleasing. I do find, though, that after a while I feel I could do with a bit of variety and the whole album gets a bit much. I’m glad I found her, though, because this was good enough to persuade me to try An Evening In Austin, her live album which is very good indeed and shows rather better than this what a fine singer and songwriter she was.

So, overall this is decent but not great, but I would strongly recommend An Evening In Austin. You may well want to come back to Back Roads after hearing it.

Little River Band - Little River band

Rating: 4/5

Review
Still a good album

This is Little River Band’s first album from 1975 and it has held up pretty well.

The album was never a real classic, but it’s good. It does sound pretty derivative in places; the opener, It’s Long Way There is a good song with some very nice West-Coast sounding harmonies, but it bears more than a passing resemblance to David Crosby’s Long Time Gone from Crosby, Stills & Nash. I get this sense throughout the album – that it sounds rather like stuff I’ve already heard. However, it’s all well done, with good vocals and some nice guitar work so it’s still an enjoyable listen.

There’s nothing strikingly memorable here, but if you like that CSN sort of sound then you’ll probably like this.

Leathercoated MInds - A Trip Down The Sunset Strip

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Probably for JJ Cale fans only

This is JJ Cale in a band before his solo career began with Naturally. A Trip Down The Sunset Strip it’s a pretty undistinguished mix of covers and some instrumentals written for the band. There’s nothing actually wrong with any of it and bits of it are quite good - Non-Stop sounds rather like a sort of precursor to The Allman Brothers’ Jessica, for example – but there’s nothing worth getting very excited about either.

I wouldn’t have bothered with this if it didn’t feature JJ, and frankly, I wouldn’t have missed much. If you’re a JJ Cale fan you’ll probably want it and do what I did: you’ll probably listen to it once and most likely not bother again but be obscurely pleased that it’s in your collection. That’s sometimes what being a fan is about and that’s fine; just don’t expect a long-lost classic. Naturally or Okie, this ain’t.

Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen On Broadway

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Great music, rather too much chat

Springsteen On Broadway is recorded from his live almost-one-man show of monologue and stripped-back songs. It’s great in many ways; Bruce is a great performer, his long, personal spoken pieces are engaging (if rather obviously scripted in a lot of places) and the music is terrific. For me, the ratio of music to talk is too low, though.

I saw Bruce live just once (Wembley Stadium, 1985, since you ask) and even there some of the introductions dragged on a bit, but the excitement and brilliance of the live performances more than compensated. Not actually being present makes a lot of difference here, and, excellent though the music performances are, it gets a little tedious at times.

This is a show I’d love to have seen and which I’m glad to have heard. I’m not sure it’s one that I’d want to listen to repeatedly, though. Springsteen fans like me will want this in their collections but I’m not sure how often I’ll be playing it.

Stefan Grossman - Black melodies On A Clear Afternoon

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

This is just great. All that really need be said is that it’s a brilliant guitarist at the top of his game playing great music.

Just to elaborate slightly, Grossman here plays 34 mainly ragtime tracks with some blues influences, and it’s just a delight. The playing is simply brilliant and the whole thing just makes me smile.

How can you not like this? It’s a cracker, and warmly recommended.

Tanita Tikaram - Acoustic

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

I like this album a lot. I’ve heard bits and pieces of Tanita Tikaram’s work over the years but never really investigated her albums. On Acoustic she shows that she’s a good songwriter and that she can really use that dark voice to great effect.

It’s a collection of good, varied songs, including a great version of the excellent Twist In My Sobriety. There’s quite a brooding air over the album but it’s always soulful rather than oppressive and it’s a good listen throughout. I’m getting more and more out of it with each hearing and I’ll be investigating Tanita’s other albums as a result. If you like a singer/songwriter who has an individual voice both in what she writes and how she sings, try a few samples; I’ll bet you’re impressed. I was surprised by how good this is and I can recommend it warmly.

Seasick Steve - Can U Cook?

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Hugely enjoyable

There’s nothing very original on Can U Cook?; the opener, Hate Da Winter is straightforward, hard-drivin’ bottleneck blues, Last Rodeo wouldn’t sound out of place on an early Bob Dylan album, Down De Road has more than a whiff of Tony Joe White about it and so on...but it all sounds really good and is hugely enjoyable. There’s a right old mixture of styles here and Steve nails them all, I think. As always, there’s no pretension and often a slight roughness which conceals real skill, a great ability to give a song soul and meaning and just a touch of class, somehow.

I really like can U Cook? I wasn’t bonkers about Keepin' The Horse Between Me And The Ground, but I think this is a return to form. There’s variety and class enough to make this an album to listen to a lot of times and still get plenty out of. Warmly recommended.

The Beatles - Let It Be...Naked

Rating: 5/5

Review :
Well worth a listen

Just to add my voice to the generally enthusiastic reviews of Let It Be without the Phil Spector additions. I always liked the original and much of this doesn’t sound that different (if at all) because Spector only produced a few tracks. Most notably for me, The Long And Winding Road sounds wonderful – and if anything better – as a quieter, more contemplative song without all those strings. (It’s such a lovely song that it sounds great almost whatever is done to it, mind you.)

I can’t say that this is a great revelation, nor that it is somehow more “authentic,” but for me it is at least as good as the original release and is well worth a listen. I found rewards here that I didn’t expect and many Beatles enthusiasts will, too, I think.

Stefan Grossman - The Ragtime Cowboy Jew

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Patchy but still good

Ragtime Cowboy Jew was originally a double album and I’m afraid one of the oldest of clichés applies to it: it would have made a great single album. For me, anyway, the instrumentals on here (roughly half the tracks) are classic Stefan Grossman; they are skilful, entertaining and a pleasure to listen to. The songs, not so much. In general, the guitar work on them is far less interesting, they’re not terribly good songs and Grossman’s voice was never that great.

Of course, you may not agree with me and you may like the vocal tracks, too. Even of you do agree that they’re not very good, I think the CD is still well worth having because the good stuff is really good and it’s simple to skip the tracks you don’t like. The digital transfer isn’t the greatest, but it’s perfectly adequate and I can still recommend this, even with my reservations.

Marianne Faithfull - Negative Capability

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album

This is a good album from Marianne Faithfull. Her voice is cracked and broken now and she half-sings, half-speaks some of the time, but she can still put a song across with real power and feeling so the effect is very poignant.

The material is a mixture, but by and large it is quite sad, it is sometimes bleak and it has a very valedictory feel; in Born To Live she actually sings of praying for a good death, for example. It’s a mixture of some new songs reflecting (not cheerfully, it must be said) on the state of the world and of her life now, and of the old, like Witches Song, Dylan’s It’s All Over Now Baby Blue and a very potent reworking of her first hit as a 16-year-old, As Tears Go By. It’s all very well done; Marianne Faithfull puts herself fully into each song and the production is largely restrained and pitch-perfect throughout, I think.

Negative Capability sounds like a farewell, although I hope it isn’t. Don’t go looking for happy, melodious pop here; this is a haunting, sometimes scarily honest album which drew me in and hasn’t let me go. Perhaps it’s not a classic of Broken English stature but it’s a good album with real depth to it. Recommended.

Siren - Siren & Strange Locomotion

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Solid blues/rock

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this is. I knew some of Kevin Coyne’s later work but missed out on Siren at the time; it turns out that even at this very early stage of his musical career, Coyne released two very decent albums with Siren.

Neither of these albums is a Lost Classic, but they are good, solid bluesy rock with a varied approach and a slightly witty, knowing edge sometimes. There was plenty of music in a similar style around at the time but I reckon this stands out from the crowd a bit. Coyne’s vocals are as good as always, there’s some very decent guitar work and the whole thing is tight and solid.

If you like the blues/rock of the late 60s and early 70s I would definitely recommend giving Siren a try. This is good stuff and I’m glad to have discovered them at last.

Frankie Miller - Once In A Blue Moon

Rating: 4/5

Review
Still a very good album

This remains a very good album. I was only rather peripherally aware of Frankie Miller at the time and I’d forgotten what a very fine singer he is. His voice is all his own, but has elements of Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart and even Roger Chapman at times and he really knows how to use it to great effect in putting a song over. The material here is largely good, solid bluesy rock with a good mixture of stuff. It’s not all great – I could do without this version of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, for example – but there’s some really good stuff here. Brinsley Schwartz are, of course, excellent as Miller’s band and the whole thing is very enjoyable.

Frankie Miller isn’t a household name now, but he’s still very well worth listening to as a really good blues/rock singer. Recommended.

Judie Tzuke, Beverley Craven, Julia Fordham - Woman To Woman

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Lovely sound, but a bit samey

I was looking forward to this album very much. The three fine singers do make a lovely sound together, but overall I found it a bit disappointing.

There is much to like here. Judie Tzuke, Beverley Craven and Julia Fordham are all very good singers and songwriters and they do sound beautiful throughout the album, with lovely harmonies and skilful controlled singing so that their voices blend together very well. The album closes with a fabulous version of Judie’s For You, which transfixed me when I first bought Welcome To The Cruise almost 40 years ago and which I have loved ever since. But…

I’m not that keen on the way that the material combines. Each song is good in its way (and Safe is very good indeed), but there’s rather a sameness about them; they are either about heartbreak of one kind or another or a bit sentimental, so that the whole thing gets just a bit cloying after a while and I could have done with more variety to make it a really successful album.

I don’t mean to carp: Woman To Woman shows some fine work by three really good artists whose work I like and admire. It’s just that, compared with other recent albums by female singer-songwriter trios, like Applewood Road or I’m With Her, I don’t think it has the same impact. Three stars would be very churlish, but I’m sad to say that I can only give this a rather qualified recommendation.

Mason Williams - The Mason Williams Phonographic Record

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Pretty terrible

Well, like most other people, I loved Classical Gas when it originally appeared so I tried this album to see what Mason Williams’s other work was like. Frankly, it’s pretty terrible.

The album is a mish-mash of stuff, with lots of “quirky” little bits on it which feel like a bit of a desperate attempt to pad the thing out to an acceptable length, and some full length songs which are, at best, undistinguished. Williams had a reasonable voice, but the material is pretty dreadful. When I was about 18 I am ashamed to say that I wrote a couple of songs for a girlfriend, which were absolutely terrible and which I have mercifully all but forgotten now. This album sounds a bit like those songs given a more lush production – weak melodies, slightly mystical-sounding but almost meaningless lyrics...you get the idea.

I’m sorry to be so critical, but I really don’t think much of this album. My advice is to get the single of Classical Gas and avoid the album.

Rough Guide To Barrelhouse Blues

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another fantastic compilation from Rough Guides

This is yet another fantastic compilation from Rough Guides.

Barrelhouse was a piano-based blues form which morphed into boogie-woogie and is real good time music. As ever, Rough Guides have collected the obscure and the well-known to form an authoritative and hugely enjoyable from the rough and ready (but terrific) beginnings to the sophistication of piano geniuses like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson.

The sound is as good as can be expected from recordings of this vintage, and sometimes surprisingly excellent and you simply can’t go wrong here. If you have any interest in this sort of music, don’t hesitate – this is brilliant.

Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Ricky Scaggs - The Three Pickers

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An outstanding album

It hardly needs saying that this is an outstanding album. These three were among the very greatest bluegrass players and there is some astonishing virtuosity here, plus a good variety of material and even a guest appearance by the great Alison Krauss. The sound quality is very good and the atmosphere of the concert is great.

Personally I find some of the down-home chat a bit cloying, but that’s a tiny reservation. The music is a marvel (as an amateur guitarist I just sit and wonder how what Doc Watson does is humanly possible) and I can recommend Three Pickers very warmly indeed.

Annie Oakley - Words We Mean

Rating: 3/5

Review:
OK but nothing special

Words We Mean is OK, but I’m afraid I don’t think it’s anything very special. There have been some terrific albums by female trios recently, most notably Applewood Road and I’m With Her, but this isn’t really in the same league.

The songs are pleasant enough, but the same musical tropes appear an awful lot, to the point when I began to think “modulation to the relative minor coming up...” and it invariably did. Similarly, the lyrics are perfectly OK but not that inspiring, with an awful lot of repetition and by the time I got to four identical repetitions of “Oh-oh-oh-oh” at toward the end of the title track it began to get a bit much.

In fairness, the singing and harmonies are good and the relatively straightforward instrumental work is fine as far as it goes, but it’s all pretty similar throughout and a bit more variety would have helped a lot. There’s nothing wrong with the album and it has its moments, but I don’t think it adds up to all that much in the end.

Lucy Wainwright Roche - Little Beast

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An outstanding album

I think Little Beast is an outstanding album. I liked There’s A Last Time For Everything very much, but after a five-year wait, this is even better.

Little Beast is an intimate, often self-revelatory album. It is permeated throughout with heartache, but the combination of excellent songs, thoughtful, intelligent lyrics and fine musicianship means that there is an atmosphere of quiet, austere loveliness and it never becomes turgid or depressing. Her songs deal with all kinds of emotional troubles from the break-up of a loving relationship in Quit With Me to a troubled relationship with drugs in the extraordinary Heroin, which contains the lyrics:

Some things that I want to say

Aren’t survivable, or advisable

Like “Happy birthday, heroin,”

But God, how I loved you

And how I still do.

That stopped me in my tracks on first hearing and the album is full of such pieces of first-class writing. As well as such superbly expressed honesty, it seems to me that Lucy Wainwright Roche has something of Leonard Cohen’s gift for writing sometimes allusive, obscure lyrics which somehow get right to the heart of things. She has a fine, haunting voice and the production is brilliant, I think. It is often minimal but has a terrific feel for the music so that each song is set off to it’s very best.

Lucy Wainwright Roche has been rather overshadowed by her two more flamboyant siblings, but she’s a very fine singer-songwriter who deserves to be much better known. Little Beast is a bit of genuine class and is one of my favourite albums so far this year. Very, very warmly recommended.

Eric Clapton - Happy Xmas

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A mixed bag

Well, it could have been worse. I was rather dreading Happy Xmas even though I’ve been a Clapton admirer for over 50 years now, and if it had been by anyone else I wouldn’t have touched this with a tinsel-tipped bargepole. With a very few notable exceptions (Thea Gilmore, Phil Spector and Kate Rusby, for example) Christmas albums are almost invariably frightful. Happy Xmas is frightful in places, but I’m pleased to say that there’s some good stuff on it, too.

The best bits of this album are three very decent blues tracks in different styles: Christmas Tears, Lonesome Christmas and Merry Christmas Baby. There are some sentimental but bearable seasonal songs and some truly dreadful things like Away In A Manger, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Jingle Bells, (which is a vacuous techno-dance sort of thing). Given that I was braced for the whole thing to be unspeakably awful, I was mildly pleasantly surprised that at least some of it is good.

Ericophiles like me will certainly want this, but the best I can say of it is that it’s good in places. Your taste may differ from mine, of course, and Eric has earned the right to record whatever he wants, but my advice is to be prepared for a lot of rather grim stuff between the highlights. Even as a believer that EC remains a major deity, I can only give this a lukewarm recommendation.

Tony Joe White - Bad Mouthin'

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Classic blues, classic TJW

Apparently, according to the pre-release blurb, “Bad Mouthin' marks a notable shift in Tony Joe White's musical progression.” Well, perhaps. To me, though, it sounds like the rock-solid TJW we have come to know and love. He’s singing classic blues covers rather than his own material, but it’s unmistakeably TJW – which is just fine by me. The fabulous laid-back vocal delivery and that magical touch on the guitar are all there, plus some great acoustic work which goes perfectly with what he’s performing. There are some quite unusual takes on some of the songs here, too; Boom Boom, for example, sounds utterly different in tone from John Lee Hooker’s original or any cover I’ve ever heard, and it’s terrific, I think.

Put simply, if you like Tony Joe White or if you just like the blues, you’ll like this album – it’s a real master performing at the top of his game. Warmly recommended.

Tudor Lodge - Tudor Lodge

Rating: 3/5

Review
Not a classic

Plainly quite a few reviewers like Tudor Lodge very much, but for me it doesn’t add up to much. They’re aiming for a sort of Pentangle/Trees/Fairport sound in various places but they were nowhere near those great bands in quality. For me, this is much more of an interesting period piece than the “classic” claimed by the reissue blurb.

There are some nice tracks on it and the album begins with some good songs, but overall the material is pretty weak. Help Me Find Myself and Nobody’s Listening, for example, are forgettable pop songs, redeemed to some extent by good production and a fine backing band; I’ll listen to anything that Danny Thompson is playing on but, great though he is, much of this doesn’t merit ore than the occasional outing. Not terrible by any means, but not really recommendable either.

A Breath Of Fresh Air - A Harvest Anthology 1969-74

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good anthology

This is a good, wide sample of some of the acts on Harvest, EMI’s progressive/experimental subsidiary label from 1969-74. As a compilation it’s excellent, but for me some of the music hasn’t aged well.

There is some great stuff on here: Michael Chapman, Roy Harper, Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers, Pink Floyd and others show why their names are still well known. To me, though, some – like Third Ear Band, Quatermass and several others – show why their names aren’t. Nonetheless, it’s a very interesting snapshot of a fine, adventurous label which was rightly very well respected at the time. The thing about being adventurous is that some adventures end in success while others don’t. A label which will record both The Edgar Broughton Band and Shirley & Dolly Collins gets my vote, even if I don’t like some of its product.

So, hats off to Harvest and I can recommend this as a rewarding anthology with good sound. My guess is that it’s so eclectic that very few people will like all of it, but it’s well worth hearing for anyone with an interest in some adventurous music of the late 60s and early 70s.

Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Great song, undistinguished album

This is a review of the original 1969 Spirit In The Sky album, not the Best Of compilation.

Spirit In The Sky is an amiable late-60s pop album. However, apart from the title track which is an unarguably monumental piece of pop genius, the rest doesn’t add up to much. There are one or two quite good tracks on it, like Alice Bodine, but nothing much that stands out as a track you’d make an effort to listen to again. It’s a little harsh to say that this shows why Norman Greenbaum was a One Hit Wonder, but as an album it fades into the background sound of the time without leaving much of a trace.

My advice – buy the single, which is superb, and don’t bother with the rest.

The Lively Ones - Surf Rider & Surf Drums

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Enjoyable stuff

This is a very enjoyable disc of instrumental surf music by a band who were quite well known in their day. It’s generally well done, with hard-drivin’ drums, echoey guitar and good tunes which have (of course) been excellently transferred to CD by Ace Records. These two albums certainly weren’t classics but they were more than competent in their style, so if it’s a style you like, I can recommend this.

The Law - The Law

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Great stuff

I managed to miss this album first time around, but I’m very glad to have heard it now. It’s a very good blues-rock album with good material and fine performances from Paul Rodgers, Kenney Jones and the band. Rodgers especially is on excellent form, which means that the vocals are something really special and they lift this well above the ordinary.

If you’re a fan of Paul Rodgers like me then just snap this up, and even if you just like really good blues-rock I can recommend The Law very warmly.

Big Surf (Ace Records compilation)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking compilation

This is an absolutely cracking compilation of surf instrumentals from Ace Records. The five groups here may be slightly less well known than people like The Ventures or Dick Dale, but they are really good – plenty of atmospheric echoey guitar, prominent drums and so on, and some terrific tunes.

Some of these tracks were familiar to me but many weren’t, and I’m delighted to have them all. The sound quality is excellent as you’d expect from Ace and it’s a gem of a collection all round. Very warmly recommended.

Mason Profitt - Wanted

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a good album

Mason Profitt were a good band; they were a little derivative, so you can hear CS&N, The Byrds, Creedence, The Dillards and others in various places here, but they do it well and the material is good without being spectacular. Personally, I could do without the over-emoted version of Skewball and the rather adolescent-sounding Two Hangmen which follows it, but the general, standard is good with some excellent banjo playing in particular, and I can recommend this to anyone who likes country rock of this era.

Robin Scott - Woman From The Warm Grass

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Pretty forgettable

The sleeve notes describe Woman From The Warm Grass as a lost folk classic. Well...lost? Yes. Folk? Maybe. Classic? No.

Robin Scott released this album in 1969 and it is rather typical of a lot of the mediocre stuff which came out then. There are a lot of rather inane lyrics masquerading as profundity, including a tuneless, rhymeless stream of consciousness thing in Song Of The Sun, and the whole album sounds as though it was conceived through mind-altering substances and was intended to be listened to in the same way. As so often, this makes it pretty dull to those of us who haven’t indulged. It’s not terrible and it has its moments, but it certainly doesn’t stand out from all the other trippy, forgettable stuff around then and I can’t really recommend it.

VA - The Beatles Dans Leurs 14 Plus Grands Succes

Rating: 2/5

Review:
A curiosity

This is a genuine curiosity. It’s a 1965 collection of Beatles covers and it’s a mixed bag, to say the least. Many of the acts here are largely forgotten, and frankly, it’s not hard to see why.

To be fair, there are some genuinely interesting takes on some songs, like The Score’s strange but compelling version of Please Please Me and an enjoyable jangly psych take on She’s A Woman by The Northwest Corporation. There’s also some unobjectionable but rather dull stuff from Del Shannon, The Beach Boys and others, but there are also some real turkeys here. Just as examples, there’s a cringingly bland version of She Loves You and the embarrassing absurdity of The Moving Sidewalks trying to give a serious heavy rock treatment to an honest-to-God light pop song like I Want To Hold Your Hand. (I would also have been interested in Chuck Berry’s views on Roll Over Beethoven and Rock And Roll Music being included as Beatles covers.)

These are early Beatles songs which relied for much of their greatness and individuality on the Beatles’ performance, and it shows here. For example, The Blue Things’ version of Twist And Shout simply highlights how great Lennon’s vocals were and how ordinary the song sounds without them. As an album, it has some historical interest but not all that much musical interest. One for real collectors and Beatles fanatics only, I’d say.

Compton & Batteau - In California

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album

This is a very nice album. Obscurities like this, originally released in 1971, are often obscure for a very good reason, but In California is a very decent example of the sort of folky, baroque, slightly-jazzy-in-places genre of the time. The songs are pleasantly melodic, well sung and very nicely arranged. The whole feel is helped by some classy musicians including people like Jim Messina and Randy Meisner and Robin Batteau’s violin is inventive and adds some real musical interest.

This isn’t a “long lost classic”; it’s long lost, possibly, but not a classic – but then very few albums are genuine classics. In California is a good, enjoyable album, though, which I can recommend to anyone with an interest in the more folky music of the late 60s and early 70s.

William C. Beeley - Gallivantin'

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A nice album

This obscurity from 1971 has aged rather well. It’s a decent album rather than a long-lost classic, but it’s well worth a listen, I think.

Beeley’s songs are enjoyable, with decent tunes and lyrics, he plays a nice guitar in a style which reminds me rather of Donovan and he has a fine, straightforward voice a little reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot. I’m glad to see this available at last, and if you like folk of the late 60s/early 70s I can recommend Gallivantin’.

Lori McKenna - The Tree

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

The Tree is a fine album from Lori McKenna. She has been a very classy songwriter and performer for many years now, and this is among her best work, I think.

The Tree is a set of ten songs, largely about domesticity, family and relationships which all have McKenna’s gift for a good tune and thoughtful, evocative lyrics running through them. The Lot Behind St. Mary’s, for example is one of the best evocations that I have heard of young love and adult nostalgia for it, and there’s plenty more of the same quality here. As always, she sings excellently in that distinctive, haunting voice and the arrangements are slightly restrained which brings out the best in every song.

I’ve always liked Lori McKenna’s work and I think this is a first-rate album even by her standards. Very highly recommended.

Hot Hundred Hits of the 60s

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A brilliant compilation

This is a quite brilliant compilation, I think. It's packed with little gems in all sorts of genres from the (mainly early) 60s.  A glance at the tracklist will give an idea: from classics like The Girl of My Best Friend or Runaway through wonderfully sentimental stuff like He'll Have To Go and Tell Laura I Love Her to comedy novelty songs like My Old Man's A Dustman or Right Said Fred, it's a terrific trip through my childhood.

I have a lot of this stuff already, but there's a good deal here that I don't.  It's still a great bargain and it's just a pleasure to put on a disc and smile my way through it.  The digital remastering is excellent and you simply can't go wrong here.  Go on – you know you want to!

Denny Gerrard - Sinister Morning

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Very dull

Reading the description and some rave reviews of this obscure album from 1970 I thought it would be interesting.  Sadly, it wasn't; I found it very dull.

Denny Gerrard was in demand as an arranger and as an instrumentalist in the late 60s, but on this evidence he wasn't a very distinguished songwriter and his singing was very uninspiring.  There's a decent overall sound to the album, but with weak material, rather banal lyrics and soporific vocals it really doesn't add up to much for me.

I can't agree that this is a "lost gem".  I think it's just another very average album which may have sounded OK at the time but which has been understandable forgotten.  It plainly carries good memories for some reviewers, but I'm afraid I can't recommend it.

The Dave van Ronk Collection 1958-62

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine collection

This is a very good collection from across the early career of Dave van Ronk. 

Van Ronk was one of those influential folk artists who never quite made the headlines himself but was widely respected and had a profound influence on some great artists – most notably Bob Dylan.   You can see why from this disc; he was a good, innovative blues and folk guitarist and a truly great singer who cared deeply about the folk/blues roots.  The early jug band stuff is enjoyable enough in a knockabout way (although it's not very good sound quality), but it's the more mature work which really impresses, played and sung with a power and artistry which really gets inside the songs.

If you have any interest in the folk/blues revival movement, or indeed in folk and blues in general, I can recommend this collection very warmly; it's a fine introduction to an unsung hero.

Eddie Cochran - Memorial Album

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

Eddie Cochran was one of the true Greats, and you only have to look at the track list to know that this is brilliant: C'mon Everybody, Summertime Blues, Somethin' Else, Three Steps To Heaven…and so on, and so on.  It does tail off a bit for the last couple of tracks and, as a reissue of the original 1960 album only lasts just over half an hour, but you still get some of the greatest Rock & Roll ever recorded.

The digital remastering is very well done and you just can't go wrong here.  Very warmly recommended.

Evensong - Evensong

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a decent album

I missed Evensong at the time of its original release in 1973.  I'd have loved it then, I suspect, and it's still a pretty decent album coming to it fresh 45 years later.

The music is folky, slightly psychy and very much of its time.  It's quite lavishly produced in many places with acoustic guitars, strings, recorder…you get the idea, and the songs themselves are a variety of the romantic, the slightly mystic and so on, and even a rather good anti-war song in Take Your Son To Church Mother.  It's slightly cringeworthy in places (it's early 70s "mystic" – of course it is) but in general it's very listenable.  It's not especially original; I keep spotting bits and thinking "That's like Bob Lind's Elusive Butterfly/ Alternate Title by The Monkees…" and so on, but I like it as a period piece.

This isn't a classic album, but it has held up better than many from that time and if you're interested in the folk-influenced music of the early 70s, Evensong is well worth a listen.

Rough Guide to Hokum Blues

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Great stuff

I love these Rough Guides to the various Blues genres and this one is well up to standard.

Hokum Blues is a term for generally humorous songs, often based on thinly disguised sexual innuendo.  You know exactly where you are from the start here, with Bo Carter's Cigarette Blues: "Smoke my cigarette, baby/Draw it all night long…"  The lyrics throughout are often inventively filthy and often funny as a result, but the music is really high-quality.  There's some superb guitar work from the likes of Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Boy Fuller and many more immortals of the Blues, and some outstanding singing, too.  Ma Rainey's Black Bottom may lack lyrical subtlety, but she was an absolute genius of a singer and it shows here.  The same can be said of Bessie Smith and others and it's great stuff from start to finish, including plenty of well-known greats but also some obscurities which I am very glad to have in my collection.

The sound is generally very good and even though some recordings show their age with hiss or rather muddy sound, it's all very listenable.  Frankly, I don't think you can go wrong with this; it's a terrific compilation.

John Renbourn - Live in Kyoto 1978

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A joy

This is a really good disc.  I'm pretty sceptical now about any posthumous release of "rediscovered" live material because so many of them are terrible recordings, but this is a wonderful, professional-standard recording of John Renbourn playing superbly.

The material shows the breadth and depth of John's musical interests, with traditional English music, blues, ragtime and so on.  There's even an encore of two pieces by the late Renaissance lutenist Hans Neusidler, which are extraordinary both in their composition and in John's amazing playing.  It's a fine, fine programme and the guitar work is stunning.  There's just the right amount of chat between tracks to give an idea of the live atmosphere but not to become tedious on repeated listening, and it's all very engaging.

John has been right near the top of my "Wish I could play like…" list for 50 years now.  If I ever play one-tenth as well as he does here, I'll be very, very happy.  (I know I won't but I can still dream and practice…)  It's a joy of a release which any Rebourn fan or any lover of great acoustic guitar playing will love.  Very warmly recommended.

(Just in case anyone is interested, John is rather rude about Hans Neusidler but there's a very good disc of lute music by his son Melchior recorded by the great Paul O'Dette, which I can also recommend very warmly. Amazon page HERE.)

Claire Hamill - One House Left Standing

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Interesting rather than great

I'm discovering most of Claire Hamill's work in retrospect.  To my shame, I was only dimly aware of her in the early 70s but tried October, her second album, recently and liked it a lot.  This, her debut, is interesting but shows promise rather than being a great album. 

There is plenty to like – Hamill was a good singer with an individual approach and nice voice and there is some very good musicianship here.  However, it's patchy, a bit self-consciously quirky in places and some of the material isn't up to all that much.  It's a first album which shows why people thought she was worth investing in and persevering with rather than being an classic in its own right.  I'm glad to have heard it and collectors and fans will undoubtedly want it in their collections, but it's not one I'll be playing much, I suspect.  If you're looking for somewhere to start with Claire Hamill, I'd recommend doing what I did and trying October first.  Who knows, you may want to come back to One House Left Standing, but for me she hadn't yet quite hit her stride.

Wilko Johnson - Blow Your Mind

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A solid album from Wilco

I award Wilko 5 stars for being here to make this album and 4 stars for the album itself.  It's a perfectly decent album with some good, solid stuff on it, but it's not a classic, however much we may love the man.

Blow Your Mind has a lot of driving, almost funky blues-rock, generally slower and more intense than Wilko's earlier years but none the worse for that.  It has a pretty familiar feel – so much so that the riff from Take It Easy is a slowed down version of the riff from Roxette – but again, that's fine by me.  Wilko does what he does and he does it fantastically well, so I'm certainly not going to carp about it.

All that said, this is a good album rather than an outstanding one.  The material is solid rather than brilliant and, 40-odd years on, Wilko isn’t the dangerous young man who thrilled me so at those early Feelgood gigs in the mid 70s any more.  Nevertheless, Blow Your Mind is a well made and very enjoyable album from one of the greats and I like it a lot.

Claire Hamill - October

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
A very decent album

I tried October out of curiosity because the name Claire Hamill was very familiar from my teenage years, but I couldn't actually remember having hear any of her music.  It turns out to be a very decent album.

Claire Hamill was plainly a good singer and songwriter because there is a good deal more character and originality here than in a lot of other half-forgotten singer/songwriter stuff from that period.  There are hints of Joni Mitchell's unusual chord sequences, of Judee Sill's melodic style and harmonies and occasionally of the slight huskiness of Melanie Safka's voice.  Hamill isn't "like" any of them, though, and although there's nothing here which screams Classic at me, it's good, intelligent material both musically and lyrically.  For example, Speedbreaker, although it ends up rambling a bit, is an arresting song, I think, which speaks of a thoughtful musicality and expressive lyrical ability – and it's very well sung.

So, October isn't a long-lost classic album, but it's a good one which has lasted well over the 45 years since its release.  I'm glad I discovered it and I may well look into more of Claire Hamill's work.  I'd say it was well worth a try.

Marc Ellington - Marc Ellington

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Very forgettable

Marc Ellington was a good musician who played with bands like Fairport and Matthews Southern Comfort.  I tried this album because of that, because Richard Thompson plays on it and because I was told that it is a lost gem.  It isn't, I'm afraid.  It's a pleasant-sounding, decently played collection of covers and traditional songs, but it's no more than that and much of it is eminently forgettable.

Just as examples, the opener is Al Stewart's In Brooklyn – which sounds very like a rather feeble outtake by Stewart himself.  Reason To Believe is a truly great song but Ellington delivers a bland, unexciting version.  And Desolation Row…oh, dear.  You need to be Dylan himself or to bring something extra-special to this song (as Chris Smither does) to make it work.  Here, it's just a long, long, *long* recitation which sounds as though it's been sanitised for a Sunday-evening on the Light Programme.  It's truly grim.

To be fair, most of the album is listenable, but with every track I'm aware that there is at least one far, far better version of it.  However much I respect Ellington's work with other bands, I can't recommend this.

The Astronoauts - Competition Coupe

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Surprisingly good

This is surprisingly good.  I'd not come across The Astronauts before, but tried them because I was a sucker for surf music when I first heard it in the early 60s and still am.  I approached this with some scepticism, half expecting it to be sub-Beach-Boys rubbish, but although it's not in the Beach Boys/Jan & Dean class, it's very decently made and very enjoyable.

Obviously, surf music was concerned with three topics and three topics only: Surfing, Girls and Cars.  Competition Coupe is almost exclusively about cars, with the other two getting a peripheral look-in occasionally.  It's fun, with several direct references to other songs of the era; the title track (ironically, one of the weakest on the album) is obviously a challenge to Little Deuce Coupe, woodies (as revered in Surf City) are belittled and so on, and there's a wonderful bevy of familiar girls like Bony Moronie[1], Short Fat Fanny, Susie Q and the like in Our Car Club.  There's some genuine wit here and some enjoyable, slightly basic but well played music, too.  The instrumental tracks are all very decent, with strong echoes of The Shadows, The Champs, Duane Eddy…you get the idea.

Competition Coupe isn't a long-lost classic, but it's a very enjoyable album of fun surf music.  I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked it and I can recommend it.

[1]One of the great regrets of my life is that I never had a girl named either Bony Moronie or Ram-a-lam-a ding-dong.  I searched and searched, but amazingly never found one.