Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another fine album from Kacey Musgraves

Golden Hour is a bit of a departure for Kacey Musgraves, but it is still a very fine album. 

There's nothing here with the defiant exuberance of Follow Your Arrow or the laugh-out-loud Family Is Family ("They may smoke like chimneys, but they give you their kidneys" remains one of my favourite lines of all time), but it's still thoughtful, emotionally intelligent stuff.  Musgraves is dealing here with much more personal matters, with her gift for great tunes, quietly witty and insightful lyrics and that lovely voice, used to perfection. 

The mood of Golden Hour is generally more like It Is What It Is or Late To The Party, which makes for a fine album of very listenable songs with genuine emotional weight.  I like it very much and I get more out of it with every listen.  Warmly recommended.

Daughters of Albion - Daughters of Albion

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Nice late-60s folk/psych

I didn't know Daughters of Albion at the time, but I would have loved this album then.  It's very decent folk/psych with some good harmonies and melodies and the sort of lovey, slightly odd lyrics which abounded in 1968. 

Fifty years on, it sounds very much of its time and, in spite of Leon Russell's production, doesn't really stand out from a lot of the better music of the period.  It's well worth a listen, though, particularly if you're interested in late 60s folky/psych stuff.

Blind Willie McTell - Atlanta Twelve String

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant stuff

This is an excellent compilation of some of Blind Willie McTell's most enjoyable recordings.  He was one of the great bluesmen, playing a mixture of blues, ragtime and other styles with a distinctive syncopated fingerstyle.  It's simply brilliant stuff which has influenced a lot of great guitarists including Chris Smither and Ralph McTell (who took his name in homage to Blind Willie).

The remastering is very good, so the sound quality is better than you might expect, with none of the original atmosphere lost.  There's not a lot more that need be said here; this is a true master playing at the top of his game and it's warmly recommended.

Mississippi John Hurt - Ain't Nobody's Business

Rating: 5/5

Review
Terrific stuff

This is a terrific recording of Mississippi John Hurt playing live in 1966, shortly before his death at the age of 74. 

Mississippi John Hurt was one of the truly great bluesmen with quite a gentle vocal style, but it's his simply magnificent ragtime blues guitar playing which marks him out.   He has no backing and the guitar work is made to sound so natural that you can be deceived into thinking it's easy – until you try to play like he did.  It's just brilliant stuff, and you can hear his influence on the early folk revivalists including Dylan.  (There's some interesting self-censorship, by the way, which reflects the establishment attitudes of the times.  In Candy Man, for example, some of the more overtly suggestive lines about the Candy Man's stick are replaced with "mmm-hmm" and "yeah, yeah."  It doesn't diminish the performance one bit and it's just the price of getting more mainstream attention at the time, but I did think it interesting.)

The quality of the recording is very good and if you have any interest at all in blues, ragtime or just in superb roots music in general, don't hesitate.  This is a record of a genuine great, still at the top of his game.  It's fabulously enjoyable and very warmly recommended.

Strawbs - Dragonfly

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a very good album

This is still a very good album.  The first Strawbs album I bought was From The Witchwood, which I loved (and still do), so I rather missed out on the earlier Dragonfly – although I heard quite a few of these songs when I saw them live in about 1971. 

Dragonfly has plenty of that late-60s folky sound with hints of rock and prog, and a generally slightly bucolic, melancholy feel.  I Turned My Face To The Wind, for example, is relatively brief but is very haunting, and there are several other very good songs here with very little that sounds like filler.

It's good to see Dragonfly available again and I can recommend it to anyone who likes thoughtful, tuneful, quite folky music from the period.

Chris Smither - Call Me Lucky

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Great stuff

Chris Smither is one of the truly great songwriters and guitarists of the last 40 years or so.  Possibly all that need be said about Call Me Lucky is that he has still got the old magic, but to add a few personal comments:

This is ana lbum of predominantly new songs, several of which are truly excellent, plus a couple of covers.  These are typically original Smither takes on well-known songs; there's a quiet astonishingly brilliant minor-key, swung version of Chuck Berry's Maybellene and a slow, soulful Sitting On Top Of The World which couldn't be more different from, say, Doc Watson's superb version, but is every bit as good.

The originals are excellent.  I've been listening to this pretty continuously for a week or so since it came out, and it is settling in very well alongside gems like Drive You Home, Leave The Light On and others.  There's the brilliance of satirical wit in songs like Nobody Home and Too Bad, So Sad, the heart-aching depth in Down To The Sound and so on.  Just as a brief sample of his lyrics:

"I saw a clown with a comb-over trying to float a loan

With the CIA while he's tweeting on his phone

But there ain't nobody home…"

Smither's voice is sounding a little older but still in good form and his guitar work is still breathtaking, of course.  The production and his band are excellent, and the last five tracks are alternate versions of songs on the album.  This is often just a space-filling device, but I love these versions here; they are darker, often slower and really effective.

In short, this is a really good Chris Smither album – which makes it one of the finest I've heard for some time.  Very warmly recommended.

Morganmasondowns - Morganmasondowns

Rating: 2/5

Review:
A disappointment

I was very interested to hear this rather elusive "cult classic" which was never properly issued when it was recorded in 1970.  Sadly, I can see why.

There is lots of harmony and lovey-peacey lyrics here, but I'm afraid it's just a bit too wrapped up in its own sense of supriority to work.  The harmonies are often unconventional – which would be fine if they had some coherence, but they don't really.  There's just a sense of trying to be different for the sake of it, which can't carry a whole album.  It's combined with lyrics like the spoken:

"I look around and all I see

Is superficial

Oh, nobody knows, nobody cares and

Nobody ever wants to"

which is just annoyingly like a sulky fourteen-year-old, or

"For love is now and today is all we have…"

which as a seduction line isn't exactly in the Andrew Marvell class and struck me as simply silly.

To be fair, the album does have its nice moments, but overall it struck me as being very pleased with itself but rather empty of ideas or inspiration.  A disappointment, I'm afraid.

Chuck & Mary Perrin - The Last Word

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Decent late-60s folk

This is a compilation of the Perrins' first two LPs, Brother and Sister aka The Chuck & Mary Perrin Album (1968) and Next Of Kin (1970) with two extra tracks, originally released on The Peoria Folk Anthology Volume 3.

It's all pleasant, late 60s folky stuff.  It's not particularly outstanding in any way, but it's very decently written, performed and produced.  The sound is a bit Peter, Paul & Mary meet The Everly Brothers, with plenty of reverb on the voices and a slightly wistful, gotta-be-movin'-on feel to quite a lot of it.  It's the sort of thing I loved back then, hitchhiking around the country with my guitar and a yearning teenage heart; now it's more a pleasant reminder of a period than anything especially musically distinguished, but that's OK with me.

If you like that late-60s/early-70s folky sound, it's well worth trying a few samples and if you enjoy them you'll like the album.  It's more than competently done and I'm glad to have this in my collection to hear every so often.

Spooky Tooth - Spooky Two

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a very decent album

This is still a very decent album.  I somehow managed to miss Spooky Tooth almost entirely first time round and, as so often, I'm indebted to Mark Barry for nudging me to try them again almost 50 years on.

Spooky Two is good, slightly generic late-60s rock.  There's decent material and good musicianship which sounds in various places a bit like Free, a bit like Family, a bit like Deep Purple…you get the idea.  Good solid riffs, quite varied vocals and a bit of the high-speed diddly-diddly lead guitar which featured so often at the time and frequently didn't add up to much.

It's not a classic, but it's good stuff of its kind, so if you're into rock of the period it's definitely worth a try.

Tracey Thorn - Record

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent album

This is an excellent album.  Tracey Thorn is a very fine songwriter and performer, but I haven't always liked her more electronic stuff quite so much.  I do here.

Record features Tracey Thorn's usual thoughtful, intelligent lyrics which always lift her songs.  She also writes great, simple tunes and really understands the value of restrained but very musical production to weave them into tracks of real quality.  I was put in mind slightly here of some of Vince Clarke's best work with Depeche Mode and Yazoo – which is very high praise.  The album doesn't really sound like those early 80s tracks, but it has some of the same quality of melody and sympathetic production which gave them such class and staying power.

I'm really impressed with this album.  It's danceable, but it's also very atmospheric and listenable too.  Warmly recommended.