Robbie Robertson - Robbie Robertson

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Still a very fine album

I loved this album when it came out and it has stood up very well over the 30 years or so since then.

There is a fine mixture of songs here: the aching Fallen Angel and Broken Arrow (both featuring Peter Gabriel), the gospel-soul infused Testify, the wonderfully sultry, sexy Somewhere Down the Crazy River and other gems.  Members of U2, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko all appear in places and the production is magnificent; rich, thoughtful, evocative and completely captivating to my ears.

In short, this remains a very fine album by a great musician and songwriter.  Very warmly recommended.

Tom Rush - Voices

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Real class from Tom Rush

This is great stuff.  It has been many years since Tom Rush's last album, but Voices shows that at 78 he's still making really good music.

This is a collection of Rush's own compositions with a couple of traditional songs, and they are all really good.  He has a fine band with him that generates a lovely sort of bluegrass driving shuffle which is a great pleasure throughout, and Rush's songs are good, solid tunes and great, sometimes very witty lyrics which he delivers in a wonderfully engaging, laid back style.  He has the knack of capturing an emotion or conveying a vivid story in just a few words, like this in Cold River

"There was a girl, there was a gun

Sixteen days now on the run…"

And there are plenty more gems of concision throughout the album.

I've listened to this quite a few times now and it's getting better every time.  Amusingly, on my first listen I'd been completely engaged by the first three songs and was thinking that we'd only just had John Prine's excellent The Tree Of Forgiveness and now a cracker from Tom Rush, when he sang

"…Sitting listening to old John Prine

My baby loves me

Life is fine."

Voices is a really good album from a genuine master.  My advice is to try a few samples and if you like what you hear, don’t hesitate; Voices is a bit of real class.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Still a very fine album

Led Zeppelin III hardly needs another review from me after all this time, but I recently listened to it all through for the first time in ages and I think it's worth saying that it is still a very fine album.

Less relentlessly heavy than its two predecessors, there is a pleasing mix of folk, blues and rock here.  Jimmy Page is a guitarist who is still genuinely worth listening to and Plant's vocals remain extraordinary. Some of his extemporising looks a bit OTT from this distance ("See-saw, Margery Daw?"  Perhaps not.) but the overall effect with the often unsung brilliance of John Bonham and John Paul Jones is still quite thrilling in places.

This album was a backdrop to some of my university days and remains not only very evocative of a time but a fine album in itself which has stood up well over the decades.  Warmly recommended.

Byzantium - Byzantium

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Nothing special

I'm afraid I don't think this album has aged very well.  Originally from 1972, it now sounds to me like a lot of other quite good acoustic-tinged, slightly folky, slightly prog music of the time.  There's nothing wrong with it; the musicianship is pretty good and the overall sound is enjoyable enough with plenty of the recognisable musical tropes of the era, but there's not much that stands out to my ears.

Plainly some other reviewers like Byzantium very much, so if you're into the music of the time it's probably well worth listening to a few samples.  If you like what you hear then this may well be for you, but personally I can only give it a very lukewarm recommendation.

John Prine - The Tree Of Forgiveness

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Just great

I think this is just great.  I approached The Tree Of Forgiveness with some dubiety because I wasn't sure John Prine had another good album in him, but he certainly had. Within a couple of tracks I was drawn in and completely won over.

It has no business to be as good as it is, really; the songs are pretty basic country structures with familiar, simple chord sequences and Prine sings of age-old concerns in what is now a battered, age-old voice – and he does it brilliantly.  His lyrics are thoughtful with a deceptive simplicity and they vary from the witty to the very evocative.  He sings everything as though he really means it, with the result that the songs glow with what is inside them.  For example, Egg & Daughter Nite really makes me smile ("If they knew what you were thinkin', They'd run you out of Lincoln…") and when he sings the three simple words "Come on home" in Summers End it genuinely touches me every time.

John Prine has been a great songwriter and fine performer for over 40 years now and he has undoubtedly still got it.  The music here is just great, it's excellently performed and I even love the humanity of the album's title and the courage of the cover photo.  I was surprised and genuinely delighted by how very, very good this album is.  Warmly recommended.

John D. Loudermilk - The Open MInd of John D. Loudermilk

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still very good stuff

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this album still is.  John D. Loudermilk was just a name to me in 1969 when the original album was issued and I didn’t really know his work.  I'm glad I've got to know it better now.

This is an apparently quite laid-back collection of melodic, slightly folky, slightly psych-y songs, very nicely performed and well sung.  There's real meat here, though, in Loudermilk's intelligent, often witty lyrics.  Poor Little Pretty Girl, for example, is a thoughtful take on how difficult a pretty face can make life and forming genuine relationships, Geraldine is a very witty pastiche of those lightweight name songs which were turned out by the yard in the sixties and Brown Girl makes serious, angry points about racism while sounding like an easy-listening, sentimental calypso-tinged love song.  It's all  very classy stuff which repays close listening.

This perhaps isn't a real Classic Album (very few are) but it's good and has stood the test of the years very well.  I can recommend it.

Cream - Nineteen Sixty-Seven

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Very poor sound quality

I am getting very fed up with poor-quality recordings of classic bands dredged up and foisted on the buying public like this.  Cream themselves, of course, are brilliant; they were three genuine musical geniuses (and I don't use that word lightly) and their playing here is first-rate throughout, but the sound quality here ranges from poor to dreadful. 

These seem to be recordings made from the radio onto a home tape recorder of pretty dubious quality in many cases, so there's a lot of hiss, distortion, imbalance and generally very muddy sound.  Just as a couple of examples, the vocals in the first version of Traintime, are distorted and really horrible to listen to, and I'd have liked an early version of Tales Of Brave Ulysses if it didn't sound as though I was listening to it coming through the wall from the next room while someone was hoovering the carpet.

Ardent admirers of Cream (like me) may want this in their collections, but there's a lot of far, far better live Cream available.  Personally, I don't think the live recordings on Wheels Of Fire and Goodbye have ever been bettered and this certainly isn't a patch.  I've given it two stars – just – because the playing is great, but my advice is to Approach With Extreme Caution.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Sometimes Just The Sky

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, not great

I like this album but it's not a major addition to Mary Chapin Carpenter's catalogue. 

She has re-recorded some fine songs and they sound very good; the arrangements are generally quiet and thoughtful and Mary's voice has an even deeper, mellower quality these days which I like a lot.  There is absolutely nothing not to like here…but if you already have the originals you may legitimately wonder whether this is worth it.  Personally, I think it is - but only just, and I can't see this getting as much play as many of her other albums.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has undoubtedly still got it; The Things That We Are Made Of was a very fine album in my view, and she was terrific when I saw her in concert last year.  This feels like a bit of a holding exercise, but I hope we can look forward to more top-quality original music from her before too long.

Rough Guide to the Best Country Blues You've Never Heard

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

I think this is a fantastic compilation.  Rough Guides have been doing a fine job of releasing well-curated and remastered blues collections and this is one of their very best I think.

For me, this album lives up to its title; I had never heard any of these tracks before and they are really, really good.  There's some brilliant guitar work and often very fine singing, too.  Sadly, my download came without any notes (I will probably turn up dead in a ditch somewhere if I bring any more physical CDs into our house), so I'm unable to shed much light on the artists themselves, other than to say that the standard is extremely high and the sound quality is very good for recordings of this age.  It's a tribute to skilled and sensitive remastering.

In short, this is brilliant and if you have any interest in blues or acoustic guitar in general, I van recommend it very warmly indeed.