Crosby & Nash - Crosby & Nash

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A lovely-sounding album

I tried this album (just a decade late!) because I have an immense affection for CSN and Déjà Vu, two albums which were a gigantic feature of my teenage years and which I still play very regularly and with great pleasure. Solo and collaborative albums since then have been rather variable, but I hoped this would be worth a punt, and I was right.

The overall sound is vintage CSN, really. There's plenty of Crosby's modal guitar sound and those utterly distinctive vocal harmonies sound great. No one else has ever quite reproduced that harmonic sound (the same is true of Brian Wilson's own distinctive harmonic sound, too) and it's an immense pleasure to hear it again here. The instrumental and solo vocal work is good, and the effect of the album is very pleasing.

The songs are pretty good. There's nothing here to stand me on my ear the way tracks like Guinevere, Wooden Ships or Carry On did 40-odd years ago, but there's plenty to enjoy. Lyrically they're OK with plenty of right-on messages, which works very well in tracks like Don't Dig Here (one of the album's strongest, I think) but can get a little self-righteously preachy sometimes. Overall, though, it's decent material, often given a big lift by the performances and production, and especially by those magical harmonies.

This isn't a classic, and that old cliché of "it would have made a better single album" comes to mind rather, but it's a very enjoyable album. It might become more of a background record after a play or two than one for close listening, but it has a lovely sound and it's good to hear two true greats making good music together. Recommended.

Bob Dylan - Where's Your Gravity

Rating: 3/5

Review:
An interesting historical record

This is a bit of an oddity. It consists of studio outtakes and (I think) unreleased recordings of the young Dylan, including some chat with engineers and producers at the start and finish of tracks, but I'm afraid I can't tell you more than that about the source of this material. As far as I can tell the album is available as a download only which comes with no cover or any other information about recording dates, venues etc. Nor has an internet search revealed anything. I would be grateful for any information that anyone else has unearthed.

As to the music...well, it's pretty good. Ardent Dylan fans will certainly want this, and as a huge admirer of his early work especially I found it interesting to hear the man at work in the studio. The selection of material is good: covers of old favourites like Woody Guthrie's I Ain't Got No Home, Corinna, Corinna and the like. It's all well performed with the odd flaw and decently recorded on the whole.

To be honest, this doesn't add much to the Dylan canon. There are no startling revelations here, nor sensationally insightful performances of great songs. I still play Dylan's early albums regularly; they remain classics and they still give me enormous pleasure. This one is an album that I'm glad to have heard and glad to have in my collection, but more for interest and reference than as an album to play repeatedly for the sheer enjoyment of it. I can recommend it on that basis: it's interesting and it's pretty good but don't expect anything sensational.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Southern Accents in the Sunshine State

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent live album

I think this is excellent.  It's a fine record of Tom Petty at his absolute peak, and it's both exciting and satisfying.

This is an FM radio broadcast of a 1993 concert in Gainesville, Florida.  It's a good, varied set with fine performances of real classics like Learning To Fly, Refugee, Don't Come Around Here No More and many others, which makes it, among other things, a great reminder of how many brilliant songs Tom and the Heartbreakers have recorded.  There is also a good smattering of more rare tracks and some covers, some of which are very good and some of which – like Something In The Air – don't work so well for me.  But that's music, and plenty of people will like the stuff I'm not so keen on and vice versa.  It's a fine set overall and no TP fan could possibly be disappointed.

The sound is pretty good.  It's certainly plenty clear enough to forget about sound quality and enjoy the music, and although occasionally there are some of the usual balance and fade problems with a live recording they don't interfere.  The engineers have done a fine job on the balance of audience noise and music, capturing the genuine excitement of the event without interfering with the sound of the band overmuch.  There are some great audience moments, like them all singing "And I'm free falling," or all yelling "Stop!" in exactly the right places in Don't Come Around Here, which really get the thrill of the concert and make me wish I'd been there.  (I join in anyway, mind you.)  There's a bit of chat in which you can feel Tom's rapport with the audience, but not too much.  It's pretty well an ideal live recording, I'd say.

I'm a bit dubious about the release of old live material nowadays after some terrible-quality recordings have been released over the last few years, but I think this is a terrific album and it's warmly recommended.

Paul Simon - Over The Bridge Of Time

Rating: 4/5

Review:
 Great music, but a very restricted selection

Any disc with music of this quality obviously deserves five stars. Paul Simon is one of the truly great songwriters of the last 50 years and a very fine performer, too. This selection contains half a dozen Simon & Garfunkel songs and fourteen of Simon's solo works. Every one is a gem, and I'm pleased to say that they haven't only gone for the really obvious stuff - it's good to see The Only Living Boy In New York and the superb and underrated Hearts And Bones here, for example.

That said, I can't quite see the point of this disc. It necessarily represents a tiny selection from what is now a large and distinguished body of work, and so it omits great swathes of brilliance. One glance at the track list will set you thinking "What - no...?" Or "Four songs from Bridge Over Troubled Water and not one from Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme?" Or any number of other questions about the selection. The problem is that you can't really do this properly in only one CD, so that many people (like me) will already have most or all of the material on the original albums, and for those who don't this probably isn't an adequate place to start.

I could be wrong, and certainly what is on the disc is brilliant. The sound quality seems excellent and the packaging (featuring, I think, the 59th Street bridge) is very attractive. If you want a skim of the surface of a brilliant musician, this will do you very well, but with all Simon & Garfunkel's albums available in a super-budget box, an excellent double CD of The Essential Paul Simon available for a fiver, and many of the original albums also available very cheaply, I certainly wouldn't start from here.

Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On (Very Best Of)

Rating: 5/5

Review:

A good compilation of early Jerry Lee

Really, there's not much to be said about a compilation of Jerry Lee Lewis's early Sun recordings.  This is one of Rock & Roll's true greats at the peak of his form and fully justifying the nickname "The Killer."  The music is just great – but you already knew that.

You may like to know that the quality of the transfers is good, with a sound which is pretty true to the originals as I remember them (yes, I am that old, I'm afraid) and it's a decent selection.  There are lots of Jerry Lee Lewis compilations, some much cheaper than this, but this is the one I've ended up with and I can't comment on the others.  If you want a decent compilation of early Jerry Lee I can recommend this – it's well done and gives me huge pleasure.

Richard Thompson - Live! Semi-Detached Mock Tudor

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent live album

This is an excellent live album from Richard Thompson. I'm not always that keen on live albums, but this is quite outstanding.

For a start, most of the set is taken from Mock Tudor which is a masterpiece of an album, with the addition of some other excellent songs. Then there is the fantastic guitar work and singing from Thompson himself, who really is a virtuoso and gives his all here. And to cap it all, a truly brilliant band, including the magnificent Danny Thompson on bass, who is on absolutely top form here.

Many of the interpretations are a bit more gutsy than the studio originals, which works very well in this context and with this band. I've discovered this album very late, but I'm extremely glad I have come across it. It's a gem, and very warmly recommended.

Amy Speace - That Kind Of Girl

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another fine album from Amy Speace


Update, May 2015: I saw Amy Speace live at The Green Note in London and she was superb. Her voice was magical; it had real power, tenderness and expressiveness, and a purity of tone and intonation which reminded me of the young Joan Baez at times. She has a great rapport with her audience, with witty and intelligent chat between songs which matches the intelligence of her lyrics, and with time and relaxed charm for people afterwards. The songs from this album took on a whole new power and depth when performed by just her with either guitar and piano, and having listened to the album again several times since, I think I was originally looking for something in the album that wasn't meant to be there. Judged objectively on their own terms these are excellent songs, beautifully sung and very well performed, so I've revised my rating up to 5.

I've left my initial review unrevised below because that seems the honest thing to do, but I don't think I would voice those reservations now - and if Amy needs crowd funding for her next album, I'll be there in the crowd without question. She's a really excellent songwriter and performer and I can give this album a warm recommendation. (And do go to see her if she's performing near you. It's a special evening.)

Original review:
This is a good album with some fine songs, although to my ears it's not quite as good as her last one, How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat.

Amy Speace is a very good singer/songwriter. She writes good tunes and thoughtful, intelligent lyrics. She's also a fine performer with a lovely voice which she uses excellently, and she's a talented guitarist, too. I have found her work distinctive and very rewarding, and some of Amy Speace's songs have been quite exceptionally good. (Left Me Hanging is a real masterpiece of both writing and performing, I think.)

On That Kind Of Girl, those characteristics are still evident, but she has decided not to play her own guitar here and has brought in a very fine band of musicians while she sticks to singing. In a way that works very well; the sound is great, the production is very smooth and there are a number of very good songs here including the title track and the opener, Nothing Good Can Come From This. It's a quality album, but...

My reservations are rather personal and elusive. To me there's a slight corporate Nashville gloss to the album which robs it of some of the real distinctness which I have found so exciting in Amy Speace's work. Her voice, both in her singing and what she sings, remains both intelligent and beautiful, but somehow the band and the production make her songs stand out rather less distinctly from the crowd of good Americana albums being made at the moment. I really yearn for something like the dark, sexy drive of Hunter Moon or the transfixing insight and sadness of Left Me Hanging for example.

Don't get me wrong - That Kind Of Girl is still a very good album and no-one with any interest in this genre will be disappointed in it. It's just that bits of Stormy Boat grabbed me by the ears and made me such a fan that I contributed to the funding of this album, and I'm not sure That Kind Of Girl would have done the same. Amy Speace is still a class act, though, and I can recommend this album. It's very good - it's perhaps just not truly great.