Lloyd Cole - Standards

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A gem

This is a really good album from Lloyd Cole. I'm delighted that he's decided to go back to recording with a band and writing songs in his old style, because this album is genuinely reminiscent of Rattlesnakes and Easy Pieces and of a similar quality to those two near-masterpieces.

The album opens with California Earthquake - a surprising choice (to me anyway) because it's the only non-original song here and which I knew in a 1968 version by Mama Cass Eliot. It's given the Cole treatment, though, and sounds fresh and very like one of his own songs. From there on in it's vintage Lloyd Cole - guitar-driven songs with a beat, singable tunes and very intelligent and quirky lyrics. He's still got that great sideways take on things and in Women's Studies even has slightly different but still excellent swipe at the people with their Government grants and his IQ whom he immortalised in Perfect Skin (one of the very greatest songs of the 80s, in my view.)

The voice is still distinctively Lloyd Cole, although it has developed a slightly mellower tone these days. That is reflected in the tone of the songs, too, which are a little less spiky and more reflective on time past, but they still have plenty of substance and lots of insightful little gems like this in Myrtle and Rose.
"I became the one that sits and watches from afar
You became the woman in the German car..."

The band is great - tight, responsive to the songs and not over-produced. It's a fairly brief album with eleven songs running to a total of about 40 minutes with no padding and not a weak track anywhere. Perfect. It's a huge pleasure to get this album from a man whose work I have loved for 30 years but who hasn't really been on my radar for a long time. This is genuinely excellent, and if you like vintage Lloyd Cole you'll love this. A gem.

American Classics (Rhino, 2016)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A wonderfully haphazard collection

Frankly, you can't go wrong with this compilation.  I mean – just look at the track list (below).  Perhaps not everything here deserves the epithet "classic" but it's an astonishingly eclectic selection of great songs, many of which are true classics by anyone's definition. 

In a way this is an outrageously random selection – the sort of mish-mash I might get if I put my mp3 player on "shuffle" – but I love the idea of a sequence like Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good, followed by the amazing Werewolves Of London by Warren Zevon and then Wake Up Little Suzy (by the Everlys, which you already knew, of course, or you probably wouldn’t even be looking at this collection.)  There are plenty more strange but very pleasing juxtapositions; for example, the whole thing closes with Lobo's facile and disposable (but strangely lovable) Me And You And A Dog Named Boo followed by Ry Cooder's sublime version of Little Sister from the superb Bop Till You Drop album.  I love it's unjudgemental joy in the music.

The transfers by Rhino seem very good and the songs are the originals and not some slightly-less good re-recordings you get in some compilations.  I've already got a lot of what's on here but it's still worth it at this price for the things I didn't have (how good to hear Harry Chapin again, for example) and for the sheer pleasure of just playing an amazing sequence of great stuff.  Warmly recommended.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - The Things That We Are Made Of

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
A very fine album

Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of the greats and, on this evidence, she's still got it - this is a very fine album.

Mary's voice remains solid and true, with that slightly husky, weary tone fitting this material beautifully.  It's an album of contemplative, often slightly melancholy songs reflecting on aging and where life washes us up.  The Middle Ages, for example, is a fine portrait of an empty life filled by being "busy," and the incredibly poignant Note On A Windshield is a song about possibly recognising someone from long ago and what it stirs up – done with allusion and delicacy so that nothing is really explained but the emotion is brilliantly conveyed.  There are also songs of enduring love and contentment, and it's all done with intelligent, evocative lyrics and fine musical creation.

The style is sort of at the Country/Americana border, with good tunes and excellent arrangements.  The production is by the excellent Dave Cobb (who did such a fantastic job on Jason Isbell's masterpiece Southeastern, among other things) and it's perfect, I think, allowing the songs to glow without overlaying them with too much gloss.

I think this is a little bit of real class.  It's an album of fine songs from one of the finest singer-songwriters of the last few decades, exceptionally well performed and well produced.  What more could you want?  Very warmly recommended.

Nikki Talley - Out From The Harbor

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album

I like this album.  I took a bit of a punt on it after hearing a snippet of Nikki Talley's music, and it turns out to be a good collection of well crafted and well performed songs.

The material is fairly varied from the country-tinged Americana sound of tracks like Mockingbird and the opener, Rainy Day to the much more traditional, rootsy ballad feel of Railroad Boy or Gracie Blue.  They aren't songs to set the world alight – there are very few of those – but these are very tuneful, listenable tracks.  Nikki Talley has a good voice and she and her small band play very well.  I like the generally restrained arrangements and production which allows the music to speak for itself without an overlay of corporate gloss.

If you like Americana and a well made album, I recommend that you give this a try.  Nikki Talley is well worth a listen, and I can recommend this album.

George Ezra - Wanted On Voyage

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good indeed

For what it's worth, this old git thinks that George Ezra deserves the praise he's received from a lot of quarters. I've heard a lot of young singer-songwriters come and often go in my time but I think Ezra has the makings of something special. He's young and raw and, in my view, very exciting; he writes tuneful, passionate songs and has a wonderful, throaty voice which sounds as though it belongs to someone twice his age but has the thrilling energy of youth behind it.

There's probably not a lot of point in going on at length because people looking at this page will know about George Ezra already, but in my view this album is very good indeed. It has fine songs sung with genuineness and sincerity by a sensational voice, it is very well arranged and produced and still sounds great after repeated playing. What more could you want?

Elvis Sings Lieber & Stoller

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Magnificent stuff

An album by arguably the greatest pop singer ever, performing songs by two of the greatest songwriters in the history of pop – well, how many stars did you think I was going to give it?  :o)

Seriously, there's not much to be said about this album other than if you don't already have Elvis's recordings of these great songs, just get it and enjoy it.  Some of his very greatest work is here, like Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and others along with less well-known but very good songs.  They're all the proper, original recordings in very good digital transfers so there's nothing not to love about this.

This is three geniuses at work together.  'Nuff said.

Eric Bibb, North Country Far, Danny Thompson - The Happiest Man In The World

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing material

I was really looking forward to this album.  Eric Bibb is an excellent singer and musician, and the great Danny Thompson is one of my musical heroes so I was expecting the collaboration between them to be something really special.  Sadly, it isn't really.  The playing and singing is excellent, but I have to say that the material taken together isn't great.

The sound throughout this album is lovely.  Eric's singing is, as always, beautifully soulful and evocative and the backing musicians including Thompson are very fine, so there's an atmospheric, classy feel to the whole thing.  For the first track or two I thought this might be as good as I'd hoped, but it declined into a nice but undistinguished sameyness pretty quickly.  The songs are almost all about Good Lovin' Gone Good and My Baby Done Stayed With Me, which actually makes a pleasant change – for a while.  The trouble is, it becomes a bit saccharine in feel after a short while and really needs something with a bit more edge to give it some contrast and spice.  To be honest, I just keep getting a bit bored and drifting off when I listen to much of this at once.

I'm sorry to be critical of artists whom I like and respect greatly, but that's my honest view.  There's nothing wrong with the album as such and the musicianship is very good, but as a listenable programme it doesn't really work for me.