Lauren Auerbach & Bert Jansch - After The Long Night

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not Bert's best work

This is a welcome issue on CD of two albums which Auerbach, Jansch and a small band cut in the mid 80s. Only 1000 copies of each were pressed and it is good to have these rarities available. My guess is that you're interested in this because, like me, you admire Bert Jansch very much and that, like me, you'll want this in your collection whatever it's like, but I do have my reservations about it.

I find this album a slightly odd period piece - odd, because the songs and the vocal style seem to me to belong more to the late 60s or early 70s. The songs are largely penned by producer Richard Newman, and are generally pleasant, forgettable tunes of the generic type found on lots of albums by folky duos and groups in the 70s, with an accompaniment often sounding a bit like Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well, Part 2. The lyrics feature a lot of hackneyed "sorrow/tomorrow" sort of rhyming and have that familiar, almost meaningless pseudo-profundity in places: Days And Nights, for example contains the lines "The mountains make love/And an angel descends from Heaven above." There's a lot of this sort of thing, which I'd have loved when aged 17 and reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but it's hardly enduringly insightful.

Lauren Auerbach's vocals go very well with the lyrics. They are breathy and fragile, and multi-tracked to give them quite a haunting quality - again a style very popular in the early 70s. Bert Jansch's guitar work is very good (of course) but it's from a time when he was drinking very heavily and to me lacks any real bite or originality. The rest of the band are competent but rather ordinary, and the whole thing adds up to an inoffensive, pleasant piece of background music, acceptable for late student nights after a few non-proprietary cigarettes but not much more.

It's not Bert's greatest work by a long stretch. However, it's pleasant enough stuff and a nice record of his first meeting with the woman who became his stabilising rock and whom he ultimately married. As a fan, I'm glad to have it in my collection, but I can't see me playing it much and I can only really give it a rather lukewarm recommendation.

Tracey Thorn - Solo

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
An excellent compilation

This is an excellent compilation of some of Tracey Thorn's best work as a solo artist or in collaboration with other artists and bands – notably Massive Attack.  The set is arranged in two halves stylistically rather than chronologically, which I think is an excellent idea; the first disc is her more acoustic, singer-songwriter work and the second her more electronic, dance-orientated material.

For me, it is the first disc which really shines with originality and excellence.  The more dancy material is very good of its type, but I think Thorn's real talent for creating fine, intelligent listenable songs is in her more solo work.  There are some genuinely great songs here, from the brilliantly told story told in the masterpiece which is Singles Bar, through the wise and penetrating study of a mother-daughter relationship in Hormones to Follow Me Down (from the outstanding 2015 Songs From The Falling EP) which is almost entirely haunting and beautiful atmosphere.  It all shows what a very, very fine talent Tracey Thorn is, both as songwriter and performer, and it's an excellent collection.

Plenty of people may well prefer her electronic/dance music, and fair enough.  This is an eclectic collection which reflects Thorn's wide musical taste and talent and we will all have our favourites.  As an album it's quality from start to finish and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

Blondie - In The Flesh

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine concert

This is a very good recording of a fine radio concert from 1977.

Blondie were still a slightly raw, slightly punk-ish band at this time, and their performance is true to form: driving, slightly angry and very, very good.  Debbie Harry is in fine voice and Clem Burke's drumming is especially brilliant, I think.  It has the slight warts-and-all feel of a live show with Harry not quite hitting some of her notes in the middle – especially some of the less emphatic, transitional notes, which aren't great in places – but that's what I like about a live recording: it's real, without studio tricks and you get a real sense of the musicians themselves.  The sound quality is pretty good, thank heavens, and it's a fine set list.  Debbie Harry chats a little between songs but not much and the sense of New Wave urgency comes over well. 

I was nervous trying this, because there have been some disgracefully poor-quality releases of archive recordings of bands recently (Canned Heat at Carnegie hall is a particularly terrible example) but this is very good.  If you like Blondie, or just music of this period, don't hesitate – you'll really like this.

Jeffrey Foucault - Salt As Wolves

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine album

This is a really good album.  I've only heard bits and pieces of Jeffrey Foucault until now and thought them OK but nothing special; I took a punt on this album for the not-very-good reason that I love his wife's work (the excellent Kris Delmhorst.)  I'm very glad I did.

This is an Americana-type album with its feet firmly planted in the blues.  It's an album of solidly composed and very well performed songs with Jeffrey Foucault's haunting, world-weary voice putting them over excellently.  The bad is solid and tight and the production is excellent, making every song shine with real meaning and sometimes genuine passion. Foucault is a Northern man but there are echoes here of Tony Joe White and JJ Cale in the sometimes swampy beat and subtle lead guitar with a lovely, fluid touch.

There is an awful lot of pretty good Americana around at the moment, but I think this stands out from the crowd by quite a long way.  I'm surprised by how much I like it and I've been playing it repeatedly for a few days now – always a good sign.  My advice is to try a couple of samples.  If you like the sound of them, don't hesitate; it's a quality album of good songs, well sung and I can recommend this very warmly.

I would also strongly recommend Kris Delmhorst's work.  Strange Conversation is outstanding, I think, and the more recent Blood Test is also very good.)

Alela Diane and Ryan Francesconi - Cold Moon

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A difficult album

I love Alela Diane's work to date, and I think that About Farewell was one of the finest albums of 2013.  I was really looking forward to this, but the truth is that I don't like it much.

My problem may be just personal taste, but the songs here lack the quirky but melodic lines that Alela Diane is so very good at, and lyrically they just don't reel me in as songs like Colorado Blue did (and still do).  I have tried, really I have.  I've listened a lot, I have tried to let it sink in and to find what I may have been missing, but it's just not there for me.  It all reminds me of Joni Mitchell's most difficult, tuneless songs.  I love and deeply respect Joni Mitchell's music but there is some that I just can't relate to at all, and I'm sorry to say that Cold Moon seems like a whole album of that sort of stuff to me.

I find it very hard to give a star-rating to this album.  On pure personal reaction it would be two stars, probably – but a review and a rating should be about more than just "I didn't like it".  It would be like giving two stars to some of Joni Mitchell's work, which is plain wrong: what it comes down to, I think, is that this album isn't to my taste but it's well done for what it is.  I can see that it has genuine musical merit and that others with different taste may like it very much, so I've given it four stars on that basis because I don't want to condemn it.  To be honest, I still don't know whether that's right, but it makes me less uncomfortable than a two-star rating and three stars would just be an insulting, wishy-washy cop-out..  My advice is to try it; Alela Diane is a class act and you may well like this.  It makes me sad to say that I don't.

Honey Dewdrops - Tangled Country

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good album

This is a very enjoyable country/Americana album. It's not earth-shakingly original, but it's a set of very good, well-crafted songs which are very well sung and played.

The overall sound reminds me of a slightly less intense Civil Wars, with minimal acoustic backing (of the just a guitar or two with occasional mandolin), lovely plaintive harmonies and very good singing in particular. Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish are both fine musicians and they produce rather a beautiful album here, excellently arranged and produced.

If you like this genre, you couldn't possibly dislike this album and you may well love it. It doesn't break new ground, but it's a very good album; I've been going back to it a lot and enjoying it every time. I can warmly recommend this.

Loudon Wainwright III - Album I

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
Still a very good album

This, Loudon Wainwright's first album, remains fresh over 40 years on. There are some enduring songs here like Schooldays and Glad To See You've Got Religion and plenty of the wry, witty, incisive and sometimes self-excoriating lyrics which have made Loudon Wainwright one of the best singer-songwriters of my generation.

I admit that I have a special affection for this album and for Album II because I spent more pocket money than I could afford on the album in 1970, went to see him when he toured the UK for the first time a short while later and still have my signed vinyl copies from that time. Even allowing for that, they are both very good albums still and I would recommend them not only to those who like LWIII but to anyone who appreciates a good song, well sung.