Space Music 34

 

NRBQ - Dragnet, album review

Historical

My fondness for NRBQ is based entirely on their 1969 debut and eponymous album which I bought at the time and considered as a favourite ever since: my review of this can be read here. For some reason, I never really followed them closely since, though I have listened to many albums over the years and enjoyed what I heard. As a fundamentally eclectic band - through all the incarnations - and with a penchant for comic turns, there is plenty of hit-and-miss because they couldn't care less about 'popular' music so have adhered to an identity that has made them a critical choice if not a widely well-known band. This latest follows that adherence: there are pop songs, country songs and jazzy songs. The upbeat, pop-focused, and brightly-lit is encapsulated in a number like Miss Goody Two Shoes; the more refined pop sensibility is represented in lovely songs like You Can't Change People and The Moon and Other Things. None are demanding and all three are easy-listening. On their 1969 album, the version of Sun Ra's Rocket Number 9 is superb and sets a standard I'd always look for, which is quite unreasonable, but there is a punchy and percussive scat-like track on this album that does reflect this wonderful corner of the eclectisim: Five More Miles; this is followed by a similarly eccentric offering L-O-N-E Lone-Ly that marks highly on the score-card for me, reminding of a Tom Waits poetic monologue and also the band Brad. Brisk closer Sunflower is a lovely unpolished ballad - these last three songs able to become classics in the band's lengthy lineage.

No Face Music 61

 

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raise the Roof, album review

Smoothed Out

T-Bone Burnett production with guitar duties by the likes of Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell and Buddy Miller - so the backdrop to the vocalists' generally harmonised sharing is atmospheric and sometimes haunting, Plant usually softened to coalesce with Krauss, certainly on the opening two songs, and more prominant on Go Your Way as they work through further nuances in the partnership. These are Americana arrangements, and as such a gentle swathe of sound with echoing guitar always lurking suggestively. Old-school rock'n'roll is burnished through songs like Trouble with My Lover and Seraching forMy Love. Early favourites are It Don't Bother Me and the stunning harmony on Last Kind Word Blues; a popular cover will be The Price of Love. Polished, and pleasantly so.