Some Awe's Top Ten, 2014

Here’s a few I missed [or have only recently been released] from my 'preliminaries' long list, and then a top ten:

D'Angelo & The Vanguard - Black Messiah

Magic Brother - I Don't Mind

Syd Arthur - A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Amorphous Androgynous Remixes

Top Ten 2014

The Cloud Cuckoo Collective - From Omaha to Ottery

Had to be. Thanks everyone, especially PP and MW, and to MP and KB and all the others. Great production PP.
The Delines- Colfax

Because of the genius of Vlautin’s storytelling, and soundscapes that embrace and enhance. Oh yeah, I also got to interview him....

Nils Petter Molvær – Swicht

Pedal steel and jazz, what a beautiful combination

Ryan Adams - Ryan Adams

Because he can and does

Chris Smither - Still On the Levee

As so often with my choices, because of legendary status, and continuing, here with refashioned versions

London Grammar - Hey Now

For her vocals

Rival Sons - Great Western Valkyrie

Because of those who still rock anew so strong

Blues Pills - Blues Pills

Ditto

Joe Bonamassa - Different Shades Of Blue

It would be too easy just to expect and therefore accept – it needs recognising

Ty Curtis - Water Under The Bridge

For being less well known but so much better than those who are

The Delines - The Tunnels, Bristol, 4th November, 2014 gig review

Consummate

Enjoyed a great gig by The Delines at The Tunnels in Bristol as the band began their UK tour having just returned from New Zealand and Australia. The show was supported by the band’s, and Willy Vlautin’s, Portland-based good friend Fernando Viciconte who played a fine acoustic set having returned to performing after a longish spell of being ill. Fernando was clearly very pleased to be playing, and he was a warm and enthusiastic person to talk with. His songs are largely intense personal stories sung with a powerful, emotive vocal that reminded me of Jimmy LaFave. You can hear one of his latest songs The Dogs here, and there are further downloads available here.

Fernando at The Tunnels

The Delines played a wonderfully engaging set including key tracks from their album Colfax, including Calling In, Colfax Avenue, The Oil Rigs at Night, State Line, Flight 31, and in the encore, I Won’t Slip Up [all reviewed here]. I don’t need to say much more really on how highly I rate these, but as with Vlautin’s other band Richmond Fontaine and their last album The High Country, on which Amy Boone also took the storytelling vocal - here - the despondency and [if it isn’t an exaggeration] everyday nihilism of the narratives are less foreboding when performed within the high spirits and band repartee of a live gig. This doesn’t in any way diminish the emotive impact when being sung live by Amy where they are in fact even more poignant. But as a live experience it is as uplifting as it is a touchstone to the power of consummate storytelling about the often harsh realities of our lives.

Jack Bruce: 14th May, 1943 – 25th October, 2014

Thanks for the sunshine.

Albert Lee and Hogan's Heroes - Exmouth Pavilions, 1st October, 2014

Extraordinary

Albert Lee finger-picking a guitar fret-board is what fibre optics is to broadband: the speed and clarity of his playing last night at the Exmouth Pavilions was superfast, and sensational.

Playing with long-time English band Hogan’s Heroes, Lee’s Country rock riffs prompted a rather genteel and sporadically geriatric crowd to a standing ovation by the end, even if there was little whopping and hollering during the performance, or indeed much movement at all amongst many rigid watchers. As we all left buzzed by Lee and the band's encore, Exmouth Pavilion’s taped default tea-dance music was as anathema as it was apt.

Playing much from their latest album Frettening Behaviour as well as a selection from a distinguished playing career – a significant sampling from Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers with whom he played – the ballads were often sweet and pretty, but it was the rockabilly and Country rock numbers with Lee’s lightening playing that truly delighted.

Hogan’s Heroes as a band of expert musicians played their part, Peter Baron on drums providing self-penned songs and vocals, Gerry Hogan on pedal steel solidly supporting, and Gavin Povey on keyboards also contributing his own material as well as playing some stonking piano riffs.

The set began with what is also the first track on their latest album, Green Day’s Good Riddance [Time of Your Life] and it is a likeable cover. The album is in many ways just that: likeable. It is only in such a live performance that much of that album’s ordinariness gets energised by the dynamics of the volume and rawer immediacy of the playing, but also, and obviously, it is Lee’s guitar breaks that galvanise. He is also an effective vocalist live, a quality somewhat sanitised on record.

The two-part set ended on Country Boy and up to this point it seemed implausible that Lee could play any faster or finer riffs, but this career stand-out hit took his guitar work to yet another level [version here to get a taste of that pace]. For an encore he and the band played two songs, an affectionate cover of Glen Campbell’s emotive swan song A Better Place, and another blistering number in Lee’s other [of many] famous songs Tear It Up, and you can see a great version here.

When considering the depth and breadth of Lee’s playing and performing career – with s many of the greatest, and recognised by these as a greatest himself – it is extraordinary that he will play a gig like Exmouth, and extraordinary to have attended.