Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways, album review

Trance

There are enough knowing and detailed reviews out there for me to defer. My core observation is that this is a mesmerising listen, what Dylan has called his 'trance' music, and it is in the incantation-drive of the rolling and/or pulsing musical lines, sometimes quite sweetly melodic, accompanied by the rhythm of the poetry, those rhyming couplets that shout their simple chimes before arrival and how this tugs us to them. The voice too, gravitas over gravel - the latter an annoyance around for quite awhile - but here the perfect trance-voice to convey the emotive, even over meaning if the lyric isn't immediately absorbed. For those of my generation, the references/touchstones are echos as much as anything else, and this pulls us in as well.

Willie Nelson - First Rose of Spring, album review

Imbued

Twee album cover; wonderfully reflective content.

Mainly a covers album, Nelson adds not just his signature sound but a history that imbues all with depths of experience and understanding.

The album title opener is as plaintive as a wailing harmonica can be in accompanying emotive pedal steel. That Nelson covers the Chris Stapleton penned Our Song is a superb reverse tribute, and Willie’s lifetime ‘with living’ adds its own colossal narrative. The closer cover of Yesterday When I was Young says it all.

This isn’t maudlin and has an accepting lament inherent in the reflection on aging and change, as in the Nelson/Cannon penned second track Blue Star where ‘the same old me and you’ asserts what does remain constant in this process.

Ryan Perry - High Risk, Low Reward, album review

Blues Exploration

This is a fine blues album, aptly slick at times in the Robert Cray mode of things, Perry having his own identifiable silk in the playing, and a strong vocal, but there is also plenty of funk and riffs throughout to play it gutsy as well.

There are quick riffs binding a song together as in One Thing’s for Certain [with neat harmonies on the chorus], and this also has a slowdown moment with guitar and bass that delights; opener Ain’t Afraid to Eat Alone has a long guitar setter to establish the blues prowess as smoothly grooved; on B.B. King’s Why I Sing the Blues has Perry letting a little loose too, and a favourite is the genuinely funked Homesick where the riff is tightly blunt, the staccato tempos controlled to perfection by Roger Inniss on bass and Lucy Piper on drums.

The title track and the closer Hard Times play it in the blues of a swamp heat, especially the fuzzed haze of the latter, and here are the true guts in a band that can also play it sweet – this wonderful dynamics of the blues if you are prepared to explore. 

Hailu Mergia - Yene Mircha, album review

Globalised

An eclectic and varied set of six tracks, this is a brief but globalised jazz, funk and reggae collection. That reggae groove gets its percussive showcase on third Bayine Lay Yihedal, and Ethiopian/African roots mix with lounge organ/keyboards as multi-instrumentalist Hailu Mergia showcases himself and support. Opener Semen Ena Debub is such a potent setter as the merge of accordion and mesenqo [a single-stringed lute] delights so distinctively - would have enjoyed much more of this. The keyboard’s calm walk through Yene Abebagets gets a bass accompaniment to pulse up the step, whereas second track Yene Mircha, which begins as peacefully, bursts through with slick guitar and horn anthems.

Here’s the trio and support to celebrate the whole ensemble and their playing:

Hailu Mergia — Keyboards, Accordion, Melodica, Vocals
Kenneth Joseph — Drums
Alemseged Kebede — Bass Guitar

Semen Ena Debub: Setegn Atenaw, mesenqo; Abraham Rezene Habte, guitar. Yene Mircha: Moges Habte, saxophone; Ben Hall, trombone; Mike Ault, guitar. Abichu Nega Nega: Tsehay Kassa, vocals. Shemendefer: Mike Ault, guitar; Tsehay Kassa, vocals.

You can listen and get here.