Rival Sons - Head Down

Classic

Rivals Sons’ latest album Head Down continues with the raunchy rockriff routine of last year’s popular release Pressure & Time. That said, it is a mature and varied third outing and doesn’t adhere entirely to route one retro-rock, not that this is in any way a bad traverse – take new band Stone Machine’s American Honey as an excellent if singular example of this.

You’d be forgiven for wondering what I’m on about listening to the first two tracks on this album. Both Keep On Swinging and You Want To thunder to tight repeated beats, and the vocal on the latter is as close to the Robert Plant School of Emotional Howl as it could be. And all the better for it. By third Wild Animal, however, there is a West Coast harmonising and 60s pop drum rhythm that breaks the mould. Fourth Until The Sun Comes Up continues that groove with an echo of Steve Miller – it is an upbeat, breezy number that is as much pop as it is rock.

But if you were getting worried about this direction, fifth Run From Revelation returns with pumping drum and guitar and Jay Buchanan belting out that classic vocal. Sixth Jordan is a requisite slow acoustic number, so well within the familiar template, but it does display the band’s songwriting depth as well as Buchanan’s superb voice. Eighth The Heist has all the pomp of a late 60s pop-psyche anthem. Tenth Nova is a two minute acoustic guitar interlude that slows and sooths before the double monument of the next two tracks Manifest Destiny. Here in Part 1 there is a return to vocal harmony, with Buchanan refining his gruff norm to a higher register, and the guitar is expansive in its atmospheric use of effects rather than piledriving a catchy riff. Indeed, there is a wonderful extended psychedelic solo. Part 2, as if determined to remind us of the retro roots, is a gutsier echo of the former, the guitar distorted around thundering drums.

The album closes on the absolutely beautiful True, an acoustic ballad with Buchanan in almost operatic form - more Antony than Plant - birds tweeting in a bucolic background of a song that could have been utterly anachronistic but which here exemplifies the eclectic excellence of the band and this significant release.

Willie Nelson - It Always Will Be

Big Love Booty

Having recently reviewed Willie Nelson’s 2012 release Heroes and been reminded of his genuine legendary status, I’ve been listening to this 2004 album where, like 2006’s Songbird too, Nelson demonstrates his familiar ability to mix romanticism with comedy – not on the same track – so keeping the listener swayed by both the lushness of love laments and the irreverence of comic storytelling, the latter embraced on this album by both Big Booty,

She said I ain’t gonna fix you no more sausage

Biscuits and gravy on the side

You done said the wrong thing to me baby

And you can kiss big booty good-bye

and I Didn’t Come Here (And I Ain’t Leavin’),

I didn’t come here and I ain’t leavin’

I’ve been thrown into better places than this

I didn’t come here and I ain’t leavin’

If you wanna pucker up, I got just the place for you to kiss

There is a gorgeous romantic cover of Tom Wait’s Picture In A Frame, and the duet with daughter Paula Be That As It May has her in one of the best vocals I’ve heard as they both plot the dark side of being down and out. The album opens with, for me, the strongest and most Nelsonesque track It Always Will Be with accordion, pedal steel and Nelson’s nylon strumming then lead caressing with its slow and beautiful narrative,

There are some things I think about

And every time I do it breaks my heart

And there is nothing I can do

About this loneliness I feel when we’re apart

I stop and curse the darkness and the distance

And then your face I see

And when I look into your eyes I see

All the love there is inside of me

With the Wait’s track following this, the album certainly begins in a meditative mood, so be prepared for the mix of emotions the whole album will deliver with Nelson’s usual brilliance.

Sam Piper - Cavern, Exeter, 15th September, 2012

It was great to see Sam Piper playing at the Cavern tonight in Exeter in his new musical incarnation. Formerly of fine local band Electric Skies - who have dissolved as good bands do where there is so much competition and members have full-time day jobs, but good to see these band members there in support tonight - Sam now fronts a simple core of bass, drums and occasional keyboard, showcasing his own songwriting and excellent guitar skills.

He kicked off with Bright Lights, Big City - a confident choice as this is essentially a solo piece where the songcraft matters, a measured and mature melody that builds in its slow repetition and doesn't rely on the brasher pace one might expect of an opener. Absolute confidence. The rest of the set presented more familiar but distinct territory, indierock - for want of a better term - with Sam and band rocking more, but the songs emerging from thoughtful origins rather than simple formulae, like the one prompted by a dream of being alone on a boat off the Cornish coast, or the memorable tune of Cold Is The Road which has a great version here that you must check out: http://soundcloud.com/sp1987. I wish I had caught Sam's acoustic set at the Phoenix yesterday.

The last two songs - I didn't get the names - foregrounded Sam's guitar playing, the penultimate a kind of bluesballad riff, and the latter climaxing in a wall of sound. With my rock'n'guitar proclivities I'd naturally like to see more of this with Sam ripping up some raunchier riffs, but I think he's cleverer than that and I look forward to this intelligent and creative songsmith honing his craft and getting more and more recognition for the integrity of his musical passions as well as the fine playing.

ZZ Top - La Futura

Yessa

Produced by Rick Rubins and Billy Gibbons, this 15th studio album is as down-dirty delightful as it could be - yessa, yessa - with opening radio-hot track I Gotsta Get Paid a heavily gritty re-working of the original hip-hop song and in its transformation emblazoning the ZZ stamp as a thundering template for all that follows, and thus the seamless dark dredge into the third track, groaner Consumption. Even blues ballad Over You is growled in a beautiful slow sludge of romanticism. It is a thick rough syrup of sound in Gibbon's natural vocal distortion. It all sucks you in with familiar stabs of guitar noise and everything else that makes this rockblues so distinct, now matured to a stonking rawness. Closer Have a Little Mercy drags that raw ass at zimmer-frame pace, but its snarling sonic grumpiness grins the warm smile of dentures held in place with barbed wire.

Nerd Vinyl Buying Two

No real need to explain much more. This is a very recent handful of six bought at an excellent source somewhere on the southeast coast of England. Again, £3 each and all in superb condition. When I'm looking through the boxes on the floor, other people come and go, gestures of commitment but really no more than lightweights. One guy looks to his wife and suggests he's going to stay for a while so she should move on. He lasts about four minutes. Pathetic. You have to have stamina to search through box after box of relative crap to find something you want. Occasional pearls inside the shells, at my price range anyway. I know there are bigger nerd vinyl buyers out there who range further for larger treasures. Each to their own.

The one I don't know and haven't seen before - and am yet to listen to - is the Herbie Mann Reggae including both Mick Taylor and Albert Lee on guitars. Looking forward to that, perhaps tomorrow.

Nerd Vinyl Buying One

I like a regular fix of buying vinyl, loving to mainline from charity shops though these have had a drastic fall in supply of late. I don't think the source has diminished. Indeed, now should be a prime time for those of my generation and older who in departing to the spinning turntable beyond are leaving behind their album/lp collections for redistribution. However, charity shops have presumably become more savvy to the value of these and are disposing any contributed collections through alternative channels to their shops. Oxfam is always an existing sound source - and I recently purchased a couple online: a Chambers Brothers and a Robin Trower - but their pricing is becoming too astute to find many bargains which is a significant part of the fun of the search [and I know I can't begrudge their pricing accuracy considering its purpose...]. I do know one local Oxfam shop that offers genuine treasures, but I'm not talking.

I work in Manchester every year for examining and it is important to satisfy the vinyl addiction there. One of the places I always visit is the Empire Exchange.

They actually have a 'proper' collectible selection, but I tend to trawl through the cheaper racks looking for what I don't already have and the occasional surprises. The guys that work there will always do a deal on the overall stated price and it is a wonderful, eclectic secondhand shop to visit and enjoy.

This summer I didn't make it to the Empire Exchange. The first time in a while. But I didn't need to. On they way back from work at the University on the Oxford Road, a guy in a white van had pulled up to the side and off-loaded a heap of records and books that he placed in various containers on trestles with old boards laid quickly across them. The van itself was still a mess of other books and records, a proper Aladdin's van-den of what had been chucked in and not chucked out for brisk display - before he was moved on [I asked him if this happened much and he said it did and 'they' took his stuff, but he just went out and got more. I didn't ask]. Below is the selection of mainly pristine vinyl I got for £3 each: I tend to go for lots of about 6 - I don't know why. A handful under £20 always seems a good buy. I was particularly pleased with Cosmo's Factory. I'd initially picked out a copy in a box on a table, but I then found this other near mint copy inside the van in a box of various drivel. My other favourite is the Kossoff Back Street Crawler - I already had a reprint copy [bought, interestingly, at the Manchester Vinyl Exchange some years earlier] but this is an original.

And you can stop giggling at Piledriver. Early Quo is good enough stuff before they got lost in a timewarp riff. This is 1972 and solid rock'n'roll.

Katrine Polwart - Traces

Poignant Narratives

Quality radiates throughout this 5^th album: the songcraft, the singing, the harmonising, the support playing, and the poetic storytelling. This is pure in that singing too, Karine Polwart’s Scottish lilt such a distinctive and affecting feature. There are a number of reviews already out there that detail the storylines and their redolent grip on the realities that prompted them: search these out and be impressed by the ranging depth and wit of Polwart’s inspiration. One such is Tinsel Snow that evokes her childhood recollection of the BP petrochemical plant at Grangemouth on the River Forth, and the song is typically rich in its lyricism, as these snippets attest: ....in the east the fires are burning spires of stone and steel ... from a window such a wonder, flying saucers on the shore....she sees disco lights and diamonds, old Orion’s sword. Eighth track Sticks N Stones is at its folk best with a duet of harmonium and accordion, and the poignant narrative reminisces on the scuffs and scars and other indelible tags we leave in a home,

I’m bruised by the early morning,
I hear the whole house breathing

Footsteps in empty hallways fall to the sound of leaving

Inch marks on doorframes
And thumbprints on window frames
Ghosts of hereafter

Kitchen walls pock marked
With shadows of blue tack
And riddled with laughter

Scars where the bed stood
And names scored on old wood
And dreams in the rafters

Secrets in timbers
And tears spilled on red bills
And hopes in the plasterboard

Out in the world of numbers
One door doesn’t count at all

It’s just sticks n stones (and our dreams in the rafters)
It’s just sticks n stones (our hopes in the plasterboard)
It’s just sticks n stones (and our dreams in the rafters)
It’s just sticks n stones (our hopes in the plasterboard)
It’s just sticks n stones (and our dreams in the rafters)
It’s just sticks n stones
And our stories

Lou Doillon - Places

Successful Singspeaking Route

In a period when so many female vocalists regurgitate an affected wispy slur, French actress and model Lou Doillon performs admirably in another career and on new album Places, her strength in a surprisingly effective half-spoken voice. She can sing strongly – and that is another facet of her potency, this volume and clarity – but her stylistic nuance is to singspeak across most of these pop tracks. What I do like is the foregrounding of the vocal, and fifth track Same Old Game is a good example with a simple acoustic guitar and other lightly layered instrumentation placing the voice intimately to the front. Indeed, simplicity informs the production throughout and this suggests and also delivers confidence in the singing, occasional harmonising adding further assistance. 

Title track Places crystallises all of this powerfully in a narrated opening over piano that seems to tell an apocalyptic story of humanity over-reaching itself, and the crescendo of its climatic rising is genuinely potent. When Doillon moves from the spoken to her singing voice, it is accentuated with this by now familiar shift as much as the musical upsurge. This is followed by closing track Real Smart where again her strongly sustained singspeaking impresses with its consistency. An excellent album to dispel any doubts there might be about Jane Birkin’s daughter pursuing this musical route.

Blind Atlas – Kodiak Bear

Not the Bear's Claws

Blind Atlas is an americana band from Manchester so their influences are obvious in reflecting the 60s/70s roots of this genre as well as more contemporary British reference points [they cite Radiohead as one of many influences....], but the pedal and fiddle/viola are probably more significant in establishing their sound. It doesn’t rage – second 4^th Street is probably the rowdiest, though it’s a neatly controlled argument between fiddle, guitar and pounding drums - and there are a few maudlin moments, for example Damned Words which is actually one of the best tracks, but its mid-tempo whole is a fine example of very good songwriting and playing, Brother Moon exemplifying with its solid guitar - a mix of slide and some fuzz - the background organ swirl, and the rising melody. It's a gentle listen overall, caressing rather than gouging with claws.

Against The Wheel - The Flapper, Birmingham, 7th September 2012

As ever, a blistering as well as pulsatingly melodic and green string snapping performance. Check them out here: http://www.againstthewheel.com/ and whenever you are able, catch them live.