Into the Distance Music 71

Collette Savard - Collette Savard and the Savants, album review

Accomplished

What a fine set of songs with great lead vocal from Savard, close vocal harmonies, and mellowed as well as funky playing – The Hardest Part a perfect exemplification of this perfection. It Shines follows this, the seventh track, and it uses its familiar rock riff well to lead up and into a sweet harmonised chorus, Megan Worthy pumping out the keyboards.

In Over My Head sets the scene with that fulsome lead voice and a tight harmonising along the melodic line, crisp lead guitar from Tim Posgate. Copper Moon is one of those funkier numbers, Savard’s up-and-down vocal sustained within its warm tone, and more of those controlled harmonies from Rebecca Campbell and Megan Worthy. I’m Counting on You Heart is a slowed gem, some interesting vocal and other percussive inserts in mimicry. John Switzer provides the walking jaunt in his bass line for The Hardest Part, already mentioned, and Megan’s dad [have to acknowledge] Martin Worthy lays down here and throughout the unobtrusive but neat beats.

Free download of In Over My Head here. 

Photo: Noir Kitty

Wolves and Wild Dogs Music 3

Daevid Allen Weird Quartet - Elevenses, album review

Yummy Psychedelia

An album of some nerdish controversy – is it really his last [to be 'found' after his passing], is it really him, is it as good as others – and I don’t know the Gong and Soft Machine originator all that well, like calling him the ‘originator’ of those two which is less accurate than co-founder I’m sure, but the mention places him in his genre and time as much as the album’s inclusion of Weird does.

And it is weird in that psychedelic way it should be, a song like Kick that Habit Man and its repetitions with distorted vocal and little synth bursts exemplifying. Mainly instrumental, when Allen is singing in his distinctive vocal the songs come most to idiosyncratic light, though I do like the synth sounds on Secretary of Lore.

I think it is simply a lot of fun and certainly lively in its playfulness and weirdness, not that this latter is really all that so by the era of its recording in 2006, the album released in 2016.

Opener Transloopthismessage sets the scene well with its hisses, tinkling bells, and echoing vocal that leads into the next Imagicknation which says it all in the neologism, Allen in that spoken-sung vocal of his, the accent [Aussie/Anglo] sounding casual in its pop-sixtyish way. There is an accordion [Don Falcone] led ditty of delightfulness in God’s New Deal, another one where Allen sings, here a little like Dylan, but only a very little. Under the Yumyum Tree is when you can drop one, if you feel the extra need.

Hands Music 37

Chris Farlowe - Live At The BBC, album review

It Was the Best of Times...

This is a delightful collection, the interviews and announcements by almost exclusively Brian Matthew delivers the period feel, and Farlowe is a genuine, nonchalant interviewee – one of my favourites is when he is asked about his song My Way of Giving and who wrote it:

CF: Stevie Merriott of The Small Faces, he brought it along and he said ‘Would you like to listen to this?’, I heard it, it was very nice, I played it to Mick [Jagger, then producing some of Farlowe’s songs], he said it was ‘Very nice’, we all got together for the session, had a great time on the session, and that was it.

BM: Was Steve at the session as well?

CF: Yeah, they was all, all the Faces were there.

BM: And he was happy with the results?

CF: Yeah, very happy.

And thus great music and recordings got made with such ease! All the performances are great, Farlowe in his brilliant husky distinctiveness, so full of distinctive tone too, and many are with his band The Thunderbirds – and then there are full band and light orchestral with backing vocal renditions of songs like Paint it Black [there are 3 versions on the second disc] and Yesterday’s Papers.

There’s soulful covers of Mr Pitiful and It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World, and then fulsome balladry with Burt Bacharach’s I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself to which Brian Matthew plainly concludes and very nice too, thank you Chris.

The best of times in so many ways.

Eye Music 22

David Munyon - Planetary Nights, album review

Munyon Meaningfulness

A new collection from the wonderful David Munyon, the grizzled singing of beautiful songs, lyrically affecting in their honesty and world-weary insights, from the politically ironic reflections of Make America Great Again to the tender memories of From Me to You.

These are everyman narratives mapping out our lives across mainly sweet, finger-picked guitar – go back to Make America Great Again and listen to the invocations of what really matters, the hopefulness in simple promises of attending church [believe or not, this cultural reality] and the search for approbation from Mom and Dad. It isn’t all plaintive, and the quick blues of Headin For The Temple, Runnin From… presents Munyon in fine voice.

Slow Night Train to Freedom addresses refugees/otherness, the souls and tears of living life in hope and fear: don’t it break your heart/don’t you give a damn/what if it was your daughter or son are heartfelt questions in the lyric. Las Vegas Money and Rain Woman Blues are further cool blues to vary the mood, reminding us that good Americana has a wide sweep. And this is good, very good.

The album closes on penultimate Inside the Wind which is poetically and musically gorgeous, and the final title track is similarly pretty and, again, honest – love grows old, shoes wear out, nights grow cold – where the me and you of the song still have hearts on fire in the planetary nights and cosmic truths of living. There is wit – Chevrolets are good, Mercedes are better: it all depends on the money you spend – and this is the summation of living, from the earthbound to the cosmic.

A great album. 

Read more of my reviews of his work here. 

Into the Distance Music 70

No matter how far you look ahead, there is no end and this is the one that will keep on going...

Jimi Hendrix - Both Sides of the Sky, album review

All Sides of the Sky

I’m so enjoying this Hendrix, listening to closer and instrumental Cherokee Mist as I write, Jimi on guitar and sitar, the latter just simple lines, but the guitar feedback is a shrill backdrop of the kind of noise we like from him. Just before this is the wonderful track Send My Love to Linda with its opening Spanish-esque guitar runs, Jimi singing I send all my love to you in a song with tapped chords [or so it seems] and quite straightforward, if sweet –  that is until halfway through and it breaks into a superb ‘classic’ Hendrix fuzzed jam [a production splice?]. The song is apparently well known, but not to me having not followed the countless other releases over time.

The music is via recording sessions made over a couple of years from 1968, just after the completion of Electric Ladyland. Other gems are the blues of opener Mannish Boy, Jimi in good voice, especially when tagging the guitar lines; there’s a potent version of well-known Hear My Train a Comin’, the fuzzed notes in languid runs and bends, plenty of crying and yowling lead later on; Stepping Stone has the sound of his earliest work a la Are You Experienced; Stephen Stills is guest vocalist on his own $20 Fine – beautiful – as he is again on a superb pre-Déjà Vu outing of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock with great organ and an even greater bass played by Jimi.

It’s all pretty damn good, obviously: an interesting spaced-out version of Power of Soul; Things I Used to Do duels with Johnny Winter on slide, and Georgia Blues is expanded beyond the usual with saxophonist and singer Lonnie Youngblood very much in the lead and delivering plenty of vocal and sax sass.

I’d say All Sides of the Sky better sums up the space Jimi’s music continues to and will forever occupy.

Space Music 23

Chris Smither - Call Me Lucky, album review

Significant Brilliance

This latest from Chris Smither is gloriously signature in sound. Largely blues-based, there is skiffle and celtic tinges here and there, always Smither’s distinctive deep vocal, the percussion of Billy Conway and Chris’ foot-tapping so often setting an in-your-room ambience.

Two songs side by side – Everything on Top* and Sittin’ on Top of the World – and then Lower the Humble remind so much of Chris’ earliest work, more folk-based, with the plucked/sliding guitar work of that time, the latter song with delicate organ and piano in accompaniment. This track also tells an affecting narrative of change and loss, weighty in the vocal gravitas. There are string touches throughout the album too, solo and lightly layered.

She Said She Said is foot-tapped out, rolling plucked guitar, gentle vocal harmonising, a lovely song again, though lyrically lamenting with She said I know what it’s like to be dead.

Opener The Blame’s on Me is a bar-room stomper, lambasting the universe for its ills that make the singer’s promises failed ones – that railing against but also accepting: the universe is guilty but the blame is all mine. Second Maybellene is a brilliant take on the Carter/Hudson original, violin and a choric backdrop adding sweet nuances to the otherwise blues drive. Third Down to the Sound has a haunting opening with violin again and piano runs, and then such a sweet cascading melody, chaotic collections of symbols of me delving into significances of self-reflection. This is such a beautiful song.

And this is a brilliant, significant album from one of the great solo artists. Read my other reviews of Chris Smither's music and playing live here.

*Check out the rip-it-up alternate take of this on the ‘B-Side’ - gives Springsteen a run for his own signature...

Half a Million Hits

Damn, I had hoped to catch that just on the turn!

Here's to the next half a million...