John Smith - Hummingbird, album review

Sublime Smith

In previous reviews of the excellent music from the excellent John Smith here, I have commented on seeing him live twice, both as surprises, and both wonderful ones, the second made more so by the introduction of the first. These memorable encounters have been made so in addition by Smith’s inherent and essentially folk credentials [though I wouldn’t narrow completely to this] but also through the personal link he has had to John Martyn, as a support act to him, and JM as an influential folk artist on Smith’s own work, but also then to me via these links because I have always placed Martyn at the pinnacle of my musical affinities.

The above is hardly symmetry but it is a succession of close connections and it means something special to me.

But thus my pleasure in listening to this latest release from Smith, which is an entirely folk album, and it resonates with both that influence from previous artists including also John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, perhaps obviously but also as evidenced in echoes throughout this album, not least the lovely track Lord Franklin which for those of my generation resounds to the cover many years ago by Pentangle [and thus Bert J and John R]. When Smith lets his voice here rise above its usual register there is such delicacy. Listen out too for that delicate plucked guitar string at its end!

The album’s title track is self-penned, as is the third Boudica – this embracing both the delicate and the powerful, a rousing chorus and beautiful violin lines gracing the sweet melody: the plaintive within the poignancy. The traditional Hares on the Mountain follows this, and we have more truly emotive performing here; violin again lamenting. Gorgeous.

In all of this so far it could seem that Smith is merely occupying a space in that fine folk lineage – not that this would be an insignificant thing – but he has his distinctiveness and this is mostly in the resonant rasp of his vocal, but also the very fine guitar playing. That vocal is also at times full of emotion, as in the singing on penultimate track to this album Axe Mountain [Revisited] – a powerful rendition; Jansch-esque guitar played.

The closer to this album is Unquiet Grave with atmospheric additional instrumentation and vocals, and it is beautiful, Smith’s guitar work simple and simply affecting. 

Two Faces Music 23

Low - Double Negative, album review

Highs and Lows of Modern Life Made Beautifully Ugly

The opening ‘vinyl’ static and scratch in Quorum of a stuck-in-a-groove sound signals more than the sibilance of this sentence. It is the noise that will battle the trio’s usual sweet harmonies throughout this pulsating album, the sound augmented by a deepened volume and its insistence on so many tracks. It is a triumph of such a combination, fully realised in the beautiful-ugly track Always Trying to Work it Out where the sweet drone and pulse is perfected into a loop of gorgeous harmony and fading inandout distortion.

In a world thrown totally awry by the politics of madness, there is something metaphorically sustaining in how Low retain their core beauty within the onslaught of the penetrating and perpetrating noise. Such sound is always percolating around and within, an ambience that unsettles until a snatch or layered or even more permanent melodicism asserts itself. Tracks like The Son, The Son is a re-invention of Thus Spoke Zarathustra launching the potted history of man’s inhumanity in A Space Odyssey, followed by the sweetly strummed guitar and peacefulness of Dancing and Fire – these poles of a world in conflict with itself, Mimi Parker in angelic vocal even as the song inevitably gets more heated.

A stunning, significant sound for our times.

Classical Nude Music 3

Camilla George - The People Could Fly, album review

Tales Retold

Hot on the heels of my seeing Quentin Collins at the Blue Vanguard Jazz Club [reviewed here] it has been a pleasing discovery to follow-up onto this latest release from Camilla George – new to me, but made known by Collins’ arrangement of the album’s closing Curtis Mayfield cover Here But I’m Gone and, as I have also discovered, Collins is co-founder of the Ubuntu record label on which The People Could Fly appears.

That Mayfield track is an upbeat and positive jazz cover, fine vocals with especially the opening sultry sax and voice amalgam leading into the main melody’s descending line. There is a fine ensemble playing on this but also a neat solo from Collins on trumpet, echoed briefly by George – the perfection of restraint. I love the repeating trio of lines in the lyric, made resonant by the band’s playing:

How did I get so far gone?
Where do I belong?
And where in the world did I ever go wrong?

If I took the time to replace
What my mind erased
I still feel as if I'm here but I'm gone

Elsewhere, the musical journey is bright and at times afro-centric, as with opener Tappin, the Land Turtle, an African American fable set to a percussive groove where the recited line

Bakon coleh

Bakon cawbey
Bakon cawhubo lebe lebe

leads in the story to food for feeding children – though it moves on to a darker end [from my new and quick reading, but another discovery] – and this also prompts instrumental patterns based on the punchiness of the lines.

Indeed, the tracks on this album interpret musically the tales from Virginia Hamilton’s telling of American Black folktales in The People Could Fly, as George says “I knew from the moment I decided to write music for these amazing stories that I wanted to expand the sound of my band in order to realise the sounds that I had been hearing in my head”.

A ‘softer’ jazz groove is conveyed with the title track, though this too is noticeably percussive, and George’s soloing on this is gorgeous. Love the dance of her playing on Carrying the Runnings Away.

Penultimate The Most Useful Slave is a bluesy dirge on the deeply ironic title of this story.

No Face Music 14

ODi - Something Missing, EP review

Nothing Missing Musically

The title track from this EP release is a bluesy, electric gem, Claire Odlum in a smouldering vocal that belies the usual sweeter [a relative term] folkish voice – indeed there seems to be a fine-wine maturity from previous, honed by experience and touring since I last saw and listened.

Dave Redfearn provides the hint only of harmony here, though in the following three, ODi’s signature harmonising excellence is evident – this immediate on second track Set a Prayer, which as a live and acoustic track captures them as I fondly recall and have written about previously here. This is an assured performing, and a simple but affecting song.

Third The Escape Artist has more sweet and tight harmonising, sustained across the rise and fall of its melody, a finger-picked guitar all of the underpin needed for such fine singing and songcraft. Closer Don’t Drag Your Heels is a ‘demo’ but again for me retains that welcome simplicity of stripped-back performance, the guitar work excellent and the harmonising on its chorus quite beautiful.

Other contributions on this EP are from Sean O'Leary, Mike Odlum and Andy Hawkins, and as a taster of what is to come, I am looking forward. You can get here, and I do recommend.

Eye Music 31

Here But I'm Gone - arrangement by Quentin Collins

Quentin Collins arrangement - see recent QC gig post

The Black Lillies – Stranger to Me, album review

Change

Just ahead of National Poetry Day here in the UK and its theme of 'Change', The Black Lillies' latest album reflects what has and hasn't - for the former, the band is noticeably without vocalist Trish Gene Brady who was/is a fine singer, and for the latter the band has retained its touchstone of countrified and excellent musicality, not least exemplified in a mix of rock roots and west coast sensibilities.

I first came across the band with the debut album Whiskey Angel and have been a fan ever since [see previous reviews here]. Other reviews of this latest out there have invoked a range of those west coast influences, but I think it suffices to say the vocal harmonies are sublime, and never cloying.

What we have on this album is the basics of sweet songwriting and tight performance - and those harmonies holding it all together. And when I use an adjective like 'sweet' this isn't about being syrupy - it is also the spot where a rootsier sound and pace is nonetheless honeyed in its tastiness.

Stepping outside the metaphoric, songs like Weighting deliver that pace refined by the harmony vocal one can't avoid mentioning, and following ballad Out of the Blue is as plaintively fetching as musical history's preceding lineage which clearly influences, thankfully. Don't Be Afraid and River Rolls posit those Country roots that have also always been a welcome feature of the band's sound. Earthquake is a vocal ensemble gem.

This is by and large pretty music. Always loved such and always will.

No Face Music 13