Volkswagon Music 6

 

William Prince - Stand in the Joy, album review

Quality Exudes

This is a mature and sweet album, Prince with his soft baritone soothing in the reflective lyrics of finely-crafted songs. It is a straightforward and simple as this: quality exudes. It has a clear Country intonation throughout, but the most indicative of this is the pedal-steel lament ‘Broken Heart of Mine’.

Lyrically, the songs tread familiar self-questioning on a life lived and measured by the here and now. They can do so with some poetic cleverness too, as with ‘Young’:

 

Cover band sign me up

Play some Metallica

Let’s count the times we drive by all the driveways we ain’t driven by before

Can’t shake what’s got me shook

Turn around take another look

Holdin’ on to someday and a better situation

 

Young hoping one day you’ll grow old

Older than when it began

Hard to imagine it all now that we’re free and I’m just fine

We can start over again

Nothing is out of our reach

We can be all that we dreamed when we were young

Wе were young

Shoulda had it all by now

According to my younger sеlf

What ain’t down on paper means nothin’ in the real world

When you’re young

 

Had a dream where I was giving blood

Hooked up to a record machine

Speaking in a fevered tongue

Staring at some desert trees

Forgetting everybody’s name

Is this all that seems

All that it seems

Ain’t no small victories when you’re young

 

There is a recurring harmonising vocal in many songs and this adds to the gentle delivery of the whole. It is a relaxing, reassuring musical narrative that puts a strong sense of knowing and understanding on whatever is being ruminated.

 

Get here.

 

 

Beth Malcolm - Kissed and Cried, album review

Damn Fine

This is a gorgeous folk album, Beth Malcolm having a fine, fine voice (damn fine, perhaps best in not wanting to repeat ‘gorgeous’ which it is), and at times there is a very slight Country inflection there which I also like. There’s a live track here Choose My Company which demonstrates how good she is, this accompanied by jazz ensemble Fat-Suit.

 

Winner of ‘Scots Singer of the Year’ in 2022, Beth is from Perth and thus the award is spot-on for quality and place of birth. Workers’ Song is doubly inspirational in its delivery and in its narrative at a time of workers struggling and fighting for their rights across the UK. 

 

 

Recommended, and get here: https://bethmalcolm.bandcamp.com/album/kissed-and-cried

Smokey Robinson - Gasms, review

Gasmic Gasms

Although I am clearly inclined to TextArting music reviews/responses of late, I think Smokey's smoking sexual lyrical inclinations on this latest are best represented by the following:

My only other observation is to wonder if President Joe Biden at 80 has been listening to this album in making his declaration he'll be running for another term in office. Robinson's seeming sexual intensity at 83 has perhaps been just the catalyst Joe needed.

With thanks to Jimi...

ProgressiveTextMusic / ProgMusic

 

Volkswagon Music 5

 

Molina, Talbot, Lofgren & Young - All Roads Lead Home, album review

Sentimental

Nothing diverging, but a comfortable familiarity across these three/four – as one would expect – and significantly better than the pretenders. Ralph Molina’s It’s Magical is a sweetness, harmonies reminding; Neil Young’s live acoustic Song of the Seasons (from Barn) is as nostalgic as it is meant to be, looking back and remembering, slotting into the album’s embrace with ease. Billy Talbot’s Cherish enters on a wave of fuzz, his vocal rasp on memory and thankfulness hopeful in its evocation of the moon; Nils Lofgren’s Fill My Cup adds a little acoustic guitar funkiness in the mix, another touchstone vocal reassuring us older ones, and the gentle harmonies playful in the punchier rhythms. A lovely album in the full sense of that sentiment.

 

Two Faces Music 39

 

Dada - Dada, album review

Not Advant-Garde

The birth of Vinegar Joe in many respects because Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks are members. The only Dada album coming out in 1970/71, it is a mixrd message of some reasonably straight rock but also soul/gospel and other generally over-produced tracks: She Walks Away an example of the latter, where there is a great tumbling-down sax riff and powerful vocal from Brooks to open, but it is quite wild and random as it progresses, with theatrical backing vocal and other more mid-60s orgestrations and choric elements. But this is of its time and the whole is an engaging amalgam of sounds. Mostly penned by band members, there are two covers: Richards/Jaggers The Last Time as a faithful representation, and then Tony Joe White's Aspen, Colorado with gentle flute and big-band heavy lifting. 

Two Faces Music 38