Thursday 22 December 2022
Some Awe’s Best of 2022
Courtney Marie Andrews - Loose Future
Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators
*Bastards Of Soul - Corners
Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
Joe Bonamassa - Road to Redemption
Jessie Buckley/Bernard Butler - For All Our Days That Tear the Heart
Christine and the Queens - Redcar les adorables étoiles
Cowboy Junkies - Songs of the Recollection
Kiki Dee, Carmelo Luggeri - The Long Ride Home
The Delines – The Sea Drift
The Delta Sound - Things Gonna Change
Jasdeep Singh Degun - Anomaly
*DeWolff & Dawn Brothers - Double Cream
Drive-By Truckers - Welcome 2 Club XIII
Steve Earle & The Dukes - Jerry Jeff
Dr Feelgood - Damn Right!
Jeff Finlin - Soul on the Line
First Aid Kit – Palomino
Richie Furay - In the Country
Gabriels - Angels & Queens Part I
Gaye Su Akyol - Anadolu Ejderi
The Greg Foat Group - Blue Lotus
Matthew Halsall - The Temple Within
Ibeyi - Spell
Shawn James - A Place in The Unknown
Alicia Keys - KEYS II
* Mamas Gun - Cure the Jones
Marcus King - Young Blood
Jim Lauderdal - Game Changer
*Bruno Mars/Anderson Park – Silk Sonic
Bob Marley - Bob Marley & the Chineke! Orchestra
Christine McVie - Songbird (A Solo Collection)
Nazareth - Surviving the Law
Old Crow Medicine Show - Paint This Town
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient Number 9
Pointless Beauty – Hearts Full of Grace
Cat Power - Covers
Bonnie Raitt - Just Like That
Leann Rimes - God's Work
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers – Nightroamer
Amy Speace – Tucson
Katie Spencer - The Edge of the Land
Bruce Springsteen - Only the Strong Survive
Tedeschi Trucks Band – I Am the Moon
*The Temptations - Temptations 60
*Thee Sacred Souls - Thee Sacred Souls
Robin Trower - No More Worlds to Conquer
Loudon Wainwright III - Lifetime Achievement
Jack White - Fear of the Dawn
Snowy White - Driving On The 44
Wet Leg - Wet Leg
Edgar Winter - Brother Johnny
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - World Record
*Soul/nu-Soul albums: a particular trend for the year in my listening – all of these had a special appeal.
Top Ten
The Delines – The Sea Drift
Another of Willy Vlautin’s songstory after songstory narrating the lost or atrophying lives of ordinary people, wrapped in an ironic beauty of performance.
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient Number 9
Every overblown cliché of OO/Black Sabbath is retro-riffed in the most glorious pomp and hyperbole possible. May well have listened to this more than any other in 2022. Clears the heads and makes me smile.
Edgar Winter – Brother Johnny
Where Osbourne’s is absurdly sublime, this is simply sublime: a powerful musical and personal tribute from brother to brother, built of course on the strongest of legendary songs. Love it.
The Delta Sound – Things Gonna Change
Indie with blues, this latter played in a number of polished guitar breaks; these are songs that consistently rock and with occasional affecting balladry – another I have listened to many times.
Pointless Beauty – Hearts Full of Grace
‘This is
a beautiful album, graced by rumination and reflection in its many serene
sounds (though there is also sass and funk) which emanate from the strange
and unusual times of its playing and production as expressed by Al Swainger
in his notes of February ‘22.’ (from my review)
Katie Spencer – The Edge of the Land
Gorgeous nostalgia in its echo of Pentangle, Jansch, Renbourne et al. Long may such homage but also individuality continue.
Jessi Buckley/Bernard Butler – For All Our Days That Tear the Heart
Beautiful vocals, and Buckley (naturally of particular interest) steps seamlessly outside superb acting into superb musical performance.
Sonny Singh - Chardi Kala
There may/will be those who dislike the ‘western’ echoes and influences on the Punjabi roots, but I am more than happy with the appropriations and pop sensibilities.
Bob Marley - Bob Marley & the Chineke! Orchestra
I know, but a manufacturing merging released this year and I find it a joyous listen that I once more returned to again and again.
Tedeschi Trucks Band – I Am the Moon
Just quality songcraft and musicianship song after song after song.
Friday 16 December 2022
Blue Magic - 13 Blue Magic Lane, album review
Falsetto Howl
from 1975, this is original soul: that is, if you accept its full copy of The Stylistics, and I do.
I've read it called a Halloween album, but I'm guessing that's entirely based on third track Born on Halloween which does begin with a howl, but it then transforms not into a werewolf but the falsetto of so much of the whole. So it too is a sweet, harmonious ballad in the Philly mood and mold. That fourth Haunted by Your Love may be a prompt for some to stick with the Halloween theme says more about an inability to grasp metaphor than take note the actual romatic thrust of a lyric.
The synths on most tracks are also a significant part of the Philly/Stylistics template. On second Chasing Rainbows they sound like shooting stars, or what I imagine shooting stars would sound like if recorded in the studio. Inevitably, this and other production predictability reflect their time and lack the memorable melodic impact of The Stylistics. The title track is a victim of this, moving to a more upbeat tempo when it's the ballads that lay claim to the album's best material, penultimate Stop and Get a Hold of Yourself returning to this. Closer What's Come Over Me is a signature saccharine sound in the Style of... The spoken narrative telling us 'I've never been to heaven but instead spent the night with you' is another limitation, but it did make me smile.
Tuesday 13 December 2022
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DeWolff & Dawn Brothers - Double Cream, album review
No Paradox Here Even If There Is
This is a fusion, but not fusion, and it is original r&b/soul, but actually is nu-r&b soul: in other words, this is more of the old-school soul sound that has occupied much of my music reviewing this year when I have reviewed so little.
Rest assured, there is no paradox in the authenticity of this excellent collection where the fusion is of two bands – the rock band DeWolff and the roots band Dawn Brothers – and they are both Dutch which is and isn’t surprising in this very American sound.
The tracks are all reminiscent of some precursor but I am not going to namecheck each or even every echo, apart from opener What Kind of Woman which is reminiscent of Al Green – not so much in the vocal but in the overall melody and orchestration.
There is a horn section added to the two bands and that makes a fusion of three components. Check out especially I’m Gone for a horn opening of sublime blasts which pans out to other superb climbs and rolls.
Saturday 1 October 2022
Steamhammer - Wailing Again
Still Sorta Stoked
For a while a couple of years ago I began making a folder collection of 'classic' rock bands releasing new albums and material long down the road from their prime. By and large these were predictably predictable - regurgitated riffs and runs, and far too often still perpetrating the naive lyrics that seemed so hopeful at the original times of their prophesying.
I have no idea where that collection is now. It was that collectively dreadful. One of the few albums I recall rating (though haven't returned to, so I guess that says something...) was Nazareth and their Surviving the Law.
Wailing Again is pleasingly sparky, if not steam-stoked as back in the day when I first heard them with the beautiful Passing Through on the Fill Your Head with Rock CBS sampler. This album has some of the predictable fillers too, like the blues of Twenty Four Hours - though saying that, there is some brooding soulfulness to its singing. The preceding Man in the Blue Suede Shoes is a very good guitar instrumental. And throughout this album, there are solid guitar and harmonica licks.
The album opens with its best 'new' song I Wouldn't Have Thought - simply a well-written, rhythmic puncher in an echo of Passing Through, I think - and this is followed by another good 'un, How Low Jick Jack Johnny, where a rap (all these returning ol' timers seem to feel there is this need for a contemporary touchstone) actually works.
And then there is the album's reprise of Junior's Wailing. Well, I can always listen to that, and am as I write this line.
Wednesday 31 August 2022
Tedeschi Trucks Band - I Am the Moon, album review
Full Moon Music Shine
I Am the Moon is a set of four lockdown albums inspired by the Nizami Ganjavi poem Layla and Majnun, not that I have looked to find the actual prompts and links matched to individual songs and their lyrics. It is like so much artistic production of the moment: the lockdown providing opportunity (perhaps necessity) for finding and reflecting – creative outlets as a sense of purpose in times that are in opposition to this. Something like that. Perhaps it is/was having the time to fill/to focus. Whatever, the four separate albums that make up the whole collect some of the most perfect music sustained across this amount of time and output. It is full of fine writing and performance – excellent vocals (mainly but not exclusively Susan Tedeschi) and great orchestrations/production. The range is across blues, gospel, balladry, soul – with a varying mix of west coast harmony, guitar solos taking their time and using effects, and of course the signature horns as powerhouse foundation. The title song from I. Crescent is gorgeous, as is All the Love from II. Ascension, this one running into a lengthy (they have the time) guitar and other instrumental conclusion which reminds me of when it was cool and natural to do so back in the late 60s/early 70s. Another great example of this latter is on the soulful funk of Gravity from III. The Fall where the guitar solo with effects is superb, as are the wonderful horns. For some sense of genre breadth, I'll just say that following song Emmaline reminds a little - just a little - of Dr Hook & the Medicine Show. Oh precursors. I am just about to listen to the fourth and final instalment IV. Farewell and I know every single song and performance will be as brilliant as all that has preceded.
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