Food Music 16

 

Paul Rodgers - Midnight Rose, album review

Where Is That F/ing Team?

Pounding drums propel the opening rock cliché, Coming Home, and it thunders on purposefully. A sound start. Expectations? This will/would do: not breaking any new ground but grounded in reasonable expectations of the legendary Free singer. I’d read the earliest reviews – well, a couple, maybe just the one – and there was the inevitable reflection on how much of an inevitable decline could be put off by the quality of songs rather than a vocal that has stood the test of time.

 

Second Photo Shooter has an echo of Bad Company days beyond the title’s reference to [fill in this gap]. Rodger’s vocal is absolutely solid here; the other requisites are on point. Midnight Rose’s acoustic (with mandolin) start – here come the violins – is sweet enough, and Rodger’s gentler balladic vocal holds up to scrutiny here too. The song itself is a little pretentious in the way such an anthemic ‘we are not alone/we are never alone’ romantic hymn is destined to be. Slide guitar and a red-rose-dying metaphor meets more choric gravatas, relatively speaking.

 

Fourth Living it Up rides the riff of its wave. ‘I’m living it up in America, home of the blues, in the heart of soul’ (Memphis) and the assertion with namecheck is wholly supported by a bluesy and soulful core. Guitar licks are tight and engaging.

 

I think this may sound a little sarcastic, but isn’t meant to be. It is because I have heard the whole collection and am awaiting the problematic to play. Is fifth Dance in the Sun one of them? It isn’t bluesy nor soulful. ‘The hurtin’ time is over’ and it is a little jolly. ‘Are you ready to dance / are you ready to sing?’ doesn’t elicit an affirmative. And the children’s laughter at the end – the rather long, aimless ending – is naff.

 

I DO pick this out as I ask myself about the quality control. In a collection that up to this point is quite strong enough, why didn’t someone in the team suggest preserving that solidity? Next Take Love is similarly generic as poprock fodder. Penultimate Highway Robber is slowly (ploddingly?) OKish, a lyric celebrating the outlaw persona in a ‘yippieIeh/yippieIoh’ couple of lines that is dreadful cowboy singalong pastiche. Where was that team input?!

 

Closer Melting is precisely why I have been precedingly annoyed. Perhaps the best track of all, this is a blues-inflected turning-to-rock number that showcases Rodgers at his continuing songwriting and vocal strengths. Great voice here.

 

 

Food Music 15

 

Corinne Bailey Rae - Black Rainbows, album review

Transformation, Often

If you are seeking the pretty hush and gentility of the norm, go staright to fifth track Red Horse, and there is nothing wrong with this muted pulse of a rhythm and harmonised vocals and Rae's slight warble. I have never disliked this though have not been driven to like enough to return again and again. 

However, take in the power of second and third tracks, Black Rainbows and Erasure, and you have arrived at Rae's new planet of distorted rock and other jazzy transformations. Fourth track Earthlings has complex developments that enagage and surprise rather than primarily caress.

New York Transit Queen is perfect punk (maybe too much so for some) but this sticks with the trajectory of change. And when this is followed by the signature lounge sound of He Will Follow You With His Eyes it is less cloying, perhaps, especially as it takes care to step outside of this familiar to intone potently its lyrical diatribe:

My black hair kinking
My black skin gleaming
My plum red lipstick
My plum red lipstick
My black hair kinking
My black skin gleaming
My plum red lipstick
My plum red lipstick
My black hair kinking
My black skin gleaming
My plum red lipstick
My plum red lipstick
My black hair kinking
My black skin gleaming
My plum red lipstick
My plum red lipstick
My black hair kinking
My black skin gleaming
My plum red lipstick 

 

Eye Music 61

 

Willie Nelson - Bluegrass, album review

Swan Swimming in the Blues and Waltzes

Willie's 151st album (how astonishing) and surely not a swan song but a swan gliding elegantly through a past catalogue. As bluegrass, it is a collection at the slower paced end of this C&W genre, not becuase of his age (90) but capturing the beauty of its gentler style. This is exemplified by the waltz and the country blues, for example Sad Songs and Waltzes and Home Motel respectively. There is great playing from the accompanying musicians, as well as fine harmonies, but it is always front-and-centre Nelson with the treasure trove of his songbook and vocal. Abolutely perfect.

Tractor Music 2

 

Black Oak Arkansas - The Devil's Jukebox, album review

It's Big Jim, and as We Know Him

It is Black Oak Arkansas because it is essentially Jim 'Dandy' Mangrum and that gravel vocal. Ostensibly a set of covers that influenced the band, so opener Sympathy for the Devil - first in a fine overall approrpiation - seems one perfect choice. All Along the Watchtower is less successful as a comparative assessment, but this, like the rest, serves up what it intends: homage in the sound of BOA. It really is as simple as this. I wasn't sure how California Dreamin' would 'fit', but of course this does because it is a great song, and in the BOA catalogue there are the gentler numbers too. It is an album of reminiscence, both of the songs themselves and the legendary tones of Jim as well as the rest of the band who fill the spaces of those who are no longer with us. I'm a Man is another perfect selection.

The set list:

1. Sympathy for the Devil
2. Space Lord
3. All Along the Watchtower
4. California Dreamin
5. Rock N Roll Woman
6. I m a Man
7. Somebody to Love
8. Bold As Love
9. Mr. Soul
10. Southern Man
11. Goin Back 

(1. Is it cynical to suggest that one of two bonus tracks on certain editions, Christmas Everywhere, is already sneaking into that potential festive market? My local garden centre likely already has its xmas decorations on display, it being the 1st September... 2. Is it sad/indicative to mention a garden centre in a review for this kind of nostalgia?!)