Syd Arthur - On and On

City Boys

The band Syd Arthur hail from Canterbury which is a godsend for reviewers referencing their progressive and psychedelic rock sounds, the former of those musical tags most closely associated with that city. I understand, hear and now use the generic touchstone as well, but its folk roots are as evident, as are the jazz grooves, for example those of fourth track Dorothy which is a smooth ballad shifting away from the speedy and at times complex rhythms that precede and immediately follow this track, fifth Truth Seeker returning to jagged edges and a fuzzed then plucked violin. Both the folk and 60s/70s rock echoes waft from the violin of Raven Bush, and it is a distinct feature perhaps reminiscent of East of Eden.

What separates the band from its Canterbury musical precursors is the pop awareness of melody as well as actual length of songs, averaging 3 minutes, with the longest being final number Paradise Lost at 8.22. This track uses that time to present the band’s more psychedelic edge and apt musicianship, though again this isn’t sustained across indulgent jams and I’d actually like to hear some of that musical self-obsession. I don’t, however, feel the comparisons with bands like Caravan and Soft Machine are that useful or fair, the former much more memorable in their melodic expansiveness [this is to do with length of songs] and lyrical playfulness, and the latter having a jazz expertise and innovation Syd Arthur aren’t actually attempting to emulate. The gentle vocal of Liam McGill is a grower and Syd Arthur is overall a fine band in its own right.

Wallpaper

This Wave

the sea is
the soft chords
much softer than
the shore behind

i am waiting
until the wave
much softer than
the soft chords
is as if
the shore behind

the sea is
both of us
strung out along
until this wave

Jimmy Cliff - Rebirth

One More From Jimmy

As many reviewers have noted, this is a buoyant and joyous record by the 64 year old Jimmy Cliff. I'm no reggae aficionado, and a number of songs on this album have strong pop elements, but its Jamaican roots and Cliff's distinctive vocal are as catchy and movement-making as one would expect from such an accessible new offering by the popular reggae great. His voice is often at its best pushed to its highest register where the slight strain is not disguised, as on the beautiful Cry No More and the pulsating Bang. It is equally hypnotic when repeating the sounds of a wordless chorus, as on Children's Bread or Rebel Rebel. Opening track World Upside Down sounds like it has been transported straight from the 70s in both its reggae rhythms and lyrical musings on the state of the world. This is followed by a stand-out reggae beat in One More with its punchy brass and rousing background vocals.

John Sebastian - The Four Of Us: Top Fifty

Tie-dye Thinking

The sunshine melodic folkpop of The Lovin’ Spoonful always appealed to me, and in particular the beautiful singing of John Sebastian. Songs like Do You Believe In Magic, You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice, Daydream, Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind, Summer In The City, Darling Be Home Soon, You’re A Big Boy Now, She’s Is Still A Mystery and Younger Generation are all classics of what the band termed ‘good-time music’.

My affinity for Sebastian was not thwarted by the tie-dye naivety of his 1969 Woodstock incarnation because I too believed in its multi-coloured imaginings of a better tomorrow, with John singing I dreamed we all were alright in his stoned and spontaneous performance, and invoking the communal spirit of peace and love in his philosophical as well as good housekeeping advice:  Just love everybody all around ya and clean up a little garbage on your way out and everything’s gonna be alright.

The embodiment of this hippie nirvana was presented in Sebastian’s wonderful 1971 album The Four of Us and its title track suite that narrates fifteen minutes of quintessentially 60s/70s romantic love and hope. Side one rocks and rolls with Well Well Well, Black Snake Blues and Black Satin Kid, but it is the gorgeous folk of The Four Of Us on side two that caresses with its narrative of a hippie quest, a journey of self-discovery for John, then wife Catherine, and another couple Bart and Carolina Carpinelli. 

Sitting round a fireplace

We drew a smile across the States

We packed our truck with all our stuff

And four of us

Two to drive and two to sleep

Wrapped up in a rainbow sheet

And in the front my love will keep me

On the road and laughing

and thus begins the four-part central song cycle, interspersed with three various musical tangents: the Caribbean tones of Domenica with the Esso Trinidad Steel band, the Dr John assisted rock of Lashes LaRue, and the further sweet folk of Red Wing Colorado. Sebastian’s vocal is gorgeous in its earnest gentleness, and the central melody is one of his finest. I know it is twee and sentimental and, as I have already stated, naive. This is perhaps wholly embraced in the bland exclamation of Gee in the closing lines [!] but this is also the enduring charm of its wishful sincerity at a time when we all had the belief in such simple expectations and aspirations,

Yeah we finally made it home

And now the family’s on its own

Babies come and numbers grow

There’s more of us

Gee...we really miss those times

Seeing through each other’s eyes

Sure was nice

So here’s a little travelling song

Of talk that comes from dusk till dawn

So go and see and pass it on

Lest you miss it, lest it’s gone

Every lover keep your driver

On the road and laughing

Beyond Summer

all the summer beyond
and expecting something unknown
light glared through windows

and this is rarely the reason
in which the love
of awakening mountains

all helped the emphasis

Olympic Poems

110m Hurdles                 

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it is all about the right stride        ern

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it is all about the right stride        ern

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it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

                                           patt

it is all about the right stride        ern

it is all about the left stridamn     err

Olympic Poems

Omnium - Scratch Race

cat and mouse

cat and mouse

cat and mouse

cat and mouse

cat and mouse

ch     e         e

                              t             a                 h

GB Olympics Jingo Lingo, 2012

I've been enjoying the absolutely phenomenal London Olympics and especially the language of our national celebration of it: the adverbial pre-modifier absolutely dominating the attempts to articulate the quality of an experience which has then been further bolstered by  the adjectival phenomenal leading into whatever bathetic noun can only follow such linguistic if restricted exuberance.  Does this highlight the limits of our collective vocabulary or indeed the limits of language to capture this experience and reality? In observing this I am not being critical nor cynical. I think these Olympics have been everything superlative that language can only repeat/not wholly embrace in its attempts to articulate.

I thought Danny Boyle's opening ceremony was [place phenomenally positive platitude or neologism here please] and it made this American absolutely proud to also be British: so much of what shapes who I am was represented in Boyle's vision of our history and culture and politics. Even the buffoon Boris, interviewed post-ceremony on Channel 4, wanted to discuss the 'semiotics' of the presentation, joking he could use language like this on such a television channel, and in his inimitable accidental way also touching on how Boyle's filmic and storytelling expertise demonstrates how to overcome the limits of language.

I have only been annoyed by the compulsion of BBC commentators to question athletes failing to achieve gold, or a presumed medal, or to make it through to a final and so on as to what they did wrong and why they failed and how would they explain their disappointment! In this instance, language is geared to perfection to deflect such a miserable querying, and an instant Fuck Off would be absolutely and phenomenally apt.

Lonesome Sisters - Deep Water

The Basics

The harmonising and roots Country/Americana of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings is obviously not of their singular creation, but it is so clearly their popular shaping and consistently brilliant performance of its traditions that has influenced the contemporary lineage of similar performers with echoing musical proclivities.

Another in this line is the Lonesome Sisters, Sarah Hawker and Debra Clifford, who offer a more ragged harmonising in terms of timing but no less tight in its pitching. Their latest album Deep Water mixes self-penned tracks by both artists with the requisite sample of traditional songs, for example the a cappella version of Hungry and Faint and Poor by Amazing Grace composer John Newton. Other traditional sounds emanate from the instrumentation, like the gourd banjo played by Clifford on her composition Ooh Song. This and Clifford's other song 20 Doors are stripped to simple instrumentation and harmony to impress in the simplicity of their empathetic performances. Hawker generally takes lead vocal and also shares in the apt playing, with clawhammer banjo on three tracks, and harmonium on another three. It is basic, and basically superb.

Jeff Larson - The World Over

Easy on the Harmony, Burrs in the Diddly

Easy listening harmony that soothes rather than scorches - and Jeff Larson assures this generic sound with the support of Gary Beckley and Dewey Brunnel from America as well as further West Coastesque buttressing from Jedrah Schmidt, daughter of Eagle's Timothy, and Jeffrey Foskett who works with Biran Wilson. If any of the underpinning precursor sounds dominate, it's America, and such tracks are Midhaven Getaway, Monday Clouds Tuesday Rain and This Morning in Amsterdam. Hank Linderman and Bob Brozman provide the burrs within the album's velvet exterior with a range of guitars, including for Hank a Turbo Diddly, and for Bob a National Resophonic and a Bear Creek Hawaiian Slide. No, I don't know what the guitars are, but they all sound damn fine. A gentle album reflecting rather than forging.

Natalie Duncan - Devil in Me

Goldie Standard

Former reality-TV chancer Natalie Duncan has a real voice and proves her talent on this debut release. Channelled through the BBC's Godlie's Band: By Royal Appointment, that institution's television credentials perhaps underpin the authority of Duncan's emergence as a singer in her own right, though I have already acknowledged on this blog the X Factor's part in the revelation of Rebecca Ferguson - however, in both cases the talent is inherent and the programmes offered transport rather than transcendence.

This album is itself a reliable vehicle for Duncan's fine vocal, both gritty and full, and best represented on the strong opener and title track Devil In Me where Duncan is at her raunchiest peak with its unaccompanied start and then emotive breaks around classical piano riffs and bluesy horns. Later track Flower has a hint of Laura Nyro about it; Black Thorn with its acoustic guitar and hand claps foregrounds the grittier voice, and the sweet harmonies temper it all to excellence. There are seventeen tracks in all, and most have a jazz/blues inclination, but this does stretch the album out too far and the aural focus can be dissipated by too many neutral offerings.

John Martyn Jokes

I fell off stage in Spain once because I was drunk - and I got three encores

Joss Stone - The Soul Sessions Vol. 2

Stone Soul Picnic

Returning to the formula that launched Stone's singing career aged 16, this is a summer picnic spread with food from a more seasoned soul and a tasty treat from the seasoning of its predominantly soul roots. And its reassuring to say that the preceding line is more full of flash than Stone's honest and honestly very good interpretation and delivery throughout. It seems to me that there is a mature voice excelling here and never needing to indulge in vocal pyrotechnics, just empathy supported by both class production and excellent accompanying artists. Early reviews have seemed to be most positive and it would be refreshing to see Stone's clear talent recognised and encouraged through this wholly entertaining set. An early favourite from these Stone covers is the Cecil and Linda Womack song Teardrops, but that is also because it is such a beautifully written song.

Lock

The lock goes through the metal loop from the right,

not the left as you do it - though I know it locks in

both positions - and whilst this isn’t the only difference

that does not matter, there is more than metaphor in this

varying way we secure what is behind those doors.

It is the same with our eating diverse meals at our

differing times, or how each night as you go to sleep

I go to bed on the following day. And though we rise

at similar moments, it will be like this for the rest our

life, each of us heading for the equivalent place by

alternative routes.

                               So when I returned from being away

it seemed so much had been rearranged;

and whilst mere things remain as if the same

there is a sense that more has been forever changed.

Meat Market - Covent Garden

Another Hippie

Finally got to try the Dead Hippie burger at the Meat Market in Jubilee Hall at Covent Garden on Wednesday. Two beef patties, seeping juice and grease, winking pink, onions held: it was delicious. No queue, and great to sit up in the mezzanine watching the market surfers below. Next time it's the chili dog and the corn puppies [corn meal wrapped around polish sausage, deep fried]. My kinda food.

Black Dub - Black Dub

Flying Low, But Soaring

This is one of the strongest cover to cover albums I have heard for a while. Released in 2010, the band features more-than-solid drumming and bass from, respectively, Brian Blade and Daryl Johnson – funk and reggae rhythms underpinning most of what is played [listen to their tight performance on second track I Believe In You] – but the two star acts are without question dynamite if diminutive singer Trixie Whitley, daughter of the late Chris Whitley, and distinctive guitar from the great Daniel Lanois who also provides vocals and keyboards.

Opener Love Lies provides signature Lanois guitar laying a swathe of sound throughout, and Whitley’s voice, often echoed, dominates powerfully over the sweet background vocals. Second I Believe In You has that pulsating reggae beat at the start, introducing an even more sultry and sassy Whitley vocal to ride the strutting bass line. Third Ring The Alarm is introduced at length with classic Lanois soundscapes, and then becomes an 80s-esque pop song carrying this anti-80s listener along by those guitar loops and echoes. Fourth Last Time returns to a more gutsy number, funked-up rhythms and soulful singing from both Lanois and Whitley: the guitar here stabbing rather than layering. Fifth Surely is a more conventional ballad with Whitley ploughing deeply with her impressive voice.

Seventh Slow Baby provides a mesmerising masterclass in Lanois guitar work. It is superb. Eighth Silverado is a gospel’n’reggae amalgam driven by the Whitley voice – and her 2009 EP The Engine is worth a listen to hear more of this clear talent, as are the many clips on YouTube that feature her playing guitar, sometimes with Lanois - and these predominantly live sessions add to the impressive experience of her emerging talent.

The album closes on an instrumental, Sirens, and again the Lanois guitar and effects production is hypnotic in its brief repetitions. A truly wonderful album, perhaps flying under the musical radar, but soaring as an aural signal.

The Rolling Stones - Happy 50th Birthday

Belated

A day late, but that's an industry in itself. Fifty years ago yesterday The Rolling Stones played their first gig at London's Marquee Club. In celebration I have today ordered their book celebrating 50 years together as the naughty boys/guys of rock, and I am writing this brief posting to add to the multitude already out there.

I've seen the band live twice: the Hyde Park concert and on their Voodoo Lounge tour, both written about somewhere on this blog. I was listening yesterday to some of their early R&B covers and it did strike me that there was a genuine affinity for the music and considerable passion and expertise in its playing. There's an understatement.

Favourite all-time tracks? Nothing esoteric or surprising: Jumpin' Jack Flash and Honkey Tonk Women are pure-rock-classic-without-thinking-in-the-bag-certainties. I love the ballads and slower numbers:  As Tears Go By, Lady Jane, Let's Spend The Night Together, Ruby Tuesday, She's A Rainbow, Wild Horses [with writing nod to Gram Parsons], Angie, Fool To Cry. The album Voodoo Lounge has an obvious appeal, and it was a later return to form, especially on the ballads again. Start Me Up holds a special place as I used to hold my young daughter and dance and sing with her as it played very, very loud. Especially early in the morning - what a way to start the day! Miss You is superb.

One of my first guitar licks was [You Can't Get No] Satisfaction - that's hyperbole of course, but when it's the first guitar line you learn, as simplistic as it is, that's a 'lick'! And what a fucking simple brilliant lick! I have always been able to hand-tap the equally simple but brilliant drum sequence to Get Off Of My Cloud. Try it if you think you can: one hand/one beat, two hands/one beat, one hand/one beat, two hands/two beats, one hand/one beat, drum roll/six alternating beats. That doesn't account for the nuances of stress per beat, and timing, but you either have it or you don't.....

The song that perhaps always registers the most is You Can't Always Get What You Want. That's sublime songwriting.

Skeeter Davis & NRBQ - She Sings, They Play

Marriage Made In Eclectic Heaven

In continuing my brief NRBQ focus, here's an exemplification of the band’s eclecticism I have been mentioning: Country chanteuse Skeeter Davis teaming up with rockabilly/rock'n'roll/rock band NRBQ. It isn't just a musical matrimony as Skeeter was married to bass player Joe Spampinato, but whereas the nuptials may have conventionally expected an equal partnership, on this recording it is Davis’ classic, even twee Country that dominates in all its innocent sounding charm.

The band gives obvious able support, and there’s some fine pedal steel throughout. The album was recorded in 1981 but not released until 1985. There is a strong cover of Hank William’s May You Never Be Alone; and the twee Country stereotype is faithfully played to musical perfection – if you have the liking, as I do – but also to deeply ironic effect in the Davis original Roses On My Shoulder where Skeeter sings of a girl’s fatherless life as a woman of the world, or as the narrative explains with a further layer of euphemism, I grew up fast and moved to town where I could walk the streets: I was looking for my daddy in every man I'd meet

Kaya Street - Sway

If you missed my review of this album, do check it out [type Kaya Street in the search bar]. I'm mentioning again as I listen now to Sway, which I wrote at the time was a 'grower'. Well, it keeps growing on me, and today I'm taken by the strong bass line and saxophone backdrop [solo and orchestrated], and as ever the vocals - Harry Birch's and supporting - which make this a full and impressive song. If you missed listening back then, here's the link again: http://kayastreet.bandcamp.com/track/sway