Piers Faccini - Between Dogs and Wolves

Entre chien et loup

Examining and writing units for a book continue to preoccupy and therefore limit my posting of music reviews. But I do keep listening to music as I work, and the unit I am currently writing for students recommends the principle of less is more in their own writing.

So for pragmatic and putting-into-practice reasons here is a brief review: Piers Faccini is an English singer/songwriter and painter who lives in France. This album is quintessentially English folk though not of the finger-in-your-ear-and-fiddle kind and more a pastoral [with clichéd but genuinely apt invocation] Nick Drake kind, apart from when sung in French or Italian, though that is a false tangent as it still sounds English, but not the words.

I have also been writing about playing around with sentence types in writing as I have done above.

It is therefore a quiet album – there is no percussion – and it is slow and pretty. There is violin [or cello?] but not fiddle. Faccini has a strong and full vocal, though gentle, and that is perhaps the most distinctive feature, but then he is a singer. Lots of piano.

Not that I would encourage students to write music reviews like this.

It means twilight.

Corey Harris - Fulton Blues

Just The Blues

I watched Django Unchained last night and whilst Tarantino injects at times pure comedy alongside more telling satire, there is a powerfully direct evocation of the evil of slavery in the Southern states. This provided an unexpected but resonant context for listening this morning to Corey Harris’ fine blues album Fulton Blues, and especially tracks like House Negro Blues.

Largely acoustic there are also electric and driving numbers like Robert Petway’s Catfish Blues and this gives the whole album a lively variety. This song is followed by the wholly acoustic tracks That Will Never Happen No More, with Harris on simple plucked guitar and vocal, and then Lynch Blues – lyrically dark as the title makes clear – and here as elsewhere there is an excellent harmonica accompaniment, with Harris also in emotive blues-howl vocal.

The album opens on a large band number Crying Blues and ends on the equally fulsome instrumental Fat Duck Groove with some sharp sax playing in support of Harris’ electric guitar.  My two favourites in an album where every track is perfect are Tallahatchie with Harris singing at a higher register, Hammond chords laying sways of sound, and horns stabbing out jaunty rhythms, and then the acoustic cover of Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman, Harris in more classic blues voice – deeper and pained – and a superb harmonica played throughout. An authentic but also contemporary blues gem.

Gregory Porter - Soul Sessions, Cabaret Sauvage, Paris - 11th September, 2013

Sublime Session

Just listening to a bootleg recording of this concert [French radio] and it is a stunning performance from Gregory Porter, yet what you also get, and don't as rip-roaringly on a studio recording, is the brilliance of the band - all of the players - but in particular the saxophone solos of Yosuke Sato. It is a special listen.

More scat too!

I do keep listening to Liquid Spirit and it is also special, as already reviewed, but even more so.

Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt

Musically Mannerly Minded

Pearl Jam’s excellent – naturally – latest is being streamed [see here] one week ahead of its release. It’s classic PJ from punk rock to gorgeous ballads. Fourth Sirens is one such of the latter, a remarkably sweeping and soaring ballad with Eddie in passionate voice. This is one of the most pop-infused offerings I have heard from the band in a long time, perhaps since Ten [Jeremy - I know there have been others].

The album opens with the catchy Getaway, bass heavy and Vedder’s vocal to the fore where it belongs – the relentless pound of the rhythm’s head-bang honed to perfection. Second Mind Your Manners is punk wild and continues the powerful pulse. Fifth, title track Lightning Bolt, is firmly in familiar territory – driving beats with Vedder singing single note tirades above, then shifts into melody that rise to screams, all the time the band pulsating in support. Sixth Infallible begins to a staccato beat and then becomes a beautiful song of descending musical notes and Vedder singing sweetly above: you can hear on this first listen how this will be one of those songs that grows to memorable distinction after further hearing. Beautiful. And again beautiful, seventh Pendulum is a haunting ballad, with echoed guitar and serenading drum rhythms.

By eighth Swallowed Whole, the songwriting suggests a more melodic overall sound to the complete album, Eddie’s vocal again to the fore and McCready here providing a sweet guitar solo. Ninth Let The Records Play returns to a rockblues riff and more guitar focus throughout. Tenth Sleeping By Myself is again gentler with acoustic guitar and calming harmonies, a love-loss lament that includes Eddie on ukulele, strumming to the song’s forlorn reflections on sleeping alone. Ahhh. I thought eleventh Yellow Moon might strive to startle us back with some punk return, but this too is balladic, guitar lead soaring rather than tearing, and whilst the vocal rises melodramatically, it is essentially Vedder in control of pace and emotion as clear frontman – and I have to say that suits me fine. But I wonder if the headbangers will be satisfied. Indeed, closer Future Days, with opening piano and then acoustic guitar, is another slow and seeming Vedder solo, though there are more harmonies – again beautiful – and an Irish folk lilt in the fiddle accompaniment. A pretty ending indeed. I love this and the whole album already.

Clem Clempson - In The Public Interest

To The Classic Top

Cream rises [and there’s a pun to rise within the metaphor later on] and this first ever solo outing from founding member of Bakerloo [and later Colosseum and Humble Pie], David ‘Clem’ Clempson, is just that in its classic presentation of rock and blues perfection. For those who recall, Bakerloo’s blues gem This Worried Feeling – gaining prominence on the Harvest label’s Picnic sampler of 1970 – features one of the greatest fuzzed-up and wah-wahed guitar solos ever. Ever. Sustained sumptuousness.

The tracks on this album are more mainstream modern rock, and exude class. There is gorgeous guitar on the instrumental fourth track Can’t We Try Again – a tranquil antithesis to the feedback-heavy brilliance of Clem’s Bakerloo classic: age does not wither but it becalms – and of course his guitar soloing throughout all tracks is exemplary. Second instrumental, eighth track Leopold’s Great Escape, jazzes things up a bit. The third, 7^th Blues, [that’s a load of numbers....] is again calmly sweet.

There are great guest vocalists: Maggie Bell on third Route 69, and Chris Farlowe on blues chug Who, whilst they both combine to contribute to Ray Charles’ I Don’t Need No Doctor.

Pete Brown, former Cream lyricist, also adds to the quality mix, with title track In The Public Interest reflecting Brown’s classic satirical insights. 

Water - [National Poetry Day, 3rd October, 2013]

For two years now, off and on – as rain will, and

good/bad fortune – water has leaked down the wall

beneath the conservatory ceiling, my later-aged edifice

from retirement funds [early though, let’s be clear],

and echoes of its rivulets mark the paint where it has

run splayed lines to a ridge above the door to let

fall its precious droplets: if they were somewhere less

wet. Like much else in this life, I ruminate on that

relative thought, and today as it pours and a single

line dribbles along an old groove – continual repairs

making their own gradual mark – there is plenty of

rain here to compensate for an unusually hot and dry

summer where weather mocks all our attempts to be in

control, like a roof allowing water its ingress and stain.

Number 28

Seeing Peterson

I'm examining again, and have been away two days to see the recent NFL game at Wembley, so haven't been posting that much on music of late.

As has become a tradition now, I had the great pleasure of seeing an NFL game at Wembley, this year the Minnesota Vikings take on the Pittsburg Steelers in the first of two games there. Supporting the Steelers, it was disappointing to see them lose, but one of the many thrills of getting to the Wembley game annually is seeing NFL stars playing over here, and this year the privilege was in seeing the genuinely all-time great Adrian Peterson - number 28 - from the Vikings, and he made two running touchdowns, one a 60 yarder to add to many of his record-setting statistics as a running back. The collective and appreciative roar that greeted his introduction before the game was, as they say, awesome.

It was also good to see Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who impressively possesses two Superbowl rings, but I will leave the accolades for him there!

Gene Simmons from Kiss sang the national anthem, and that was bound to be interesting for all kinds of reasons. He gave a simple and honest rendition which was a welcome alternative to the often ostensible vocal acrobatics of some performances, though American artists will always proffer heartfelt coverings of a song that resonates for any one of them given the honour to perform. When I hear my anthem I am not overwhelmed with feelings of a conventional patriotism, but I always have the deeply proudest thoughts for my family and how they and other experiences of my time living there and since have shaped me - remarkably so having lived away from them and the country of my birth for most of my life.

In celebrating other if less profound aspects of still being an American, I enjoyed eating on game day at Bodean's in Tower Hill - sharing with my daughter a ribs, pulled pork, burnt ends and chicken meat platter - and then a return visit on Monday to the Meat Market at Covent Garden where I again enjoyed a Dead Hippie burger, though sadly not any corn puppies [deep fried, cornmeal encased polish sausage] as they had been removed from the menu - one of my main reasons for my wanting to go. Still, that helped me to leave without looking like an NFL defensive guard!