Legs Music 6

Audience - The House On The Hill, album review

Another Favourite

This fine 1971 album, the band's third, has just been given a new release. It is distinctive for the rasp of Howard Werth's vocal, who also plays guitar, and the saxophone, clarinet and flute playing of Keith Gemmell.

I have to be honest that its personal distinction is entirely for the title track that I recall seeing for the first time on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Gemmell's sax is put through an echo/repeat - a popular effect of the time, and a time when saxophone in bands itself was increasingly common. Gemmell graces that sax playing with some trilling flute a la Ian Anderson, and when the sax returns for a solo slot over Williams' bass and Connors' drum interlude, the echo effect is the clincher for the song's lasting impression on me, breaking into a raucous rise above bass again, Werth joining with howls, before returning to the main melody. A classic.

Hands and Feet Music 2

Hypercolor - Hypercolor

Max Preferred

This is easy: Hypercolor is a powerhouse jazzrock trio that belts out blistering and complex sounds, the guitar of Eyal Maoz ranging dominantly across strident chords, staccato picks, discordant scales and sprinting solos. There are varying paces so it isn't a complete assault, but I do like it when the instrumental adrenalin is at max.

Breakdown Brass Band - Demonstration

No review because I don't have the album. Simply thought the cover is worth a share: one of the more unusual, without over-complicating the composition!

Lips Music 5

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown, album review [1974]

Knackered Knees and Nostalgia

I have just laid the final bits of plastic and ground sheet, masking taped all around the skirting boards ready for painting, but my knees are now fucked so there will be no priming the walls today.

Unlike my return to DIY which I now almost completely detest, I can return to albums like this from Lightfoot with genuine appreciation. I used to play this a lot, especially after a trip to Kentucky in 1975 when title track Sundown was getting loads of airplay [along with Joni Mitchell’s A Free Man in Paris, Steeley Dan’s Rickie Don’t Lose That Number, John Denver’s Annie and Conway Twitty’s Honkey Tonk Angel] which with these left a lasting impression, inextricably linked with my visit.

As well as that great track with memorable if simple bass line foregrounded, others which still stand the test of time better than my knees are Somewhere USA; Seven Island Suite; Circle of Steel [even with that twee recorder]; Is There Anyone Home which is wonderfully atmospheric in its rhetorical title, opening horns and obtuse lyrics [though a man behind you with a gun is quite direct]; Carefree Highway with strings and harmony sweeping its AOR like a caressing breeze across a field of long grass [ok, twee again, but….], and closer Too Late for Prayin’ where those stereotypical lyrics of the day still held some naïve potential to action change – here an environmental message acting as an ironic warning when we listen today – and Lightfoot’s voice is as beautiful as the melody.

Steering Wheel Music 2

David Clayton-Thomas - DCT and Tequila Sunrise, twofer cd review

One Out of Two is OK With a Voice Like That

I'm still examining with punctuations of a very slow, knees-hurt-now-I'm-older DIY, so music reviews are few and far between, and shortish when appearing. But having a break from that second occupation and listening to Clayton-Thomas so here is another quick one.

From his eponymous album, there is a great opener with backing gospel choir, and a funky follow with the funkily titled We’re All Meat From The Same Bone, Steve Cropper on guitar. There’s a sprawling orchestral cover of Edgar Winter’s Dying to Live, DCT hitting the high notes over piano like a born flyer; a straight but glorious cover of Gram Parson’s She, that piano base again all that is really needed when a voice can be as potent as that, sultry accompanying female vocal by Patricia Holloway providing a tandem storytelling, and a curio in the cover of Neil Young’s Don’t Let It Bring You Down which probably tries too hard to turn an acoustic song into a band and orchestra expansion.

His other 1972 album Tequila Sunrise is less varied overall and will seem a plateauing extension when added to the first on this double cd. The voice is what carries, assuming you like, but the songs lack the obvious notable covers – even that  Young ‘trinket’ takes on a certain sheen when compared with these – and the fact that DCT has written/co-written 9 of the tracks reveals the reason. And so yes, Chuck Berry’s Down Bound Train steals the show, though the gospel-esque ballad My Song [for Geanenne] is quite affecting.

Tree Music 12

Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Tragedy, album review

Just the Music

It's The Who punked-up a la The Sex Pistols with a little of The Rolling Stones on the side, so if you haven't heard these three precursors it will seem spunky and meaningful in its concept, and as I haven't had the time to listen and follow that carefully to the narrative, it sounds like a punk opus with interludes of softer instrumental and also quick-fire Pogue-esque outbursts. I could namecheck a litany of other influences, but the raucous whole doesn't countenance such nuances. More Perfect Union at 9+ minutes breaks the mold with a rousing folk anthem, followed by the 1.17 minutes of a silent Intermission - ok - then a sweet polyphony of Sun Salutation at 55 seconds, followed by another 9 minuter (S)HE SAID (S)HE SAID which returns to the punkrock core. I like these clusters of variation. A choric rendition of Auld Lang Syne has an abrupt knelling that stops the melody and adds some drama to the concluding pace of the storyline [that I will need to return to] which then segues into the punk-with-shredding-guitar of I'm Going Insane [Finish Him]. Seven Seconds is seven seconds of silence, again, and this seems a tad twee by this stage, and the 30 seconds of closer A Moral is mainly a single organ chord with a final brisk vocal inhalation that doesn't really satisfy either creatively or in the storytelling, unless I have missed the lyrical thrust. Which of course I have.

There are clearly depths to main-man Patrick Stickles both in terms of his own life experiences [classic but nonetheless genuine personal demons] and his and the band's creative energies that require further exploration. I'm simply presenting this as an aural snapshot. There is a detailed and informed review in the current edition of Uncut.

Hands and Feet Music

Rock Candy Funk Party - Groove Is King, album review

Ditto

Tracing the funk footsteps of 2013's We Want Groove, reviewed here, Groove is King repeats in its title the key word to describe these instrumental ditties, a step for step ditto on the tight grooves of the former from Joe Bonamassa's funk collective. Favourite is East Village with resonating guitar work, Santana-ish throughout. If Six was Eight is a percussion celebration [some Santana in this too], and Cube's Brick is playfully electronic in its jazz fusion before the guitar virtuosity asserts itself. At 16 tracks you can sustain quite a funkgroove to its excellent entirety.