Food Music 6

Eartheater - RIP Chrysalis, album review

Creative Counter

This is a mesmerising listen, the phenomenal vocal of Alexandra Drewshin displaying the rich purpose and effect of experimentation, underpinned by the astonishing range. This is also all buttressed by electronica as well as conventional instrumentation - like violin on Rip Chrysalis where we also get the first exotic taste of her voice, a high-pitched sound cued from the tone of that violin.

Before this, the nearly seven minute opener Utterly Fx is a pulsating panorama of that electronica, and closing on other sampled sounds. There is a genuine cleverness to the arrangement of many of these, like the brooding choir that intervenes at the end of RC. A simply plucked banjo beneath further strings moves on to another difference with Human Hymn, the tightly harmonised vocal also a shift. Vocal hiccups continue the experimental.

Whilst I am consistent in berating the cliched affectation of so much female vocal these days, this is a creative counter to my disdain and proving how playfulness and creative integrity can produce genuine quality over mere copycatting.

Steering Wheel Music 4

Yoko and the Oh Nos - Yoko and the Oh Nos, album review

Oh No No Yoko

Well, I naively took the band's name literally, and was therefore rather surprised. But - using the cliche - with considerable pleasantly....

Hailing from Chicago, these three claim to play 'Rock 'n' Roll with a touch of soul', and I'll happily accept that Facebook designation, but I think it is more accurately described as the most clever and infectious garage pop.

The trio are Max Goldstein - vocals, Max Loebman - guitar/vocals, and  Stef Roti - drums, and one particularly glorious example of their music is fifth track Heart Attack which is richly layered with simple but beautiful guitar chord sequences, the outstanding vocal of Goldstein, and the vocal harmonies that build to moments of rousing crescendo - other guitar and tight drumming holding it all together tightly.

Most tracks rock their way through two and a half minutes and it is an upbeat succession of joyous vitality, eighth Lone Wolf an excellent example of this.

You can get here at Bandcamp.

Bridge Music 6

Joe Jackson - Fast Forward, album review

Pop Successful

I have a few Joe Jackson vinyl albums but haven't really listened, and probably know and like him best for the obvious, his great song Is She Really Going Out with Him?

So it hadn't occurred to me how good his latest album Fast Forward would be. It is a collection of songs recorded in four different cities with various bands though in most respects this doesn't impact hugely on the sustained pop crafting of all, a pop crafting that is very often sweetly superb. Opener, the title track, is a beautiful song, many descending lines and some of the Billy Joel about it, Jackson's piano playing to the fore, and a violin accompaniment by Regina Carter. Jackson's vocal is remarkably youthful in tone, and there are moments of fine falsetto.

Other songs are less obviously melodic in this beautiful sense: next If It Wasn't For You is an uptempo, piano pounded number with dancing bass lines by Graham Maby, and third See No Evil [a Television song, which I didn't know] is a thumping whirl with vocal harmonies and Bill Frisell adding some squeal and other sonic sounds from his short guitar burst.

King of the City, the last of the four New York songs, returns to a more balladic pace, piano and voice simple in its performance, a chorus that raises the volume and tempo for effect. Again, successful pop construction. The first Amsterdam song, A Little Smile, seems more signature Jackson, with piano and vocal lines merged across the rise and fall of straightforward melody, leading to a tenser chorus. Far Away begins with the 'genuine' youthful voice of 14 year old Mitchell Sink [a Broadway 'star', and I had to read about this] and there is a chamber pop element to this which is uncertain in its effect, but I do like when Jackson enters the song, so to speak, and his vocal - accompanied by light layers of violins - is quite affecting, though the whole does have an, understandably, stagy feel. Poor Thing, the final Amsterdam song, has horns bolstering, and Jackson's singing is sweeping across a lively range - the lyrics a tad naive if earnest in their rumination on the state of the world.

The first Berlin song, Junkie Diva, is a mix between Steely Dan and that signature Jackson sound, the former in the chorus, quite noticeably, but if it is directly or even indirectly aimed at Amy Winehouse it is a questionable summation of her art and life,

Junkie Diva – I just heard the news
I'm so happy – and there's no excuse
You didn't get a chance to go on too long
You're even better now you're gone

The Blue Time, which is the eleventh track, is one of the more beautiful, Jackson rising to his falsetto and then falling again to the slow soothing melody, piano chords struck to a few sudden beats, and some laid-back jazz trumpet.

The final four songs are recorded in New Orleans, with some of band Galactic in support. There isn't a noticeable Orleans feel, but there is a funkier element overall, especially in Satellite, with horns helping. Keep on Dreaming bursts forth with more over-earnest lyrics - god must think he's god or something, lording it over us; seems to lie to make us feel ridiculous - and the or something lets the profundity deflate somewhat, and more funked up rhythms with a jazzy end. The album closes on a relative percussion-fest with Ode to Joy.

Legs Music 14

Peter Case - Hwy 62, album review

Surprise End

I saw Peter Case just the once many years ago and that was a treat as he is one of the great singer-songwriters.

This latest release is also a treat, and reflects Case’s inimitable style of blues/roots inflected folk, lyrically astute and sung with his distinctive lightly drawled, light-husky vocal.

A song that perfectly encapsulates Case’s craft is second Waiting on a Plane: the acoustic guitar blues opening suggests a classic 12 bar, and it is in some respects, but the beautiful folk melody that is layered over this makes for a delightful combination, the delicate piano chords adding a calming texture. The lyrics tell a tale of loss and regret, a thief perhaps reflecting, as he waits, on the precarious balances his life produces.

The angry Case is reflected in opener Pelican Bay, a song railing against the colossal number of inmates held in American prisons, the lawlessness of its environs, the imbalance of black inmates to others, and further inherent injustices. This ‘theme’ is pursued from a different perspective in All Dressed Up [For Trial].

The other imbalance of the rich and poor is presented in Water from a Stone, a broad canvas on which to paint the injustices meted out to refugees who have escaped in search of a better life, tenants of greedy landlords, the more general history of haves and have nots, and the larger capitalist culture/context of it all – embraced by the metaphor of squeezing water from a stone.

In The Long Good Time, the opening could describe my memories of home and growing up,

Mother was doing her ironing while she listened to Nat King Cole

Teenagers came and went in cars all tuned to rock’n’roll

Windows were open in a summer heat

Locusts were singing out there on the street

The feeling passed now, I can’t recall, how we never thought we had it all

Every one, every place, everything has been erased

That’s the way it goes

and Case continues to rue loss as well as some fond reflection on home life, darkness in his song about the power’s cut and mother called down from the top of the stairs ‘boys play that nice song about suicide’. Not quite my scenario, thankfully. But my mother loved Cole, and I remember the locusts and their night-time songs in Elk Horn, Iowa.

Closer and title song is 1 minute and 5 seconds of honky tonk piano. Go figure. 

A journey that resonates - thank you Peter.

Into the Distance on Tracks Music

Bill Bissett & Th Mandan Massacre ‎– Awake In The Red Desert (1967), album review

Sound Poetry

This has been an exciting discovery for me. Bill Bissett is a Canadian poet - The Godfather of Canadian Poetry, by some suggestions - and an experimental poet, on this 1967 album dealing in sound work, always focused on voice, but also much background musical accompaniment, acid-based folk [or electronic noise as on heard ya tellin and fires in th tempul], and if you want a touchstone you can think of The Fugs, but Bill's work here is much more to do with the vocal performance.

There is little point in trying to review individual tracks, but there is much playing with sounds through repetition of words or vowels or other noises, and varying the tone of delivery, and always generating a hypnotic chanting aura to the performance - and that is the key word about this poetry performance.

Reincarnated as someone's front lawn

I just typed that line as it was delivered [as I am listening] from 2 awake in th red desert

and that is how Bill spells it, and if you don't believe me - why not? - this is Bill's commentary on his 1992 book Inkorrect Thots

WARNING each wun uv thees pomes may contain inkorrect thots these pomes have not bin kleerd by th ministree uv korrect thots Ths book contains reel storees that have reelee happend th mysteree uv pain has not bin adequatelee xplaind 2 us why memorees can cum crashing down on us robbing us uv our present or why we lifting grasp hold of a suddn laffing idea baloons us up n what we lern from memorees I cum skraping across a glacier bringing yu ths burnd flowr see its petals bleed as it opns all ovr our plans our mesurd safetees see its tabula filling with such wondrous snow these pomes have not bin bleerd by th ministree uv korrect thots we have no control ovr what is not being xpressd heer eithr byond ths sign yr on yr own

I have ordered a couple of his books on the basis of listening to and loving this album.

U cld do th same.

Butt Music 5

The People's Victory Orchestra and Chorus - The School [1972], album review

Well, It Was the Seventies...

I am listening to rather esoteric, often private-pressed early 70s music at the moment, some of which I will review, and this Queens Village, New York ensemble is wonderfully weird. Indeed, as I type this, I am listening to their second album Weltschmerzen [1973] where the opening 8 minute track  Memories - including Kennebec Chatter, The Fair, Dancehall Days and Others is silly-brilliant.

The School begins with three amazing tracks - often with young children joining in, or not, among the screams and random instrumentation - which are Super Music Man, Songbird of the South and Ballet for a Small Apartment, and the superb female vocal - probably Carla Lund from what I can find out - is on the first raw roaring rock; is on the second refined rock, and is on the third operatic rock. An astonishing range. Birds chirp on the second, by the way. The third is orchestral as it progresses with a range of off-beat [literally] percussion.

Fourth Waiting at the Theatre is quite a soulful number with fuzzed guitar; fifth Children's Anthem - Let Us Sing a Love Song begins with kids coughing in what sounds like a large auditorium [one assumes they are gathered in a large space, and there are echos] and it is then a rather upbeat, jolly, piano thumped and whistle tooted stereotypical kid's chorus song.

The rest is various acid folk, raw folk and psychedelic folk type ensemble offerings: quite raw and with an occasional tuba. Even vaudeville, or is that chamber orchestra?

Black Crow Country is quite rocky, and has crows cawing.

Great fun.