The Answer - Solas, album review

Nulled Noggin Knockin'

No longer, it would seem, just Rock, retro or nu, as fine as that is, this latest from Irish band The Answer still purveys the scorchers but in tracks like Beautiful World especially, the palette has been filled with a broader range of complex vocal and instrumental colouring. This is an expansive song. Battle Cry is an acoustic rouser that again breaks from riff roots, folk fusing within with a rallying vocal chorus, or as it tells us, you are an anthem on the radio.

Just in case, along comes Untrue Colour, all riff and Cormac Neeson in fine voice, though this too morphing into anthem and a hint of 80s synth. Interesting. Thief of Light is echoing guitar and the sweetest vocal chorus before this too surprises with its anthemic core [with different lyrics guys, this could have been your Christmas single, and forever payday].

Being Begotton has some balladic rock blues, Neeson restrained yet powerful in the early vocal focus, and the rises within the whole are sung with passion.

Left Me Standing brushes with the echo of Thin Lizzy, and Demon Driven Man pulses with real rock strut. That leaves the opening title track as the expected one, not saviour, but a signature sound that still hints at the widening developments to follow. The conscious shift in direction signposted, this album will reveal tangents some headbanging fans may find difficult to knock their noggins to. I like the broadening, but will also welcome the return.

Two Faces Music 11

Ennio Morricone - Morricone 60, album review

Shhhh - The Empathy of a Cover Picture

If I said it out loud, I’m sure I could think of many examples, feeling I had to, but if I just write it here, like a whisper, and because I’ve just listened to this album’s version of the song, were I to ask, quietly, what music moves me the most, I would reply softly and undemonstratively Ennio Morricone’s song-score Deborah’s Theme.

This choice is definitely linked to the first time I heard it when watching for the first time, obviously, the film Once Upon a Time in America. The theme runs throughout the film [and whole soundtrack] in a number of variations, but it is always intensely emotive in its orchestral beauty, and plaintive about lost love, though also powerfully but negatively about the horror of abused passion.

The most personally moving music should actually be John Martyn’s Head and Heart, and probably is, or Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, or Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings [all the clichés, I know, again], or in fact any other number of John Martyn songs, but right here right now it is Deborah’s Theme.

This whole album of Morricone music arranged and conducted by the man himself after 60 years of writing film-scores is excellent, not least his gunslinger groundbreakers.

Between and Around the Legs Music

LEON RUSSELL /// 1. Medley: Jumpin' Jack Flash/Young Blood - (The Concer...

I don't remember where I was, but I do remember when I first heard this amazing cover - and the rest - on the radio, not knowing it was Russell. One of the memorable vocal performances.

Leon Russell and the Shelter People, album review

Great Growl

Soulful with gospel tones, this is a fine album of rock too, and then the beautiful ballads, firstly, starting balladic before funking up, Home Sweet Oklahoma, Russell singing in his twanged growl, and then next the gorgeous string-washed and aptly named The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Russell singing in his more emotive twang.

There are the two gutsy Dylan covers, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [and there are three more on the cd re-issue]. Another cover, George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness, gets a suitably Indian flavour with tabla percussion, but it is Russell on piano and the harsh snarl of his vocal that defines its performance.

This is yet another death that has reminded me of a music I haven’t known that well and which requires listening, but then such a demand will only continue and can never be fully accommodated. I will therefore close this brief review with another shout for and celebration of The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen which is superb, a belated – really – discovery in honour of Russell’s passing, and one I will be returning to more.

Into the Distance Music 43

Beyonce and Dixie Chicks - Daddy Lessons (live at CMA Awards 2016)

Doesn't quite match the Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake dynamic mix of a previous CMA, but this is still a lot of fun, and good - the commercial reach of the ceremony is being honed by the corporate good ol' boys, and gals!

Weeley 1971

I'm in the next picture, somewhere....

Mini Music

Leonard Cohen - Suzanne

The choice of song to honour Cohen could have been many from his earlier days as I best know and like his work, but I select this because the lyric also appears as the poem Suzanne Takes You Down, its origins, in the collection I have of his Leonard Cohen Poems 1956-1968. This is a gorgeous live version.