Food Music 5

Neil Young and Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years

Tough Love

Neil Young's imminent release The Monsanto Years can be heard here. My favourite so far is People Want to Hear About Love, a fairly emblematic song from the whole that mixes bile with beauty. Indeed, this is an album of rant as much as rock, and I suspect only someone with Young's track record both musically and in acerbic attacks could get away with it. Backed by a band I have liked for some time, Promise of the Real [with Lukas and Micah Nelson, Willie's boys], you get what it rages from the tin, with great guitars and some lush harmonies.

Into The Distance Music 3

Meg Baird - Don't Weigh Down the Light, album review

Most Gorgeous

This is gorgeous in that ethereal, angelic way this kind of late 60s/early 70s folk music with female lead always used to be and has continued to be with Meg Baird as solo artist [see review of Seasons on Earth here] and with Espers and other like-minded freakfolk to rockfolk to justfolk outfits.

Her sweet vocal with beautiful harmony accompaniment in the outerspace surround of such a genre reminds most of Trees and at times Sandy Denny but also early Joni Mitchell. Baird's acoustic plucked guitar is also accompanied by other largely atmospheric guitar effects, similar in effect to the pedal steel on Seasons on Earth. Opener Counterfeiters is gorgeous folk; second I Don't Mind is gorgeouser folk. This is a calming, relaxing, nostalgic album.

Food Music 4

Metallica - Load, album review

Blood, Semen and Grunge

Where second 2x4 is immediately into a Black Sabbath riff - occasional thrash metal growls updating the template - it has been hammered out in the solid steel of years before, but third The House Jack Built has been grunged, even if the chug chug chug of that metal motif prevails, and it is this narrowed eclecticism of The Heavy that makes Metallica who they are and this description confined to its necessary platitudes.

1996’s Load has been loaded from the foundry that supplies all requisite ores, even if a Frampton talk box seems to get an anachronistic voice inside Jack’s house. Fourth Until It Sleeps is the ballad-into-thump-into-harmonies that is another of the Metallica trademarks, Hetfield’s by now established vocal distinction one more flyer in the Kite. Fifth King Nothing is headbang-ready: not too fast to cause concussion; not too slow to seem geriatric. It is the perfect pace. I know because I am doing it.

Sixth Hero of the Day is the slow, slow-burner, a song that allows Hetfield to sing’n’snap as he does with his vocal, whiplashing at word-endings, or alternatively elongating on a vowel sound – either way it is a part of his distinctive singing style. Seventh is half-way through the album’s set, and Bleeding Me is a return to a grunge sound, great guitar work running through the song, both rhythm and lead and especially at about 4 minutes into its 8 minutes where it has gradually climbed to its Metal plateau. Later, the wah-wah wails over machine-gun drums and cymbal crashes. Then it winds down to its grunge drawl.

The album continues in similar and it is a long album at just under 80 minutes. The gentler pace [a relative term] does make it a potential slog, depending on whether you are more into your thrash Metallica than this incarnation. There are divergences, like eleventh Mama Said, the acoustic number via Jethro Tull and a tinge of Country, and closer The Outlaw Torn at nearly 10 minutes is more of the grunging that has dominated and on this track it does seem like the band had run out of ideas but persevered out of some strange grunge-hypnosis, even though guitar wails and squeals do eventually liven things [and should have stopped there – but didn’t…..]. It does make the ‘blood and semen’ of the album cover, apparently real, the more rock’n’roll of the whole, though there are fine enough moments throughout. I’d have to listen again, but I think on reflection I prefer 97’s Reload, and I don’t imagine I am the only one.

Food Music 3

Metallica - Kill 'Em All, album review

Whipping and Thrashing the Insipid

I like to say the 80s was, musically, largely insipid, and I think there is merit to the generalisation, though I know it is punctured constantly by remembrance of bands/music I like firmly from that period.

I had no idea about Metallica in 1983 and I'm not entirely sure why. This album isn't insipid, though I clearly prefer latter work. It is far from uninviting - obviously - and has strong elements of punk informing its heavy/thrash metal beginnings. Jump in the Fire, for example, doesn't do a lot for me, but opener Hit the Lights does in its frenetic energy, this quality probably the significant factor of the album: those Hetfield guitar rhythms at lightning speed. And this is quite punk-infused in its spitting pace. [Anesthesia]-Pulling Teeth is interesting for its instrumental bass lead and is positively experimental in the context of the whole. When Whiplash whips in immediately at the point of tooth extraction, that frantic guitar thrash rhythm asserts its wake-up call. Intriguing how two thirds into Phantom Lord and the song slows to what becomes a familiar later Metallica motif.

Hey, I'd marked 10 before listening to this as a post-work morning slaparama ready for the next small batch: feeling revived.

Food Music 2

Metallica - Reload, album review

Chugging Great

I saw Metallica the once at The Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert and they were playing Nothing Else Matters as we entered Wembley Arena – late – and it was mesmerising. Other than this I am no particular fan but love it when I hear them, and I couldn’t name or recall a single track on their album Load that precedes this subsequent reworking of outtakes and similar that didn’t make the initial one. So there is no baggage, expectation or whatever and thus I love this too, opener Fuel chug-chugging brilliantly, second The Memory Remains graced by the gravel beauty of Marianne Fairthful, and third as I listen now Devil’s Dance simply superb in more grinding chug and guitar-with-effects effects. Hetfield growls to the rhythm of the riffs and more chugging, and there are other vocal complexities that enhance the heavy template. The Unforgiven II broods and builds in its balladic brilliance. Carpe Diem Baby says it all as a title. And so on, everywhere. Looking forward to the next album I decide to listen to.