Belle Schnetzler - Für immer bis dass der Tod uns trennt 1972

Pretty damn sure, but I think I went to the same school as her in Karlsruhe in 1967, though she was older, me in junior high and she in the Senior and therefore graduating year. Just been looking at my American school yearbook and she is there, mentioning her hope to have a career in music. Well, this would seem to have been a start. I will pursue.

The internet is really quite amazing, if you have the time and inclination.....

Baseball Music 2

Allison Crowe - Newfoundland Vinyl 3, album review

Riddle-I-Day Me Boys

I wasn’t aware of the preceding two Newfoundland Vinyl albums in the series, a folk focused celebration of the west coast of Newfoundland, and best described on Allison Crowe’s own site:

Conceived by Jeff Pitcher, Artistic Director of Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador, (TNL - the Atlantic Canadian professional theatre company founded in 1979), the hit stage show’s under the Musical Direction of Allison Crowe who’s been with the production from its launch in 2012.

Each Summer Allison Crowe delights in residing in the beauty of Gros Morne National Park - an UNESCO world heritage site located on the west coast of Newfoundland. In working with her wonderfully-talented cast and crew, Allison records a selection of songs to be included in the show repertoire. Once the play’s run its season, she selects some of her favourite tunes to share from this collection.

I am also discovering a side to Crowe’s performance – not entirely new – where a ‘restraint’ in the often impressive drama of her vocal allows, for me, the natural beauty in her tone and tremolo to be sustained throughout, with emotive pulses that have all the more impact for being occasional.

Opener Up She Rises is a generic folk song with strummed acoustic guitar, sweet but distant vocal choir and the rousing upbeat of the chorus. This is followed by Cliffs of La Scie, a wonderful traditional narrative from a male persona lamenting loss, even after he has found some happiness, Crowe singing empathetically, and beautifully, relaying the pain and sorrow [just a tired old man with his fond memories], the vocal choir here quite angelic. Third Lucky’s Boat is a sprightly Celtic romp driven by percussion and tight vocals racing through the rhymes and ‘riddle-i-days’!

Further jaunts and ‘me boys’ abound with Crowe bringing a joyous appreciation to the traditional folk roots of the songwriting and authentic presentations, storytelling to the fore. When Johnny meets St Peter in Johnny’s Moonshine, the angelic chorus takes on a more satirical support, and unable to meet the demands being placed on his entry to heaven, Johnny decides to take me moonshine can and trudge on down below.

The gorgeous Snowy White is a sweet centrepiece in the album, the acoustic guitar reminding of that other great Canadian artist Leonard Cohen, and the vocal partnership again of Crowe and the backing folk ‘choir’ in perfect synergy. The Green Green Grass of Home gets classic Crowe coverage where she does make such well-known songs her own with distinctive passion.

This is definitely traditional fare delivered with genuine, folk-honest class and I recommend. You can download the album here at a ridiculously cheap and therefore generous price!

Bridge Music 5

Manfred Mann Chapter Three - Volume Two [1970], album review

Second of Two from the Three and like the First

The second of the two Manfred Mann Chapter Three albums [I know the Volume Two gives it away, the point being there were only two main albums, with subsequent editions/variations appearing over time] is more of the same from the first, so going to my review of that favourite here is more than just a cheat and does embrace the overall sound.

Opener on this one Lady Ace by Mike Hugg sounds quite a bit like Travelling Lady from that first so the melody has had a long extension [read about its origins in the initial review] but this does break into the explosive horn and saxophone jamboree that I do so like from this period of Mann’s output: freeform sax solo a la Ornette Coleman and horns that could be from either the Buddy Rich Big Band or Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Hugg’s pop sensibilities are more to the fore in the next I Ain’t Laughing which is really quite sweet and folksy, more down the Incredible String Band route, whilst third Poor Sad Sue is still pop but with a blues rhythm and fuzz, semi-oriental saxophone in the background with more screaming sax as the track progresses, and the song merges into piano jazz before more wild and wonderful freeform shenanigans. It really becomes very playful. African drums underpin some fine bass playing by Steve York on Jump Before You Think, and there is a 15 minute upbeat-pop-into-jazz extravaganza with penultimate [on the original album] track Happy Being Me, some excellent Mann piano playing before the beautiful alto saxophone of Bernie Living – and then the long jam.

The closing song Virginia – again on the original vinyl – exemplifies the focus on this second outing: a pop melodic core, sung with Hugg’s feather-light rasp of a voice, and then sudden hearty stabs of horn and saxophone and some mad Mann organ. Love it. 

Into the Distance Music 17

Of all my themed album cover searches and collections, I have been surprised how many times an 'open road' or similar leading into the distance is used as the central image. Even more surprising are the number of bridges that appear on album covers. I can to a degree understand the 'distance' motif, probably as journey to take or taken, but the bridge placement is less obvious [and it isn't about linkage...].

Other common images are trees, and I started to post these but they just didn't engage [me, that is] so I stopped collecting and deleted what I had. Animals are everywhere, so apart from 'dogs and owners' I am less inclined to collect here as well. I have become fond of other categories, but as I have a proliferation of the two  mentioned in the opening paragraph, these will reoccur more than the rest. For now.

Trixie Whitley – Porta Bohemica, album review

Gorgeous Haunt

Trixie Whitley’s latest release is a more refined sound overall than when I first heard her with Daniel Lanois in Black Dub - reviewed here; a Noisetrade Mixtape here - and I miss a little the rawer sound of that vocal, but the tracks on this album are classy, and there are elements of BD’s more sultry singing [and similar atmospheric guitar work] on a song like Eliza’s Smile, where the slow ruminating pace allows the singing to dominate, here with such emotion in the rises and falls across tone and texture. This is a sublime offering, horns near its end adding depth to the brooding tone.

Soft Spoken Words is another atmospheric soundscape of beautiful menace, the soulful vocal chorus ironically heightening the aura with angelic harmony. The vocal expansion here is intense. As I focus on the album’s second half with respectively tracks five and six, seventh New Frontiers is pop-electronic with repeating vocal lines, and eighth Witness layers sweet harmonies over Whitley’s fulsome solo lines.

Closer Visitor is a piano-based, sultry ballad with exquisite vocal. The rasp and soar in the singing is so natural, and so penetrating in its emotive impact. The mention of melancholy is wholly empathised through that sound and also the lyrics of lose thyself in a well of temptation in a puddle of love, as I sip from the grounds of mental alienation. Hauntingly gorgeous.

This is an excellent album from an excellent singer deserving much more recognition. 

Photo: Athos Burez

Sable Music 15