Car Music 20

Nils Lofgren - UK 2015 Face The Music Tour, album review

Lofgren Live

Any Nils Lofgren live album is superb because he is a superb musician, and this 2015 encapsulation of his UK tour delivers another in this consistent brilliance. We could take it that the playing will be exemplary - as it is - but it is also outstanding in sound quality.

I missed his gig at Bristol, sold out before I had realised, so this is some compensation. Lofgren is one of the genuine greats, the view of his occupation on the musical pedestal perhaps deflected somewhat by his other central role over the years in Springsteen's E Street Band. His own songwriting is memorable, and he is a consummate interpreter of others' work, making it distinctive by his vocals which to this day remain idiosyncratically boyish.

Then there is the guitar playing. I have written about this before: apart from his virtuoso talent he is singular, I believe, in the way he can play and sustain the harmonics on a guitar, acoustic and electric. On this album he is accompanied by regular multi-instrumentalist Greg Varlotta, with some great synth on New Holes in Old Shoes, sublime funky jazz trumpet on Wakin' Nerve, and the keyboard 'vocal' chorus on the always emotive Black Books.

There are two affectionate renditions of favourites - Miss You C for the late Clarence Clements, saxophonist with the E Street Band [and a sweet if sad anecdote about hearing of his death], and although not sung at every gig, the great Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitton's I Don't Want to Talk About It, this a beautiful cover, and personalised with how you broke Danny's heart...

Legs Music 15

Weedpecker - Weedpecker, album review

The Paradox of Tautology

This is the debut 2013 release from the Polish stoner-rockers, and I believe they are just about to or have already released their second, II. Tautology, I know.

There is a kind of musical tautology in their playing on this album too, not the mix of sung songs and instrumentals because they are quite distinct - apart from the obvious - but the instrumentals are similar longish brooding panoramas of grungerock thuddings that meander, but hypnotically, along building moods. The first instrumental Don't Trust Your Elephant follows on from the grunge-harmony openers Berenjena Pipe and Mindbreath, two songs that establish the methodical pace of stoner riffs with gruff vocals polished up by sweet harmonies, and it segues directly from that second song into its opening peaceful atmospherics: echoing backdrops over which guitar trills and added layers of other guitar-work become more complex, though pretty, until it breaks into its own stoner riff. It is nine minutes of soothing power. Paradox, I know.

Space Music 6

Jeff Crosby - Waking Days, album review

Knowing This

A mighty fine addition to the singer-songwriter genre, said in an apt vernacular for its country americana. Jeff Crosby has a grizzled but resonant vocal, and the often pedal-steel infused songs create comfortable, lived-in landscapes for his homespun narratives, Emily and I Should Be Happy lamenting in their remembering. It's that kind of album you start to play and from the first track you know it is honest, genuine music, and I have been enjoying every track listening this morning. It just isn't complex to know this.

Eye Music 4

Dry the River - Hooves of Doubt EP, review

Leaving the Lineage

Announcing you are splitting up as a band and releasing at the same time an EP that illustrates the beauty of your music could be seen as the quintessence of romantic tragedy in a la broche de l'amant for fans. I have yet to fully discover the other gorgeous harmonies to their music - having listened only tentatively - but on the basis of this EP it does remind me of why I should hear more, no matter how cruel their parting for established paramours. This EP represents the apotheosis of a contemporary West Coast sound espoused by the likes of Fleet Foxes and the long lineage to Dry the River and Peter Liddle's soaring falsetto. You can hear two tracks streamed here.

Into the Distance Music 21

Stan Webb's Chicken Shack - That's The Way We Are [1978], album review

Chug and Slide

In anticipation of seeing Stan the Man next month, I am listening to this '78 album, not the Chicken Shack of their prime, and more rock than blues. You'll Be Mine is the strongest for me in sounding like 'classic' Stan [vocally, and I am a fan though many are dismissive] and with a chugging riff [opener The End sets this as a template for most of the whole]. High Cost of Love adds the sax of Dave Winthrop in and around that riff, whilst Doesn't Matter About Me has some brief solo sax in this more pounding rock number, closing on a guitar and sax with effects fade that I would have enjoyed as an extended jam. We get a bit of slide on Sillyness - which it is - and the mainly acoustic Rich Man's Blues. There is a sweet ballad Emily that sounds like it could be The Faces. Shake You Money Maker closes out the album at a pace, with Stan again on slide and displaying some fine licks, Winthrop's sax on accompanying bursts.

Sable Music 16