Into the Distance Music 29

Pans People + Small Hours by John Martyn

If only, if only......

John Martyn - Couldn't Love You More - BBC Songwriting Circle, 1999

I have been wanting to see this again for some time, from the BBC's Songwriting Circle, 1999. I don't think I saw it for the first and only time in 1999, but it was not long after. I recall so clearly my happy surprise that John was going to perform, and my shock at his opening guitar playing which was so indifferently poor. And then he starts to sing. It is of course one of his many beautiful songs, and one swelled with such emotion, and when he closes his eyes and sings at this live event that emotion is overwhelming, carried in the glorious vocal that had become his focus in later years - rather than the virtuoso guitar playing [and he could still play - it was a decision he had made].

Near the start, there is an example of John's classic self-effacement, the hand waft in mock dismissal of the crowd's applauding, loving accolade; at the end, having performed with such tender empathy a song about his heartache of a few years' earlier - lived again fully in this moment of performance - he turns away immediately, clearly affected, as we all are/should be having listened.

Paul Kantner - March 17, 1941 – January 28, 2016

At the start of a new year that has seen the passing of many rock legends, I had missed this, and I guess the media couldn't keep up: his work with Jefferson Airplane in particular - seminal for the San Francisco and psychedelic sound that defined its memorable place in rock history - and Jefferson Starship where he and Grace Slick attained considerable commercial success, warranted more acknowledgement along with the others. Perhaps none of us will be able to keep up in the imminent years and passing to come.

John Martyn - Live at Bristol 1991, Official Bootleg, album review

Not a Dry Eye in the House

The jazz underbelly of Martyn’s music, especially in live performance, is plump and fulsome on this wonderful 1991 Bristol recording, and having this limited edition cd now [just purchased] is some recompense for the nonsense of my having missed going at the time: only up the road really, and I should have known it was on.

It is a superb recording of a superb show. The band is occupied by Martyn stalwarts of this period: Alan Thompson on bass, John Henderson on drums, Andy Sheppard on saxes, and Spencer Cozens on keyboards. Absolutely stonking.

And Martyn is in fine form: mixing his wonderful banter with beautiful playing. He affects an American announcer’s voice at times, especially paradoxical – comically so – as he foregrounds Couldn’t Love You More, and then when he starts, is wholly immersed in the tender emotion of this great song; similarly so with a less lengthy intro for Sweet Little Mystery: and as so often, the mocking, self-effacing comment at the end of a sentimental and serious song - a funny voice about its cheerfulness.

Elsewhere, the band punch out the most rousing jazz backdrops; also ominous as on John Wayne, Sheppard in particular quite outstanding, towering Cozens keyboards, and John’s guitar sneering fuzz. His vocal by this stage in his career, and on jazzier numbers like this, the other superlative instrument. The pumping band riffs on Johnny Too Bad stir the blood.

Cooltide – ‘in the middle of being written....this is a bit of a shifter…a groove thing to send you home feeling cool’ – is a penultimate grooved funk; and this recording concludes on John in mock announcer’s voice again, ‘not a dry eye in the house’, lounge whistling, then the prettiest version of Never Let Me Go [stated as Let Me Love You Tonight on back cover], Martyn’s vocal making me well up as only listening to him can continue to make me so pathetically prone. 

Birds of Chicago - Real Midnight, album review

Sweet Partnership

Birds of Chicago is duo Jeremy Lindsay and partner Allison Russell, and whilst I am not that knowledgeable about their musical histories - by all accounts highly regarded - I do recall a little of Russell's former group Po' Girl so I had an expectation of harmony and americana tinges, and this is what one gets, excellently and many times beautifully. Lindsay [better known by those in the know, I guess, as J.T. Nero] is the main songwriter and Russell the main singer, though there are shifts between them.

It is Russell's sublime singing that does impress most - just take ninth track Sparrow as an example where she soars vocally, singing in French too at the end which adds a nuance of extra beauty. Opener Dim Star of the Palisades introduces immediately the expected harmonies and they are glorious, warmed in a gospel-esque embrace. Lindsay leads with vocal on next Remember Wild Horses but this song too soars to gorgeous harmony on the chorus, clarinet and organ and accordion added for simple effect as an interlude in an overall soulful country song. Third Kinderspel (child's game) is sublime with mainly piano and Russell quite emotive in the shifts between plaintive glory and pained eruptions. Fourth Estrella Goodbye is punchier, more country gospel to rouse, both singers more in shared evidence. On sixth Barley, Russell sings a capella with percussive hand claps, singular drum beat and tambourine and it is captivating.

Closing Pelicans is a harmony masterclass over a simple childlike melody, mainly acoustic guitar and this sweet partnership.

The Mockingbirds, Timepiece, Exeter, 26th March, 2016

Ryley Walker on the Rise, Posterwise

Two Faces Music Six

Mary Spender - Blues Duet (Official Video)

Mary Spender - support for the Walker/Thompson gig, St George's, Bristol, 17th February, 2016

Brilliant In and From Bristol

Her Vigier guitar in Revolution Green will for the moment serve as a partial metaphor for the elegant as well as sassy talent that is Mary Spender. It is a pretty guitar, yet that is mere show if played with little skill – I imagine my amateurish attempts – but when Mary picks it up at the start of her support slot, the immediate fluidity of her setting-up is impressive as well as tempting. There is a blues run that is suggestive too, and when she sings, this is where the promise is fully realised.

Supporting Ryley Walker with Danny Thompson at last night’s St George’s gig would seem a daunting task – as it so often is with an expectant audience – but Spender instantly performs with confidence and clarity: a voice that is pure and ranging; her guitar playing with such felicity, a slap and picking that has a jazzy characteristic as much as the blues. Her fine songs are often sung in tandem with the guitar work deftly picking out the key melodies, and her vocal tone resonates wonderfully – especially in the fulsome acoustics of the venue. There is a beautiful self-harmonising [I am guessing] vocal work-out on her The Electric EP I picked up with two others last night.

I was generally impressed, and having picked up and listened to those three available cds [two studio eps and one live recording in Philadelphia] as well as all the music on her web site – which includes a sweet video cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit – I feel excited to have heard this emerging talent on that stage.

To anyone reading this review, I would recommend an immediate visit of Spender’s site here to listen to the music available. And it is all in the listening, and I can confirm that she excels both live and in recording [if you can make her The Louisiana gig in hometown Bristol on the 31^st March, she will be playing with a band and that will be interesting, but the soloing is damn fine enough].

I don’t think I quite accounted for the ‘sass’ I wanted from my opening metaphor. This is for me always a positive quality, and I take from it the essence of being confident. I liked her confidence in making it clear to the audience last night that she has taken her journey: she has travelled, played in America, recorded in Nashville, and this has taken some years. She is now ready and releasing her debut album in October of this year, and I look forward to that. I look forward to seeing her play again and sharing this discovery with a wider audience.

Ryley Walker with Danny Thompson, St George's, Bristol, 17th February, 2016

Ryley and Reverie

Ryley Walker is a young American guitar artist, his artistry clearly in the instrumental work across a variety of open tunings and finger-picking dexterity that is quite outstanding, and also in the jazz-infused songcraft where, on record - especially his most recent Primrose Green - his backing band augments those inflections, and, in live performance, the extended jamming as with last night at the wonderful St George’s in Bristol. That he was accompanied there by the legendary Danny Thompson on double bass augmented this performance to levels of bliss.

Midway through last night’s gig Walker referred to one of the instrumental improvs as a ‘boogie jam’ which I quite like as an upbeat assessment, but it struck me that they were most like ragas, and his performance of these seems characterised by a trance-like immersion in the soloing where sudden bursts of chord strikes are balanced by delicate finger-picks and occasionally the sweetest minor chord sequences.

All the time Thompson played his exquisite bass where dropping into the lower notes resonates with such soothing power, and then he bends glorious notes to meander within the tunes. The audience was clearly gathered to see Danny playing as much as Ryley – judging from his reception – but it was palpable how Walker asserted his presence in a mutually assured construction of folkjazz symmetry, this their first gig of a tour and perfectly at ease in the virtuoso partnership.

Walker is also a consummate folk artist, this also more evident I would guess in a live performance of acoustic guitar – though amped – and double bass, compared with on record, though his first All Kinds of You veers more to this than the jazzier and at times psychedelic PG. His singing is also heavily influenced by a folk tradition, the obvious echoes of influences like Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and John Martyn. In his more trance-vocals, one can hear Tim Buckley and Van Morrison with yelps and hollers and grunts and other guttural expressions of emotion. His vocal variations on the singular word alright were hypnotic.

The main set last night ended on Primrose Green, and its distinctive riff remained with me long afterwards. Most affecting personally, however, was the first song of the subsequent encore, a gentle acoustic playing and singing of Sweet Satisfaction, the most poignant of the John Martyn echoes of the evening. Walker doesn’t use his voice quite like the instrument Martyn eventually made his own distinctive sound, but he did sing with the beautiful clarity of earlier Martyn, and the chord sequence, as well as slap playing, could have been a song from JM’s early period too. All the time this was being performed I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of nostalgic reverie was going through Thompson’s mind, such a long-time musical collaborator and great friend of John Martyn. I think I saw these two play live together twice many, many years ago, and Thompson must have a sense of fond memory when performing with the youthful Walker, reminding of those days. I have no doubt that any such sentimentality – nothing wrong in that – is wrapped in a profound professional regard from the senior legend to the emerging talent of Walker, whose volatile life exploits and experiences would seem to mirror some of the boisterous existentialism of the Thompson/Martyn years! 

Review/comments previously on Ryley Walker on this blog can be found here. 

Jane Siberry - Ulysses' Purse

Deep Purse

An album I heard about via Facebook, with reference to a link for a free download here, still working as I write but with a full release on the 26th February it won't presumably last much longer, this is at its best quite complex solo-singer material from Canadian chanteuse Siberry, possessing at 60 a very pure and youthful vocal. Some of the material can be a little sweet [saccharine really, as with the violin swelled Geranium] but opener Hide Not Your Light has greater depths with complex vocal over-dubs and horn additions that build and burst throughout the song. Second Dark Tent is more apparently brooding, as the title suggests, yet its atmospheric synth backdrop with developing orchestrations provide an ultimately peaceful, soothing platform for the emerging narrative - beautifully sung and at times nearly spoken - that harbours drama: the siren sounds intimating this. A powerful song. Third Walk on Water is genuinely lovely - great songwriting, harmony and other vocal developments, pedal steel, and those horns again. It is overall a sophisticated sound with superb vocal from Siberry.

Legs Music 17

Nebraska 45: Michael Murphey, 'Wildfire'

She comes down from Yellow Mountain
On a dark, flat land she rides
On a pony she named Wildfire
With a whirlwind by her side
On a cold Nebraska night

Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down it's stall
In a blizzard she was lost

She ran calling Wildfire

By the dark of the moon I planted
But there came an early snow
There's been a hoot-owl howling by my window now
For six nights in a row
She's coming for me, I know
And on Wildfire we're both gonna go

We'll be riding Wildfire

On Wildfire we're gonna ride
Gonna leave sodbustin' behind
Get these hard times right on out of our minds
Riding Wildfire

Pigeons - The Bower, album review

Discordant Affection

It isn't easy to articulate the peculiar attraction of the discordant sound of this contemporary psyche-folk, that off-kilter sound perpetrated by the design of performance and rawness of recording. But that doesn't mean it is 'rough' - there is mild complexity in the woodwind editions/arrangements by lead singer Wednesday Knudsen, and the overdubs that exist throughout and are evident in, for example, fourth Not a Party with its lush-ish harmonies and squealing synth-sounds. Third Two Years of Land is another example of this, with saxophone added in its own naive yet impacting brevity. Knudsen sings in a 60s/70s folk simplicity which is affecting in the same way the electric guitar licks work, though these latter can be developed with echoing layers as in fifth The Mountain, and at times I hear Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, though not their ensemble playing.

Nebraska 44: Black Sabbath in Omaha, Nebraska, 20th January, 2016

Steering Wheel Music 6