Sports Music 7

 

Steamhammer - Wailing Again

Still Sorta Stoked

For a while a couple of years ago I began making a folder collection of 'classic' rock bands releasing new albums and material long down the road from their prime. By and large these were predictably predictable - regurgitated riffs and runs, and far too often still perpetrating the naive lyrics that seemed so hopeful at the original times of their prophesying. 

I have no idea where that collection is now. It was that collectively dreadful. One of the few albums I recall rating (though haven't returned to, so I guess that says something...) was Nazareth and their Surviving the Law.

Wailing Again is pleasingly sparky, if not steam-stoked as back in the day when I first heard them with the beautiful Passing Through on the Fill Your Head with Rock CBS sampler. This album has some of the predictable fillers too, like the blues of Twenty Four Hours - though saying that, there is some brooding soulfulness to its singing. The preceding Man in the Blue Suede Shoes is a very good guitar instrumental. And throughout this album, there are solid guitar and harmonica licks.

The album opens with its best 'new' song I Wouldn't Have Thought - simply a well-written, rhythmic puncher in an echo of Passing Through, I think - and this is followed by another good 'un, How Low Jick Jack Johnny, where a rap (all these returning ol' timers seem to feel there is this need for a contemporary touchstone) actually works.

And then there is the album's reprise of Junior's Wailing. Well, I can always listen to that, and am as I write this line.

Into the Distance Music 117

 

Tedeschi Trucks Band - I Am the Moon, album review

Full Moon Music Shine

I Am the Moon is a set of four lockdown albums inspired by the Nizami Ganjavi poem Layla and Majnun, not that I have looked to find the actual prompts and links matched to individual songs and their lyrics. It is like so much artistic production of the moment: the lockdown providing opportunity (perhaps necessity) for finding and reflecting – creative outlets as a sense of purpose in times that are in opposition to this. Something like that. Perhaps it is/was having the time to fill/to focus. Whatever, the four separate albums that make up the whole collect some of the most perfect music sustained across this amount of time and output. It is full of fine writing and performance – excellent vocals (mainly but not exclusively Susan Tedeschi) and great orchestrations/production. The range is across blues, gospel, balladry, soul – with a varying mix of west coast harmony, guitar solos taking their time and using effects, and of course the signature horns as powerhouse foundation. The title song from I. Crescent is gorgeous, as is All the Love from II. Ascension, this one running into a lengthy (they have the time) guitar and other instrumental conclusion which reminds me of when it was cool and natural to do so back in the late 60s/early 70s. Another great example of this latter is on the soulful funk of Gravity from III. The Fall where the guitar solo with effects is superb, as are the wonderful horns. For some sense of genre breadth, I'll just say that following song Emmaline reminds a little - just a little - of Dr Hook & the Medicine Show. Oh precursors. I am just about to listen to the fourth and final instalment IV. Farewell and I know every single song and performance will be as brilliant as all that has preceded. 

 

Into the Distance Music 116

 

Thee Sacred Souls - Thee Sacred Souls, album review

Authentic Nostalgia

More ‘sweet soul’ / ‘sweet summer soul’ indeed, though I don’t know how the band can have a label ‘pioneers’ unless travelling back in time to start all over again; indeed (once more) can't have them eschewing the other label ‘neo’ which I'll arguably attribute as a full compliment. This is old-school and wonderfully so.

 

That’s me done with any dissent – this is new sweet soul with lead singer Josh Lane’s falsetto in the Stylistic’s frame of things but without the layering of strings and other lush orchestrations: this album production is much less glamourised and content with tight rhythmic thrusts and a female vocal backing that repeats lines and melody with additional wraparounds.

 

A model track is Weak for Your Love, Lane soaring the heights and that supporting vocal tracking the title line as repeating chorus, a delicate finger-picked lead keeping the mix tight again. Nostalgic / authentic album.

 

 

Into the Distance Music 115