The Latest Album, DVD & Book Reviews - JULY 2008
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OK, I know we don't normally cover EPs, but this latest offering from Boo feels more substantial than a mere 20-minute stopgap between Harmonograph and the next full-length album (due in September). As a limited-edition disc, Boo's fans will want it in any case, but the quality of the six new songs therein will endear it to a wider audience I'm sure. It's a totally acoustic set, recorded with Neil MacColl, which showcases Boo's folkier side, with stripped-back arrangements. Considering how prolific a songwriter Boo has been over the years, it's perhaps all the more astonishing to find the lyrics of these new songs are particularly memorable. Each one's a polished and enviably economic little gem, whether it brings thoughtful reflection (Dragonflies and Sunset) or simple storytelling (Ellis Island Blues), or comes in the guise of a deceptively chummy reminiscence (Bible Pages) that seems to spring straight from folk memory. A masterly set, which ensures that September's album will be eagerly anticipated.

www.boohewerdine.net

David Kidman June 2008

Gramercy Arms is a collective of New York-based musicians comprising members of Joan As Police Woman, Guided By Voices, Luna and the Dambuilders; here on their debut release, we get a concise 30 minutes' worth of summery power-pop comprising ten compositions by the Dambuilders' Dave Derby performed by Dave with Kevin March, Sean Eden, Hilken Mancini and JAPW's Rainy Orteca. The idiom is west-coast pop, but with east coast sensibilities, and it all breezes along with brio and panache. There are guest backing vocals form a host of others, including Sarah Silverman, Joan Wasser and Matthew Caws, and Lloyd Cole plays keyboards and Chris Brokaw slide guitar on one track apiece. Performances are suitably committed and the half-hour passes very amicably, but I feel the collective needs a musical voice that's more distinctive overall, and there's a sneaking suspicion also that a little more substance in the writing might not go amiss.

www.myspace.com/gramercyarms

David Kidman June 2008

Her first new studio release in three years, opening track Emerald Street finds Gilkyson in sunkissed upbeat mood, warm brass adding Memphis soul while she whistles and sings how the little birdies go 'tweet tweet tweet' all because she's in love. She doesn't even care that the 'whole world's goin up in smoke'. Except, it soon becomes clear she does.

This may be a musically bright affair, rocking it up on Dream Lover or pouring soulful organ across The Party's Over, but her politically hued songs are barbed with a sobering awareness that, as on the aforementioned lament for contemporary America ("the house is a shambles, broken glass in the streets guttering candles, blood on the sheets"), we've been living it up like there's no tomorrow and now there very may well not be. We are, as she puts it on the gutsy touch country Runway Train, racing into the wreck.

The bluesy, moody electric piano based title track celebrates what it says but notes how 'billions of years come down to a point in time, setting the stage for the folly of man' and on 40s jazzy waltzer closing cut Unsustainable, backed by pedal steel courtesy of the marvellously names Cindy Cashdollar, she could well be talking about the gods deciding to 'tear it down and start all over'.

And if it's not eco themes then, on Dream Lover, it's daddy's little telling how she became an on line porno queen or, on the smoke curling soulful Rare Bird with its echoes of both Janis Ian and Ben E King, the loneliness of celebrity where everyone wants a piece of you.

But, she remains an optimist. The rippling country folk Wildewood Spring with its fiddle and cittern, talks of the urban survivors seeing revival in a new baptism and finds hope in romantic love. It's there on the jangling Clever Disguise where Baez and Emmylou join spirits, and it's there on the tender He Waits For Me.

And, above all, that flicker of optimism is there on the album's finest track, the softly Prine-like, whispery sung The Great Correction that sees judgement coming as she talks about suffering "at the hands of our American dreams" and how "we'll all be burnin in the same big sun". But it also sees that "the future waits on the horizon line for our daughters and our sons" and that if " the light burns brightest in the darkest times" then (echoing the theme to Unsustainable) perhaps "the end could be the start of something new" if love and compassion can squeeze us through the eye of the needle. Hopefully, there'll be singers and songwriters like Gilkyson to celebrate the new world as well as mourn the passing of the old.

www.elizagilkyson.com
www.myspace.com/elizagilkyson

Mike Davies June 2008

Abigail's recent hectic five years of touring with Uncle Earl hasn't seemed to stop her from pursuing a parallel solo career, and her solo CD Song Of The Travelling Daughter was released in 2006 to much critical acclaim.

By this time, she'd already put into practice a touring partnership with cellist Ben Sollee, and toured China along with Ben, banjo maestro Béla Fleck and bold young fiddler Casey Driessen, under the collective name of the Sparrow Quartet. It's an extraordinary combination of talents, this newly-recorded instance of which is given even more of a cutting edge by Abigail's genuine bilinguality (some songs are sung in Chinese, and this is no mere gimmick of token orientalism!).

As you can hear straightway in the (mostly) instrumental prelude (Overture), old-time Americana is rendered a world-scale musical language, where orientalisms turn back and forth into old-time, newgrass and classical gestures (just like in the movies!). Elsewhere too, challenging and innovative elements are introduced into the soundscape: not least the unusual sounding-together of two banjos (clawhammer and three-finger style) with cello and five-string fiddle. And of course there's the inalienable fact that these musicians all have a hell of a track record for innovation - Béla has virtually reinvented the sound and image of the humble banjo in a long-term crusading career, while Casey has proved a visionary in combining virtuoso playing and improvisatory capabilities with a feel for the tradition. Ben's more of a wild-card, in that his unique approach to playing the cello (combining spirited fiddling with three-finger-style pizzicato and percussive bow work) is only recently being lauded for its inventiveness and soulful and gutsy qualities. And by the way, Ben also sings (pretty well too!) and writes songs.

As for Abigail herself, well she has a voice to die for, and a very individual one: deliciously resonant, and with an often unexpected approach to phrasing, it's also capable of some interesting decorative expression (not to mention that authentic Chinese, and even a hint of overtone technique, alongside some yodelling). It can seem a little strident too on isolated occasions, as on the sanctified-style Strange Things, but that's not a barrier to the adventurous listener. Seven of the thirteen tracks are Abigail's own compositions, two of these being jointly penned with Ben; pick of these are the creepily intimate and emotionally fragile It Ain't Easy (it sure ain't!), which features the intriguing sound of a "sitar banjo", and the delicate, charmingly tactile imagery of Oh Me Oh My.

Elsewhere, there's still lots to admire, whether in the homespun call-and-response of Captain (inspired by a Lomax recording of the Georgia Sea Islands Singers), the almost unbearably plaintive, love-obsessed A Fuller Wine or the funky chinoiserie of the folk tune entwined within Béla's Old Time Dance Party. Any sense of mild exoticism, as in Journey Home or the Chinese traditional Tayang Chulai, is perfectly plausible; much of the melodic invention is highly memorable, and the yodel-bedecked waltzery of Great Big Wall In China will sit around your brain for ages after. (I do need to warn you about one small presentation glitch, tho': the order in which you hear tracks 10 and 11 is different to that given both on cover and in booklet.)

This is a stunningly original and very stimulating record, the likes of which I'd guarantee you won't hear elsewhere, and it's one which goes into my end-year best-of shortlist for sure.

www.abigail-washburn.com
www.myspace.com/abigailwashburn

David Kidman June 2008

Country rock and bluegrass from Guilford, the press blurb talks about the five piece in terms of Gram, early Eagles, the Burritos and Byrds. That’s a tad ambitious and banjo playing Jon Clake’s slightly flat voice doesn’t have the timbre or quality to warrant the comparisons. Nor is the production exactly sympathetic in the way the instruments figure in the mix, the drums far too upfront and clunky. But they certainly have a feeling for old school jangle and play up a storm on several of the tracks. Like Uncle Tupelo, they cover 20s gospel number Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down but throw urgent squeeze box into the train chugging rhythm while B Mando gives it some South of the Border flavours and The World Can Turn has an attractive GP honky tonk waltzing air with some keen pedal steel and mandolin. I daresay the likes of The Night Ends, the Hank sounding Endless Highway and I’m Not Sad whip up the crowd live, but if they’re going to make a mark in a very competitive field, the next time they go into the studio they need to a stronger producer, punchier songs and more vocal training.

www.twofingersoffirewater.com

Mike Davies June 2008

Formerly leader of 80s Newcastle upon Tyne underachievers Hurrah!, were Handyside to never pen another song he would still warrant singer-songwriter immortality for the title track of his solo debut. Little short of a modern day hymn with a soaring arms-linked swaying chorus that builds to a jubilant, uplifting finale as he sings ‘let now every heart rejoice’, it’s hard not to find the words Rufus, Wainright, Buckley and Jeff rising unbidden to the lips.

The same is true throughout the album where you might also see parallels with Martin Stephenson (with whom he’s collaborated on a Grant McLennan tribute), but which unfolds to reveal him as very much his own man. Working with producer Rob Tickell (who also plays bass and Hawaiian Weissenborn guitar) and Hurrah! drummer David Porthouse, he’s crafted an album steeped in dusty Americana, English folk and church music. Indeed, that hymnal quality is also forcefully to be heard on the no less outstanding Midwinter’s Feast with its hallelujah chorus, lines about church bells and wheezing harmonium and the closing piano backed, emotion quivering Peace In Our Time as he sings "God bless our bombs and the guns we are firing, caught in the crossfire of lies we told."

Dealing in themes of love, loss uncertainty and disillusion, the album’s musical textures are simple but rich. The opening piano ballad Beautiful Thing hints at Brel and Buckley equally (you could also imagine hearing it on an early Scott Walker album), Darkest Night is brooding, muscular bluesy soul flecked folk, River Of Song harks to Irish trad folk swayalong while acoustic Americana warms the heart of The Slow Road and the yearningly gorgeous Whisper In Your Mind with its pedal steel and Paul Heaton colours.

There’s not a weak moment here but it would be remiss not to also make special mention of Let The Lights Go Down, a spare, romantically bruised acoustic song of pleading and resignation that features shared vocals with Maria Yuriko and curls around the ears like aural aromatherapy. Hopefully it won’t mirror Hurrah!’s fate of critical acclaim but little commercial success, because Handyside truly deserves to be discovered on a global scale. Let now every heart rejoice, indeed.

www.paulhandyside.com
www.myspace.com/paulhandyside

Mike Davies June 2008

Another Irish singer-songwriter looking to make a name, Glover hails from County Antrim and apparently spent quite a while listening to Tom Waits and Dylan. Indeed, the opening track of hos debut album is actually titled No Direction Home. However, he sounds much more like he could be a new Ryan Adams or Steve Earle, which is perhaps why his backing band’s called The Earls. Recorded in Nashville with legendary producer JD Foster, there’s a definite Americana feel to his Celtic soul and he’s got some heavyweight names chipping, not least Al Perkins, Vince Gill, Jim Lauderdale and Buddy Miller. You can understad why they’d want to be involved.

Glover’s got a distinctive dusty twang to the throat and he writes strong, melodic songs about love and taking chances veined with memorable, poetic images, certainly ones likely to spent some profitable time doing the rounds of Nashville’s own recording stars.

Both the slow acoustic Atlantic Eyes and, reprised from his debut EP, storysong The Ballad of Carla Boone hint at Springsteen and are among the stand out cuts, but there’s little here that doesn’t measure up. The jauntily upbeat Things Haven’t Started Happening Yet harks to early Steve Forbert, Daybreaker has a similar wearied quality to David Gray back when he was interesting, while Strong Enough For This could stand alongside the Jayhawks, Melodies Of Midnight hints at the early country explorations of the Stones and Tennessee Take Me has that early Earle glow.

But for all the comparisons, Glover emerges as his own voice, and with the likes of the soulful Mercury Is Falling and the organ backed Midnight Scarlett where he conjures a singing Second Street siren who ‘rattles choirs of angels’, it’s one you’ll be wanting to hear more from.

www.benglover.co.uk
www.myspace.com/benglovermusic

Mike Davies June 2008

Perthshire-born Doris is a passionate performer who has won several trophies for traditional singing, and a popular guest singer at festivals and folk clubs around Scotland and Ireland. She's well known for her hosting of “The House Of Song” at Celtic Connections, as a member of Wildfire (with Brenda Frier) and The Keekin-Gless group, and as long-time publicity officer for Glenfarg Village Folk Club and its annual Folk Feast. On this disc, Doris treats us to a set of 14 songs which has a real personal meaning for her. Her voice soars radiantly, whether on traditional or contemporary material: the disc strikes a healthy balance between these, with moving versions of songs by Andy Mitchell (Farewell Indiana), Robin Laing (The Isle Of Eigg) and Jim Douglas (Ewan) – and of course the disc's title track, by Ian Davison – alongside reliable unaccompanied renditions of The Great Silkie, Will Ye Gang Love and Huntingtower (the latter a duet with guest singer Joe Aitken). Other particular successes include Mary Brooksbank's Spinner's Wedding and the spirited Hi Jeannie Hi, not to mention Lassie Of Fashion, a joint composition with her husband Hugh Hoffman embracing a sense of fun that fairly and squarely netted them the Songwriters' Cup at Aberdeen TMSA last year! Doris's deep love of sharing her songs with others is much in evidence on this CD, not least in that she is joined on four of the songs by her seven-strong Festival Friends Chorus, whose contribution is both convivial and complementary: adjectives that could equally well describe the duetting voice of Terry Dey on a further four songs. Doris's own interpretations are always admirably clear-sighted and genuinely expressive, although there are times when I find her innate vibrato a tad omnipresent and even mildly distracting (as on Karine Polwart's Follow The Heron Home). Doris also employs a modest instrumental accompaniment on a handful of tracks, courtesy of Neil Paterson, Irene Watt, Paul Anderson, Shona Donaldson and producer Stuart Duncan. But the most important factor in the success of the disc is that Doris herself so obviously enjoys singing and communicating the songs to her listeners.

www.myspace.com/dorisrougvie

David Kidman June 2008

www.northernblues.com
www.myspace.com/sugarsmallhouse

David Blue June 2008

Blending dreamy psych-folk and sunshine pop vocal harmonies, this forgotten LP was released in 1970 by Chicago-based duo of Chuck Hollins and David Starr, who subsequently disappeared without trace - a fate which in my opinion they didn't entirely deserve, judging by the music on it. Its flute-led textures and gentle guitar backings sometimes suggest a certain Moody Blues influence, and there are some classically-inspired moments (including a straightforward performance of a movement from a Bach flute sonata), while the duo don't entirely avoid some more discomforting encounters (Hard-Headed Women has more than its share of grit and discordant orchestration), and Home? has some attractive Plant-like vocal work and stinging pre-prog organ and guitar. A small number of extra musicians (guitar, bass, percussion) are employed at times, but textures remain generally light and airy and the songs tend to float in and out of consciousness in a consistent haze rather than grabbing one's attention and holding onto it. Some songs hit the mark more than others, inevitably: John Hurt is a gentle McTell-like reminiscence-cum-tribute, and the aforementioned Hard-Headed Women generates real excitement through battering timps battling it out with the drumkit, brass and organ. Elsewhere, the tintinnabulation of hippie bells isn't exactly all-pervasive, but in the end this is still quite a trippy album, and for that reason may not always engage the listener ideally at times. It also contains one of those annoying sound-effects collages that most albums of the time seemed to insist upon including. Those observations notwithstanding, Sidewalks Talking nevertheless has a certain appeal outwith the halcyon cloisters of idealised memory, and much of it is worth occasional exhumation.

www.soundlinkmusic.com

David Kidman June 2008

With a string of critically acclaimed literate, intelligent, melodic and passionately delivered albums under her belt, it’s hard to understand why Gilmore’s still not the international star her talent warrants. However, it’s hard to see how even the most cloth-eared Katie Melua devotee could fail to be blown away by what may well be her career masterpiece. Which, given the quality of its pred0ecessor, Harpo’s Ghost, is saying something.

Having recently entered the realms of motherhood, the album’s steeped in a new, deeper maturity, rich in dark emotions and headily textured melodies and arrangements. A fine grained blend of social comment and refletive emotion, she herself has called it 'the lovechild of whisky and heartache', and her most personal album yet. It’s intoxicating stuff, both deceptively beguiling and subtly insidious. Dave McCabe from the Zutons lends his vocals to the wonderfully wearied, malt and woodsmoke folk of opening track Old Soul, but then Black Letter heads away from what might be seen as typical Gilmore into more Zep blues-folk smouldering, a crooning chorus framed by nerve-scratching strings scraped edginess that echo the experience of depression from which it and much of the album was forged.

It’s a mood to which she returns in a lower register for the spare, percussive rumbling Roll On and its turmoil of love, rejection and resentment while, making use of cutlery, grill pan and chimney hood, The Wrong Side is a clattery burlesque carnival of souls parade down the slopes of self-loathing that surely tips the nod to Tom Waits at his most carny.

Elsewhere, her roots are teased out to understated but seductive effect. A duet with Erin McKeown. the seven minute Cohenesque Dance In New York is a pizzicato slow waltzing of defiance and the refusal to be constrained by compromises imposed by others, And You Shall Know No Other God But Me a folk spiritual about shaking off dependencies delivered in fever-sick hushed and husked voice accompanied by a simple, repetitive spooked dobro phrase.

If the jaunty Rosie contemplates packing bags and running away, leaving behind hairbrush, red shoes and ‘a little boy who looks like you’, the album’s prevailing note is one of survival and catharsis. It may be, as the rolling acoustic blues says, a Slow Journey but both the strummed Breathe with its gathering melodic force and the mandolin led revivalist folk gospel jugband When I Get Back To Shore have faith that the end is within grasp. She even bursts into a laugh mid way through the latter.

There are times when Gilmore’s now well seasoned voice conjures thoughts of Joan Baez, so it seems fitting that the legend herself duets on the closing (save for the bonus folksy cover of You Spin Me Right Round) diamond, The Lower Road which, with fiddle by Steve Wickham from the Waterboys, brings together the personal and political in images of conflict both on foreign shores and deep within, and the faith in endurance. A song that could have come from Baez’s own treasure trove, it sends a shiver down the spine. But then, that’s something Thea’s been doing since she first started singing.

www.theagilmore.net
www.myspace.com/theagilmore

Mike Davies June 2008

Strip Polyphonic Spree down to its essentials, soak in a brew of church music, Brian Wilson, trad British folk, backwoods Americana and the essence of Tim Buckley and you’ll get a hint of what this Seattle quintet refer to their 'baroque harmonic pop jams'. They’re the sound of pine angels washed in morning rain, sometimes beating wings to soaring uptempo melodies like Ragged Wood or Quiet Houses at others, as on the spooked dreamscape stillness of Meadowlarks or the leafy acoustic strummed simplicity of Tiger Mountain Peasant Song, bathing in melancholia. Interestingly, listening to both the closing stripped down Oliver James and the choral sounding Blue Ridge Mountains, you’ll hear distinct Chinese and Japanese influences at work, more tea gardens than mountain cabins. It’s an unlikely exotic touch that adds further lustre to this already beguiling collection.

www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes

Mike Davies June 2008

If ever reminded were needed as to why Harris is regarded as the queen of country music, then all that needs be done is to slip this into the CD player. Her second release for Nonesuch and the follow up to Stumble Into Grace, sees the 61 year old reunite with ex-husband Brian Aherne, the producer with whom she made her first 11 albums. Understandably, it’s a reflective work, the songs, original and self-penned, concerned with the passing of time, mortality, faith, and loss, taking stock but still looking forward.

Her song choices are as keen as ever, bringing attention to overlooked and underexposed writers or more obscure numbers by better known names. Of the former, Jack Wesley Routh provides the album’s bookends with Shores of White Sand and Beyond the Great Divide. The opening track, a song about fortitude in the face of broken hopes, uses the original drum tracks by the late Keith Knudsen as featured on the version recorded back in 192 by Karen Brooks. Brooks even revisited her own past to provide background vocals. The second Routh song, with John Starling on harmonies, is a lovely old country spiritual, the sort of thing cowboys sang out on the prairies.

Among the familiar names, you’ll find Merle Haggard’s wistful drowning ballad Kern River, Patty Griffin’s hushed and starlit Moon Song with Mary Ann Kennedy on mandolin and Phil Maderia providing keening accordion, while trucker-poet Mark Germino provides Broken Man’s Lament’s heartrending tale of a woman who found she couldn’t ignore the song in her heart and man who had the world and saw it fall away.

More recognisable covers come with Tracy Chapman’s hymn to keeping pure, All That You Have Is Your Soul, and, now feeling she’s lived long enough to do it justice, Billy Joe Shaver’s weary but resilient Old Five And Dimers Like Me, duetted with Starling for a version that stands shoulder to shoulder with Shaver’s own. As her career testifies, Harris is no slouch when it comes to penning her own classics and she’s come up trumps here. Both Hold On and Take That Ride, a song about talking to God and facing up to dying, are respectable additions to her canon, but it’s the three others that truly shine.

Both co-written with and featuring Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Sailing Round The Room is a remarkable joy-infused song about the spirit leaving the body and becoming one with the universe while How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower is a touching tribute to June Carter Cash that shimmers with the same beauty of those early Emmylou albums.

But, to these ears at least, the album’s finest moment comes with Gold which, featuring Dolly Parton on distinctive harmonies, is a heartbreaking, lump in the throat broken love song of a woman whose best was never good enough. When she sings "I could come trailing clouds of glory but you saw nothing to behold, no matter how bright I glittered, baby, I could never be gold,’ there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to musical heaven is clearly built on sublime ones.

www.emmylouharris.com

Mike Davies June 2008

The Tipperary singer-songwriter’s debut album, Night On My Side, earned a Mercury Music Prize nomination and saw her being compared to the likes of Beth Orton and Joni Mitchell. However, come the equally fine follow up, The Roads Don’t Love You, the fickle nature of the business had seen new names take their place in the next big thing spotlight and, outside of Ireland where she picked up a Best Irish Female Artist award, the album slipped past almost unnoticed. Now comes her third, released on her own label and a pretty even balance of the stripped down acoustic and more fleshed out, rockier tracks, but all again sharp with the emotional depth and observations of her past output.

Of the uptempo material, Out Of Our Hands is the most obviously direct though In Over My Head is a shimmering wall of sound that at times feels almost shoegazey and Don’t Forget is scuffed beats pop.

However, it’s the quieter moments that are the most persuasive; a gently rippling Chasing Dragons (a break up song with a drugs crux?) where her whispery delivery sounds incredibly strung out and world weary, At Constant Speed’s six minute simple synth pulsing reflections on an ended relationship and, showing offer guitar dexterity, the sun-kissed dreamy haze of This Is What You Do where she sings in a languid, husky whisper that’s both sensual and sad. It’s not going to bring a return to the attention she received first time out, but those who’ve kept the faith will find no disappointments.

www.gemmahayes.com
www.myspace.com/gemmahayes

Mike Davies June 2008

Part of the Fence Collective, the Brighton duos’ third album again tips the hat to Pete Lush and Miss Ping’s love of Nick Drake with music that conjures images of summer meadows, leafy woods, clear streams and lazing on hay bales. They get unexpectedly poppy on a veritably jaunty Nothing Means A Thing, but otherwise the mood’s kept tranquil and warmly melancholic, the spare acoustic guitar and sepia hued vocals lightly brushed with minimal percussion, the occasional harmonica or lonesome piano and, as on You Know, murmurs of electronica. Love lost, clung to or sure to end provide the heart of Lush’s songs, As You Were Ending, Once Were, Nothing Is Lost and Where Do We Go flowing with a gentle intimacy like prayers dancing in the rays of sun skittering between church pews.

www.thingsinherds.co.uk

Mike Davies June 2008

If you’ve not already got copies of Gauthier’s first three albums, then you’ll be finding them harder to track down. Seems they’re no longer going to be available, hence this compilation which gathers the best under one CD roof. There’s only two taken from debut album Dixie Chicken, the Prine-like Goddamn HIV and the bluegrassing Ways of the World, though you do get a previously unissued live version of I Don’t Know Nothing about Love.

However, it was Drag Queens And Limousines and Filth And Fire that really produced the best of her early work with their tales of actors, barflies, writers, drunks, junkies, down and outs, suicides, poets and nuns.

Thus here’s the Kristofferson like Long Way To Fall, Burnin' Sugar Cane’s snapshot of her birthplace that evokes the first Band album, Karla Faye’s story of heroin junkie murderer Karla Faye Tucker, the sinners seeking absolution at the Camelot Motel, Our Lady Of The Shooting Stars desperate hope for salvation, the matter of fact autobiographical I Drink and Christmas In Paradise’s poignant tale of the homeless Davey stealing a tree to bring a little cheer to the wreckage of his life. A previously unavailable live version of I An’t Go No Home, provides the second bonus. In an ideal world you’d already have the complete albums, but for latecomers this is a perfect place to start playing catch up.

www.marygauthier.com

Mike Davies June 2008

Named for a pub in Buckinghamshire set up in the late 1800s by a Mr Pink and Miss Lillie rather than a jokey play on old Scaffold hit Lily The Pink, Thom's sophomore album is a far stronger, more focused affair than her debut, proving that I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker was no isolated flash of brilliance.

There's a lot more country and roots influence this time round, opening track, Devil's Beat, all handclappy gospel pop while Shape I'm In, the skirt swinging Saturday Night, a rowdy chugging boogie Remote Control Me and I'm A Human Being wouldn't be out of a place at a beer-swilling Nashville juke joint line dance. She does the big country power ballad well too with Wounded Heart and the excellent, emotion packed The Last Picture House, which uses the closing of an old time cinema as a lament for a lost golden age as it builds from simple acoustic strum to a swelling, orchestra laden show stopper. Thom's had her fair share of sniping, but these songs are ample evidence that she's a writer of note while the unaccompanied intro to Success's Ladder, a tale of getting out of the office drone rat race, show she has the voice to match. Pity about the Joan Jett style cover photo, though.

www.sandithom.co.uk

Mike Davies June 2008

A West Country girl with a mix of Devonian and Irish blood, Marshall’s guitar work’s been compared to that of Stevie Ray Vaughn. That may be overstating things, but she certainly knows how to pick her way round a bluesy slide fretboard. Trading in swampy blues and country rock, her whisky-stripped husky vocals most readily call to mind Janis Joplin and you could easily imagine the legend herself steaming up some bar, slinking her way through the 12 bar blues Red Light or the gutsy blues gospel Stand Up.

The rolling rhythms and guitar picking of Kitchen Table suggest JJ Cale plays a considerable part in Marshall’s influences while slow burn Black Guitar suggests what might be the result of teaming Bonnie Raitt and Led Zep and letting them jam in an everglades moonshine joint. As a writer, the likes of Little Bird and Here Is My Heart are proof that she’s mastered the art of making new material sound like it’s been found in long forgotten vaults and the presence of Hayseed Dixie’s Don and Dale Reno supplying banjo and mandolin various tracks show she’s impressing the right people too. You should be among them.

www.myspace.com/bexmarshall

Mike Davies June 2008

Direct lyrics, simple, catchy air punching melodies with pounding piano, power chord guitar, and rousing singalong choruses, I have a lot of time for Tim Smith, one time singer with punk outfit The Adverts, but in recent years a socially committed protest-folk troubadour in the tradition of The Levellers, Chumbawamba and the better days of Bob Geldof.

Thankfully shedding the production overkill of his last album, joined by Tim Renwick on guitars this is essentially a set of man the barricades power chord folk rock as he attacks consumer culture (Get it Now), climate-change denial (It’s Warming Up, Clone Town), the self-serving moral bankruptcy of government (See-Through), blind conformity (Together Alone), social collapse (Weak Glue), control through a nanny state climate of fear (In The Arms of My Enemy) and the need to take a stand (Trojan Horse). The world could do with a few more of his kind.

www.bosstuneage.com

Mike Davies June 2008

Building a following on the New York folk scene, identical twins Sarah and Claire talk of such influences as Gillian Welch, Allison Krauss and Cat Power but if you’re looking for a quick pigeonhole then perhaps a jazzier Be Good Tanyas with a dash of vaudeville would do the trick.

They’re certainly steeped in old school Americana with gospel and blues also filtering into their sound while The Kitchen Song, where voices entwine with Sarah’s cello and Claire’s fiddle, has a definite classical influence. Indeed, the brief instrumental Pick On Piece Reprise is pure chamber music. At the same time, You’re Right is out there in Fleetwood Mac rock territory with its punchy electric guitar.

The harmonies are as bright as the melodies are generally playful, bouncy on the opening jazzy blues On The Road, Make It Last and a knee slapping Digging For Gold with what could easily be spoons percussion. They do laid back warmth just as easily, Williamsburgh Bridge made for listening to while gazing up at night skies, World With No Boundaries a lovely honeyed slouch and I Have Fallen the sound of unadorned heartache. And if they’re playful, then the closing throwaway Porker Song’s vegetarian ditty shows they can make a point while smiling too.

www.thebowmansmusic.com

Mike Davies June 2008

With twangy guitar and a voice of similar timbre to Steve Forbert or, on the moving Chapin-esque St Peter, higher pitched Springsteen, the Canadian singer-songwriter has clearly made some useful friends. Guesting here you’ll find Ron Sexsmith adding vocals to piano ballad A Penny for the Band, Oh Susanna singing on the hymnal slow march San Sebastian, and Hawksley Workman doing back-ups for Alberta Breeze’s sparse slow building, emotionally exposed love song to a city, a woman and a time gone past.

Not that he needs propping up, Rutledge is patently a potent talent in his own right, crafting understated but memorably melodic songs stained with bruised, battered but unbowed emotions.

The Wire may slightly overload matters with its horn arrangements, but the moment his voice takes back control you surrender to the song, and if This Too Will Pass has you on your knees with its tender acknowledgement of love and devotion then, with its steady drum beat, chiming guitars and a melody that swells from shanty to anthem, Greenwich Time will bring you to your feet in exultation. ‘The stern is yours, the mast is mine’, he sings. Run up the flag then, and we’ll all salute.

www.justinrutledge.com

Mike Davies June 2008

Fronted by Doug Sahm’s son Shawn, this makes no bones about what it is. A straightahead, good time meld of Tex Mex, country, blues, polka boogie and Liverpool beat rock n roll. Had The Beatles ever hooked up with a Texicali accordion player then Bajo Betty might well have been the result, likewise Hippie Girl (My Little Groover) sounds a lot like I Feel Fine with She’s About A Mover organ. There’s no pretension to be anything more than a bunch of guys making music to drink and dance to, getting down and grooving like a border town Chuck Berry partying with Rockpile for Mama’s Out Rockin’, while Comin’ Around, She Would If She Could, Who Don’t Cha and the cover of Roy Head’s Lemme Kiss Ya are the sound of a cantina Status Quo. Order a cold one or several, twist in the lime and enjoy.

www.myspace.com/thetexmexexperience

Mike Davies June 2008

Is it me or are blues players getting younger? Eric Steckel is the latest kid on the block and at the age of 17 he is certainly one of the youngest. However, he is already a bit of a veteran having released his debut album when he was just 11. Feels Like Home opens with Just Walk Away, which has power from the outset. Blues rock with a maturity that belies his years. The eponymous title track is sophisticated Southern style rock and shows that he is an extremely talented and classy guitarist. Southern Skyline is an instrumental that highlights his exceptional technique and he is ably backed by Duane Trucks on drums and contributes Hammond organ himself. I haven't mentioned his voice yet but on the plodding Don't Look Behind it demands to have the attention taken away from the guitar. The voice will grow as he gets older but the signs are there that he came become a top class all rounder.

He shows that he is as adept on dobro as he is on electric guitar on Smiling Liar and his solo performance on Robert Johnson's C'mon In My Kitchen is raw and exciting. Something Better is a return to the sophisticated rock of earlier on - a very, very strong performance. From Time To Time is a shuffling blues and is as good as anything in the genre at the moment. Is he a possible successor to Stevie Ray Vaughan? He has every chance. When Ignorance Turns To Bliss is an atmospheric acoustic based blues ballad and the predominately instrumental The Ghetto, led by Hammond organ, is an excellent jazzy offering. These tracks serve to confirm his excellence. He shows he can play acoustic guitar too on the closing track, Tuscany. This is an instrumental that calls up memories of days in the sunshine but seems a strange way to end such a powerful album. I'm not complaining, though. If you like your guitar licks then check out Eric Steckel, the baby-faced blues assassin.

www.ericsteckel.com

David Blue June 2008

With the re-formed original Pentangle shortly to be touring again for a limited period, this may not seem to be the most appropriate time to revisit last summer's reissue of the final two albums from the late-period, reconstituted (1984-94) era of the band - but what the hell, they deserve reappraisal, for they've often inevitably been overlooked, overshadowed by the seminal early records. During the group's final incarnation, lasting from 1989 till 1994, original members Jacqui McShee and Bert Jansch were joined by guitarist Peter Kirtley (ex-Alan Price and Radiator), bassist Nigel Portman-Smith (Magna Carta) and stalwart folk-rock drummer Gerry Conway, and their combined sound was both distinctive and stylish - and not lacking in energy or inventiveness with regard to approaching their chosen material. One More Road was the second release by that lineup (the less satisfactory first, Think Of Tomorrow, still awaits reissue I believe); recorded at a residential studio, the sessions were both relaxed and productive, and the eventual product was both exciting and satisfying. Some numbers (like Travelling Solo and the relatively unremarkable title track) embodied a slightly rockier feel, and Peter's composition Endless Sky was bordering on country-Americana, but all the while the characteristically light and airy texture of classic Pentangle was effortlessly retained in the sensibly creative arrangements. Notable among these were the spirited new treatment of the traditional Oxford City (with some especially piquant electric guitar work from Peter) and a jig-like syncopated version of High Germany (with former short-term Pentangler Mike Piggott guesting on violin and Paul Brennan on whistle). Bert turned in a really good Lily Of The West, and there was a lovely new extended take on Willie Of Winsbury, while two further compositions - Hey Hey Soldier and Somali - were directly inspired by contemporary news events, the latter's sombre images illogically given a breezy synthy African township setting that doesn't really convince. It might seem an unusually eclectic ragbag of material overall, but in the end it hung together surprisingly well. Live 1994 was the band's swansong: compiled from tapes of the band's German tour of that year, it ranged temporally from early Pentangle repertoire classics like When I Was In My Prime and Bramble Briar (aka Bruton Town), a typically exciting Yarrow and a timely revisit of the perennial Cruel Sister, to a particularly fine syncopated Sally Free And Easy, Bert's solo instrumental Kingfisher (given a beguiling band treatment) and the swinging Kirtley number Meat On The Bone which by then had become a live set favourite. The overall impression given by this live album was of a band who, far from merely trading on past glories, still had plenty to offer, so it was a shame that this was to be the lineup's last record. As far as the present reissue goes, this is in every way a superlative package, up to the usual Hux house standard: it has comprehensive, well-informed booklet notes including band interview commentaries and song lyrics for One More Road, and excellent digitally remastered sound.

www.myspace.com/pentangle

David Kidman June 2008

Hey, d'ya remember Belshazzar's Feast? – the formidably fine duo formed by accordionist Paul Hutchinson and oboist/violinist/singer Paul Sartin back in the mid-90s, which motored on bravely for a good number of years producing no fewer than five albums for WildGoose before drawing to a temporary halt and taking a brief sabbatical principally due to the lads' heavy commitments elsewhere (Mr. H with Hoover The Dog and Okavango, Mr. S with Bellowhead and Faustus). Never ones to let a good opportunity lapse, however, they've somehow managed to shoehorn their masterful partnership back into those already unutterably crowded schedules and hurrah, Belshazzar's Feast (aka The Spice Boys!) are now back on the road. And on the CD player too, I'm glad to see (and hear), with this tasty new culinary offering. It's even more of an appetising menu than usual, for it comes in the form of a main-dish (full-length) studio disc with a complimentary (and complementary) bonus disc containing an “appetiser prepared at a live performance”, all housed in a mouth-watering vol-au-vent of a digipack.

This particular musical partnership was always something rather special, the chemistry between the two musicians very pronounced, and if anything their sabbatical has sharpened those interpersonal responses even more. You might think that with just two instrumental colours the overall sound might get just a little boring after a while; not a bit of it! The sheer variety of available sounds and textures, combined with the brilliant (and at times brilliantly wicked) inventiveness of two players who really know their instruments and their capabilities inside out, makes for a whirlwind listening experience. And that's not considering the breadth of repertoire which they can call on with such ease, from traditional to classical to pre-classical and even world but all interleaved so incredibly naturally (well that's how it sounds!) into one music. Following each delectable twist and turn of a typical album-track tune-set proves to be an art in itself, and yes, I'll virtually guarantee you'll find a fresh nuance or added cheeky, knowing musical cross-reference on each successive playthrough.

I daren't spoil the myriad of scintillating musical surprises you'll encounter in this way, but suffice to say it ain't gonna be Playford or the Penguin Café or trad-arr as you know it, Jim! The many imaginatively arranged and executed instrumental items are punctuated (mostly on the studio set) by a generous number of songs, which Mr Sartin treats in a lively and yet amicably relaxed manner that's both immediate and appealing. At their live gigs, as you'll hear on the bonus disc, Belshazzar's Feast stun their audiences into silent submission with their marvellous musicianship, then roll 'em in the aisles with helpless laughter at their hilarious banter and, er, marvellous musicianship. For these guys possess the rare ability to both inspire and entertain by combining an acute intelligence of approach with superbly witty humour and virtuoso playing. As you'll hear on these discs, in spades; while the sleeve notes alone provide more genuine laughs than a year's supply of TV sitcoms - and they're just as funny on repeat reading too!

The Food Of Love is pretty much essential cuisine I'd say, if you're seeking a night out in good company serenaded by "Hairy Hutch and Suave Sartin", two of the most able musicians you could wish for, ready to respond to your every whim and mood-swing with the most delightfully appropriate music whatever its origin. Yum, it's all quite overwhelmingly good at times: feast don't fail me now - or, as I might well say to the two Pauls: "men, u is too much!"

www.belshazzarsfeast.co.uk

David Kidman June 2008

A most welcome reappearance in the racks for the infrequently-heard 1987 Rhino label debut album from the dependably quirky combo that united four master musicians - our own Richard Thompson, experimental guitarists Fred Frith (of Henry Cow) and Henry Kaiser, and drummer John French (aka Drumbo from Beefheart's Magic Band). The album's 13 tracks encompassed a bewilderingly diverse gamut of musical styles, and showcased compositions by all four band members. Highlights of these were three durable Thompson creations, notably the wonderfully gloomy Drowned Dog Black Night, and the cryptic joint Kaiser/Thompson piece Tir-Nan-Darag. Frith's somewhat frenetic Where's The Money? also hits the mark, and French contributes a contrasted pair of instrumentals - the distinctly Beefheartian Disposable Thoughts and the percussive extravaganza Drumboogie. These were topped up with four even more idiosyncratic covers, ranging from Hai Sai Oji-San (which sounds like it might be a traditional Okinawan song) and a skewed, rather Muppety-sounding Surfin' USA to a workmanlike runthrough of a Willie Dixon number. There are plenty of fine instrumental moments scattered through the disc, with all three guitarists on great form and yes, plenty of ear-bending RT solos (while the more avant-garde techniques and gestures of both Frith and Kaiser are less to the fore in this group context than might have been expected, a factor that may please less adventurous listeners). I recall feeling slightly overwhelmed by the album when it first appeared, and mildly frustrated by its waywardness, but time seems to have given it a certain coherence and this time round my attention only really started to drift during the aforementioned blues cover. So, congratulations to Fledg'ling for licensing this rare album and re-releasing it in an attractive digipack, but double congrats for unearthing 24 minutes' worth of bonus material, in the shape of four tracks recorded live in Berkeley; it doesn't say when, but I'd guess around a year post-album-sessions, for the live material previews Invisible Means, the title track of the foursome's second (1990) record. Two Thompson numbers appear in the live set: Night Comes In and Madness Of Love, and both receive better than reasonable performances, the latter containing an especially well warped RT solo but also being of incidental interest for letting someone other than the song's writer take the lead vocal role.

www.thebeesknees.com

David Kidman June 2008

Another belated discovery! This Canadian (Winnipeg, Manitoba) singer-songwriter (she pronounces her name 'Raw-mee') landed some prestigious award nominations back in 2006 and 2007 in her homeland, but only now, with the overdue release of this album in the UK, can her talent be properly assessed over here. This disc, recorded almost two years ago, follows a 2005 self-released, home-produced EP (which I've not yet heard, but with a humble title like Living Room Sessions it must've been a raw, immediate affair), and it's a studio production by the celebrated Gurf Morlix. And that's where the Lucinda Williams or Mary Gauthier comparisons might start rollin' in…! But in fact, tho' it's easy (and tempting) to find superficial similarities, especially with Gauthier, you'll quickly find that Romi's no clone. The best of her songs are masterfully atmospheric slices of bourbon-soaked broken-heartedness, sure, but she's not (yet) quite as worn down by her experiences. Still, there's a total sincerity of expression in her writing and her singing, and a kindof honest sensuous come-on that draws you into her world right away. The slow-burn delicacy that prefaces the eventual catharsis of Desperately, the simple sweet pain of Angeline, the regretful confusion of Let Me Run and Bible, the laconic Smoke More Than I Drink – these are all brilliant evocations of states of mind; while On The Corner Of Grant And Alice has a storybook poignancy that says much in few words. What really helps Romi get her ideas and feelings across as much as her voice, you could say, are the inspired and judiciously pared-down musical backdrops. There's a great sense of spaciousness to these settings, even tho' the subject-matter and internal mood of the songs is often quite claustrophobic. Even on the faster-paced numbers like Long Way Home the less self-conscious rhythm contributions are all the more telling for their minimalism (you don't always need a persistent drumbeat!). Key players are Dan Walsh (dobro), Gurf himself (guitars) and Chris Carmichael (drums and vocal harmonies), with Scott Nolan (bass), and Jaxon Haldane and Sky Onosson delivering some nice fills too. Perhaps the harder-edged, rockier songs like How I Roll and The Other Dame need to touch a rawer nerve than the polish of their arrangement here allows - but generally the forceful tone of Romi's music comes over just fine, while also letting the songs breathe for themselves.

www.romimayes.com

David Kidman June 2008

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