A to Z Album and Gig Reviews
Fred Eaglesmith - Dusty (AML Records)
'Dusty' is the latest studio release from the prolific Fred Eaglesmith. He's a man who doesn't seem to stand still for long. Recent releases have seen his bluegrass roots shown off as well as the intimacy of his live solo show recorded for bootleg posterity. Now, 'Dusty' starts up with a fairly mournful and harmless title track but the next track finds bells are tinkled, drum machines plod along, strings slip and slide across and it all gets a little like Fred at the controls of an effects machine rather than one of his beloved tractors. On first listen, I have to say that 'Tunnel', 'I 75' and the rest that arrived with this synthesised feel to them had me worried that the old boy had lost the plot. This wasn't helped by the fact that this collection has more than the usual share of sadness - typified by the Mexican inspired 'Carne Del Toro' which closes the record. However, a few listens later and his songs come shining through as strong as ever on this ten track release. Take, for example, the lyric for 'Rainbow' that says' 'what are you supposed to do when your rainbow breaks in two and all your favourite colours went to her'. What wonderful imagery. Or, musically for example, 'Hey Baby' slips along with a sleazy feel and a lovelorn tale of desire that hangs together to perfection. It all goes to prove one of my pet musical points that good songs can be sung and enjoyed in any musical style. Yes, it will no doubt create some consternation amongst his loyal Fredhead fan base but I'm convinced that this guy has a streak of genius and it hasn't deserted him here.
Steve Henderson
Fred J. Eaglesmith - Live Solo 2002 (The Official Bootleg Series Volume 1)
2002 was the year that Fred Eaglesmith decided to tour the world. In fact, to tour the UK not once but twice. This after the guy had steadfastly ignored anywhere outside the US/Canada landmass for many a year. Friends still talk of those gigs and, so, it's fitting that the first official live bootleg from Fred was recorded in 2002.
It's a double CD with both discs turning in well over 75 minutes apiece. Of course, there's plenty of Fred's banter between songs on the usual topics of tractors, girls and.ahem..Flathead noodling. In terms of wacky stage chat, he is to Canadian bluegrass what Vin Garbutt is to British folk except that Fred is extremely prolific on the song-writing front, too. So, quite typically, there are four tracks popping up on this CD that have yet to see the light of day on any other record. 'Tommy and Joe' being quite a classic. There are also a couple more that were hard to track down - 'Steam' is a wonderful paean to the train lovers out there. Not that the topics on this record are exactly what we'd call 'anorak'. The tales of drug busts at the border will split your sides and songs like the wonderful Fred classic, 'Summerlea', will reduce you to tears. Other songs on this collection include 'Rodeo Boy' (written with Rod Picott), 'Cumberland County', 'Big Hair', 'How's Ernie', 'High Heels In The Rain', the list goes on and on. There's nobody quite like Fred and in what better setting to find him than live, solo and acoustic at The Tin Angel in Philadelphia.
Available from www.fredeaglesmith.com and, no doubt, when Fred returns to Europe early in 2005
Steve Henderson
Fred Eaglesmith & The Flying Squirrels - Ralph's Last Show (Signature/Blue Rose Records)
Out of rural Ontario and a farming family of nine kids, leather and bourbon voiced Eaglesmith may not be the best known name in the alt-country singer-songwriter hall of fame, but check back through your Cowboy Junkies and Dar Williams albums and you'll find his credits among the songs. It's been 22 years since he made his recording debut, releasing only a further eight albums (including two live sets) over the course of the next two decades. This, his tenth , is another live double recorded in Santa Cruz with his regular three piece back up of Willie P Bennett on mandolin/harmonica, percussionist Washboard Hank and bass n harmony man Ralph Schipper and afford's an excellent opportunity to get to know his brand of Austin infused, dustbowl trad steeped blue collar country with its rough hewn honest tales of working folk, their loves, their struggles, their dreams and demons.
If you're looking for handy references to persuade you then the most immediate would be John Prine, Guy Clark and Steve Earle but you'll hear Woody, Johnny, Bob, Hank and Waylon in there too. The material here spans some six years embracing both sadness and joy, hope and loss, ranging from the waltzing barroom laments Crazier and Livin' Out On The Road to Carmelita's account of migrants workers and Alcohol & Pills, a cautionary tale of the downside of fame that name checks Elvis, Gram, Janis and Hank, liberally peppered with such offbeat, often humour laced love songs as Spookin' The Horses, May/September wild and crazy romance Lucille, live favourite White Trash and How's Ernie? in which he admits to missing his ex's dad more than her. File under unmissable, but be prepared to damage your back account tracking down those nine other albums once you've had the experience.
Mike Davies
Talk about entertainment value, Canadian Mr Eaglesmith and his Flying Squirrels have got it in spades. His double 'live' album of working class, trailer-living, snapshot numbers don't just cruise down the highway - this is fast and furious, pedal-to-the metal, high-string-twangy mandolin and Dobro rich country/roots music with a little 'punk' thrown in. Ralph's Last Show captures Fred & Squirrels in all their glorious hilarity.
He's like a West Texas John Prine with a rough-grade sandpaper snarl. Humorous and well-crafted songs tell darkly-wicked stories of guns, Big Hair, white trash, road songs, horses, alcohol and pills, migrant workers, dogs, fathers-in-law, relationships gone wrong, but mostly about heavy metal machinery - cars and trains are the core of his repertoire, either on their own or as a subtext to his others songs. This is not surprising for someone who covers thousands of miles on the road with his band - reportedly 230 gigs last year.
He's out on tour, solo acoustic, in the UK in February. One not to be missed even without the band.
Sue Cavendish
This new CD is Ronnie's fourth for Stony Plain (two solos and one duo album with Duke Robillard, whom Ronnie replaced in the legendary Roomful Of Blues band). The blues-guitarist-par-excellence gets the chance to stretch out his chops in real style here, on a brilliant (and excellent-value) 78-minute all-instrumental set recorded live in the studio in April last year, on which Ronnie was backed by long-time members of The Broadcasters Dave Limina, Jim Mouradian and Lorne Entress (with appearances by guests Michael "Mudcat" Ward and Nick Adams). It's been said that Ronnie is one of that select category of blues guitarists who's forcefully asserted the guitar as featured vocalist in a band - and I really couldn't put it better. The Hope Radio set runs the gamut from the blistering swagger of the first section of Wolf Dance and the note-bending tonal onslaughts of the blinding organ-backed slow-drag Blues For Otis Rush and the funky-steppin' Eddie's Gospel Groove to the beautifully controlled dynamics and spellbinding repose of I Am With You and Blues For The Homeless (in particular) and the powerful phrasing of Kay My Dear, with just a lone foray onto acoustic for the thoughtfully-paced, almost spiritually reverent Katrine Blues. Many of these compositions - all Ronnie's own, by the way - are given gloriously extended treatments, but these don't outstay their welcome for a single second (and hell, it takes a lot for me to be truly captivated by a blues workout these days... I didn't expect to be laying other discs aside to play this one right through in one sitting, but it's that compelling!). Whatever the mode tho', it's the sheer soulfulness of Ronnie's playing that's paramount; while sure, there's a strong influence from Ronnie's friend Otis Rush (and Ronnie even titles one of his pieces for him), but Ronnie's own playing has an individual combination of energy and sensitivity, a deep intensity - and emotionality - that's in a class of its own, not least through the intelligent control and shaping of the melodic lines. Thanks, Ronnie, for sharing your magic with us.
David Kidman January 2008
25-year-old son of legendary singer/songwriter Steve Earle, Justin Townes engenders high expectations without singing or playing a note, such is the way the biz works, but his debut album The Good Life, while possessing some ragged edges, is no hasty, ill-thought-out trade-in. Lineage apart, JT's musical pedigree is decidedly not illustrious, having (mis)spent his youth first in bluegrass/ragtime combo The Swindlers and then in the altogether louder, more rocking outfit The Distributors; however, subsequent to those dubious pursuits JT got down to serious songwriting, taking folks like his dad's hero Townes Van Zandt (after whom he'd been middle-named) as primary inspiration. In truth, much of JT's music sounds less directly like that inspiration than you might expect: the scratchy barrelhouse chugalong album opener Hard Livin' is more like primitive lo-fi alt-country, for instance. Two of the best tracks, Turn Out My Lights and Who Am I To Say, both fine, tender acoustic ballads, are probably the closest to the world of TvZ. Elsewhere there's the forlorn resignation of Faraway In Another Town, some lazy barroom heartbreak Hank-style (Lonesome And You), honky-tonk (The Good Life), lonesome folksy balladry (Lone Pine Hill), bouncy redneck swing (What Do You Do When You're Lonesome), and a curious quasi-Hawaiian shuffling jugband number (Ain't Glad I'm Leavin') - all grist to the mill of JT's special take on his country roots, on which he invariably sounds significantly older than his years. JT's all-star supporting musos include longtime cohort Cory Younts on banjo and mandolin, pedal steel player Pete Finney, bassist Bryn Davies, drummer Bryan Owings, keyboardist Skylar Wilson and fiddle player Josh Hedley. The one real fault of JT's characterful debut is that it's a criminally short record, over in almost no time; even playing it over again leaves a feeling of being shortchanged.
David Kidman March 2008
Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart - Never Gonna Let You Go (Southbound)
It's not all quite as sunshine in the lyrics with songs of loss of frustration lurking between the romance and let your hair down numbers, the closing The Note an aching piano ballad about a wife left behind and a song likely to leave the hairs on the back of your neck standing. It also comes in a special edition with rough demos of ten of the songs, simple voice and guitar acoustic recordings that not only provide the blueprints for the fuller versions, but also serve as a pretty good idea of what shape they take live.
Mike Davies
After two whole albums on which Stacey has developed her all-round talents with the aid of that darned fine acoustic picker Mark, it made sense to crystallise the cumulative achievement thus far by releasing a live set. This double CD (23 songs plus 13 intros) is culled from the very best of around 40-50 concerts at a variety of venues large and small, and really does what it claims - to present the very essence of the two performers. As well as the high quality of the songs themselves (mostly Stacey's own, with a handful by Mark), the chemistry between Stacey and Mark is palpable - maybe not quite as jaw-droppingly, atmospherically intense as that between Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, say, but very real all the same and bringing the various elements of their performance together in a most compelling way.
I don't think Stacey has ever sounded better vocally than here, good though her two solo albums were - there's less of the chirpy little-gearle protegée and more of the mature young country woman; her singing, while not losing its attractively youthful timbre, now exhibits a higher level of soulful assurance that comes with the energy and immediacy of the live performance and the increased familiarity with the material over a period of time. Recommended.
David Kidman
Recorded at the city's legendary Electric Lady Studios, this new album brings Steve full circle from the Guitar Town which he first wrote about 20 years ago. Tennessee Blues (not a blues exactly) is his road-farewell to Nashville, after which the musical idiom takes on more of the character of a slightly country version of hip-hop (Down Here Below), with increased use of computer beats behind the swingin' banjos and other acoustic instruments. Satellite Radio is a scratchy paean to everybody's late-night saviour, then City Of Immigrants brings in Brazilian combo Forro In The Dark for a taste of the vitality of forro music.
In the tracks that follow there's tender romanticism aplenty, in Days Aren't Long Enough (a thoughtful duet with his wife Allison Moorer), Sparkle And Shine with its simple, almost nursery-rhyme sentiments and the deeper pleading of Come Home To Me. Unusually for Steve, most of the demo work and basic tracks for this album were started on home computer equipment, only at a much later stage adding the many guitars and mandolin, bouzouki, harmonium etc. (all of which Steve played himself); this change in recording practice, although for much of the time imparting a hard contemporary edge to the rhythms, doesn't significantly detract from the gutsy, rootsy feel or those qualities within Steve's writing, and his responses and commentaries can still hit hard: the fiery Oxycontin Blues and the powerful Red Is The Color, for instance, are two of the set's strongest cuts, another being Steve's Hammer, a singalong anthem "for Pete" (Seeger) that feels more resigned than its punchy, defiant backbeat might imply. The album's final track (which to my mind doesn't quite fit with the rest) is Steve's commercially-savvy take on Tom Waits' Way Down In The Hole, which is being used as a theme song for the TV show The Wire in which Steve plays a recurring character…
Ardent fans of Steve's more politically-charged material may form the opinion that this latest set is a "soft option" response to relocating to NYC, but it's still a satisfying enough product to be going on with and I wouldn't want to be without it.
www.steveearle.com
www.myspace.com/steveearlemusic
David Kidman November 2007
One man, a guitar, a harmonica, some songs. Not a bad recipe. It's served well, from Hank and Woody through Bob, Billy and Bruce, and Steve Earle is hewn from the same motherlode with folk and country inflections, a twang to the voice and songs that stick between the ribs.
You might feel he's a bit casual with Devil's Right Hand, feeling obliged to include but getting it out of the way with little fuss or involvement, but it's the only track here where you don't feel he's putting body and soul into the song and performance. Even the throwaway Condi Condi has a sting.
Although the set reaches back to Copperhead Road (and includes the title track), the blues picking CCMK and South Nashville Blues hail from I Feel Alright, his Del McCoury collaboration is repped by Dixieland and The Mountain, and Ellis Unit One marks a welcome outing for his Springsteenesque Dead Man Walking soundtrack contribution, the emphasis is primarily on his more recent, what might be called political protest albums.
Thus you'll find the set bookended by Jerusalem and Christmas In Washington, sandwiching between them Rich Man's War, The Revolution Starts Now, and Warrior (complete with a biting spoken intro) while also plucked from Jerusalem is the brilliantly desperate tale of economic hardship and frustration What's A Simple Man To Do that comes straight from the heart of blue collar America.
The voice wavers here and there, but the fire rarely does, making for a solid contribution to any Earle collection and a reminder of what a potent live performer he can be. A DVD of the concert is due in August.
Mike Davies, July 2006
Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now (Artemis)
In a way it's a shame that Steve Earle has to add political activist to his CV. It means that the focus will be on this album's politics more than it will be on the fact that it's a great rock n roll album. But that's the way it is and just be thankful there are people like him around.
I've never understood people who complain about music being political. It's ALWAYS been political, from Woody Guthrie to Dylan and beyond, music has been a force for change.
As you would expect, this is a harsh and uncompromising album, Earle doesn't mess about with niceties, the message is simple and direct. The mood is 'lightened' a little by Comin, Around in the company of Emmylou Harris and the ballad I thought You Should Know. Timely reminders of just how good a writer and singer Earle is.
But it's F the CC, Condi, Condi, Home To Houston and Rich Man's War that will, quite rightly, cause a stir. They are meant to stimulate and polarize, they will enrage and delight in equal measure. On The Revolution Starts Now there is no fence to sit on, only battle lines.
But what you get from listening to Steve Earle is honesty, integrity and a passionate belief that one man can effect change. Let's all pray that the world has changed sufficiently that the next time he releases an album, we can all concentrate on a brilliant musician making wonderful music.
Michael Mee
Steve Earle - Live From Austin (New West)
Another live album, so soon after All American Boy, you ask? Well, yes, but... Part of the new series from the label (others in the first wave include The Flatlanders and Robert Earl Keene), this was recorded way back on Sept 12 '86 for the Austin City Limits TV show. The transmitted version was just half an hour, but the albums will feature the full 60 minute concerts. For Earle (who in the publishing credits back then went by Stephen F Earle), this was his first appearance on the show, coming on the back of his Guitar Town official debut album, long before he was hit by addiction and bad health.
Backed by the five piece Dukes, Mike McAdam having joined on guitar after the release of the album, that early fire is well stoked here, his blue collar raised and rocking as he ploughs through tracks from both the debut and material that would surface the following year on Exit O, plus a cover of Springsteen's State Trooper completes the set, and the song that would prove his signature tune and albatross for some years to come, The Devil's Right Hand.
Over the years, much of the material featured in the show would drop out of his repertoire, so it's good to be able to relive the likes of Sweet Little '66, The Week of Living Dangerously , I Love You Too Much and Goodbye's All We've Got Left alongside more durable numbers as Guitar Town, Good Ol Boy, Faithless Heart and My Old Friend The Blues, a reminder that from the moment he first woke up Nashville, Earle was a renegade country boy right down to his toes.
www.newwestrecords.com
www.steveearle.com
Mike Davies
Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now (Artemis)
If nothing else, George W Bush has done wonders for Earle's career, spurring him to some of the sharpest political songs he's written. Following Jerusalem with its story of American taliban John Walker's Blues and the live album All American Boy, recorded on tour during the Iraq war, now comes this even more direct jab at his nation's rulers and their policies, bookended by two versions of the handclaps and hand-grenades title track.
Highly evocative of Jim Morrison at his declamatory best on The End, Warrior finds a universal soldier mourning that there are no more 'honorable frays to join' but that they must remain dutiful and die for "the cruel consequences of your deceit."
In more typical Earle form, Home To Houston is a jokey swagger about a trucker who's gone to Basra to make a buck and is now so desperate to get home he's ready to promise God he'll give up his trucking ways, The Gringo's Tale is a gruffly growled reflection of a fugitive secret ops agent who got sick of the job, Condi, Condi is a tongue in cheek calypso about wanting to bed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice while F The CC is a fairly direct Stonesy guitar rocking attack on the Federal Communications Commission and America's revised democracy where criticising POTUS is regarded as tantamount to treason.
He's even handed too, well aware of the lot of the poor on both sides when it comes to being cannon fodder, the quietly chiming Rich Man's War drawing parallels between tattooed Bobby in Kandahar because there's bills to pay back home and Ali from Gaza who, reared amid tanks, "wrapped himself in death and praised Allah" when he was turned into a terrorist. It's not all agitprop, more intimate wounds and bruises can be found on slow chugging Emmylou duet Comin' Around, the lonesome desire in waiting of I Thought You Should Know while, striking a welcome note of optimism amid the weariness and cynicism, the ringing faint hope burrowing up from The Seeker.
Unlikely to make Earle any more popular among those who wanted him to be strung up for his recent serenades to his country, it's an album firmly of its times but one assured to last well beyond them. Be interesting to see what he does if Kerry gets in though.
Mike Davies
Steve Earle - Just An American Boy (Artemis)
A double live CD that'll also get released as a DVD, this was recorded on the tour that followed Jerusalem, the album that saw Earle coming in for considerable stick over the song John Walker's Blues which some regarded as backstabbing unpatriotic tribute to the American Taliban convert. That the tour happened to coincide with the war on Iraq and saw Earle singing not only that but also such politically angry numbers as the Stonesy America V 6.0, Ashes To Ashes and Conspiracy Theory, not to mention the anti-death penalty two fister Over Yonder and Billy Austin did little to persuade detractors that he wasn't some left wing radical intent on bringing down government and nation. However, it's fair to say that judging by the audience response to his furiously strident numbers, he's the one more in tune with thinking Americans than his critics.
Politics aside, the album covers all of the Earle bases, the guitar slinging rocking country of Copperhead Road and Guitar Town, the spare acoustic folk of Billy Austin, the old school blues picking of South Nashville Blues, Jerusalem's Dylanesque harp blowing protest folk and, with mandolin wizard Tim O'Brien sitting in, the bluegrass era represented by Hometown Blues, The Mountain and Harlan Man. He even ends the album passing the torch to a new generation as no less talented son Justin takes over for his own Time You Waste.
Before launching into an appropriate cover of Nick Lowe's What's So funny About Peace, Love and Understanding. Earle makes his position clear as he tells his audience that even if they disagree with the war they should have respect for those fighting it and their families, but also sends out the message that one of the principles upon which democracy is founded is the right to be able to question the actions of its government. Which is probably why one of the best things here is the introduction to Christmas In Washington were he says that what America needs is heroes, heroes like Baez and Guthrie but also George Ryan who in his last hours as Governor of Illinois commuted his State's death sentences because he looked at his conscience and found it wanting.
Live albums inevitably tend to be mementoes for the faithful rather than anything to convert newcomers, but it's hard to imagine anyone hearing this and not being persuaded that Earle is an artist you want to hear more of, both as a performer and proudly American a voice of dissent. Born in the USA, he's the alt-country Bruce Springsteen.
Mike Davies
Describing it as his most Old Testament album yet, this is unlikely to endear leftist dissenter Earle to those fired up with kick ass patriotism after 9/11 and yet it is, he insists, the most pro-American album he's ever made.
The controversy begins from the get go with Ashes To Ashes, an apocalyptic Last Judgement (or more accurately Judgements) number in which the image of death raining down from the sky and the line 'every tower ever built tumbles' will be seen (incorrectly) as reference to the World Trade Centre tragedy and which includes the line "God stood and saw it was good and said ashes to ashes and dust to dust." From here it's into the equally musically muscular Amerika v.6.0 (a talking rap blues that calls to mind Sympathy For The Devil) that paints a suitably cynical portrait of a contemporary US of A where you're only as equal as you can afford, which in terms rolls into Conspiracy Theory, a Prince-like strut that would do Oliver Stone proud. Then we get to the one that's caused the major furore, John Walker's Blues, a brooding narrative from the point of view of the Marin County teenager who disillusioned with his country's MTV culture and seeking something in which to believe converted to Islam and joined the Taliban. It takes no moral stance, it just is. That it ends with a quote from the Qu'ran merely confirms its treasonous nature as far as Earle's detractors are concerned.
After this, things necessarily ease up as Earle hits a TexMex vibe for The Kind, 'bout a fella with a crazy dream' and the comforting nature of simple songs, stories and pictures (do we detect acertain irony in its positioning?) and What's A Simple Man To Do?, though its story of a Mexican busted for selling drugs across after losing his job is hardly a big up for the American Dream.
So it's back to the gloom then with a scratchy spooked bluegrass The Truth pointing its finger at the prison system and what it breeds, the girl running away from home in swaggering rocker Go Amanda (co-written with undoubted fellow Commie Sheryl Crow), twangy Emmylou duet I Remember You with its I'm all right now reflections on an old romance (relatively cheery by comparison), and the cranked up Dylanesque nasal whine of the broken man looking to hide in the Shadowland before finally wailing harmonica leads us back to the end of days theme on which the album opened for the title track. But while (in a nod to the Middle East crisis) he tells how 'death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood', he ends on the same note of defiant optimism that's characterised America in the past year. But not its manifestation in patriotic gung ho militarism, rather a belief that "one fine day all the children of Abraham will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem' and we can all "wash all this blood from our hands and all this hatred from our souls."
As a singer-songwriter's response to 9/11 and the state of the world, this stands right up there with Springsteen's The Rising.
Mike Davies
Steve Earle explains, "these are not outtakes. They are, rather, stray tracks that I am very proud of and that are either unreleased or underexposed." So what do you think you gonna get? In all it's diversity the CD's actually surprisingly cohesive - this collection of 13 songs, with sleeve notes annotated by Earle, hang together remarkably well with one gem following another.
There are original Earle songs, songs from soundtracks, instrumentals (omitted from Transcendental Blues and regretted by Earle) and covers drawn from the 60s to the 90s. Earle delivers a rich tapestry of country twang, reggae, celtic and american folk - and rock - including (in no particular order here) a dirty electric cover of Breed by Kurt Cobain; The Chambers Brothers 1968 'trippy' gospel Time Has Come Today with Sheryl Crow adding vocals in LA (Earle recorded the track in Nashville); Lowell George's much covered (but always room for one more) Willin'; Bob Dylan's My Back Pages more Earle than Byrds; and Gram Parson & Chris Hillman's My Uncle. Then there's the powerful and emotion-packed Ellis Unit One with the Fairfield Four (not the solo original which appeared on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack), and Me and the Eagle (from The Horse Whisperer). Other delights are Earle's own (instrumental) Sarah's Angel with the Bluegrass Dukes (with Tom O'Brien), and the reggae Johnny Too Bad with the V-Roys.
All in all an album which demonstrates Earle's enduring talents, breadth of interests and influences and his ability to move masterfully through a wide variety of roots and rocking material which would trip up many of his peers. It's also a cracking good album. It's June but if this was December, Sidetracks would end up in a good many of my friends' stockings.
Sue Cavendish
What it says on the label, the three singer-songwriters recorded live and acoustic at Nashville's Bluebird cafe, Sept 13, 1995 in a benefit organised by Susanna Clark for the, er, Interfaith Dental Clinic. Sadly they don't get together to join voices for a number, but the individual contributions are just fine. Clark opens proceeding with Baby Took A Limo To Memphis, which sounds suspiciously like it borrowed some tune from Donovan's Mellow Yellow, and with the arguable exception of Randall Knife, written to honour his late father, the rest of his selections equally come from the lesser known pages of his repertoire. So that'll be Dublin Blues and Immigrant Eyes (on which his wife duets), a couple of storysong gems that have been unjustly overlooked.
Earle's songlist hits more familiar notes with a resigned My Old Friend The Blues, Valentine's Day (dedicated to his wife on the second anniversary of their remarriage), I Ain't Ever Satisfied (harmonica rampant), Tom Ames' Prayer and his breakthrough hit Copperhead Road while there's a nice touch of musical memorabilia with Mercenary Blues, a song he wrote while working at the local pizza parlour, as recounted in the highly amusing intro.
But inevitably it's the late Van Zandt that makes this the collector's must, his cracked but warm nicotined voice on excellent (emotionally if not technically) form as he works his way through Tecumseh Valley, A Song For, Ain't Leavin' Your Love, Katie Bell and, of course, the immortal Pancho And Lefty. What makes this even more of a delight though is the chat, Van Zandt in particularly amusing mood recalling being commissioned to write a lullaby on the intro to Katie Bell and his rambling story of a gold tooth, lost bet and improvised dental work. Now there was a song he should have written!
Mike Davies
A native of Taylor, South Carolina, Angela actually spent some years making a name for herself in the West Coast country scene, all the while writing her own songs, but only when subsequently rediscovering her roots did she feel inspired to commit her music to record. With the help of James O'Connell, drummer and producer of LA roots-rock outfit West Coast Grand, she managed to put together this set of songs for her debut release, which last year earned the accolade of Top Americana Album of 2006 at Smart Choice Music. I don't think it's quite that good, but it's certainly got plenty going for it. First up, Angela has a really good voice, falling comfortably into the soulful-end-of-country bracket yet retaining a certain amount of what might be termed mountain sensibility. Second, she's surrounded herself with a decent crew of backing musicians including Ike Marr, Dave Phenicie, Mark Christian, Carl Byron, Deane Cote, Shawn Davis and Chris Laurence. Third, out of the eleven songs on the album (all but one being Angela's own compositions), approaching half of them are really good: standouts are the opener River Jordan, which resonates with tradition, the strange-but-true tale of The Accordion and the lonesome ballad Dear Johnny, while Angela's strongest vocal performances are on the more gently reflective material like Long, Gone, True and the title track. The closer, interestingly, is a cover of When I Wake Up To Sleep No More, a long-cherished gospel song that Angela only recently discovered was written by a distant relative of hers, Marion Easterling: on this cut, her voice is boosted by harmonies from Jim and Dani Lacey Baker. Sadly, however, the rest of the uptempo tracks rather let the side down, being little more than routine honky-tonk where the sentiments are hackneyed and the melodies simply aren't strong enough to hold interest. Angela surely has it in her to make a really good record, but - existing accolades notwithstanding - I don't feel this is quite it; she may have earnt her wings, but now she needs to learn to fly.
www.angelaeasterling.com
www.myspace.com/easterling
David Kidman December 2007
Eastmountainsouth - Eastmountainsouth (Dreamworks)
Centering around Los Angeles based singer-songwriter duo Kat Maslich (hailing from Roanoke) and Peter Adams (Birmingham, Alabama) and signed to the label by no less than Robbie Robertson, they may have a mouthful of a name but their blend of alt-country and folk makes it well worth getting the tongue round.
With influences filtered in from her growing up around bluegrass and church music on Clinch Mountain (home of Ralph Stanley) and his training in classical music and film scoring, they create what Robertson's termed 'haunted mountain music with modern beats.' Which, roughly translated means taking Appalachian roots and giving them both a timelessness and a contemporary edge with the use of drum machines and electronics (the gospel folk Rain Come Down, based on a Negro spiritual, a perfect example) as they sing songs of love and heartbreak inspired by friends, history and literature. It's a simple but effective approach, their voices weaving in harmony through dark hued self-penned numbers like The Ballad of Young Alban and Amandy and the bittersweet bluesy folk of Father, the affirming You Dance with its aboriginal back rhythm and the hushed ache of Ghost. Yet, ironically, the album's stand-out is the opening track, a rework of Stephen Foster's Hard Times that uses harmonium, fiddle, manola and a military beat of gravel crunching percussion to build to an emotionally resonating hymnal climax. Wonderful.
Mike Davies
Tim Easton - Break Your Mother's Heart (New West)
Touted by some as the new Ryan Adams, with all the Dylan touches that entails, the Akron-raised, Athens-based Easton's second, largely acoustic album sees him making a hefty leap up the troubadour ladder with a collection of wryly humoured songs and tunes that lean as much to folk as they do to rock.
Working here with such session veterans as Jai Windin, Jim Keltner and Hutch Hutchinson has clearly rubbed off on his own studio approach, sounding decidedly laid back in a John Prine/James Taylor fashion on several numbers. The vibe was so relaxed most of the tracks were laid down in just a couple of takes, Easton playing live in the same room as the band. Road songs, lonely songs and love songs, the set opens with Poor, Poor LA, a dig at the city of Angels and stream of consciousness songwriters, and proceeds through the likes of folk-rocker Black Hearted Ways (very Petty/McGuinn), get out of my life and stop ruining it number Hanging Tree, the heavily Dylanesque train blues rhythmed Lexington Jail, and the dreamy slurrings of Amor Azul with its dobro and tremolo guitars. Long time friend J P Olsen contributes two, very trad flavoured folk-blues numbers in storysong John Gilmartin and the spare acoustic guitar picked True Ways, but the album standout has to be Easton's own slow swaying, piano based seven minute epic Watching The Lightning. Fuelled by the death of a friend it's an uplifting confused collision of hurt, defiance, love and encouragement not to let your knees give way in the face of life, it's like his Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
Mike Davies
Subtitled "music of the hurdy-gurdy", and it's exactly that, with a couple of songs thrown in for good measure. Nigel's playing is expectedly scintillating, with his characteristic drive and keen sense of both rhythm and melody. Here Nigel tackles a collection of source material that includes an original three-movement classical concerto (no. 2 by Michel Corrette, on which he's accompanied by Becky Price's harpsichord) alongside a number of typically idiomatic self-composed pieces in various tempi, many in the French style, and one of which (the riff-ridden Hum 'n' Bass) dovetails neatly with three examples of "hurdy pop" written by Mark Davies which take the Ancient Beatbox approach to its logical conclusion. I found these latter pieces a bit much-of-a-muchness really, but they're well executed and at least they're spread sensibly through the CD. The aforementioned songs (Break Of The Day and Sydney Carter's Like The Snow) are delightfully sung by label-mate Julie Murphy and fit well with the instrumental items, providing a good tonal contrast just at the time when the listener might be tiring a bit of the insistent tones of the gurdy. Aside from mentioning that Andy Cutting also brings his instrumental skills to this recording, I think I've covered most aspects of this enjoyable offering from Beautiful Jo and the Blowzabellist.
David Kidman
Assembly Line is another excellent understated song which is well constructed. Dug Your Own Grave confirms a Tom Waits feel to his music and shows him as another great American songwriter. Let This Whole Thing Burn has a slight Latin tinge and a strong performance. New Is What's Come Over You is relaxing and I'm All Right is contemporary Country. The final song is Goodbye Again and it is no surprise that he closes with another quiet song. Most of the album is on the gentle side but having said that, he still manages to show many different facets to his voice.
www.cliffeberhardt.net
www.redhouserecords.com
David Blue August 2007
Ecki - Punchdrunk (Product Records/distributed by Shellshock/Pinnacle)
The market for confessional singer-songwriters is pretty crowded just now, and it takes something a bit special to make an impact. The man to deliver that something, just possibly, is Ecki. Known to his mum as Richard Ecclestone, he's been fine-tuning his spellbinding, minimalist tales of heartbreak and loss on the acoustic circuit for a few years now, and his debut album Punchdrunk calls in a lot of musical favours from people he's met along the way.
The resulting performances stretch the material in a variety of unexpected directions, from the claustrophobic intimacy of 'Under the Dust' and 'Save You' to the epic sweep of 'Fire Song', which throws pipes and strings and hurdy-gurdies into the mix. Yet for an album where no two songs use the same line-up of musicians, it's the consistency of mood and atmosphere that is really striking. The fire that animates live favourites such as 'Rare Sun' and 'Never Quite Got it Right' has been bottled to good effect, while the less familiar tunes showcase a surprisingly confident hand in the studio. Particularly notable in this respect is the stunning 'Pulse 2', an almost wordless duet with Odette Michell which wouldn't be out of place on a Pink Floyd record.
More than the sum of the parts, Punchdrunk is a rich and subtle album that rewards repeated listening and deserves to be jostling for top ten places with the likes of Damien Rice and David Gray.
Sam Inglis
The word "beyond" in the title is probably the key, then, at any rate judging from the opening track, which sets out Tim's stall by driving a set of slides well out of the usual ambit and onto a peninsula of its own, complete with electric guitar, keyboard, bass and percussion. In true Mike Oldfield fashion though, as soon as you start to get used to it (and even like it), it stops dead and you're left on the very edge of the cliff looking out to sea! That sense of being left in mid-flight is common to several of the 16 tracks, sad to say, and some fade very prematurely... But having said that, I really like the spirit in Tim's playing, its easy rhythmic lilt, its sparkling joy and sprightly enthusiasm, qualities which extend to the altogether simpler arrangements on the more traditional-sounding tracks (eg the Mist Covered Brandon and Dingle Harbour sets and the gorgeous slow air Beauty Deas An Oileain), while even the more complex texture of the Blasket Island Jigs feels refreshing and uncluttered.
For when Tim concentrates on retaining the traditional feel in his music-making, the result is more satisfying than when he goes all out for atmospherics and over-conscious arranging. He multitracks all the instrumental parts, adding accordion, low whistle and banjo to the aforementioned armoury, but his imagination seems to know no bounds and it can lead to a sense of arranging for its own sake, as when some generated water-sounds course distractingly through an otherwise enchanting performance of the slow air Dónal Og. In this respect, he strikes a better compromise between atmosphere and atmospherics on the softer-edged soundscape of the slow-jigs-set Out On The Ocean and Dawn Magic Of Ventry. The brightness of Tim's playing is reflected in the crisp, upfront recording - perhaps it's a little too crisp and clinical, for it seems to over-analyse somewhat, rather than believably blend, the individual instrumental timbres. I wouldn't want this review to sound unduly negative, though, for there is much to delight the ear in Tim's playing and in his inventive approach generally.
www.timedey.com
www.myspace.com/timedey
David Kidman January 2007
This is a compilation of sorts, which attempts to distil the essence of David Honeyboy Edwards, who's often referred to as the last of the authentic Delta bluesmen. Born in 1915 and still going pretty strong (at least on the evidence of the recently-recorded sides gathered here that comprise just under two-thirds of the 19 selections), Edwards is regarded as somewhat of a national treasure, for he's a charismatic performer who has always had his own special take on the delta blues. Unusually, he chooses to play in standard tuning, which adds more edge to the already stark and uncompromising nature of the music of the genre. But the principal focus of this new collection, its common thread, is Edwards' near-telepathic interplay with harmonica players; here we get duets with Bobby Rush, Billy Branch and Johnny "Yard Dog" Jones recorded last year, and a handful of duets with Big Walter Horton, Michael Frank or Sugar Blue dating from the mid-70s. All of which material is previously unreleased... It's also good to hear again a classic example of Edwards playing solo, accompanying himself on rack-harmonica on one of his very first solo sides, The Army Blues (1942), which is placed alongside an exuberant "I can be a whole rhythm section all by myself" track (Trouble Everywhere I Go) from 1976. And as a bonus, scattered amongst the musical gems there are three brief snippets of conversation: two with Bobby Rush (discussing the philosophy of the blues and reminiscing about bringing Little Walter to Chicago in 1945) and one talking to Alan Lomax back in '42. This is a fine collection that both celebrates and well illustrates Edwards' trademark intensity and commitment as an authentic performer over some 60 years.
David Kidman April 2008
Back in 2003, Ottawa-born Kathleen released her rather wonderful debut album Failer (which proved her to be anything but!). It established her as a name to watch, a new kid on the country-roots-rock block of savvy lady singer-songwriters who got compared readily to Lucinda Williams. I actually thought she had a less raw demeanour, reminded me as much of Patty Griffin maybe, a sweeter innocence that turned back the emotional clock just a little but was no less compelling in its own way. Failer's followup, Back To Me, found Kathleen consolidating her musical personality on an even stronger set of songs that hooked you straightaway then came back to haunt you ever after.
Though Asking For Flowers comes complete with a fresh collection of appealing hooks, Kathleen has refined her songwriting vision even more, producing a batch of brand new "clear-eyed stories of hope and resignation, humour and death, unconditional love and brazen inequality". It's hard to credit that she's still not out of her 20s, such is the maturity of expression she conveys in these songs, the honesty with which she tells her stories. If pushed, I'd say the quieter and more reflective numbers like Sure As Shit and Scared At Night make the most impact on first playthrough, but in truth there's not really a weak link anywhere among the eleven songs. The brooding six-minute closer Goodnight, California is a standout, with a live-sounding instrumental part featuring a subtle string section that builds, supports and embellishes Kathleen's mellow, long-breathed vocal line before introducing guest Paul Reddick for a gorgeous harmonica solo.
On most of the tracks, Kathleen benefits from a full band backing: having put her trust in her co-producer Jim Scott to co-opt drummer Don Heffington, bassist Bob Glaub, Heartbreakers' keyboard player Benmont Tench and pedal steel ace Greg Leisz to play alongside her guitarist-husband Colin Cripps, nobody lets her down for one moment. There's still the strong Neil Young/Tom Petty influence (after all, that's what Kathleen grew up listening to!), and perhaps there's a slight sense of identikit-jangle about the arrangement on one or two of the individual tracks, but taken in isolation each song works just fine and it's a pretty satisfying record all told. I'm goin' right back to play it over again now...
David Kidman February 2008
Kathleen Edwards - Back To Me (Zoe)
The Ottawa born Americana singer-songwriter burst on to the scene two years ago with sensational debut album Failer with its echoes of Suzanne Vega, Tom Petty and Lucinda Williams on tales of bruised love, filtered through tobacco smoke and whisky fumes. She's back now with a follow up collection of 11 tracks loosely linked by a theme of absence stemming from a rootless upbringing as the daughter of a diplomat and her more recent life on the road as a performing musician.
Perhaps inevitably it's not quite as impressive as the first, a little more straight ahead in places, the title track and What Are You Waiting For standard issue country rockers that go through the moves but simply lack any distinctive character. These though are small niggles in view of the larger picture that sees Edwards in fine vocal form on her tightly observed stories and memories. Linking back to the former album, opening track In State, a jangling acoustic rocker about a woman who sells her cheating boyfriend out to the cops, works as a companion piece build up to the Six O'Clock News stand-off that serves as Failer's opening gambit.
By contrast, Pink Emerson Radio is a simple, slow swaying recollection of the day her flat burned down and her defining choice to save her guitar and violin. It's on such quieter, more reflective numbers that the album really shines; the ghosts of old flames that haunt the bluesy Independent Thief and Old Time Sake, the wistful ache of being absent from home and friends on the yearningly uncluttered road song Away, the break-up anticipation of What Are You Waiting For? and the sense of displacement that informs Copied Keys, a song written about her uncertain feelings after moving to Toronto.
She's not just about regret though, two songs in particular, the unconditional in love joy of Summerlong and the closing Good Things, a reminder that life has a way of warming the heart when it's least expected, give the album a lyrical uplift to go with the ringing melodies and, if it doesn't quite demand an instant place among the year's best it makes a credible stab at numbering among the runners-up.
Mike Davies
Kathleen Edwards - Back To Me (Zoe)
Well, there's no change to the formula on this new record with great pop tunes with jangling guitars wrapped around bittersweet lyrics. The title track sounds like it's straight out of the Tom Petty songbook and elsewhere Benmont Tench of The Heartbreakers makes welcome keyboard contributions. Lyrically, her aggressive ideas on 'Back To Me' such as 'drug you and drag you home' may not appeal to her lost love but wonderfully illustrate those feelings of frustration. Straight after this, she takes on losing prized possessions to fire in the beautiful 'Pink Emerson Radio'. Then, on 'Old Time Sake' she reluctantly finds her man wandering off after a night of passion with this old friend. Though she expresses less interest in the man who mistook her casualness in 'What Are You Waiting For'. All along, it's soaring guitar and driving rhythm with occasional slices of ballad such as 'Away' with its lonesome appeal for love underpinned with mournful steel guitar. In 'Copied Keys', she gets the man but feels that she's not part of his life. Yes, she's full of tales of loves and love lost but the inner sleeve shows her wearing a wedding ring before you get too upset. Well, assuming she's happily married. Despite her tales of woe, this is tremendous stuff and I-Spy music fans wander off at their peril. Despite a stage patter too full of the F word and worse for my liking when I saw her show, I won't walk away either.
Steve Henderson
Kathleen Edwards - Failer (Zoe)
Responsible for another of those scarily wonderful debut albums that make you wonder how such artists emerge fully formed without any previous word of mouth, 23 year old Edwards is an Ottawa born singer-songwriter who grew up in Switzerland and Japan (her dad's is/was the Canadian ambassador), was raised on her brother's Neil Young and Dylan albums, whose first record was by Tom Petty and who refined her acoustic percussive guitar playing by listening to Ani Di Franco. By 99 she was booking her own gigs, living on the road in the back of a beat up Suburban and pressing up 500 copies of her six song EP Building 55.
Then, come summer 2001, relocated to rural Quebec and going through a break-up, she wrote seven songs that would eventually form part of her first album. Add three more, throw in Jim Bryson on guitar, put in the studio with Dave Draves and we're talking this year's Patty Griffin. Though you may find yourself thinking Suzanne Vega (the breathy The Lone Wolf) and even Tanita Tikaram (Hockey Skates, featured in Leslie Nielsen movie Men With Brooms but written by way of a half-apology to Ottawa outfit Starling after upsetting them - this from a diplomat's daughter - with an earlier song, though typically tempered with the sarcastic last line "Do you think your boys' club will crumble just because of a loud-mouthed girl?"), it's Lucinda Williams who's been held up as a vocal comparison with that world-weary drawl. Accompanied by jangling guitar, it's a sound that perfectly suits her tales of bruised love, filtered through tobacco smoke and whisky fumes.
The opening Six O'Clock News plays out a hurting smalltown story of a pregnant girl and her lover, the failer of the title gone to the bad through hard times and family break-ups. "You could do a little time and save my broken heart," she sings, but there's no happy ending here. "I try to come clean but I guess it's no use. Copper went ahead and he just shot you through. Now you're lying dead on the avenue."
It's a mood of self-destructiveness and defiance that characterises many of the songs from her "lonely girls' club". In the chiming One More Song The Radio Won't Play, a stinging attack on the music business written in angry mood after a row with her manager - here characterised as Johnny Little-Rocket-Star - she sneers "write a hit so I can talk you up. Nobody likes a girl who won't sober up" with all the attitude of someone who clearly has no intention of putting down the glass or doing anything anyway but hers. And on the strutting 12 Bellevue she talks of drinking my way through today" and tells some guy "I don't want to be your friend just take of your clothes and get in my bed." Just to reinforce the point that she's no shrinking violet, the blurry blue Mercury (Lucinda sings Coldplay?) finds her asking "wanna go get high? Wanna take me to parking lot at the old high school?" While Westby tells the sleazy tale of "a little bleeder with white pants on" stealing some drunk married jerk's watch after losing her virginity to him after being hit on in some low rent motel.
All of this comes wrapped up in irresistible hook laden melodies, swaggering for Six O'Clock News, amped up rowdy on the plangent Maria (Byrds meets the Stones rocking up English folk), or tumblingly acoustic with the yearning strings-swept National Steel and the sparse introspection of the closing emotionally unfulfilled relationship (more drinking) lament Sweet Little Duck.
As I write this I've played the album at least once a day since I received it a week ago. The frequency can only increase. That's one of 2003's Top 10 accounted for then.
Mike Davies
Eels - Souljacker (Dreamworks)
Ever been down? Yes I guess most of us have. Ever lost your soul? Well not quite I guess. You might do both on hearing this CD. Turn down the lights, take a stiff drink, then a longer one. Turn up the volume. Relax, let Eely things happen, they will. Fuzz guitar, strangulated vocals, great words, power playing - this album is a real cracker. Not for the faint hearted, but for those who like their music new and innovative. One of the best.
Jon Hall
The 18th Day Of May - The Eighteenth Day Of May (Hannibal)
Well at the very start I thought I'd put the wrong CD on - for the opening rocking guitar figure is nothing if not a dead dead-ringer for the opening figure of Come All Ye which kicks off Fairport's seminal Liege And Lief! It soon becomes apparent, however, that The Eighteenth Day Of May are no tribute band or clone-Fairport outfit, although it's equally apparent that their music is infused with, and heavily influenced by, this and other impeccable cusp-of-that-decade role-models. Theirs is a really attractive, if defiantly retro electric-folk sound as roughly defined by Liege and its contemporaries (first-album Steeleye Span, Trees, early Albion Band with Shirley Collins) but spiced with a little healthy psychedelia (Mr. Fantasy-era Traffic, and early Family both came to my mind here), with cult acts like Principal Edwards Magic Theatre and then a bit of Fifth Dimension/Younger-Than-Yesterday-period Byrds thrown in. Despite all that, the band had originally formed as a three-piece acoustic outfit a couple of years ago. Allison Brice, Richard Olson and Ben Phillipson quickly decided, after getting together a healthy repertoire of self-penned and traditional songs, to enlist viola player Alison Cotton (from Saloon) and a two-man rhythm section (Mark Nicholas and Karl Sabino, both former members of acid-expressionists Of Arrowe Hill).
In June this year the band released (to rave reviews) its debut single, both sides of which appear on this album. And it's not hard to fall under the spell that the 18th Day Of May casts; Allisson's mellifluous vocals weave and float on the knowingly florid instrumental tapestry, which is replete with all manner of delights from flute, dulcimer, harmonium, sitar, mandolin and autoharp counterpointing the prominent electric guitar lines. Percussion is used creatively and not in the heavy-handed way you associate with folk-rock ploddery. I loved the way the band evoke those late-60s glory-days of acid-folk without sounding like they're taking the piss; they seem to have a genuine affection and feel for the genre, and know what it's all about. Having said that, the band's take on the classic Lady Margaret ballad is quite different from the brooding version by Trees!... although they do use a broadly similar arrangement to Full House-Fairport on Flowers Of The Forest. Without a hint of pastiche, Deed I Do has the ominous tread of the Velvets, and Sir Casey Jones jangles along like a hidden Byrds outtake, while Hide And Seek could have come off the first Monkees album; folkier reference points are an even earlier (Dyble-era) Fairport and Trader Horne, possibly even mid-period Incredible String Band too.
Inventiveness and panache characterise the band's work, and the production - by the band and Andy Dragazis - takes all the fascinating and fantastic instrumental colourings fully into account; its only downside is that Allison's voice is sometimes buried deeper in the mix than it deserves and you really can't hear her words for much of the time (as on the opener Eighteen Days in particular). On this evidence, I'm real keen to hear more of this exciting band.
David Kidman
To follow up last year's The Invisible Man, the erstwhile American Music Club mainman has chosen to delve into the cover versions genre. However, as anyone familiar with his penchant for hushed brittle morose neurosis will appreciate, these excursions into rock, pop, soul and country are going to be pretty much a departure from the original blueprints. As if to underline the fact, the opening tracks takes Ann Murray's jaunty hit Snowbird at a narcotic reverie pace, Eitzel breathing nicotine fumes over the lyrics as she draws out the son's inherent sense of sadness and despair. He's no cheerier though on I Only Have Eyes For You which turns the evergreen love song chestnut into a funereal paced fractured psyche stalker's hymn that is seriously unsettling to listen to. His take on John Hartford's Gentle On My Mind is more in keeping with the dusty drifting nature of the original as is Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through The Night (though as if to acknowledge the song's inherent cheesiness he throws in a bad lounge bar comic compere outro) and, albeit more melancholic and suicidal, Phil Ochs' Rehearsals For Retirement. Move On Up is the most faithful, grooving on Curtis Mayfield's jazzy soul arrangements with Eitzel's breathy reading perfectly in tune with the groove.
The Tom Waits bar-hound drunk at 3am treatment accorded the jazz standard I'll Be Seeing You isn't entirely inappropriate if you want to interpret the lyrics on a gloomier note though his bleak bluesy take on Ain't No Sunshine injects a troublesome dimension as he observes "I gotta leave the young things alone." The real off the wall inclusions though have to be a spaced interpretation of Do You Really Want To Hurt Me that he makes sound more like a masochist's plea than a lover's complaint, and the old Andrea True Connection disco cheese More More More which becomes sparse, otherwordly ice spiked sex-addict's cocktail lounge emission of sinuous twisted sex. Would you let your daughter buy a balloon from this man?
Mike Davies
Here's some facts to start us off: Elbow Jane is an acoustic band with bundles of energy and freshness and lots of ideas. They hail from the Wirral. Founder member Rich Woods (guitars, bouzouki, mandolin, vocals) was once voted Young Performer Of The Year at Fylde Folk Festival, since when amongst other things he's appeared with his father Mike in the group Brass Tacks. The other three members of Elbow Jane are guitarist/keyboard player Kev Byrne (who along with Rich has played in acclaimed local band the Hedgehogs), bassist Chris Chesters and percussionist Colin Burgess. More facts: Elbow Jane's debut CD is a brave and honest gamble - consisting as it does almost exclusively of compositions by Rich and/or Kev (whether jointly or severally). These almost without exception put their message across in simple, unadorned and unaffected language, with an enviable economy of expression - no tortuous verbosity here. The songs together cover an admirably wide emotional range, from the breezy, defiant (if simplistic) fantasy of It's Your Day (which opens the CD) through the Celtic-inspired passion of She Steals and the "turn, turn, turn" message of Ecclesiastes, The familiar dilemma of trying to work out how to cope with a given situation is highlighted in several of the songs - for example, rejection in Silent Angers, or one's final days on earth (the plight of Kev's mother in Smile). I'll admit that not all of the remaining songs engage me as much as those I've mentioned, but that's probably just my personal taste at fault. The musicianship of these young players is accomplished, yet they don't feel the need to be unduly showy with their skills, preferring instead to concentrate on allowing the instrumental work to unobtrusively serve the lyrics. I might point out, though, that this CD doesn't quite present the whole portrait of Elbow Jane, for in the live context, the band members' individual instrumental skills are heard to be quite formidable (for instance, Rich can turn in a marvellously skilled guitar arrangement of O'Carolan's famed tune Si Bheag Si Mhor). The principal idiom within which Elbow Jane work may at first hearing proclaim "acoustic-based contemporary pop-folk", but although the band are breaking into the quality end of the folk scene they don't wish to be pigeonholed. The songs themselves signal a deeper vision, which the band's discerning choice of the CD's one cover song reinforces. It's the superb Pretoria by Mike Silver (one of the finest singer-songwriters in the land, and one from whom Rich and Kev have clearly learnt much in terms of effectiveness of expression in words), and Elbow Jane do Mike proud here. They do themselves proud too, though, in the fine sound they achieve for this album - sensitive engineering gives the production a very immediate, almost live feel. It all adds up to a more than promising debut.
David Kidman
The latest incarnation of this classic 1973 album (a well-filled single-disc issue) is welcome for several reasons, not the least of which is the inclusion of five previously unreleased tracks (of which more below) and three bonus cuts (which include that superb single Showdown). The Electric Light Orchestra had moved fast and developed quickly, from an eponymous debut album heavily underscored by the ex-Move, pre-Wizzard Roy Wood through the increasingly prominent influence of Jeff Lynne to what was arguably the apotheosis of their innovative brand of fusion, whereby nascent prog took on board classical influences and collided head-on with good old rock'n'roll to produce a gutsy and captivating hybrid. In the climate of the early 70s, pop had become pap and much prog was in danger of disappearing up its own orifice in inaccessible obscurity, the music scene was ready for something with the right combination of balls and intelligence, so ELO2 ended up in the hit album charts without too much effort. Surprisingly for such a complex album, it had been recorded quickly by the standards of the day (mostly in one or two takes), and something of that immediacy certainly comes across in the sessions. It's probably the finest example of the band's individual brand of musical fusion, and finds Jeff taking their structural experiments and stylistic juxtapositions to brave new limits - the "extended" (ie album) version of Roll Over Beethoven being a prime example. The climactic Kuiama then points the way forward to the band's big-name years, as does the previously unreleased Auntie (a pre-Warner take of the track that was to become their next hit single, Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle). Great stuff.
David Kidman
El Hula - Violent Love (Things To Come/More Protein)
Signed to Boy George's label, El Hula is basically Blair Jollands, who, as Bitter Girl testifies, is New Zealand's Van Dyke moustachioed answer to Divine Comedy. Not content to settle for one reference point when he can lay claim to a dozen, the album also conjures up comparisons to David Bowie (Gems, the Starman tribute Killer Landings), Nick Cave (Arena Of My Soul) and, er When The Devil Arrives At My Door. It's certainly eclectic, one minute trumpeting out big brassy funk pop (Get Together Again), the next keening a pedal steel lament (Beautiful Day), here a splash of glam (Songs of Violent Love), there or a slab of desert rolling twangy country noir (Eyes of Blue) or a plangent Scott Walker piano ballad (Marigold). Unavoidably camp at times (listen to Your Hunger is a Fire if you can), but in need of a little less self serious posing, it's pretty much going to be a love it or hate it thing. For the moment I'm stuck firmly somewhere in the middle.
Mike Davies
The melodic Jigsaw confirms their professional attitude. If Satellites Should Fall is back to the acoustic side but is one of the weaker tracks. I'm sure that the good idea and eerie feeling behind this song could be re-worked. Mr & Mrs Frankenstein is an eccentric little tune and, remarkably, it works. The quirky vocal is a la Elvis - Costello, that is. If I Had To Make A List confirms their dedication to the melody. Constantinople (or is it Istanbul - ok, my jokes are getting worse) is acoustic with shades of the soft rock of 70s band, America. Plastic Jesus keeps its base on the acoustic side but does creep up on you (no pun intended) and makes for a strong finish to the album. Eisenhowers are superb in parts, due mainly to the song writing skills of Weir; I hope that they haven't missed the boat.
www.serali.co.uk
www.myspace.com/eisenhowers
David Blue August 2007
Marc Ellington - Rains/ Reins Of Changes (Talking Elephant)
Good for the Talking Elephant label, in continuing to bring us quality remastered reissues of partly-forgotten LPs from what for many is folk-rock's archetypal age, the early 70s. In the case of this album by singer-songwriter Marc Ellington, the end product is distinctly closer to the country-meets-folk sound of Matthews' Southern Comfort (on whose first album Marc very briefly appeared!), than to the folk-rock practised by the principal musicians whose presence graced the album sessions (Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks). Having said which, the guest-list on Rains/Reins Of Changes is very impressive indeed: Sneaky Pete Kleinow's steel guitar is featured prominently on several cuts, and Byrd Chris Hillman swells out the roster (on mandolin), along with (among others) Mike Deighan, Karen Ellington, Tony Cox, Gordon Huntley, Ray Duffy, Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway, and Iain Matthews and Sandy Denny among the occasional backing vocalists. The vast majority of the 12 tracks are Marc's own compositions (a couple co-written with Mike Deighan), the exceptions being a strong folk-rock treatment of Yarrow and fun renditions of Alligator Man and Blue Suede Shoes (ho hum!)… I believe Marc was a better songwriter than he's given credit for, and several of the songs on this CD deserve to be heard more although others wouldn't exactly set the world alight. Sure, like most LPs of the period, it has its share of lightweight material, but the whole album is a much better one overall than I remembered. Whatever, the standard of the playing is a cut or more above mere session-filler-standard, and for that reason alone this CD belongs in any self-respecting folk-rock fan's collection.
David Kidman
Mama Cass Elliott - Dream A Little Dream Of Me: The Music of "Mama" Cass Elliott (Universal)
In a year which saw the 40th anniversary of sixties California dreamers the Mamas and the Papas and the release of a landmark four-disc survey of the group's recordings (which I reviewed a few months back), the first comprehensive biography of their "first lady" Mama Cass was published by Macmillan. This new anthology both presents a comprehensive career overview and acts as a companion product and virtual soundtrack to the book. It studies and exemplifies the key areas in Cass's musical career, and according to the press release ranges from the early days of the Mugwumps through the golden group years to Cass's later solo output - although I couldn't find any Mugwumps on the disc, the earliest cut being a Mamas & Papas track from 1966 (Words Of Love); hmm, naughty ...To compensate, there is, however, one previously unreleased track from 1972 (East Of The Sun). and a selection of radio jingles. I was also a little confused about the opening minute of the CD, a sequence of storm sound effects that introduce the title track, which I'm sure didn't appear on the original single and seem very much out of place here. Otherwise, there can be no quibbles about the choice of music on this issue, as the unique qualities of Cass's voice are showcased on a variety of settings from upbeat to ballad, folk-pop to jazzy soul. It's uplifting music, and a well-compiled issue that (those early omissions apart) is a pretty stylish memento of Cass's output, although on balance I think I'd have preferred the compilers to have observed a more strictly chronological approach to her career.
David Kidman
Ronny Elliott - Valentine Roadkill (Blue Heart)
Born in Birmingham Alabama back in 1947, Elliott's been around the block a fair few times, had label dreams and nightmares, spent years hiding out from the world, played with his heroes and released eight albums. All of which have left him with a cracked, warbling voice and folk-roots stylings that's part Tom Russell, part Cash, part Townes, part Kristofferson and part anything out of Lubbock.
Now approaching 60 but sounding twenty years younger and a 100 years wiser, he's come up with an album that demands to be included on any self-respecting 'best of come' the year end.
If the opening Huey P Meaux inspired Valentino's Dream - a weary American romantic's disillusionment with the modern world that features a mournful blues sax break - was the only cut here, it would be still worth the full price. Consider the further 12 tracks a bonus from God then.
Elliott's a classic American storyteller, his songs populated by characters wearing stained hearts and dust blown souls. Here they talk of love gone bad (You Already Did), beloved grandmothers (Lottie), blind devotion (Walk To The End of the World), unrepentant Depression era killers (Mr Edison's Electric Chair), fallen stars (When Idols Fall's laments for Lord Buckley, Hank Williams, Kerouac), rock n roll tragedies (George Jones and Elvis falling apart on Hope Fades, Phil Spector crashing to earth on Do Angels Ever Dream They're Falling) and, most potently, the state of the nation (religious hypocrisy on No More War, the forgotten veterans plea War-Scarred Horses with its musical echoes of Civil War rallying tunes, and the self-explanatory I Don't Hear Freedom Ring Any More with its condemnation of the way dissenting voices are crushed).
There's a hidden track too, untitled here but apparently called The Third Coming, a Kristofferson-like number in which Elliott recalls hanging out with a dark skinned, hook nosed JC, who reveals he's not happy about being appropriated by "a bunch of hillbillies in the United States of America to fight wars for oil" and that he's a fan of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. I reckon Elliott would figure pretty high on his playlist too.
Mike Davies
This starts with an ear-bashing in the guise of The Celebrated Tommy Ellis Boogie. Moves on to a swing beat with Honest I Do and the twin harmonicas of Elliott and Gary Martin on Suck My Harpoon. The latter sounds as if it was done in one take and has some blinding harp work.
How Can You Keep On Moving is an excellent arrangement of a traditional song and Hard Work Ain't Easy is a sleazy blues, written by Gary Martin who also contributes to another two songs on the album. Elliott himself, writes, co-writes or arranges over half of the songs on the album. Another of the arranged songs, Going To The River follows and highlights how tight a band this is. The Robert Johnson classic Love In Vain is given The Troublemakers treatment with Elliott's voice in fine fettle.
They continue with songs from the masters with Rich Woman and Sonny Boy Williamson's Sloppy Drunk. The harmonica playing on the latter is top class, as it is on the rest of the album. This also features some fine bass work from Kevin McGuire. The Story Of My Life slows the pace down again and Elliott's vocals come to the fore again.
The innuendo laden Sure Tastes Good To Me, Barkin with it's high powered harmonicas and the surprisingly high pitched vocal on Lying In The Woods finish this well balanced album off. Guitarist Sandy Tweeddale sometimes has to take a back seat to the twin harmonicas but he can also be proud of his contribution to this very good set.
David Blue
I have to admit that Australian singer/songwriter Rory Ellis was a new name to me. On the evidence of Two Feathers, his fourth release, that's my loss. Ellis is one of that group of musicians that just are. He is neither blues/folk nor country, instead he is an amalgam of the best of all three, fused together by one special ingredient, Rory Ellis.
Although every note and line of Two Feathers comes from the heart, this is music that refuses to be hurried. Like a mighty river Two Feathers gets to the end in its own good time and carries all before it. It does help a little that Rory Ellis was born with the kind of voice that growls gravitas, when he sings he fills every corner. But Two Feathers is built on more than presentation, all of the tracks are written to mean something close to Rory Ellis's heart.
This is an old-time, minimum fuss, album, searingly angry and beautifully tender in equal measure. Work is an acoustic indictment while Little One sees Ellis open up and become heart-breakingly raw. But because the music is based on simple truths No Love In This War never disintegrates into a rant and from the other end of the spectrum Take Me Away stays the right side of mawkish sentiment. It's a delicate balancing act but Rory Ellis walks it surefootedly.
If you dissected Two Feathers you would find seams of blues, folk and country running through it, all to varying degrees. However, the essence of Two Feathers is that of a powerhouse performer, a keen-eyed observer and a conscience seeking a voice. In the face of such odds what chance does mere genre have? This is a Rory Ellis album anything else is window dressing of his choosing.
Michael Mee August 2008
For their latest project, EIS, here alias those remorselessly inventive underground multi-instrumentalists Pete Astor and David Sheppard, moved out of London to rent a converted chapel on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, into which they packed every conceivable acoustic instrument they could lay their hands on (from guitars and dulcimers to stylophones and goatskin drums!) and set the tape machine running. The result was a series of short - pithy - sonic explorations with no overdubs or edits, which paradoxically sound more complex than you might imagine due largely to the intermittent use of drum-machines and other retro-modernist technology. Into which environment the Willard Grant Experience's Josh Hillman dropped in from time to time to add some violin or musical saw to the special atmosphere of the duo's musical meanderings. The spirit of wilful, furious independence looms large in these recordings, which ooze with atmosphere rather like a forgotten art-movie soundtrack. Most of the pieces are directly inspired by images or experiences the duo encountered on their local bike-rides, from the starry majesty of the East Anglian night sky through to a poster espied outside a local church. The evocations can be somewhat sinister, but the majority are beguiling and many suitably enigmatic. There doesn't seem to be much going on in the way of linear musical development, yet each one of the CD's 20 tracks is an enchanting ambient snapshot that (much against expectations) repays your closer listening. Genre-wise, there's folksiness (The Waveney Waltz), shifting cottage-lounge (The Orchid), pastoral (Density Ratio), harmonium mantra (Concertina Theory), and hypnotic skittering free-jazz rhythms (Summoning The Pharaoh), but almost all could be termed weird gothic, albeit of a peculiarly English kind. Fascinating and strangely stimulating - and I bet you'll hear nothing else quite like it.
ellisislandsound.free.fr
www.myspace.com/ellisislandsound
David Kidman March 2007
Well known for her fine vocal work with Alva and the early-music ensembles Sinfonye and the Dufay Collective, Vivien is equally at ease with medieval song, world music and contemporary balladry. The concept of The Dawn Songs could be tailor-made for her, therefore, as it brings together a dozen songs which embody the basic theme of the meeting and parting of lovers at dawn, a motif which exists in the poetry of almost every culture. Some listeners may feel that Vivien casts her sonic net almost too widely, but I feel this is a venture which makes a virtue of proud eclecticism and uses a large variety of expressive and musical techniques perfectly naturally, above all genuinely at the service of the songs. The spare beauty of ancient song is represented by the earliest example of alba (dawn song) on the record, the 12th century Reis Glorios composed by the troubadour Guiraut de Borneilh: here Vivien is really in her element, and accompanied beautifully by Alva's Giles Lewin on medieval fiddle. The next oldest example is the gently erotic, if melancholy Sweet, Stay Awhile, attributed to John Dowland, for which lute and bass viol provide the musical backdrop. Vivien's intense if quirky take on the murder ballad The Lover's Ghost, with banjo, fiddle, guitar, scratching and loops, is a brave and adventurous essay, while she is also very persuasive on the pair of very recent compositions, Andy Duerden's As The Dawn Breaks (liked the attractively complementary group-backing on this one too) and Olivia McCannon's tango-inflected Dawn Is Already Too Late. The traditional Bulgarian song Go Love no doubt gains in authenticity from Vivien's visits to Bulgaria to study folksong, and Dessislava Stefanova repays the compliment by guesting on this track. Vivien also tackles two Scottish Gaelic items, a waulking song and a clapping song, with suitable brio and panache and in slightly electro-fusion arrangements that recall Capercaillie or Mouth Music. And her arrangement of The Lark In The Morning is suitably cheeky, set to a feisty, springy oompah-waltz tempo. The least successful items for me are the Brazilian samba Alvorada (not within my personal musical sympathies, I'm afraid), and Bright Morning Star, which, though done as an ensemble-acappella outing with Giles Lewin, Jocelyn West and Ian Giles, lacks the essential fire and guts of the Southern Baptist hymn through its all-too-well-sung perfection (and over-deliberate tempo). The same four-piece vocal complement does, however, make a splendidly poised job of the traditional American night-visiting ballad The Drowsy Sleeper. This is a thoroughly worthwhile CD, well presented with full texts and notes.
David Kidman October 2007
Just when I thought that Yellow Dog had just about exhausted their roster of quality artists, up they pop with another. William Lee Ellis is steeped in the tradition of blues and Americana guitar playing and if I told you that his father, Tony Ellis, was one of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys then you'll understand why. God's Tattoos opens with the slide guitar extravaganza that is Snakes In My Garden and I can't think of a better way to open a set. The title track has a rumba beat and its smouldering feel makes me think of French cafés. The fantastically titled When Leadbelly Walked The River Like Christ is not a blues but the instrumental is one to make you think and the sustain that he achieves with the E-Bow that he uses on his acoustic guitar is phenomenal. Ellis manages to vocally sound like Eric Clapton on Search My Heart, a lovely version of a revamped Gospel song and chooses Perfect Ones Who Break, a bluesy ballad, to continue with the Clapton comparison. This is the type of song that Clapton does so well these days. Sandwiched between these is Four Horses (of the Apocalypse I presume). This is a return to his acoustic slide style and is one of the top tracks on the album.
The Call demands to be listened to and is a stunning response to 9/11. This is followed by roots music of the highest order in the form of Cold And Weary and the Mississippi John Hurt song, Here I Am, Lord Send Me. You don't have to do much to songs like this, just play them and there's some nice backing vocals from William's wife, Julie. If you were to try and play Jesus Stole My Heart then I think you'd need 12 fingers. This is spectacular! The Missing Moon And Stars is a lovely instrumental and the final track, Dust Will Write My Name, is a low key finish but for once I agree that this is the way to end what has been a lesson in roots music.
www.yellowdogrecords.com
www.williamleeellis.com
David Blue Sept 2006
Julie's will, I suspect, be a new name to almost all of you out there, but you really should check her out if you have any predilection for top-quality acoustic music. It's no exaggeration whatsoever if I say she's one of the most accomplished singer-guitarist-songwriters I've ever come across, and it's even more surprising that this CD's her recorded debut. I first saw her play live at a small local venue in South Yorkshire some three or four years ago, and I was overwhelmed. She has an unassuming, even understated presence, but as soon as her fingers hit the fretboard you know you're in the company of a very special performer; then when she starts to sing… and then, when you realise the songs are her own too, well… it all adds up to one hell of a talent. Now Julie's real hard to pigeonhole (so don't try, just ride with her through her songs). Her musical language is diverse, but not in the attention-seeking manner beloved of the modern-day eclecticism merchants who just want to parade their theoretical mastery of a myriad of different styles; Julie's feel for the idiom over a whole range of musical expression (folk, blues, ragtime, rock and jazz) is utterly genuine, and she performs every song with awesome (though never over-emoted) passion. Julie's lyrics, often deceptively simple, are charged with the power of latent emotion, and they depict and discuss their particular (mostly romantic) dilemmas in a wholly natural, truthful and direct manner (by the way, Julie also helpfully provides notes on the background to each song, as well as details of the guitars she plays, in the accompanying booklet). Her easy command of vocal phrasing is brought further into the spotlight on the unaccompanied Eyes Of A Man. The songs are complemented by three self-penned instrumental pieces, ranging from the tender Parting (a love song to a guitar, which Julie dubs "a tune uncluttered with lyrics"!) to the self-evidently tricky Spinning (written as a "challenge to myself", Julie says) which almost incidentally demonstrate Julie's apparently effortless mastery of the guitar. This CD, although a product of studio recording, has been engineered with the ethos of live recording in mind so that it accurately reflects what you get in Julie's live performances - i.e., one guitar, one voice, no overdubs. The twelve tracks, recorded at different times and in a variety of studio environments over the past few years (the earliest dates from 1998, the most recent from January this year), manage so beautifully to retain the essential immediacy, the distinct frisson of that live performance ("flying close to the edge" as Julie herself puts it in her typically succinct booklet note), and fully capture the very soul and spirit of her musical personality. And taken together they achieve a remarkable artistic unity. This is a superbly classy CD, and you owe it to yourself to hear Julie at the earliest opportunity; "at last" you can, and very easily! Though I'd still insist you get to see her live I concert - mostly in the north at the moment, but she's supporting Ralph McTell at the Customs House International Guitar Festival (South Shields) next month, and there are gigs down in Kent in the autumn (see her website for details of gigs and also for samples of the album).
David Kidman
New and traditional songs from Conamara is the subtitle for this intensely enchanting disc that comes to us from the somewhat unexpected quarters of the cutting-edge Scottish folk label Vertical. It's an unusual release in that it's sung almost entirely in Irish Gaelic (the odd-song-out being Poor Weary Wanderer, a John Spillane composition which, though sung equally delightfully in English, seems mildly out of place here) - but hey, that mustn't put you off. It's a disc where the splendour of the singing voice dominates, necessarily, but when you discover also that the whole album's produced by Dónal Lunny (no less) and features contributions by Dónal himself along with musicians Máirtín Ó Connor (button accordion), Róisín's fellow-Irish Consort colleague Siobhán Armstrong (Irish and renaissance harps), Ronan Browne (bansuri, whistle, flute) and Graham Henderson (keyboards), you'll appreciate that it's something of a work of art too, with a distinctively mellow, subtle air full of gentle presence and admirable clarity of parts. Each one of which, of course, complements Róisín's striking and brilliantly ornamented singing, the lines of which flow just like another instrument. Her melismata on the disc's (official) final item, Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair, a song of unrequited love, are overwhelmingly beautiful, an effect emphasised by the appearance (on just this one song) of the gently-applied forces of the RTE Concert Orchestra with John McSherry on low whistle. Other disc highlights are the wire-strung-harp-accompanied Síle Bheag Ní Chonnalláin; Alí: Dílleachtaín Gan Bhri (an anti-war song written by Róisín's mother, the celebrated sean-nós singer Treasa Ní Cheannabháin Elsafty); the various acappella selections (including a powerful Róisín Dubh), and a significantly fleet-footed rendition of Cúnla (complete with a cameo by dancer Seosamh Ó Neachtain). The booklet sensibly includes full texts in the original Irish, together with some helpful background notes to each song. This is, incredibly, Róisín's debut solo album - although you may remember her appearing on Sharon Shannon's Libertango CD a few years back; it's so heart-warmingly good that even at an hour's duration it doesn't overstay its welcome, and I do hope it's not going to take her ages to record and release a followup.
David Kidman May 2008
It's getting real hard to keep up with Joe! This is the third release already on Joe's own label, which he started only last year; it follows the magnificent hard-act-to-follow studio set Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch (already reviewed here at NetRhythms) and Silver City (still not received for review, sadly). It's a what-it-says-on-the-tin-but-even-bigger jobbie that fair prickles (sorry!) with all the electricity of the occasion. There may be only the two of them onstage, just a guitar and an accordion, but ooh what a sound! Joe and Joel together push each other's capabilities to the limits and come up with some intimate, intense and extraordinarily fine performances of a cluster of songs that epitomise exactly what Joe's about, those long hard years of steadfastly peddling his roadhouse troubadour music in crowded, smoke-filled honky-tonks and roadside juke-joints. Ely classics Up On The Ridge, Because Of The Wind, I'm A Thousand Miles From Home and Wind's Gonna Blow You Away sound fresher than ever here, and Joel's excellent solo on Letter To Laredo is almost worth the price of admission alone. That unique, trademark Ely mix of outlaw country, Texan blues, Tex-Mex and rock'n'roll has never sounded more persuasive than here. Stripped down to bare bones it may be, with no extra musicians (only Ryan Bingham joining them on vocal for the finale, a cover of Townes Van Zandt's White Freightliner Blues), but hey, you can sure feel the passion and sweat in every note, every nuance of this tremendous hour-long live set recorded at the Cactus Café in Austin, Texas back in December 2006. It's no wonder that Joe was recently recipient of the Americana Music Association's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for Live Performance. These guys are right at the top of their game alright, and this is an unmissable record.
David Kidman May 2008
Yeah, so Joe's last live album (At Antone's) was maybe a bit of a mark-timer, darned good tho' it was, but it seems ever more so with the advent of the release - at long last - of a brand new studio offering from Joe. Never content to do things by halves, Joe's ensured that Happy Songs... also happens to be a book tie-in (the CD's a companion piece to Bonfire Of Roadmaps, published by the University Of Texas Press, whose title says it all, y' know!).
But as for the album, well the man's genius for writing brilliant songs steeped in American roots is intact and if anything even more polished and developed lately. You can hear how much of a seminal influence Joe's been on all manner of acts who've passed across the radar since his early gigs with Butch Hancock and Guy Clark in the late 70s; most of them have passed fleetingly and vanished but Joe's stayed steadfast and true, honing his own brand of roots music into album after album of punchy, well-crafted observational classics that have proved consistently entertaining and lasting.
At Rattlesnake Gulch, there's plenty of great new writing that sidewinds itself straight into your brain, from the tellingly iconic narratives of Jesse Justice, Miss Bonnie & Mr. Clyde and Hard Luck Saint to the cryptic, if almost too simple parable Up A Tree, from the altogether more hard-driven realism of July Blues to the gentle Cajun-waltz sway of Little Blossom, the tongue-in-cheek rockabilly of Sue Me, Sue and the R&B-inflected cover of good ol' Butch's Firewater. Country rock, Mex, mambo shuffle, storming horns, solid guitar riffing, chunky backbeats - all the familiar Ely elements, here they're present and correct, and his can't-put-a-foot-wrong backing crew just couldn't be finer, period. This just has to be one of Joe's best albums (and he's made a dozen and a half with no turkeys!).
David Kidman July 2007
Joe Ely is a true rock and roll legend. The Lubbock born troubadour was one of the Flatlanders, along with Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and perhaps even more impressively, he is the only act to have supported The Clash and lived to tell the tale. As legend has it, the Texan won over every punk audience he ever played in front of, not to mention Joe Strummer and his gang of merry men, who were all huge fans. 'Happy Songs From The Rattlesnanke Gulch' is his first offering as an independent artist, but Ely, who recently turned 60 shows no signs of taking it easy. The honky-tonk stomp of the opener 'Baby Needs A New Pair Of Shoes' shows the master has not lost his touch and can still rock harder than singers half his age. The music then does a sharp left turn into two-step territory with 'Sue Me Sue' before reverted to Ely's trade and tested formula of lonesome ballads and rockers. While this CD never quite reaches the dizzying heights of 'Love and Danger' or 'Live From Liberty Lunch', it's still a million times better than most country and western releases. Joe Ely can still tell a hard-luck story better than any other singer alive. Highlights include 'Firewater' and 'So You Want To Be Rich?'. Sure he has mellowed a bit with age, but not that much!
Jamie Hailstone March 2007
www.myspace.com/otispfunkmaster
Joe Ely - Streets of Sin (Rounder)
His characters don't get an easy time of it; Carnival Bum is a spoken verse/sung chorus hard luck tale of the lovelorn, All That You Need finds cotton farmers strapped to dependency, Run Little Pony sees a gamber wind up "lookin' thru cold hard steel" while on the lollopping rootsy blues picker Twisty River Bridge they even pile up the car after drinking too much after finding out the wife's run off with the preacher's son. But, typically, they may be down but they never quit. And, as on the closing speak-sing I Gotta Find Ol' Joe there's often someone out there willing to hold out a steadying hand.
There's nothing particularly new in the Ely musical universe, but like a well worn pair of jeans, the sawdust of a Texas barroom and the salt round the rim of the tequila shot it's a familiarity that breeds content.
Mike Davies
Open all the doors and let the fresh air and the brilliant butterflies fly into your home! This sparky and utterly enchanting mixed-heritage (ie. Welsh and American!) female duo (Emily Williams and Rebecca Sullivan) has been wowing discerning audiences at festivals and folk clubs over the past five or six years; now four albums down the line, the lasses are still purveying their special and seriously cool brand of quirky acoustic magic that's been variously compared (and not only by me!) to the Be Good Tanyas, Pooka, Abbie Lathe and Indigo Girls.
I commented in a previous review that Ember's sound is defined by the piquant combination of the girls' striking and intuitive vocal harmonies and their sparse but considered instrumental work, elements which together create their own magical world where feelings are conveyed with depth and sensitivity yet often also with an edgily whimsical sense of humour. Ember songs may more than nod at home-grown nu-folk, acid-folk and old-time Americana, with an occasional stylistic shift in the directions of jazz or western swing, but the performers always manage to retain their own distinctive, if occasionally quite idiosyncratic voice.
The batch of new songs comprising the majority of Open All The Doors is particularly fine even by the girls' standards; couched in admirably simple (yet at times more than mildly enigmatic) poetry, the songs mostly express romantic desires (and the potential and actual complications arising therefrom), but they lighten the palette somewhat (only joking!) with a neo-traditional confessional (A Murder Song) and a quite heartfelt little political rant from Rebecca's hometown (Salt Lake City)! There's also a fond rendition of the traditional Welsh song A Ei Di'r Deryn Du (To My Dearest Love?), and an acappella take on Blood And Gold (the eastern European folksong here credited to Andy Irvine and J. Cassidy - well, it sticks closely to Andy's version at any rate).
As well as those characteristic, naturally inventive intertwining vocal harmonies, Rebecca and Emily again display their own wiry and subtly virtuosic instrumental skills (on guitars, violin, clarinet and harmonica), but on this new CD they're ably aided and augmented principally by "world percussionist" Job Verweijen (who makes a significant contribution to the textures throughout) and guitarist/pianist/whistle player (and duet vocalist on one song) Dylan Fowler. Five other musicians, including a bass player (Nathan Thomson), are brought in at various points, but there's never any sense of overkill and it's all extremely skilfully and selectively managed, with supreme clarity of studio focus, to the extent that the girls' unique, intimate charm remains upfront and beautifully intact throughout the exercise.
They have every right to be very proud indeed of this album, for it contains some really fine songs and spine-tingling performances; in particular, I loved Emily's Far From Home and Better Than Me, Rebecca's Northern Wind and her uncannily catchy and rousing Spade And The Hoe, and (for more than equality's sake) their joint composition which closes the disc, the intriguingly economic Bad Guy Lullaby. And a word of praise too for the environmentally-conscious digipack presentation and its attractive design and photography (I specially liked the cheeky pseudo-Winterset look of the booklet's sepia-tinted parlour-portrait!). This lovely disc will, if there's any justice in this world, "open all the doors" for Ember and bring them serious recognition as one of the most original and captivating of the more independent-minded acts on the scene.
David Kidman January 2008
Ember's previous album 'Land Under Water' has remained a firm favourite of mine ever since getting it a couple of years ago, and one of the many pleasant surprises in first listening to 'Spark' was to find that I liked this even more. Ember's third album sees them clearly going from strength to strength.
This is a tremendously impressive and enjoyable album. As before, the content is primarily songs written by the two main members - Emily Williams and Rebecca Sullivan. Their songs are consistently excellent and sometimes profoundly so, and these latest ones are some of their best to date, bursting with originality, deep emotions and fun. The beauty is not only in the songs themselves but also in the detail of the vocal harmonies and instrumentation, every bit of which seems to play a vital part in conveying the emotion of the song. There is no superfluous or mushy padding - everything is precise and essential.
Sometimes the two voices are working in conventional vocal harmony, notably in the excellent rendition of the traditional song 'Sospan Fach' as well as in sensitively selected parts of their original songs, and at other times they are each doing their own thing in a more free-form, intuitive way, interacting in a way that is 100% effective and that works according to the magical unknowns of music rather than the formal rules and structures.
As regards objective judgements on quality of vocals, instrumentation and musical arrangement this album is second to none, but most important of all is the abilty of the music and words to strike the heart and bring out the listener's emotions, from sadness to joy and laughter. This ability is a rarer quality still, and the only one that counts at the end of the day.
"Spark" is such a suitable title, thinking of the musical electricity that is so evident between the two individuals and the vital spark that is ever present.
Ian Gulley - gwerinABERfolk - March 2006
This husband-and-wife duo would seem to be virtually unknown outside of their "home ground" (Cheddar): certainly it's the first I've heard of them. And although they've been performing together for almost ten years, this is their first recording. It centres round Issy's original songs, which have pleasantly-turned melodies and often a fairly strong traditional feel (although the occasional phrase or reference betrays their contemporary origin). Issy and David also give us their take on a pair of traditional songs: Turpin The Blade and a quirky version of The Mole Catcher (from the Baring Gould collection), the latter being one of only two songs where Issy takes the lead vocal role. The other's The Skies Turned Grey, a powerful piece which Issy wrote at the time of the (first) foot-and-mouth crisis and has since been covered by John Kirkpatrick (incidentally, here I couldn't help thinking Issy's voice sounded uncannily like that of Maggie Holland). Elsewhere, though, David sings lead (and Issy the harmonies) and accompanies Issy's melodeon with guitar or bouzouki, while extra colour is provided by Kate Diaz's cello, with John Dipper's fiddle also appearing on a couple of tracks. The songs themselves possess a kind of old-fashioned crafted quality, an understated gentility and grace, that's both immediate and appealing; several of them pay tribute to characters of local-celebrity or minor legendary status in an affectionate and accessible manner (although I couldn't quite fathom why the singer of The Bristol Giant addresses the man whose tale he's telling), while Bedtime is a deft observation of the childcare routine and The First Of May rounds off the disc in joyful processional celebration. The songs are topped up with three instrumental tracks containing tunes composed mostly by Issy; being primarily of pictorial, descriptive or atmospheric character, these provide endearing interludes. All in all, this is a thoroughly companionable disc, one of those which may not set the scene on fire but which invariably satisfies in the "quietly pleasing or better" category on each subsequent play.
David Kidman October 2007
David Kidman
Drew Emmitt - Freedom Ride (Compass Records)
Mandolins are definitely the 'in' thing. There was a time until very recently when mandolins meant 'folk' and in the eyes of the music media 'folk' was to avoided by all but a real-ale-loving, beard-growing minority. Then along came O Brother, Where Art Thou? to win the last Grammy's top album award and suddenly American folk, namely Bluegrass, was fashionable.
New mandolin-playing star in the ascendant is Drew Emmitt with moody good looks and his first solo album of dynamic and mostly self-penned songs. Emmitt's playing is stunning - he's honed his mandolin chops for quite a while now with his band Leftover Salmon - a rocking Blue/Newgrass Jamband. And his priorities are right: amongst those he gives credit to on his album are Little Feat! As well as his own material, he's covered JJ Cale's If You're Ever In Oklahoma, Peter Rowan's Rainmaker and included a great cover of Dylan's Tangled Up In Blue. The whole album is 'pickers' heaven' featuring the John Cowan Band plus the legendary Sam Bush and a wealth of