What does it sound like?:

What to expect? When a sideman (and that term is not meant in any derogatory sense, as sidemen generally have to be musicians of the highest calibre) steps to the fore – are the results going to be a source of celebration as long suppressed musical ideas packed with inventiveness and originality are released and exposed to the audience they deserve or something of a snooze as half-baked self-indulgence is given its head?

Happily this falls into the first category, being a collection of musical delights of varied textures, moods and hues, giving the listener ever increasing rewards from repeated listens because with Beekeeper Steve Wickham has produced a collection of instrumentals and songs that variously entrance and energise and never fail to engage. More simply it’s a wonderful collection that deserves wide exposure. It is neither Waterboys-lite nor an echo of his former band, the excellent In Tua Nua. Almost half the tracks here are instrumentals, but they are in no way filler, forming essential elements of the whole enterprise. One of my favourite tracks on the album is an instrumental piece titled The Bohemian. It’s a composition for violin and piano that last » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

In some respects this review can be considered as a continuation of the Don Nix album review I posted a couple of days ago.

Nix is the key figure in this recording of the Alabama State Troupers live revue. Recorded in October 1971, this came about a couple of months after Nix had been involved with The Concert for Bangladesh where he might have learned some of the difficulties in putting on a big band show. It was also meant to emulate Mad Dogs and Englishmen which had recently preceded it where of course Nix’s good friend Leon Russell was the ringmaster in that particular circus. It’s a real mix of the profane and sacred.

The profane comes courtesy of Furry Lewis (the same Furry of whom Joni Mitchell wrote about singing the blues; a tribute about which he was not overly impressed, being of the not unreasonable opinion that if his name was being used, he should have been collecting a royalty). Furry, aged 78 at the time of recording, sings of having a different woman every day of the week in Furry’s Blues while in Brownsville he sings of his woman trying » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Don Nix really surprised me with this album, originally released in 1971, but out now on Man In The Moon as part of their series of Elektra releases.

He’s a name I’ve known because of his work with Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Freddie King, Leon Russell and others (also he had been in the Mar-Keys but left them and they then evolved into Booker T and the MGs), so I was expecting a fairly straightforward blues-rock album, maybe given his background a record with with some soul influence.

Looking at the song titles, the first song listed is titled The Shape I’m In, so I was naturally expecting a cover of The Band’s song that opened Stage Fright.

Not so. The song opens with proper church organ and that is a huge clue to what you get to hear on the rest of the album, because this is a hugely gospel influenced rock album. Not a soul influenced rock album, but real gospel. Not exclusively so, but gospel is on many tracks.

Then you find its confirmed its not the same song as The Band recorded. All it shares is the title. Once the organ » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

This, the latest in the series of Elektra reissues from Man In The Moon Records, is quite a strange album in that from the title you’d expect a concept album built around the legend of Amelia Earhart, but it only accounts for a couple of songs herein.

Plainsong were a band born with great expectations. It was formed by Ian* Matthews (guitar, vocals) and Andy Roberts (guitar, vocals) with the lesser known Dave Richards (keyboards) and Bob Ronga (bass). The album artwork doesn’t actually credit them.

I say there were great expectations. A guy I knew at school (who was a fan of all things Fairport) thought they could be the new Beatles (perhaps I exaggerate a bit there). But they were pretty good but didn’t stick around to live up to the early promise.

It’s a real mixed bag. Opening track For The Second Time is gorgeous and heart-breaking. It’s a Matthews’ song and utterly poignant. Every-time I hear him sing “For the second time in year I was broken” I feel my throat tighten. Maybe that’s because I can directly relate to it, but that aside it’s a really beautiful and » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Before I heard this album I knew two things about Tom Rush: 1) he wrote No Regrets and 2) he had been on the Elektra label.   That’s two positives for me in that No Regrets is a great song and that Elektra under Jac Holzman, like Island under Chris Blackwell, did not release anything unless it was something he believed in and generally the artists he believed in were musicians of the highest calibre.

So what do I now know about Tom Rush after listening to The Circle Game? That I’ve spent more than 40 years missing out on a really first rate, talented artist. I’ve found out he has an extensive back catalogue, he’s still performing and this album could well be the perfect starting place for further exploration.   A big surprise is that only two out of the ten tracks here were written by Rush, – No Regrets and an instrumental called Rockport Sunday. I’ll come back to these two, which close the album, later.   Rush selected three Joni Mitchell songs, two from James Taylor and one from Jackson Browne. That might not sound so surprising today, but at » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

This album has been out a couple of months. Reviews have been mixed and I’ve lived with the album a while before coming to a definitive conclusion. My conclusion is this: The Things That We Are Made Of is one of Mary-Chapin Carpenter’s finest albums. Ever. I didn’t want to oversell something that in the end doesn’t merit the praise showered upon it. First impressions can be misleading. We can sometimes want something to be good and so dive in with claims of “Return to form” or “The best since…” which turn out to be nothing of the sort. Since her trilogy of albums in the 1990s, Shooting Straight In The Dark, Come On, Come On and the peerless Stones In The Road most of her albums since then have lacked any real distinction. There has been the odd great song but overall they’ve lacked contrast, light and shade. From a onetime judicious mix of the uptempo with balladry, Adagio became the dominant pace of the songs, which combined with a limited tonal palette didn’t reward regular replay. Her muse, while not grounded was certainly not consistently soaring to its former heights. The first thing » Continue Reading.