What does it sound like?:

A Prince demo is no ordinary demo. Besides the usual synthesiser, drum machine and click tracks, most of the demos on Originals include overdubs, backing vocals and horns. Fourteen of the fifteen here were made between 1981 and 1986, a period when Prince functioned in a different time zone, working for more hours than there are in a day, without the need for sleep, and at a super-human rate. He recorded Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Around The World In A Day, Parade and Sign O The Times, plus numerous quality B sides and outtakes. He also undertook four major tours and wrote and performed in two movies. It was a time when Prince was smarter, quicker and more exciting than anyone else.

These are no throwaways, studio discards donated to a worthy cause. They are songs conceived, created and arranged with particular artists in mind, ones he’d recruited deliberately and specifically as part of his master plan to put together a roster of Prince acolytes. Other than The Bangles and Kenny Rogers, these acts were almost entirely dependent on Prince for any success they scored. Prince benefitted too. Writing for another voice gave him » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Dylan LeBlanc is a sensitive soul. He writes personal, evocative songs. His voice is sweet and gentle, almost feminine. He has his demons. His parents divorced when he was an infant. His father, James, moved to Nashville to pursue a career writing country songs, so little Dylan had two homes. He ended up in rehab before he finished high school. He has an open, trusting face, high cheekbones and long flowing locks. A good-looking sensitive musician with issues should be a big hit with the ladies but his early albums are bleak Southern Gothic, the kind that warns people to keep their distance.

Dave Cobb is a highly professional producer with a long cv ranging from Sturgill Simpson to Jason Isbell. You’d expect him to provide a slick ‘Nashville’ production for LeBlanc and his longstanding band, The Pollies, even though Renegade was recorded over just ten days. It is, indeed, nice and clean with smooth curved lines but the surprise is that there is barely a Country note in it. This album is mainly Power Pop but with the power turned down down to seven. Think of eighties radio music, such as Journey » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Wovoka Gentle are a trio from London: twins Imogen and Ellie Mason and William Stokes. The music they make is an eclectic sound collage. They can all turn their hand to any instrument they care to reach for but they tend to use synthesisers, drum machines, samplers, effects units and guitars, lots of guitars. Steadfastly refusing to be pidgeon-holed, they have no respect for genres or musical styles and have the attention span of a gnat. A Wovoka Gentle track could be a Pastoral Folk song with Electronic squelches set to an African beat, topped with ripe, close harmonies, suddenly handbrake-turning into New Order, lurching onto a sea shanty and finishing up with Johnny Cash. It’s as though they’ve randomised the most diverse playlist they could think of and flit from one track to the next before each has finished.

At first, Start Clanging Cymbals is as challenging a listen as its title suggests. However, coherence improves as the album goes on and over repeated listens. The youthful vibrancy of the music is infectious. The sound is warm and bright. There is some beautiful playing here. They are all skilful musicians. The vocals » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Jamie Freeman is evangelical about Americana. He isn’t just a member of the Americana Music Association UK, he is also their designer and a dedicated volunteer. He has spent many thousands of hours practising his musicianship and writing songs. He organises gigs for Americana bands and is the MD for Angaleena Presley of The Pistol Annies when she tours Britain. He spends half his life in Nashville, playing, learning, supporting, even producing. The only thing he lacks is a beard. He is a man utterly in love with the music and totally committed to the cause.

Dreams About Falling is his third LP but his first for six years. He has exploited his connections to the full. It is well produced by Neilson Hubbard in Nashville. The songs are co-written with some of Americana’s best known: Michael Logan, Amy Tudor, Ben Glover, Brandy Zdan, Amy Speace and The Wild Ponies, Telisha & Doug Williams. The lyrical topics covered are worthy and suitably dour: the strain within personal relationships, the return home of a damaged Gulf War war veteran, the Grenville fire, the effects of having to cope with an alcoholic father, sibling rivalry and » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Mavis Staples is eighty in July. She has no intention of slowing down. There have been three celebratory events where the likes of David Byrne, Maggie Rogers, Jason Isbell and Norah Jones have shown their appreciation. Live In London, recorded at The Union Chapel was released in February. There is this brand new studio album and the small matter of a mini world tour: in June, she will perform at Glastonbury, Dublin, Amsterdam, Norrmalm and Antwerp. As she pithily puts it, “I’m over the hill, but now I’m going over the mountain.”

Mavis has evolved as an recording artist over the decades. Her voice is less sweet than in the sixties and is now darker in hue, capable of an authoritative growl. She is always willing to embrace modern producers and songwriters. However, her message of peaceful protest has been consistent and she still knows how to fully inhabit a song, unerringly finding its core and drawing out its strengths.

The nearly fifty year old young man occupying the producer’s seat this time is Ben Harper. He was brought up in a household full of Soul music, so Mavis Staples is part of his » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Daddy Long Legs are misnamed. They are a garage punk/blues band determined to hit the stage hard, get the audience spinning and drink the place dry before disappearing into the night. There is nothing fragile or delicate about them. They make a racket like an alley cat; nimble with sharp claws and teeth, they squeal, hiss and howl. A threesome, Brian Hurd on hollering, unwashed harmonica and guitar, Murat Akturk slide and fuzz guitar and Josh Styles drums and junk percussion, Lowdown Ways is their third and best album to date. JD McPherson helps out on bass and produces with his mate, Jimmy Sutton, to capture their wild, feral sound.

All twelve tracks are originals and they breeze by in well under forty minutes. They are created by the streaming generation with the whole of Rock ‘n’ Roll history at their fingertips, able to flick from Howlin’ Wolf to Dr. Feelgood and Jon Spencer in seconds. They have no qualms about melding musical styles, such as singing a Delta Blues to a Rockabilly beat, topped off with a greasy riff. Lyrically, it’s all about life on the wrong side of the tracks and » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Field Medic *is* Kevin Patrick Sullivan. He plays acoustic guitar, banjo, a couple of tin cans or a cheap drum machine and the obligatory gob iron. He’s a grotesque, a car crash of a busker. He is so Lo-Fi, he couldn’t get any lower.

He opens this album, his third, berating his audience. It’s a surprise he has one. His voice is mainly a painful whine. His songs shamble along. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can like this music. Fade Into The Dawn is an album to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

As it progresses, we get to know him a bit better. Sullivan is exposed as a friendless, homeless alcoholic whose nomadic musician lifestyle brings him no joy. The Bottle Is My Lover, She’s Just A Friend reveals that there is a girl, one who clearly cares for him but cannot save him from himself. The mood is relentlessly downbeat and downtrodden, if not explicitly suicidal.

These ten songs are effectively a dialogue with himself, a long, dark night of the soul, a struggle with his damaging desire to drink, the bleak thoughts in his head and the black dog of » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

In a crowded field of female singer-songwriters, Carrie Tree releases her third album, courtesy of the crowd funding generosity of her fans. Her voice is as silky as the petals of a prize-winning rose. She opens The Canoe with a whisper, soft and tender, laying flowers and incense by a lake but by the penultimate track, she unleashes her full range from delicate to destructive, falsetto to grumbling baritone, to convey the complexities of The Red Clay Woman.

Markus Sieber produces and contributes arrangements. He is known for his warm, natural ambient music. He brings a variety of acoustic instruments, ngoni, jarana, sitar, ronroco and a balafon (an African xylophone) to accompany Carrie’s familiar palette of piano, guitar, harp, flute, glockenspiel, clarinet and cello. His skill is to combine all these instruments, yet retain a minimalist, delicate feel, all the better to bring out the quiet, unassuming charm of Carrie’s songs. It helps that all the musicians show admirable restraint. Between them, they cast a spell.

Carrie sings with her chin high and her jaw set firm. The experiences she portrays are personal and mystical, rooted in a deep respect for ancestry and » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Global Identity starts with a bang. The first four tracks are dynamic, playful, imaginative and full of hooks and riffs. Think Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) with Lou Reed on guitar instead of Phil Manzanera, plus added random. Starr resides in New York but is smitten by London. He seems to writes songs by stitching together fragments from each city’s musical heritage using William Burroughs’s cut-up technique. It’s difficult to know when one song has ended and another begun, as each has so many different, seemingly unrelated parts. There are guitars, both acoustic and electric, drones, funky bass, no-wave synths and a harp. It’s faded Glam with some free jazz skronking thrown in instead of carefully constructed bridges. The single, The Heart Is A Loaded Gun, even has a Genesis moment. On the radio, Starr’s wilful rejection of song structure would raise eyebrows. The element of surprise is certainly engaging. He’s a great believer in spontaneity and improvisation. If you showed up at the studio when he was recording at Konk Studios, Hornsey, North London, home of The Kinks, you’d stand a good chance of featuring on the album, even if you’ve never held » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

J.J. Cale was a quiet, gentle soul. Throughout his career he shunned the limelight, even spending most of the eighties as a recluse. His songwriting may be better known as he has been covered by a wide range of artists. His guitar playing was masterfully understated, effortless and incredibly fluid, the antithesis of shredding. Neil Young said his touch was unspeakable. Eric Clapton described him as one of the most important artists in Rock. God thinks J.J.’s a god.

J.J. is the personification of the Tulsa Sound, where he was born and bred, a bled of Blues, Rockabilly, Country and Folk. His songs are deceptively simple and proceed at a stately pace. They are mostly mellow, laid-back grooves. His voice has similarities to a shy Ry Cooder as he would often whisper or position himself low in the mix. He perfected a technique of multi-tracking his voice harmonising so he wouldn’t sound like himself. He produced, engineered and mixed himself, so his sound maintained its characteristics throughout his career, unless distracted by guests. His ability to exploit studio technology and also play piano, bass, drums and flute, meant recording was often a solitary » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Sabrina Piggott’s roots are in County Cork and folk music. Her voice is pure, even if the Irish brogue sometimes mangles the vowels in a manner similar to Björk. She has a distinctive style of playing the acoustic guitar. A champion bodhran player, it is rhythmic rather than melodic, very effective at ratcheting up the drama and intensity in her songs. Her wings have taken her from Ireland and beyond Folk. David Crickmore produces this debut, giving her plenty of space as though he’s recording her in Iceland. It helps he brings a bag of tricks including Electronica and found sounds. He’s a multi-instrumentalist who used to be in a synthpop band with Bill Nelson in the eighties. David Hornberger’s cello adds colour and authority.

Roots And Wings is a hybrid of old and new, acoustic and electronic, Folk and Pop. It’s full of passion. Sabrina sings with a powerful conviction, feet firmly planted on the floor, chin held high, even in the quieter moments. Each song has the story-telling of Folk at its heart but delivered in a thoroughly modern way. Roots And Wings captures Sabrina caught on the horns of a dilemma. » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

John Paul White made his name duetting with Joy Williams in The Civil Wars. Four Grammys later, he can call on some of Nashville’s finest to help him with his solo career. Ben Tanner produces, Pat Bergeson plays lead guitar and the legendary David Hood provides a hefty bottom end. White declares he was inspired by the lush, orchestrated music of 1960s Nashville, aiming for a torch song, classic timeless quality, and you can hear the money that’s been spent on this record.

Of course, ‘solo’ it doesn’t matter how many talented people are surrounding you, in the end the responsibility is on your shoulders. White, himself, sings lead on nine of the ten songs, writes seven entirely by himself and co-writes the remaining three, plays guitar and co-produces.

White aims high, his lyrics concentrating on the universal experience of disappointment in love, swept along on grand melodies. Sadly, under the rather resplendent sound, the songs aren’t particularly strong. There’s none of the excitement of the usual Country fare of disease, failed crops, alcoholism, heroin addiction, illegitimate births, betrayal or revenge killings. White’s only real problem in life is his difficulty maintaining » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Malihini consist of a young Italian couple, Giampaolo Speziali and Federica Caiozzo. They sound as though they are drifting aimlessly through life, spending all their time mooning over each other. On Hopefully Again, their debut album, they invite us into their universe, probably a dilapidated bedsit in Rome, but they are so self-absorbed, they don’t notice we are there. The outside world barely intrudes on their daily existence, even when it snows.

The sound is simple, no clutter. There’s a nice chicka-chicka guitar, the bass is plump, the drums unobtrusive and the synthesiser neat and tidy. Federica’s vocals are hushed and smoky, Giampaolo’s confident and intimate. Most of all, God bless them, there are tunes. The melodies are strongest in the choruses but there is sweetness everywhere across all of the ten co-written songs. The whole album is sensual and romantic, a real pleasure to listen to. Hopefully Again improves with repeated listens as though it matures with time. It’s the kind of record that will be described in those reverent tones used when looking back at a lost classic. It’s an album to cherish and to nurture. Catch it now, while you » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Amazing Grace is a phenomenum. It is Gospel’s most successful live album and Aretha Franklin’s best selling of a fifty year career. It won a Grammy. It was recorded live in a humble church, The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, over two nights in front of an audience of about two hundred. It was January 1972 but it was baking hot in that church. All the performers were sweating profusely. The Reverend James Cleveland played piano, beautifully, and directed his Southern California Community Choir. There was a full band, including a fabulous rhythm section of Chuck Rainey on bass and Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums. Ken Lupper’s spiritual organ was an enticing call to worship. Aretha’s father, C.L. Franklin, a famous Baptist Minister and preacher himself whose sermons sold in their millions, made an appearance to deliver what is effectively a eulogy to his daughter. Sydney Pollack recorded the whole thing for prosperity for a documentary that never saw the light of day until after Aretha’s death. largely because of problems of its own making.

Amazing Grace was billed as a homecoming. The great, hugely successful Soul singer, Aretha Franklin » Continue Reading.