What does it sound like?:

This is the sixth and final box set in the ‘Eras’ sequence that started with Five Years in 2015. The template was set by Bowie himself: freshly remastered studio albums, contemporary live sets, Re:Call collections of officially released singles, B sides, EPs, and a different take on one of the albums. Five Years had a Ken Scott mix of Ziggy Stardust, Who Can I Be Now? a Harry Maslin mix of Stationtostation and Tony Visconti’s view of The Gouster, A New Career In A New Town Visconti’s mix of Lodger, Loving The Alien a Mario McNulty remake of Never Let Me Down, and A Brilliant Adventure included Mark Plati’s version of Toy. Live albums that have received a first official release on these boxes include an extended Stage, Serious Moonlight, and a complete BBC Theatre. Otherwise, Eras boxes do not include any outtakes or previously unreleased material, which are held back for a different collection of box sets covering approximately a calender year, a series that is up only up to 1973. Surroundsound was never a part of the offer, so no Blu-Rays.

I Can’t Give Everything Away covers a period of just four » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Bob Dylan said, “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism; Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree.” He may have a point. Proust’s concept explores the relationship between memory, self-identity and the passage of time, suggesting that our understanding of who we are depends largely on flimsy, inaccurate, subjective memories. Prine was modest, with a self-deprecating sense of humour. His band was faithful, his voice quiet and his songs simple, based on basic chords and an acoustic sound. He was never going to be big. He found wisdom and heartbreak in the everyday mundane, noticing and remembering profound moments that are most often ignored. His calm, measured approach is captivating and his carefully chosen words hang heavy, both on his shoulders and in our hearts. He was a man whose character was built from the small details that really matter.

Lost Dogs And Mixed Blessings is a follow up, of sorts, to a Grammy winning comeback (after a five year spell away from the studio). It’s an attempt to cash in on the attention to secure some radio play and more sales. The production values are upped » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Whatever happened to White Arena Rock? Back in the seventies and eighties, almost any white rock band with a hit could fill a stadium, especially in the States. Think of Europe, Journey, Styx and Survivor. Both Michael Jones, guitar, and Lou Gramm, vocals, are original Foreigner members continuing to take an interest in the band but Jones’s Parkinson’s restricts his ability to tour and Gramm only makes the occasional appearance for one or two songs. Effectively, the Foreigner of today is their own glorified tribute act with high quality musicians and inflated prices for tickets. The Rolling Stones are another perfect example of a heritage act still filling stadiums, with just two original members, both in their dotage. Black Sabbath have just said an emotional farewell in their home town and, now, the Prince of Darkness has gone to another place. Oasis are relative youngsters performing songs that are a juvenile thirty years old. Dave Grohl has hit his mid fifties. Chris Martin isn’t far behind. White Arena Rock has become a nostalgiafest.

4 was Foreigner’s fourth album, released in 1981, at a time when the band reduced in number from six to four, » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Joni Mitchell has been having a conversation with Jazz her whole career. Her songwriting style has always been unique; self-relevatory lyrics on a volatile bed of unusual chord changes. Childhood polio weakened her left hand forcing her to be creative in finding fret placings for her fingers. Her solutions were chords most other singer songwriters never used but Jazz musicians recognised. In an interview with New York Magazine in 2005, she described her influences: romantic classical music, folksy impressionists, Leonard Cohen until she realised he took a lot of lines from Camus and Lorca, Bob Dylan, of course, and innovators such as Marie Curie. However, in the music world, it was Charlie Parker’s trailblazing approach to melody, rhythm and harmony that fired her up.

Her “Jazz period” is generally regarded as being between 1974 and 1979 for the albums Court & Spark through to Mingus, when she recruited bone fide Jazz musicians to her band and adjusted her writing to suit them, including luminaries such as Jaco Pastorius, Airto Moreira, Larry Carlton, Michel Colombier, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Emil Richards, and John Guerin. Most of this period is covered by » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

There is a pall of sadness that hangs over this album. Mac Davis, who wrote or co-wrote these songs with Girelli, died in 2020 aged 78, and the work dates back six years before then. Davis was a veteran songwriter, performer and actor. He wrote A Little Less Conversation and In The Ghetto for Elvis Presley. He had a long songwriting career, including songs performed by Nancy Sinatra, Kenny Rogers, Louis Jordan, Helen Reddy, Perry Como, Bobby Goldsboro, and, more recently, Bruno Mars and the Swedish DJ Avicii. Nevertheless, it’s Country music that flowed through his Texan veins. Girelli is from Otley, West Yorkshire and more than forty years younger. He started off in Indie Rock bands as melodramatic as Radiohead or U2. He’s always loved the big heartbreak songs of the fifties and sixties, decades before he was born, thrown in with some Springsteen and opera. A performance on Letterman brought him to Davis’s attention and soon they were writing together, prompting Girelli to changed direction towards emotionally charged songs of the Rock & Roll era set in the wild Yorkshire Dales. His solo debut in 2018, Love Kills, represented an artistic awakening, » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

This is Speedvark’s third release in thirty-nine years. Ben and Pedro normally sing songs about homely mundanity, such as drinking tea, quietly existing in middle England. Music is more of a hobby, a bonding experience for the two of them, something to keep them out of mischief. You can imagine them writing songs around a kitchen table, guitars on their knees, a rudimentary keyboard within reach. They are fully aware of their limitations and approach performing, producing and marketing with good cheer and self-deprecation. Their first two albums troubled no charts and shifted few units. Some of their friends and family like them, which was the main thing. Presumably, they have alternative ways of making a living.

For this release, available for streaming and download, Ben Raudnitz recruits his offspring, Mig and Nath to play. Pedro Flatt is on drums. It is a sixty-eight minute piece inspired by Albert Lord Tennyson’s poem The Lotos Eaters, an epic tale about getting stoned out of your mind. It takes them a good seven and a half minutes of messing about with chords to find the riff. After all, they originally wrote it thirty-two years ago. The » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Coles Corner is where Richard Hawley found his place in the musical firmament: shoulders square, reverb guitar, and mournful baritone, crossing Roy Orbison’s romance with Johnny Cash’s grit. The songs are beautiful constructs, with their feet firmly in the fifties, soul in the city of Sheffield and heart hopelessly dreaming of Hollywood. Hawley totally inhabits every moment of them. As with all the very best albums, Coles Corner is a world entirely of its own but, in 2005, the music scene in the UK was fragmented and there was enough room for its faded glamour and yearning nostalgia to be noticed. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize, won by The Artic Monkeys, also from Sheffield. As soon as Alex Turner accepted the award, he declared, “Call 999. Richard Hawley’s been robbed!” It’s his third LP and he has released six since, not to mention five film soundtracks and three live albums, but it’s the one with which he is most closely associated and many believe is his best.

The album was immaculately recorded in 2005 and requires no further embellishment or polish. Twenty years have enhanced its stature. It is the kind of » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Revved up and raring to go after touring with The Ramones, Talking Heads flew to the Bahamas to record at the newly opened Compass Point Studio with Brian Eno in the producer’s chair. They were a band in hurry, battle-hardened and armed with a clutch of songs they knew worked a crowd. Rather than separate into constituent parts, Eno recorded them as a single unit. The early run-throughs are the band playing together, live, all in the same room, with minimal Eno treatments. As a result, disc two of this set is fantastic: raw, frantic with energy, but as tight as a gnat’s chuff. The band clearly can’t believe their luck, loving their job and working in such a beautiful part of the world. David Byrne chortles away with delight at the beginning of the alternative With Our Love, hardly the cheeriest of songs, and the sense of glee pervades the whole project from beginning to end. It’s not often the work-in-progress tracks sound so great but these are definitely worth repeated listens.

John Cale had taken Eno to see Talking Heads perform almost a year before. A smitten Eno invited them to » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Last year, Claudia Brücken celebrated a significant birthday with a round number. Bearing in mind she first enjoyed pop success in the eighties with German band Propaganda, you can guess which one it was. In fact, their first album, A Secret Wish, was released exactly forty years ago, a rather grand affair, typical of the label ZTT. The producer was Stephen Lipson “under the supervision of” Trevor Horn, but you can barely tell the difference. Brücken’s contribution to the songwriting and distinctive co-lead vocal, were an essential part of its character. The band quickly broke up in acrimony, fuelled by Brücken’s relationship with Paul Morley, when they discovered their contract meant they weren’t going to make any money, ever. Since then, apart from spending the nineties bringing up her two children, she has remained musically active furrowing the by-ways of the music industry, often working with others, including ex Propaganda members and OMD’s Paul Humphreys. xPropaganda’s The Heart Is Strange in 2022 was a third attempt at a reunion but only involved Brücken, Susanne Freytag and Lipson, and not Micheal Mertens and Ralf Dörper. It’s a fine album, if indicative of the complications of » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Keith Jarrett is the pre-eminent solo piano performer of his generation. His Köln Concert is legendary, a remarkable improvisation, despite, or because of, a dodgy piano. It’s one of the best selling jazz albums of all time, shifting over four million copies. He has released many solo piano recordings before and since. His first was in 1972, Facing You, the product of spending a day in an Oslo studio bunking off from The Miles Davis Septet. New Vienna is his twenty-fifth, most captured live. In addition, there are another four solo multi instrument LPs. Jarrett clearly enjoyed playing alone, expressing himself through his fingers, just him and his instrument.

The Köln Concert was recorded in 1975, when his performances were characterised by emotional intensity and physical energy. Twenty years later, he contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was forced to change his style. He had to play with greater economy and focus more on the beating heart of his artistry with fewer dramatic flourishes. He resprung the keys on his piano so that they flowed more smoothly, requiring significantly less initial pressure to get through the so-called breakaway, like piercing the surface tension of water. » Continue Reading.