What does it sound like?:

Full disclosure first. Shifting Buffalo, ITRW, is my friend Ben, so don’t expect an 1979 NME style hatchet job here. But…but…come back! This is really good so I’m sharing it here.

The origin of this album was an intensive songwriting day when SB single handedly wrote, recorded and mixed 10 songs in a day using the “A Shropshire Lad” poems as lyrics. This is a brushed up and slightly more polished version of that manic effort but still has a charming bedroom studio vibe.

The instrumentation is remarkably full band sounding given its origins, with a pallet of drum machines, guitars, synths, other keys and vocals. The general feel is a interesting hybrid of late 70s synth pop experimentation (woozy synths, drum machines, and doomy vocals) with perhaps proggy guitar overtones, though “The loveliest of trees” with its bucolic lyrics and acoustic guitars could easily be a Caravan outtake. Some tracks are more conventional rock workouts, “Wake” being a particular highlight. A.E. Housman could have been famous in the 70s.

Overall it’s a fun set rich in texture and variety and for an asking price of, oooh, nothing, it’s well worth checking out.

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What does it sound like?:

In 1968, David Bowie had been dropped by his record label, Deram, and was on the scrap heap at the age of twenty-one. Undaunted, he continued to make music in any way he could, he tried some acting, joined a mime group and became part of a ‘Folk scene’. He fell in love with dancer, Hermione Farthingale, and formed a Folk trio with John Hutchinson, developing a fondness for verbose allegorical fables. By early 1969, Farthingale left him for Norway, he appeared in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, was third on the bill as a mime act beneath Tyranosaurus Rex and became involved in a Beckenham Free Festival. Fortunately, for Bowie enthusiasts, he often had a tape recorder playing nearby. He made numerous demos, recorded sessions for BBC Radio and had an audition for Mercury Records captured for posterity, an audition he passed. He also starred in his own promotional film, Love You Till Tuesday.

Most Bowie watchers will be expecting part five of the ‘Five Years’ box sets, which began in 2015 before Blackstar was released. Sadly, a dispute over Tin Machine royalties is causing a delay. In the interim, Conversation Piece » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

By all accounts, Ronnie Wood has spent his career in the Ringo role, the affable chap all the others like talking to. He’s a great companion on a long tour. In the studio, he makes the clock tick by that bit quicker when the engineers are tinkering with the snare drum. He has a nice little sideline in ‘art’, painting portraits of his band mates and selling them for a pretty penny. Experts rate him as better than Dylan but that’s not saying much. He also plays guitar.

It’s difficult to be anything other than condescending when confronted with this vanity project. Ron has gathered around him a group of musicians including a fine vocalist in Imelda May and a classy pianist in Ben Waters. The album is recorded live at Wimborne’s Tivoli Theatre, eleven tracks of Chuck Berry usual and not-so-usual suspects, bar Wood’s own imaginatively entitled Tribute To Chuck Berry and a Maceo Merriweather song, Worried Life Blues, that Chuck covered for a B side. The sleeve is ‘hand painted’ by Ron himself, a copy of an image most people will instantly recognise. The deluxe box includes LP, CD and a » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

At the age of 80 (she hit that milestone last May), at a time when some of her contemporaries are losing their voices and their creative wellspring is running dry, Judy Collins has produced a late career gem.

No doubt she would maintain her voice is not what it was, and I’m sure it must have lost some of the power of years long gone, yet it still sounds absolutely gorgeous, full of richness and pitched absolutely beautifully.

This collection is a collaboration, like her last release from a couple of years ago, Everybody Knows. This time, instead of the star billing with Stephen Stills, she is collaborating with the not particularly well known Jonas Fjeld. Chatham County Line also contribute, and I understand Fjeld has been a regular collaborator with them in recent years.

He sings in quite a husky baritone. He doesn’t have the greatest range, but he he contrasts nicely with Judy and they combine together to excellent effect. Let’s face it, Judy proved she can accommodate herself to all sorts, when she pioneered singing acapella along with the songs of humpback whales many years back on Farewell To Tarwathie.

Ostensibly » Continue Reading.