22nd...Dawn of the Summer of Love

Surrealistic Pillow. Four stars.

The popularity of Jefferson Airplane always rather perplexed me. They were, it is true, an epitomizing sixties band, but I never found anything spectacular about them in musicianship, songwriting or anything else. So I concluded it was because of Grace Slick, first lady of rock (I know, I know, there was Janis, but she came from the blues tradition. Note all others at the time were into folk: a la Joan, Judy and Joni... or country). Now imagine my frustration when I heard this record and discovered she only sang two of the eleven tracks! Marty Balin got the job of lead vocals, and actually sounds a lot like a West Coast Paul Simon.

So what has my second listen discovered about one of 1967s most popular releases? Sheer enjoyability. These fellows were early on in the psychedelic movement and were just having a good time, making music and taking drugs - they weren't trying to be anything or make any sweeping statements. They were just a pleasant little San Francisco group. The excess and political posturing would come later.

Track 1, She Has Funny Cars (to the title I say "????"). Opening with drums and harmonies, it quickly reinvents itself as a shuffle. Marty Balin with Grace on counterpoint. Rather than your usual call-and-respond technique, they mix it up, singing different lines in tandem and occasionally harmonizing. The effect is disorienting but neat.

Surrealistic Pillow is primarily a pop record, and Somebody to Love makes for one of the few rockers, and a memorable single. It was written by Grace's brother-in-law, so she sings lead. Brilliant voice, cuts like steel and she projects so well.

My Best Friend is....cute. Dreamy, sunny pop, extremely dated, and Grace is back to being an accent again.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead guests on lead guitar for Today, an extremely beautiful ballad. Alright, it's sentimental and rhymes "you" and "true" more than necessary, but it still makes for a lovely moment.

Comin' Back to Me is Today Part 2. Replacing percussion with recorder, it's even more evocative. Garcia plays again and the lyric is an improvement. An acoustic gem.

3/5 of a Mile in Ten Seconds gets back to a rock foundation. At the last, the random title is shouted out but the song actually has something to do with freaks and the price of pot. Cool riff.

D.C.B.A. - 25 (Whose idea was that for a name?) is a pleasant, inconsequential California folk-rock number. You know, with the jangly guitars of the Byrds/Mamas and Papas....

How Do You Feel is more sunny harmonized pop, which blends nicely with the rest of the album.

Embryonic Journey is just one finger picking guitar played by band member Jorma Kaukonen. First song he ever composed, purely from the folk tradition, no rock and roll to it. Very short, yet a memorable addition.

The classic White Rabbit is next. Combining Alice in Wonderland with drugs and some kind of Spanish march, it drips with atmosphere for its two brief minutes. That is due to Grace, who wrote it. I can forget the sixties lyric and just savour the way she sings it. Mojo Magazine named it the greatest drug song ever recorded, for what that's worth.

Plastic Fantastic Lover finishes things off in the rock camp. I thought it was about a robot, but it turns out Marty had the television in mind. As the title indicates, the lyric is some kind of a mouthful.

The bubblegum pink cover strongly indicates Surrealistic Pillow as a pop record, and that's pretty much what you'll find. Oh, and notice the glum mop-top holding a banjo? Notice it has no strings? False advertising, or, to put it more kindly, a stylistic addition. No banjos were used in the making of this record.

I lump Jefferson Airplane in with Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel and The Zombies. Make a pot of tea, put up your feet and smile.

(Next week, I promise I'll review something frightfully obscure again. It'll be after Christmas then, so here's a Merry Christmas to all my devoted followers and to those who just happen by. Cheers!)

21st...Overlong review of an overlong CD

London Calling. Four stars.

First just let me say that in all the genres huddled under the rock umbrella, my favorites are folk/singer-songwriters and intellectual art-rock (Bowie, early Eno, Roxy Music, etc). I'm telling you this just so's you'll know how much store you want to set by this review.

1979's double album saw the introduction of post-punk and pointed the way for the Clash selling out. This is an artistic statement, you can hear ska, reggae, horns, honest to god pop tunes strewn across the record. It's all carried off well, but it means that, as far as punk was concerned, the Clash were making a fast exit.

Like all double albums, it's got filler. All the songs are short, making the weaker songs less noticeable (queue up Physical Graffiti), so taken as a whole, it mostly works.

Okay, song by song...Brace yourselves!

London Calling is a pull-out-the-stops apocalypse song. Flooding, nuclear destruction...heck, even zombies. Joe Strummer (lead singer) sounds quite pleased with all this, possibly because Beatlemania doesn't survive the experience...

Brand New Cadillac was an extra the band used to warm up before recording the serious stuff. It's dumb, basically rock and roll, and funny if you're in the right mood.

Jimmy Jazz is one of several songs dealing with criminals of one stripe or another. Horns show up alongside the guitar bridge, and Strummer sounds like he's ad-libbing through most of it. Not bad, not memorable.

Hateful is not a punk diatribe. It's about a drug addict and has a fabulous chorus.

Rudie Can't Fail is also gifted with a memorable chorus, and is driven by the brass section. Reggae inflected standout.

Spanish Bombs features grand, soaring guitar as the lyric looks to the Spanish Civil War, including a few lines in the language. When I first heard the CD two years ago, this was my favorite track, telling you how accessible it is.

The Right Profile is about the actor Montgomery Clift. This musically chaotic piece follows him down the drain. Hardly pleasant (that's the point) and Strummer's diction is really, truly horrible.

Lost in the Supermarket is gentle, a pop tune. Mick Jones, the other half of the songwriting team, sings it. The lyric is good and it's damn catchy...but it drops the ball in the second half by repeating the chorus over and over and over...Must repeat six times, rendering the song rather tedious.

We return to rock on Clampdown. Anarchy. The Establishment. You know the drill. High quality tune.

The Guns of Brixton is the real reggae moment. Paul Simonon wrote and sang it. An ominous story of civil unrest, it's one of the standouts, and that's saying something, since I've never liked reggae.

So, that's part one. It's all quite interesting, never excessive and surprising well paced. Part two?

Wrong 'Em Boyo is a ska-inflected pop song. It sounds like nothing so much as Madness. It's a riff on the traditional Stagger Lee murder ballad.

Death or Glory is archetypal from the title in. It's pretty good, and makes me curious to hear their first two albums.

Koka Kola has another strong melody, and at two minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome. In fact, it is my own favorite on London Calling.

The Card Cheat has all the instruments recorded twice to get a bigger sound, and includes piano and brass to make it swing.

Lover's Rock is the weakest track. Mildly interesting, but it drags out into a dull coda again. Superfluous; outshone by the rest.

Back to business with Four Horsemen. No, it is not another apocalypse song. Actually, I'm not sure what it is about, but never mind that.

By this point, the album is unbearable to me if not broken into two days of listening. So we come to I'm Not Down, a repetitive, uplifting little tune. Verse, riff, chorus, rinse and repeat is a mite bit predictable.

Last proper song is Revolution Rock, which is a misleading title. The brass calls up ghosts of Herb Alpert for God's sake! Though the lyric would be unacceptable in his world. Judging from the lyric sheets, I'd guess Joe Strummer was very fond of ad-libbing...

Train in Vain is an odd inclusion, a single tossed on at the last possible minute, so the original album sleeve didn't even mention it. I'd enjoy it more if it wouldn't play back in my head for the next 24 hours.

Okay, so it has more strengths than weaknesses. It makes a cohesive artistic statement and judging from what I've heard about Sandinista and Combat Rock, they didn't have anything to say afterwards.

If my review hasn't convinced you that this isn't a punk record, you can see my statement backed up by the cover art, which is both an homage to Elvis Presley and a shot recalling The Who more than anything else.

In conclusion, I'm pleased with London Calling, though I'd hardly call it one of the greatest records of all time, and the length deters me from taking it off the shelf for another two years.

20th...Roxy's second

(Bonus points to anyone who's already noticed that this is my third "For" somebody or other)

For Your Pleasure. Five stars.

So, 1973 gave us the last Roxy Music album before Eno split, and it takes the darkness hinted at on the prior's Ladytron and lets it loose. From album cover in, this is the excessive, even decadent expansion of everything originally presented.

To start, the camp is campier. Do the Strand is essentially a joke song, and wears off as all such numbers will if overplayed. But man, the bridge is killer and the band cooks... Even on silly throwaways the band puts in a five star performance.

Beauty Queen is a poetic, strangely touching end-of-love song. Romance in Ferry's world always seems expensive, glamorous and entirely superficial, yet he really wrings the pathos out of it. This is probably the best song on here, as the band gets to rock out, and Ferry's ballad shines through with fabulous turns of phrase. And his voice is unmatchable.

Strictly Confidential is a macabrely rendered deathbed lament (every songwriter has got one of those inside them). It creeps slowly upward, becoming more and more otherworldly. All details are left to the imagination.

Editions of You is an all out, chaotic slice of art-rock with more extreme camp and a great trade-off among lead instruments.

Then there's In Every Dream Home a Heartache, more like spoken word than song. It's a peek into an empty space, a world where the excessively rich have every convenience but no soul. So (the narrator at least) turns to the gothic and perverse right in the middle of suburbia. When the music does kick in it's worth the wait, even though it contains a false stop (and I really hate those).

The Bogus Man is further creepiness, but the least effecting work overall. Oh, it's loungy and strangely upbeat; the brief lyric is about an emotionally stunted man and simmers with undercurrents of stalking and violence. That lasts about four minutes and then we're fed minute after minute (five in all) of instrumental noodling. It doesn't build or go anywhere terribly interesting, it just proceeds aimlessly along. Why?

Grey Lagoons is underrated. A bit celebratory, but it, like Beauty Queen, brims with energy and isn't camp. It's not as good as the earlier track, just because the lyrics are a bit lightweight.

And Eno, I hear you ask? Oh, he's running riot on the title track, a rather sweet last minute note. It does it's fair share of noodling too, but coming at the end and mimicking a sunrise, it goes somewhere and fades out where you can't follow it.

Roxy Music would never sound like this again. Take heart though; their second phase was equal to the first, though only lasting another two albums. Then they caught the most unfortunate of rock's maladies...they sold out. But all those stories will come later. This week, my concern is For Your Pleasure, one of the best CDs they ever made.

19th...Lyrical craftsmanship

For the Roses. Four stars.

1972s For the Roses was supposed to be Joni Mitchell's farewell to the music industry. Uncomfortable with her progressing popularity, she released this album and took a relatively short hiatus, returning in 1974.

So in my mind, this record marks her farewell more to the heart-on-the-sleeve singer-songwriter style she'd epitomized on Blue, and the groundwork for later obscuritantism. (I don't believe that's a real word)

Banquet is the uncompromising start-up, taking a simple metaphor of life as a banquet and expanding it into something just a titch more complicated. The beauty of much of the album is found in the structure. Joni knew how to arrange a song, even a simple piano ballad.

Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire is as impenetrable as the title makes it sound. Jazz inflections on a guitar track, a beautiful melody if one has the patience to tease it out, her voice turning hollow and spooky and a lyric far too deep on a thematic level for me to understand.

Barangrill is much easier, thematically and melodically. The denizens of a Bar and Grill are lovingly described, while woodwinds and reeds highlight a memorable tune. It is pleasant and easy to overplay, since there isn't a whole lot underneath the charm.

Back to piano with Lesson in Survival, and back to the seaside painted in Banquet. Journalistic free verse, set to a vague tune. It details the straining elements of a relationship. "I came in as bright/as a neon light/and I burned out/right there before him." Moving story, excellently crafted and immediately forgettable.

It shifts superbly into Let the Wind Carry Me, detailing the strain between a rock n roll rebel and her parents.

For the Roses moves back to guitar and is an informed, detailed song about life as a singer-songwriter. After the last couple, the melody is especially nice and the imagery proves how adept Joni Mitchell is with a lyric.

See You Sometime is a continuation of it. And it occurs to me that I'm not recommending her as being fun to listen to. In fact, the singer-songwriter genre is not replete with light-hearted self deprecation and absurdities. No, it's like art, recommended as thought-provoking material. It's just not good time music.

Where was I? Electricity; another simple metaphor, faulty wiring = a relationship. It's rather touching, just for that simplicity.

Harmonica! You know this one. It's You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio. Got into the Top 25, without benefit of a chorus, and it is a sweet little love song. It makes me smile. Oh, and it's Nash supplying the harmonica.

Blonde in the Bleachers is a vignette, brief but interesting. Stills gets on this one as the whole rock n roll band that invades the coda.

Woman of Heart and Mind is the most scathing song, though the delivery is merely contemplative.

Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune) is certainly the most ambitious of the lot. Obviously, the subject is Beethoven. It settles into a longish bridge, but the actual song is good, though it doesn't wrap up so much as pieter out.

Verdict? A good job all around. Not the study in excellence of Blue, nor her best collection of songs, since a lot of them only dimly register on a melodic level. Yet Joni's capability and strength of craftsmanship make it a splendid continuation record, though I wouldn't recommend it as a good starting point if you haven't heard any of her other work. She's got a good voice too.

18th...Some indie obscurity

For Emma, Forever Ago. Four Stars.

In 2006, having recently lost his band and relationship, Justin Vernon sped off to a hunting cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin and recorded this record over the winter. His nom de plume, incidentally, is an intentionally misspelled "bon hiver" (bohn ee-vair) which means good winter in French.

Once he got out of the woods in 2007, he did a little bit of extra recording, but this is mostly a one-man, one-time effort, and also a true indie album, as I've never heard of the publisher.

Flume sums up the entire style of Bon Iver. Driven by acoustic guitar and Justin's overlapping falsetto blurring an already vague, imagistic lyric. Neat effects in the overdub department, and a guest drummer.

Lump Sum pretty much repeats the formula, so one must accept the cohesiveness of the sound from song to song. What it lacks in variety is made up for with atmosphere. It forms a perfect compliment to a snowy day.

Skinny Love is the angriest track, one on which Justin ditches the falsetto to help accent the feeling. It's patched together and messy, like he'd only barely got the song together and then used the demo.

The Wolves (Act I and II) takes its sweet time, starting with repeated lines and pauses that reminded me of a gospel hymn. Then it stretches out into a long strummed refrain "what might have been lost don't bother me." With nowhere left to go, it eventually splinters apart, leaving just this little timid voice spouting an unfinished line.

Blindsided is more of the same; a confusing lyric married to a lovely melody with some interesting musical effects. Your mileage will vary. Heck, even mine does.

Creature Fear has a rousing chorus, but is in fact the most despondent, depressing song herein.

It blends seamlessly into Team, rendering the song by itself pointless. It's about a minute worth of drumming and a bass riff, with affects and whistling.

The almost title track, For Emma, is next. Feels like a hopeful finale, thanks to trumpet and trombone from the guest players.

But the last song is Re: Stacks. Longest, most coherent lyric settled on the least catchy melody by far. I always get lost on this song; it feels like a bonus track.

Well, I'm really rather ambivalent about this CD. I've been listening to it heavily this past week, trying to figure it out. Sometimes I think the whole thing's dull, at others it seems to possess a most extraordinary beauty. What is Justin Vernon trying to convey? It takes concentration for me to even begin to figure it out. I find that snow outside the window really helps the cause.

Oh, and a reviewer on Amazon recommended hearing it alongside Neil Young Live at Massey Hall. So I bought them both, and did just that. Yes, they do form a natural compliment to each other, sharing acoustics, falsetto and a predilection for loneliness.

Looking back, this does seem a tepid review. I simply don't know whether I like Bon Iver or not, let alone if anyone else would. The frost obscuring the window on the cover really tells you everything you need to know. Sometimes one accepts the obscurity with a philosophical nod; other times it's "get a windshield wiper and say what's on your mind already!"

17th...An elegie

Gone Again. Five stars.

Except for a brief return in the 80s, Patti Smith had retired from the music business, opting instead for a private life with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith and children. But in the years leading up to 1996, several close friends (Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith Group pianist Richard Sohl) and her brother Todd all passed away. With the loss of her husband, to whom Gone Again is dedicated, she returned to the studio.

Gone Again is an incredibly organic, sincere record. Though themes of death and loss are dealt with in every song, it is neither morbid nor depressing; rather, the underlying emotion seems to be recuperation, renewal of strength and the attempt to make peace with death and also create an adequate tribute to life.

The title track is a powerful attention grabber, and therefore somewhat misleading (as the record afterwards is mostly in a quiet vein). It heralded at the time that after such a long hiatus, Patti Smith could still rock, still capture poetry and still draw on incredible emotional resonance.

Beneath the Southern Cross is acoustically driven, with John Cale on organ and Tom Verlaine on electric guitar, both of which form unobtrusive textures. The song is astonishingly good free verse, but takes time to appreciate, lacking hooks. And listen to the heavenly, pure vocal at the end...That is Jeff Buckley, within a year of his death, making the song chilling, in retrospect.

About a Boy is a lengthy eight minutes, full of atmosphere, washes of guitar far in the background. Patti's vocals are the centerpiece of the entire record. The subject? Kurt Cobain's suicide, and each verse grows more bitter, more angered, as is only fair in the case.

My Madrigal is made of piano, cello and the most emotional of all the lyrics. The refrain is simply "till death do us part" and Patti's voice is at its most beautiful.

Summer Cannibals is oddly placed, being even more abrasive than Gone Again. The catharsis of the take must have been incredible; she practically spits each word out. It's very strong, working on the surreal story of cannibals in Georgia, but (perhaps on purpose) it forms a harsh put down of the romanticism just prior.

Dead to the World is nearly a country song, and Patti adopts a rather severe twang for the telling of the tale, which I found annoying at first...But the sheer appeal of the song, and the fabulous whistling contributed by one Oliver Ray (who I know nothing about) soon won me over, and it is now one of my favorite moments on the album.

For all the shifts in tone and texture, the record is remarkably consistent in its vision. Wing, the only song written for it that does not clearly deal with death or absence, is almost entirely on acoustic guitar.

Ravens features a Spanish inflected mandolin (played by Kimberly Smith, who I can't believe isn't related) and the best poetry included, as it reads good on its own. "All the gifts that God had gave/and those by fate denied/gone to where all treasures laid/and where the raven flies."

At 55 minutes, the CD is longer than is preferable to me, and so we come to the only superfluous song, a cover of Dylan's Wicked Messenger, transforming it into hard rock and obscuring the lyric. Nothing wrong with it - she belts it out - but it is the only weakness to Gone Again.

Fireflies is the other long track, and could never run in any one's head, but the atmosphere conjured is breathtaking. Verlaine, Ray and Buckley are all on it, along with the regular band. The lyric starts in a gospel theme before Patti's muse reasserts itself in a haunting devotional ode.

"This little song is for Fred," she says softly, and lists the chords before playing Farewell Reel, an unaccompanied song that could very well be a first take. It's a fitting end, encapsulating the theme of life making its peace with death.

Gone Again is an essential Patti Smith recording. To me, it is her finest work. The price paid, the degree to which she rose above what must have been incredible pain and the statement hewn from the experience all point to her being on the highest tier available to artists of any order.

16th..."Bizarre"

(Sorry about the hiatus, folks. Will try to keep on top of things from here out, but everyone needs a vacation now and then)

Roxy Music. Four stars.

Fairport Convention. The Beatles. David Bowie. Bob Dylan. On the whole, debut records bear the marks of influences and the musicians' own uncertainties. Roxy Music is one of the exceptions. In 1972, they put this record out, already sounding like veterans. Supremely confidant, with a unique sound, watertight band and fabulous front man, Roxy Music already seemed to know the exact sound (slightly camp art-rock with a strange lack of choruses) and look (glam rock) they were going for.

Make no mistake, this is classic Roxy down to the cover art.

The only clue that this is their earliest effort comes from Bryan Ferry: lyricist, pianist and singer. Compared to the work to come out in just a year or so, his voice herein is pale and washed out. And don't just take my word for it; Ferry himself must have harbored some dis-satisfactions, as he reworked almost half of these songs on his 1976 solo record Let's Stick Together.

The other members of the band: Paul Thompson on obligatory drums, Graham Simpson for bass, Phil Manzanera on the electric guitar, Andrew MacKay playing oboe and saxophone and a man the reproduced liner notes refer to only as "Eno" playing synths and tapes.

The album starts and ends quite fittingly, with party sound affects. Then Re-Make Re-Model kicks off. It's the straightest rocker in the set, and the saxophone is even better than the guitar. Highlight is the "band introduction" where everybody gets their own 10 second solo. It comes across as a well-rehearsed jam (which it may well have started as).

Ladytron is quieter, with a haunting soundscape crafted from oboe and synth and an elegant, darker lyric. It finally implodes as a dense rocker, but Manzanera does not get a solo.

The campier elements of Roxy Music come to the foreground on If There is Something, a woozy forerunner to the more American sounds of songs like Prairie Rose. However, it won't be pigeon-holed and shifts into epic, heartfelt territory with Ferry belting out his cliched declaration of love ("I would climb mountains..." etc... though he'd also become a gardener, growing roses...and potatoes?!).

Virginia Plain, the single, made the Top Ten in the U.K. and was performed on Top of the Pops. It's purely ridiculous, full of weird little asides and what might be the most abrupt ending of any pop song ever recorded.

2 H.B. is a sophisticated ballad whose title is actually "To Humphrey Bogart," explaining the almost-chorus of "here's looking at you kid." It focuses on Casablanca, but makes a touching ode to his entire screen legacy.

The Bob (Medley) is naturally the most schizophrenic song, starting off with pure Eno invention before abrasive rock...war sound affects, smooth jazz and Eno glitter (best part)...and so on until it eventually pivots back to the starting point. Art-rock with a capital A.

Chance Meeting is a stripped down piano driven work. Ferry's speciality is lost love between glamorous, beautiful people, and it's on display here. Less is going on musically, but incredible, ominous noises come from Manzanera's guitar...

Would You Believe? Snazzy melody, percussion and sax and more campy takes on what strikes as California rock. This is the last swinging song on Roxy Music and it's a great tune.

Sea Breezes (yes, surf sounds are lovingly included) is evocative, haunting and well-structured at first. MacKay's oboe is fabulous for three minutes, then the song goes into a herky jerky faster tempo with lots of noodling from all involved. It loses coherency at this point and is the weakest track.

Bitters End is, as the backing vocals so aptly sing "bizarre, bizarre, bizarre, bizarre." Every thing's here: the pink gin, the parties and yet also the loneliness and nostalgia for bygone romances. And it is cloaked in eccentricity from the delivery of the lyrics ("too late to leap the chocolate gate"...?) to the nominal music backing it up.

The debut of album of Roxy Music doesn't really put a foot wrong. In hindsight, better things were to come, and I'd recommend a newcomer start with Country Life, but this is a good little CD for fans of unpretentious art-rock or who just want something different.

15th CD...

The Times They Are A-Changin. Four stars.

Okay, I am scared stiff. This is bearding the lion, phase 1. What could possibly be worse than describing this?

Answer: Highway 61 Revisited. So I should count my blessings.

Now Dylan's a bit of a cynic and pessimist on all his records, but I think this one takes the cake for surpreme downer. Almost every song is either a bitter ballad or written in protest of some form of injustice. Trust me, this is not the place for the uninitiated to start. His other records from around this time have far more humour and musical diversity, never mind when he went electric.

And for those who want to know, this album came out in early 1964.

Every line of the title track is solid gold. It is the bar-none classic from the record. Early Dylan consisted of him, his guitar and bursts of harmonica, and the sound of this track is the blueprint for all the others herein. Musically primitive, but the song itself hasn't dated an inch. Great statement.

Ballad of Hollis Brown is certainly memorable. Tense guitar lick, and an excruciatingly slow building murder ballad. After introducing Hollis and his starving family, the rest of the story changes to the viewpoint of "you." This stroke of genius forces empathy, as you listen in to every awful detail.

With God On Our Side is a still more obvious protest song. This one is rather stuck in its era, but it still makes some valid points. The nice thing about his protests: they don't offer any reform plans, he just says what he thinks and leaves the audience to make up their own minds. It's the reason this stuff still holds up after decades of changing ideals. Don't ask me about the melody though; it clunks at every note.

One Too Many Mornings is the shortest track (God was the longest) and the most beautiful, wistful and sad. It's an evocative vignette, not a statement of anything.

North Country Blues is the bitterest of the ballads. It's about the iron ore mining towns, the casualties they create when operating, and the ruin when they shut down. "They say it's much cheaper down in South American towns/Where the miners work almost for nothing."

Only a Pawn in Their Game. More protest, obviously. Better than God.

Boots of Spanish Leather is structured as leave-taking between two lovers. It's the lady leaving on a boat, though until the last verses you can't tell. It ends ambiguously, yet unhappily, and the entire song is hauntingly rendered.

When the Ship Comes In is positively allegorical, like the second coming of Christ. It is the only upbeat tune, and quite a welcome addition too. Great change, full of fantastical imagery that doesn't quite reach biblical in nature until the end.

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is an extraordinary ballad. Lovely melody, however simple it is. The story is of a 51 year old servant "killed for no reason" and it is surprisingly moving. The story catches you up just like Hollis Brown's did, and it's impossible not to feel insult and indignation at the absolute misplacement of justice depicted.

Restless Farewell is a fitting end. The narrator is moving on, and leaving a sprawling epitaph behind. Old-fashioned, poignant and a fine finish all around.

...Okay, how'd I do?

14th CD

After the Gold Rush. Four and a half stars.

In 1970, after his collaboration with Crosby, Stills & Nash (resulting in the extremely successful Deja Vu, which I still haven't heard), Neil Young went back to his solo career with another successful record. Keeping his backing band Crazy Horse, he also got Jack Nitzsche from the first album for piano and Greg Reeves (bass player for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) on board. Oh, and Stills gets to do backing vocals.

So it sounds a lot like the hard rock/country and folk/country of previous efforts, with the difference of Bill Peterson (whoever that is) playing flugelhorns.

Tell Me Why. Neil starts singing almost immediately on a lovely acoustic number with harmonizing. It's everything I like about his music in one song.

After the Gold Rush is a piano ballad. The lyric makes no sense (that's probably because it's based on a screenplay for a film of the same name. The film never materialized, by the way.) The melody is nice; the horns get their first airing on the bridge. For some reason, I really haven't warmed to it.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart also leaves me cold. It's really quite fragmented, like he had something he meant to say, but couldn't find the words to say it. There's not much to it, but it got to # 33, so what do I know?

Southern Man makes up for these weaknesses. It starts seemingly right in the middle of an epic rock song. Most of it is taken up by guitar soloing, but the piano steals the show for me (that's an unknown Nils Lofgren, by the way). Anyone who played on this song can walk tall for the rest of their life, that's how good it is. Great lyric too; a stark, sweeping glance at the South's slave legacy.

Then, Side 1 finishes with Till the Morning Comes, an extra lavished with horns and harmonies that turn Neil Young into a barbershop quartet. It's treated like a real song, when in fact it is two lines and an infectiously good-natured piano riff. At one minute, its nearest relatives may be found on the Beatles' White Album.

Oh Lonesome Me is a cover of country artist Don Gibson. Harmonica! Pure country, of course. Neil's delivery is as sincere as it gets, which is good, as the lyric is a bit old-fashioned. It's a dirge, but rather nice.

Don't Let It Bring You Down is packed with vivid imagery, centered on the city (which is a bit of a scenic shift) and one of the most gripping songs herein.

Birds is a mercifully short piano ballad. It's pure heart-on-your-sleeve material. Just listen to him sing the line "It's over..." It is absolutely beautiful and sublime and chokes me up.

When You Dance, I Can Really Love is a rock song, and the other single. Rather low-concept, but a thankful change of pace from all the harrowing songs about lonely people.

We go right back to that with I Believe in You. It's an acoustic guitar partner to Birds and gets much the same reaction.

Side 2 wraps with another throwaway. Cripple Creek Ferry is one verse and a chorus. The simplicity makes it somewhat ridiculous, though the story it paints has a lot of potential.

I'm rubbing my hands in anticipation of Harvest and Live at Massey Hall 1971, though I must say After the Gold Rush is a little bit uneven.

Also, despite my lackluster readership, I have to say I'm enamoured of this job I've undertaken, and I have no intention to stop until I've reviewed everybody from Abney Park to ZZ Top.

13th CD

Treasure. Four stars.

The Cocteau Twins are one of those flukes, a band out of time. Brought together in the late seventies, when post punk and new wave were the sounds of the future, a trio in Scotland morphed from goth sensibilities into all-encompassing gauzy soundscapes.

In 1984 the lineup was Robin Guthrie on guitar, Simon Raymonde on bass and Elizabeth Fraser on all vocals. Strangely, I couldn't find a listing for other instruments; it was all production. That caveat aside...

The Cocteau Twins are built upon Fraser's extraordinary vocals. You'd swear she was two people the way her voice dips and soars in near operatic flights. Her range and ability of expression are also noteworthy for not utilizing lyrics. Her songs are based in pure sound; English and (maybe) others crop up, seemingly for the feel of the word. That such distance, such affectedness, results in such emotionally gripping work is a testament to the Cocteaus talent.

When I heard Ivo for the first time, I'd have sworn it was a 90s product. It opens with acoustic strumming and Fraser's voice - off putting for spouting nonsense in such a high pitch. It's like getting dunked in cold water, but the music, which is equally as affected as her voice, is full of bell like percussion and a cooling lushness. It sways.

Lorelei is playful and spinning. One of the unique elements of the record is its ability to capture the sound of movement. The song structure is out of the ordinary, yet not inaccessable. Typical pop structure is forsaken with the rest of normality.

Beatrix is absolutely beautiful, a pure cascade of jangling harmonies. It's almost a complete musical circle, but just as it gets predictable, it shifts gears and becomes a brand new song laid on the same foundation.

Persephone lifts the style of hard rock. It's grungy, yet still somehow delicate and Fraser adapts to the tone perfectly. She utilizes near-English, but it makes no snese anyway. The quality is turbulent and ominous. Her two vocals play off each other excellently (she always doubles her voice and sings on different scales, which is a neat touch).

Pandora sounds absolutely Spanish. It has a sultry quality, and instrumental interludes as gentle as lacework.

Amelia is the most emotional moment. The tone is similar to Ivo and Lorelei, only the playful strangeness has been replaced with lament and sorrow and a sense of space and grandeur.

Aloysius returns from the dark. It's celebratory, frivolous and life-affirming. The drum beat is oddly low and deep for the "song." Listening to the CD several times, I can only wish they'd been a little less repetitious. First time, it's so lovely you don't mind, but afterwards.... So this CD is not to be revisited with too much consistancy.

Cicely is nicely ambiguous and strange. It's a melting pot of the sounds and styles from the other tracks. It calls to mind Persephone and is consistently contradictory.

Otterley is the most mysterious moment. Fraser descends to a breathy whisper, the music mixes with the sound of the tide. Atmosphere in spades. High drama being acted out in an unknown language.

And then it botches it completely. Donimo, six minutes of the most aggravating tune imaginable. It grates on me from the word go, yet somehow this, which would still have been weak at two minutes, gets stretched to a painful six, and sounds proud of itself for it! I don't listen to it; I stop at Otterley. Forced to take the album as a whole, Donimo stuck at the end to ruin the experience knocks a whole star off the rating.

Other than that, the Cocteau Twins are worth a listen.

12th CD...European plane ticket

Gulag Orkestar. Four stars.

No guitars were used in the making of this album.

Instead, Zach Condon (Beirut), a 19 year old from Albuquerque, takes up ukelele, mandolin, trumpet, piano, organ and percussion (including tambourine and congas), with a little help from members of A Hawk and a Hacksaw picking out a line here and there on clarinet or violin.

The result is probably the most European CD ever created by an American. You can tell right from the opening title track, which starts almost as a mournful band tuning up...somewhere in the Balkans. I thought the whole record sounded tinny on first few listens, but once you're past the lack of guitar and bass, a really incredible sound is open to you. A deep piano, Zach's melancholy vocals working in layers, trumpet everywhere and subtle percussion.

Prenzlauerberg (named for a nice district in Berlin) is a waltz. It sounds like he's singing in another language, but it's just him slurring his English, adding a mysterious vibe and leaving the song open to interpretation.

Brandenburg (named for a German state) is the first song to really pop out at you, via its driving mandolin melody. Despite the pace, it's no less sad for it. It's like an ode to a time and place long gone. That's Beirut's specialty.

Postcards from Italy runs along as a romantic ukelele tune that morphs into a triumphant second half. Trumpet is not a beautiful instrument, but Beirut transforms it.

Accordion comes to the foreground in Mount Wroclai (Idle Days), a peaceful, good-natured tune with a repetitive, chanted chorus and splendid percussion. You can dance to this one. Oh, and Mt. Wroclai is a fictional place.

Rhineland (Heartland) is a more subdued, melancholy number.

Then Scenic World, a bit of a shock, as it's got electronics in it that I find distracting. It's rather like having Pac Man running in the background, but once you're used to it, it's not too bad and the song's only two minutes anyway.

Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) gets back to more familiar territory. It's a crowded, militaristic piece that I get claustrophobic listening to.

The Bunker's sparsity is a breather, though the sound burgeons out as it goes along.

The Canals of Our City is well placed, as the album begins to wind down in a stately, graceful manner. The layers on Zach's voice can be a bit frustrating if you're trying to get the gist of what he's saying. It adds mystery though. Sort of like early T. Rex, though completely different in every other way.

After the Curtain is a bit silly. Applause bursts in like someone pressed a button, and there's the electronics again. The Pac Man sounds gets to be the only solo on the entire CD, and you can almost see the credits roll.

Overall, I'd say the first half of the CD is dynamite, and the second just can't measure up. Despite that, Beirut's debut is undoubtedly one of 2006s most interesting releases, and curiously genre-proof. It's certainly as alternative as they come. I can't wait to check out The Flying Club Cup.

11th CD (with picture anyway)

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Five stars.

Back in the early days of Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young met the Rockets, a psychedelic/folk hybrid that weren't really getting anywhere. He must have liked them, because after both bands had disintegrated, he got what was left of the Rockets, re-named them Crazy Horse and put them up as backing band for his second solo record.

So, out went the strings and the thoughtful little fragments that made up record 1, to be replaced with a more standard rock ensemble. Guitar (Danny Whitten), bass (Billy Talbot) and drums (Ralph Molina). The overall sound is still undeniably countryish.

Kicks off with Cinnamon Girl, immensely accessable, as handclaps always signify. Guitars manage to soar and be incredibly muddy at the same time. Straight ahead rock song, with an immediately fabulous riff that revolves through the whole thing and never wears out.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is pretty much an ode to the country and is the shortest tune. The two verses and chorus are sung in a rather rough harmony with Neil having entirely ditched his "thin" falsetto for the job. Guitars cover the song again, jangling in tandem.

Round and Round (It Won't Be Long) is a duet with Robin Lane, then on the folk circuit, since remembered on the New Wave circuit. Their voices compliment each other beautifully and the song itself is one of those wistful, melancholy numbers he does so very well. Six minutes of acoustic balladry and emotional metaphor.

Down by the River is, wonder of wonders, a Neil Young murder ballad. Well, not quite, since the lyric is purposefully obscure, only being meant to frame a sprawling, intense, grungy guitar workout. As a mood piece, it is fabulous. As a song, it's somewhat frustrating, as the lyric is so interesting and it never develops, and instead we get a mountain of morose guitar soloing. That being the intended purpose, it's excellent anyway.

The Losing End (When You're On) shouldn't be any good at all. It contains a rather unforgivably pedestrian line about tears falling like rain, along with some incredibly messy harmonies. Somehow it gets away with these technicalities and is quite an endearing country tune, when all is said and done.

Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets) features Bobby Notkoff, another Rocket, on violin, making this the darkest track on the album. It smolders, like the soundtrack to the best western you'll never see.

Finally, it's the ten minute magnum opus. Cowgirl in the Sand. Starting quietly, it quickly shifts into an epic jam. A lyric is attached, and it makes a strategic moment of melodicism amidst the musical exhibition. It couldn't be more different from Down by the River, and it actually makes for a more enjoyable listen. It never becomes complacent, always shifting, and emotion never lets the guitars go for a second.

That's it. So I'm only two albums into this guy's catalogue, and I think I'm already a fan.

A lesson in production

Chelsea Girl. Five Stars.

In 1967, Nico was no longer with the Velvet Underground. She'd moved on, interestingly enough, to being a sort of folk chanteuse in New York City coffeehouses. Her act was solo, backed by a variety of guitarists, among them both Tim Hardin and Jackson Browne, both of whom donated songs to her.

With a roster of songs, only one of which did she help write, Nico set up to make this, her first record album. However, her producer, Tom Wilson, tampered with the recordings, overdubbing flute and strings without her consent. (Actually, he'd done a similar thing to Simon and Garfunkel, overdubbing electric instruments onto The Sounds of Silence and releasing it as a single without bothering to get their permission)

I don't think Nico herself liked this record.

Jackson Browne had a hand in writing The Fairest of the Seasons. It is quite nice, but Nico's voice is a slap in the face. You'll either get used to it or bail out. She was tone deaf and emotionally stilted, but if you let go of that, there is an extraordinary beauty hidden beneath. Musically it's very much chamber pop, lots of strings and an elegant, stately melody.

These Days is a straight pop song from Browne's pen. If you're still here after The Fairest, this one is easier to get into and Chelsea Girls is probably your cup of tea. It's got a sad, beautiful lyric. She was lucky to get such excellent material.

Little Sister is a Cale/Reed offering with a hypnotic, drawn out and gently haggard quality. It flows over you and into the distance.

Winter Song is somewhat fiercer. John Cale's imagistic lyric is a bit of a mouthful at times and makes no real sense.

It Was a Pleasure Then feels like a Velvet Underground outtake. She cowrote it with Reed/Cale (the latter provides his memorable demon-possessed feedback). A morose, eight minute epic of avant-gardeness. The wordless chanting comes right from the ancient world and Nico and the band sound like they're jamming full across the room. It's the most difficult cut; also the eeriest.

Side two comes up with Chelsea Girls (Sterling Morrison was on board for this one). Flute pretty much defines this one. It is very repetitive, problematic at seven minutes. Lyrically, the most Velvet of the whole set. It's snapshots of denizens in the Chelsea Hotel, for God's sake. The mood of urbane decay fits perfectly onto the rest of the album.

I'll Keep It With Mine is a Bob Dylan song. He never got around to releasing his own version, but Judy Collins had sung it, and later on Sandy Denny with Fairport Convention wound up with it. It's extraordinarily upbeat for Nico, and she does sing it with sincerity. I did say she was emotionally stilted, yet a strange degree still gets through that incredibly flawed German voice.

Somewhere There's a Feather is Browne's work and another lovely, good sentiment. With Dylan it forms a nice couplet of sunshine and hope on what is quite an ominous album.

Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams, a Lou Reed song, starts spiralling back into darkness. Highly poetic and very appropriate.

Finally, there is Tim Hardin's Eulogy to Lenny Bruce. Lenny was a stand-up comic who make obscenity his trademark. He died via drugs. Nico sings dispassionately in one ear while a guitar plays a waltzing tune quietly in the other. The starkest moment, and a strong finale to an album whose atmosphere is simply astonishing. Even with that damn flute.

I personally do not mind it, or her voice. And I think the cover art ought to be on a list of 100 Greatest Album Covers. She looks like a dark Joni Mitchell and it perfectly encapsulates the sound of the record.

Oh no! It's another long review!

Neil Young. Five Stars.

Just a few months after Buffalo Springfield's demise (the band had died from ego: a rather common rock malady) Neil Young came out with his self-named solo debut. Because of comflicting information, I haven't been able to figure out whether it came out in late '68 or early '69. However, the record didn't go anywhere either way, and he changed tactics on the followup. As part of my continuous feud with AllMusic I noted that they don't think it necessary to hear this one. My expectations were quite low, but I found it surprisingly enjoyable.

It starts off with The Emperor of Wyoming, which I love for its sheer ridiculousness. You're alone on the world stage for the first time, and you're going to introduce yourself with a rosy instrumental? Seriously, it's one of the sunniest tunes I've heard from Neil, driven by acoustic guitar and some pleasantly wistful strings.

The Loner is a crunchy rock song, the hit on an album of non-hits. The lyric has some nice turns of phrase, though it's entirely straightforward. The musical bridge ties it back into The Emperor of Wyoming, and it is one of the few songs on here that sounds complete.

If I Could Have Her Tonight is two minutes of a lovely melody and Neil singing a heartwrendingly sincere little tune. And it's actually that sincerity that saves the album, turning it into a masterpiece of simple statements.

Crunchy electric guitars make a return on I've Been Waiting For You. Great little guitar solo. I used to be most familiar with it via David Bowie's cover some decades later; however, the sentiment sits far more easily here.

The Old Laughing Lady is a six minute acoustic ballad. It's actually rather ominous, though that might be because I can't make heads or tails of the lyric. It's one of the occasional abstruse works. Musically, it features a set of soul singers rising to crescendo (which is pretty neat) and it was arranged and produced with help from Jack Nitzsche.

Nitzsche actually wrote String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill, a positively surreal inclusion. It is exactly what it says. One minute of a string quartet. I love violins, and it makes for a nice intermission.

Also, it leads excellently into Here We Are in the Years. This is a song suite in three minutes, as it features several beautiful melodies that never repeat themselves and it never settles into a chorus. Wonderfully plaintive at points and featuring a nice piano.

What Did You Do To My Life? Well, here's a sad one for you. The production is odd. Very buzzy, and I'm not sure why. Terribly unfinished; it's mostly just a chorus.

I've Loved Her So Long takes up those soul singers again. It's all chorus, but rather more upbeat...in a wistful way.

That ends the thematic album, as the last track is nine minutes of spare, upfront acoustic guitar, with Neil singing a dark, hallucinatory lyric. It's dour and serious as anything, and on my first listen I hated it. "Like Dylan, only bad" I thought. Listening a second time, knowing what to expect, I found it so weird and bizarre a coda that it simply added to what is overall a rather eccentric record. So, if you start out thinking The Last Trip to Tulsa is pretentious rubbish, give it another chance.

The Neil Young album is only a little over half an hour in length. Most tracks are fragments, so they form a cohesive whole and don't really stand well alone. The overall flavour is rather countryish, and of course, it's just been remastered, so everyone's making a fuss over that. I don't know anything about it, so I can't really comment. I'm just endorsing the record, which I find immensely enjoyable. The rest I'll leave to the audiophiles.

The Monday Review

The Implied Neutral Sons. Five Stars.

One year after The Ballad of Ariel Piccolo, Neutral Sons teamed up once more, this CD being the result. Englishman Mark Cottrell took the production helm, designed the artwork and gained solo songwriting credits for the first time. Hence, The Implied has a more cohesive sound than Ariel Piccolo and it is also a more diplomatic work.

Now, a quick word about the title. It's a rather awkward joke, as "The Implied" is quite literal. "The" is written on all the songs as T'

With that explained, it's on to the opening number T'Conference. A loop that sounds a bit like a party played backwards gets it going, then a tinny little riff puts the song into focus. Richard Knutson (the American) handles all the vocals. It's not terribly memorable, but it's high quality. What's it about? Beats me.

It leads into T'Devil's Kiss, a soothing track. This is Cottrell's work. It's one of those "woman let me down" songs, and it's really a nice interlude, resigned but not complaining in tone.

T'Donkee puts the record into trippy waters. Lots of neat turns of phrase make it a solid standout.

T'Face of T'Shine (?????) passes the vocals back to Knutson. It's full of loops, therefore full of ear candy. It's rather woozy, complimenting the black and white cover art.

T'Frequency has fantastic percussion. Oh, it's weird. Only one verse, sung in unsettling duet. Its meaning is too deep for me, but the whole thing has an atmosphere of the sinister and uncanny.

T'Hole continues to work in the bizarre. Knutson does scat vocals to accent the drums while Cottrell sings some kind of gutter gothic over loungy music.

T'Jaaam Doctor (based on a comedy skit) is a nearly spoken exchange. It manages to be morose, disturbing and funny all at once.

Luckily, we get back to music on the more upbeat Side Two. T'Kalmer almost sounds accessable to start, before breaking into a Talking Heads style chorus. The bridge revves up fast, a fantastic, rocking moment. The verses make a nice contrast, being quite wistful.

T'Oken Old Git (stretching the naming joke here) is a complete rock tune. The lyric is hilarious. The whole thing sounds like a pastiche.

T' Old Queen (that's the male sort, I do believe) is a rather sunny track, bouncy and light. Short, and with an excellent coda.

T'Spacebook starts with more runaway zaniness. Ignoring that, it becomes another excellent song. Guitar driven, with Cottrell's backing vocals standing in for percussion. Knutson sings in his "hip" voice about what appears to be internet popularity, though it is somewhat abstruse.

T'Stones is an ancient Knutson song he had lying about. It was dusted off and revitalized for this record, though Cottrell only adds backing vocals. Pure class. (I'll refrain from further comment, due to my own extremely favorable bias)

That being such an interesting, serious song, these guys just had to take the mickey out of themselves with T'Ziki Bint. It's purposefully camp, the lyrics fun and dumb. It's a good-natured closer, and will keep most people from ever taking The Implied Neutral Sons seriously. However, it can grow on you.

That's the album. A well-crafted hour's worth of entertainment. When Ariel Piccolo came out, I was skeptical as to how they'd top it; however, they have done so. The Implied is a far more unified listening experience, thereby making it another step up in this musical partnership. Now I only wonder how they'll ever improve upon it next time.

See you next Monday.

Coming Soon...

I've finally got a publication schedule. A new review every Monday. This upcoming one is as you see. Check back then.

Who's for Hawaii?

A Bestiary of the Creatures. Five Stars.

I don't usually do complilations, but this one is a cohesive library: it is the collection of pre-Boomerang Creatures, containing their debut EP Wild Things, the album Feast and couple of singles.

The Creatures were a spin-off of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie teamed up in 1981 and made Wild Things, seemingly as an experiment with no intention of it becoming a long-running off-shoot.

Wild Things is five tracks worth of jungle percussion that holds promise not always lived up to. It gets off to an explosive start with Mad-Eyed Screamer. Anyone familiar with the Banshees will notice that Sioux didn't really have to change her writing style to accomodate the extremes of exotica that are the trademark of early Creatures.

So Unreal proves that Budgie is simply an amazing percussionist. The whole track is nothing but percussive elements and Sioux's reverberating voice. The melody makes it beautiful.

But Not Them has energetic drumming, I'll give it that. But it's repetitive to a fault. Sioux sings all three verses exactly the same, and then repeats them in the same order. A highly boring track.

Wild Thing is dissonance incarnate. Lots of theatrical pauses and her voice grates. Moving along...

Thumb is lovely. Soft traffic sound affects(it's about a hitchhiker), the percussion a gentle accent, Sioux nearly a cappella to start. It's haunting and understated, very slowly gaining power. It's a relief after the last two and a high point to end the EP on.

However, it's only an indication of things to come. In 1983, a year after the Banshees' creative highpoint of A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, the Creatures returned with the full album Feast. Taking Hawaii for inspiration, it opens with bonechilling, howling metallic dementia. Then gentle wind chimes on the tide take over while she sings the beautiful Morning Dawning. This is the only record I think she did where she lets other singers on. Wordless chanting backs her up on this elegant lament.

Inoa'Ole doesn't have English lyrics. It's the strangest song they ever did, featuring prominent chanting (courtesy of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters) which fades out as Budgie and Siouxsie come into play. She vocalises wonderfully and it is highly atmospheric.

Ice House is an erotic glance at tropical flowers. It's weird and suitably disturbing and gothic. Like much of Feast, it's not so much a song in itself, as it blends into the tracks before and after.

Therefore it segues perfectly into Dancing on Glass, an imagery packed little gem.

Then it's on to the good-natured Gecko. Percussion is fabulous, and the song is memorable. It's silly nonsense, which is rare from Sioux. There's also Jungle background (recorded in somebody's backyard) which adds colour.

Sky Train is a torrential downpour of drums. This one is Budgie's show. Sioux howls a bit. Her one line is buried. It's a really freaky "tune," but the ambiance fits perfectly onto the rest of the album.

Festival of Colours gets back to tribal chanting, with Sioux joining in. It's a wonderful track; sounds like the title, which is all you need to know.

Miss the Girl was the single. It got to No. 21, which isn't bad for a rather eccentric, though beautifully crafted track with a disturbing lyric apparantly about an abusive relationship.

Next up is A Strutting Rooster. Just like Sky Train, it's a drum powerhouse. Scarce any lyric and Sioux drowns her voice in echo anyway. Actually, the lyric is a traditional Hawaiian riddle.

More sound affects open Flesh. It's the finale and exceptionally unpleasant. It moves between Sioux dispassionately describing a decadent party and a dissonant chorus that flies in the face of the overall mood and dissolves in the end into cacophonous noise.

Then there's the B-side to Miss the Girl, and idle curiosity called Hot Springs in the Snow. It's an instrumental with no melody to speak of. Percussive noodling with a return from that metallic voice on Morning Dawning.

Lastly, two months after Feast and Miss the Girl, another single came out: Right Now/Weathercade. The latter plays first. Weathercade is probably one of the Creatures best tracks. It's got the exotic edge still, but also manages to stand as a good song. By far most of Feast blends into a one-of-a-kind atmosphere, but when taken apart, only a few of the songs are good standing alone.

Lastly, there's Right Now. Finger snapping and...a big band! The lyric was originally for Mel Torme back in the sixties and how the Creatures got ahold I'll never know. It's a hilarious pastiche and also a nifty little tune in its own right. The single made it to No. 14 in the U.K.

The Creatures disbanded until the late eighties when Boomerang, their most celebrated work, came out. Inspiration turned to Spain for that more accessible album.

If your favorite Banshees records are the McGeogh triptych, and you wish they'd done something afterwards with half as much bite, this is the record to get. Feast is completely out of print and A Bestiary manages to come to just 60 minutes, which is pretty decent for a comp.

The other side of New York

You know, as opposed to The Velvet Underground...

Bridge Over Troubled Water. Four and a half stars.

1970, and Simon and Garfunkel walked away with no less than six Grammys for what ended up as their final album. That makes it sound like the greatest album ever made, but the hype doesn't quite hold water. Not to say that this is a bad record - far from it. It's just that if you take it on a song by song analysis, you'll find a fair amount of filler is included.

And a cursory glance at the liner notes leave me wondering: where the hell was Garfunkel? Was he just on board for the harmonies and production, or what? He's not even credited among the featured musicians, and Simon was the songwriter, so I ask myself...

Garfunkel does get to sing lead on the lead-off title track, a kind-hearted piano ballad. It rises to a gorgeous crescendo, he has a heavenly voice and the strings that join in (on this and other songs) are tasteful and unobnoxious. Pay attention to the gunshot drum; it will be used to far better effect later on.

El Condor Pasa (If I Could) is an old Peruvian song. Simon lifted the melody and wrote his own words to it. It's my own favorite and only suffers from being way too short (a trait most of the songs share). The lyric is one of Simon's best, as it walks the knife-edge between being a sweet sentiment on the one hand, and tipping over into cutesy pie on the other.

Cecilia sounds like it came from an entirely different studio session. It's buoyant and all in harmony...and rather silly if one pays attention.

Being a pop duo, Simon and G never ever rock. The best you can hope for is a jaunty toe-tapper, like Keep the Customer Satisfied, which features punchy horns. It's more fun than Cecilia, and one has to admit, even ignoring the lyrics, that Paul Simon is a very clever songwriter; he seems to avoid the common verse-chorus-bridge design that makes so many pop songs blend together. A lot is packed in a short amount of space.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright is a beautiful, quiet little number. I'm not sure why he wrote an ode to the architect in question, but there's a peaceful melancholy to it and it makes an excellent change of pace.

The Boxer is the true centerpiece of the album and maybe of their entire careers, together and solo. It's a production miracle, the gunshot drum returns and absolutely makes the "lie-la-lie" chorus, and the lyric holds up perfectly. It's epic, at five minutes by far the longest track included, and emotionally satisfying. The album would crumble into dust without this one.

Baby Driver cheapens the effect, more by its placement than anything else. It's comic and silly (includes car sounds, for instance). There's nothing wrong with it, but in the long run, it heralds the downslide of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

The Only Living Boy in New York is another standout. I believe Simon wrote it during one of Garfunkel's absences, which gives the words meaning. The harmonies included herein are breathtaking, even more so than all the others. It returns the album to greatness, but Baby Driver so clashes with the two serious songs that sandwich it, that this whole half of the record sticks in my craw.

Why Don't You Write Me? is another rather light trifle. It's one of the weaker moments, but the total despair in the lyric is completely at odds with the jaunty music surrounding it, and that makes it interesting.

Bye Bye Love is live (weird). Was Simon hard up for material? Its inclusion is a surreal twist. For those who might not have realised their similarity to the Everly Brothers, this will set them straight. The audience handclaps are nice, but Simon and Garfunkel bring nothing new to the song, and since Simon can write real good, I'm stumped as to how this got on here.

Song for the Asking makes an excellent coda. Guitar and strings while Simon breaks the fourth wall and finishes off with a tune equally as uplifting as the opener. The only problem is that, at less than two minutes, it's the shortest track on record.

I can't be too hard on it overall, as it is entirely pleasant and very well done. Even Bye Bye Love is a nice extra. If it weren't for the inconsequential filler, and the overall disorganized side two, and the fact that the last track should be called Half a Song for the Asking, this would be perfect.

Even with those problems noted, this is a wonderful little album, if you don't mind light music. It has left me with the desire to hear a lot more Simon and G.

Epitaph

I realize that I mostly keep to the rock arena, but I'm compelled to write a brief note on Lena Horne, who passed away on May 9th. No one can pretend to enjoy so-called Easy Listening music without having heard her voice. And since I hadn't, in respect to her, I popped in Stormy Weather.

Quite simply, if you haven't yet heard that CD, go do so. Lena had a voice of liquid crystal, one which didn't just sing the right notes, but would catch thoses notes and make them earn their keep. Like Tony Bennett, she clearly had a great respect for her source material, and a verve for the telling; a spin for each individual song that made even the novelty numbers as powerful and dynamic as the torch ballads.

She was also in quite a few Hollywood musicals, and while I'm sure we can argue about the merits of those, one can't but admire her elegance and glamourous air. By the time she got to the Stormy Weather album in 1956, the squeaky-clean delivery from the fourties (such as in the orginal cut of Stormy Weather) was being supplanted by a brimstone flair, but the glamour never went away.

She was a class act, a dear and wonderful singer who had her Moment, had her success, and has left us a marvelous recorded legacy. Wherever she is now, God bless.

As to the album Stormy Weather, I don't actually have any clue how to review an album not of rock lineage. I'm inclined to say just go track it down and let it speak for itself. As with most records of that age, it's short. Only a half hour. And the lady never put a foot wrong. She saved the rather quaint lyrics of Tomorrow Mountain, gave all the fast songs jive (it's honestly just a fun CD to listen to) and the timbre of her voice made all the torchy moments hit home.

There was only one Lena Horne. Now I just wonder why it took me so long to get around to listening to her...

One of the new wave girls...

Return of the Giant Slits. Four and a half stars.

I'll begin by saying there is no guarantee (whatever your musical preference) that
you'll like this. The Slits stepped out of the punk arena and into new wave. But since that's almost as generic an umbrella term as "rock" it's not much help.

Put simply, this is just plain weird. It's quite daring and innovative for its time, highly experimental and decidedly uncommercial. It's been doomed to obscurity, of course.

Though the Slits have had numerous men in the band (notably Budgie, who went on to higher profile work in Siouxsie and the Banshees), they've always been considered a girl band and the focus has always been on Ari Upp, frontwoman and singer of amazing distinction. Throughout this, their second album, released in 1981, what stands out first is her fascinating, wandering voice, which interprets lyrics seemingly regardless of their meaning. She leaps up and down the scale, warbles and howls like a half-mad jungle native, ranging from playful to angry and back again, and slurring her words so much that it's hopeless to try and make sense of them.

The music almost equals Ari and her backup singers in the bizarre, since it trips along on afro-centric beats and rhythms.

I own the Japanese import of the CD and I don't know if that's the reason it opens with the closing song Earthbeat...in Japanese. You certainly couldn't find a less accessable way to open an album if you tried. Driven by tribal drums, any melody it may have possessed is knocked off center by the odd handling of Japanese. It also features Ari doing her best attempt at a bird call, adding to the generally exotic flavour.

Or What It is? takes up English. Its time signature is all crosseyed, forever halting just when it starts to go somewhere. The sheer amount of strange percussion, including rattles, and Ari in prima-donna overdrive, makes it a continuation of eccentricity; but the second half of the song takes up a gradual fade on a chorus that, coming from these ladies, is downright appealing.

Face Place kicks in with trombone, juxtaposing an almost sinister with the more light-hearted tempos of a carnival. Three piece harmonies practicing vocal acrobatics... it's like the Boswell Sisters channeling Yoko Ono, and it sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded.

Walk About is the most appealing song on the whole record, possessing a cool, funky riff and a fascinating vocal line. It wasn't a single, and would have gone nowhere if it had, but one can dream...

Difficult Fun takes up flute, the sort of synth one hears on a lot of eighties fantasy films and soaring vocals.

Animal Space/Spacier is one of the darker tracks. The lyrics are a little more comprehensible, but it's really Ari that makes these tracks what they are. This one has a good guitar solo on it. And the "spacier" part is the instrumental only section, which is chaotic, yet with a distinct method to the madness that keeps the beat up front and keeps the jamming from going too far off the mark.

Horns take up Improperly Dressed. The chorus shows off her higher register warbling nicely, though it's a bit too out-there and chaotic, from a melodic standpoint, for my taste.

Life on Earth is decidedly ominous. Ari goes into higher register, backed by a far from heavenly choir. They sound a bit tormented, forming a strange contradiction to the more playful main vocal. It dissolves at the end into what sounds like a tribal funeral lament, and all the instruments fall away.

Then it's the English version of Earthbeat. And it's just as odd as the Japanese. Driven by that same drumming, it's somewhat shorter.

It took me a few listens to really even begin to appreciate the various and sundry oddities Return of the Giant Slits has to offer. The Slits are not for everyone, and I wouldn't blame a person for being far less enthusiastic than me over this album. It was the last thing the band did, and far from an all-occasions CD. I've described it to the best of my ability. Now you'll just have to track it down yourself.

And in the end...

Let It Be. Four and a half stars.

Iconic, isn't it?

It's my pet theory that 1970 was a dismal capstone to the public who'd been through the golden era of the 60s. New talent was rising everywhere you turned, yet many of the "old gaurd" as it were, failed to make it through. Woodstock had already failed to change the world, or even the music festival, as the recent Isle of Wight indicated. The Stones had lost Brian Jones. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were both casualties of the rock lifestyle and it must have looked like Eric Clapton was following suit. Dylan had turned his back on everyone, releasing the outrageous Self Portrait. Even the endearing team Simon and Garfunkel, who were at the peak of success and had just won a Grammy, couldn't keep it together.

Then there were the Beatles. The beloved Fab Four who had started it all. And they broke up amidst much public rancor. It was common knowledge that McCartney was suing his former band mates, Lennon was busy exorcising his demons and Harrison was assembling a regular rock orchestra in preparation to blow everyone's mind with a triple LP success. Amidst all of this, Let It Be was released.

Let it Be is a curiously maligned Beatle disc, perhaps because everyone heard it after the production marvel of Abbey Road, though it was actually recorded first. It was designed to sound rough - their intent was to distance themselves from the tricked out studio releases of the past few years. So there's a lot of studio chatter (provided by John Lennon) and a lot of throwaway tunes.

Unfortunately these plans went awry and Phil Spector got his hands on the tapes and did overdubs, leaving the record to swerve between overproduction and simple roots rock.

John opens the record with a mock intro, then Two of Us kicks off. It's one of Let It Be's crowning achievements; a lovely acoustic duet (impeccably harmonized) between John and Paul. It's got a beautiful refrain from Paul and a laid-back, almost pastoral feel.

One false start later and Dig a Pony starts. It's a guitar dominated rock tune, with a lyric that John later dismissed as rubbish. You can see why. It's such nonsense it might have been written in a day. That doesn't stop it from being enjoyable, of course. It has a rough charm to it.

Across the Universe is a classic, despite the Spector treatment it gets. From this era, it is Lennon's signature tune. Has an out-there lyric and an haunting delivery. It sticks with you.

I Me Mine is a Harrison contribution. Considering what he had in storage, this is a curiously light offering. I've never been a fan of the chorus, but the plaintive verses about human self-centeredness ring true. It's only two minutes long, but that's an epic compared to the next one.

Dig It is a tiny excerpt from a massive jam. It fades in with John leading the charge, so to speak, and then fades out at less than 50 seconds... It adds character to the album, of course.

Let It Be is a masterpiece. Paul's finest moment for the foreseeable future. Spector doesn't damage it, as the sweep and grandeur of the song smothers him, not the other way around (See The Long and Winding Road). It sounds religious, but it isn't at all. Listen to it when you're down. You'll feel better.

Maggie May is a traditional song. Lennon adopts a thick accent and proceeds to knock out about thirty seconds of it. Impossibly, it's shorter than Dig It. Again, character...

I've Got a Feeling is an interesting experiment. It starts as a McCartney throwaway, a not quite finished heavy rocker. Then, without missing a beat, it morphs into an even more incomplete Lennon bit. They'd done this sort of thing before (notably A Day in the Life), but never quite like this.

Another experiment is unveiled with One After 909, a song written in the early years of the Beatles, then brought out and dusted off for inclusion on this disc. Were they short of material? Perhaps. But the end result is a success.

The Long and Winding Road, a sad piano ballad from McCartney's pen, is next. It's awful. Spector finally saps the Beatles. Any emotional power it might have had is smothered underneath strings and a choir. Paul was furious, and damn, I don't blame him at all. Where was Martin when you needed him?

For You Blue is another Harrison throwaway. It's memorable for the woozy slide guitar. I Me Mine is the better contribution. It bears repeated listening better. Not that this is a bad song, especially if you like George.

So...the last track it the adored Get Back, a bouncy, instantly catchy little number which for some strange reason I have never warmed up to. It's a foot stomper, roots rock in action...I just don't like it very much.

Lennon ends the record with another bit of tongue in cheek mockery. Really, more than ever, you can hear the group splintering on this record. It's a constant tug of war between John and Paul, with George sticking his nose in when he can and Ringo minding his own business behind the drum kit. None of the rampant dislike going on behind the scenes makes it onto the record, but just viewing all the throwaway songs included, and the cover, where each of the four gets their own solitary portrait, and it's plain to see that as a band, things were over between them.

That they shelved this admirably messy LP and set aside their differences long enough to craft a cohesive swansong is another story. For what it's worth, I have always liked Let It Be, warts and all, far better than Abbey Road.

The troubadour's odds and sods album

Thanks for the votes from last time, people....This image is a bit smaller than the last one, partly for economical reasons. But it's not at all a good cover, and like Odessey and Oracle, it is not a good representation of what you'll find inside.

Mellow Yellow. Four stars.

Donovan Leitch really is in some ways the epitome of the sixties hippie ideal. By combining light folk leanings with trippy pop tunes and heavy brushes of psychedelia he manages to completely sum up one whole aspect of the counterculture of the time. He's also light, whimsical, twee. Naturally a bit dated.

Yet these are not bad things. They add to the music's charm, certainly. And Donovan has a lovely Scottish lilt to his voice and is a capable songwriter.

Prior to listening the only song I was familiar with on this 1967 album was the title track, which as it turns out was not at all representative of sound or quality. Mellow Yellow sports a punchy brass band and a lyric that is complete nonsense. There's a school of thought that believe Paul McCartney is doing backup vocals but (unless he's the one whooping it up in the background) I think that's a hoax. I don't really like this song, to be frank.

But that's no problem, because with Writer in the Sun quality goes way up. A gentle, swaying song, featuring a pastoral flute or two. It was written several years earlier when Donovan had believed his career to be over. The resignation and sorrow come across beautifully and the lyrics are far beyond the previous offering.

Sand and Foam has a dark, elegant guitar and the lyrics are so highly poetic as to be nearly incomprehensible the first time. This gives the whole thing a mysterious vibe and it's another highlight.

The Observation is very short, more memorable for the jazzy backup band than either melody or song. But it still gives proof of what an odd lyricist Donovan really is, as he uses the simplist rhymes imaginable (hustling and bustling, mellow yellow, trip out skip out flip out, etc) and can turn around and deliver something really accomplished and poetic - sometimes in the same song.

Bleak City Woman is another light moment. Innocuous and not at all memorable, but there you have it.

House of Jansch is the opposite. Instantly memorable with a very interesting lyric. Why? Because while nothing about it indicates it's a happy song, there's nothing especially sad about it either. Two minute pop songs are usually more overt than that. The title has nothing to do with the song contents, and seems to be meant as a tribute to one Bert Jansch, another Scot, one who founded the band Pentangle.

The real tour de force comes with Young Girl Blues. The voice is way too loud in the mix, and the fadeout is a bit too quick, but other than that! It gets your attention right away, more so with the pauses after every dour verse. "Blues" in a title is usually misleading, but this track is actually quite harrowing and dismal.

With Museum it returns to typical Donovan. A hip, swinging number to enjoy.

Hampstead Incident. Now listen to that guitar. Doesn't that sound a lot like the acoustic passage opening Babe I'm Gonna Leave You? Otherwise it's another dark track, this time featuring strings and an evocative lyric. I really like Donovan's darker work.

But it ends with Sunny South Kensington, a name-dropping, fast paced song. Donovan ditches his Scottish croon for a rather harsher voice, the sort used on his famous Sunshine Superman song. Good music anyway.

Oh, keep in mind, not one of these songs rocks, not even slightly. That really wasn't his forte. Some of them bounce a bit, is all.

Extra facts: Mellow Yellow is in fact not a proper recording at all, at least not from one complete session. It combines leftovers from the Sunshine Superman album, a single or two, and other odds and ends. This may explain the continuously shifting lineup of incidental instruments, or that may just be part of Donovan's style.

However, it does explain the lack of information about the session players. I've heard that it's Danny Thompson on double bass, and that John Paul Jones did arrangements. Based on the McCartney rumour, I'll take such info with a grain of salt.

Otherwise, all I have to say is that this is a nice little record. Fun and moody by degrees, and a good candidate for my list of afternoon tea comfort CDs.

Now in technicolour

Okay, this is an experiment, to see if I can jazz up my Blog by adding pictures and fancy elements...

Odessey and Oracle. Five stars.

Most people are unfamiliar with the Zombies, so here's a bit of background for their only proper album. Released in 1968, after the Zombies had been together for years, releasing single after single that went nowhere. They were never popular in England, though they did get two number one hits across the pond in America (one of which is included here).

In '68, they were ready and willing to call it quits. They were on a new label (CBS), had booked time in Abbey Road, produced themselves and broke up with minimum rancor upon completion.

Ironically, the track Time of the Season became a huge hit when released in America and there were calls for the band to reform. They refused, perhaps not wishing to exploit their success, and as Rod Argent said "it would have been a real downer if we had regrouped and then failed."

Argent was one of the two songwriters of the group, the other being Chris White. Colin Blunstone took distinctive lead vocals for most tracks. Hugh Grundy was the drummer, Paul Atkinson the guitarist, White the bass player. Argent played everything else.

I've never done the whole music history lesson before, but I thought I'd give it a try. Vote on whether you like these changes, please. Now, what about the music?

It's Mellotron heavy, very British pop songs, impeccably crafted with superb harmonies and backups. And surprisingly strong songwriting.

The opener, Care of Cell 44, is a bright, jubilant number about how happy out narrator is that his girlfriend is soon to be released from prison. Just listen to those backing vocals. They put the Beach Boys to shame, almost.

A Rose for Emily is a simple, melancholy piano tune. Without any experimentation or psychedelia, making the story a rather odd theme for a pop song, added to by the matter-of-fact voice.

Maybe After He's Gone is in more familiar territory, a poetic broken-heart song with a surpringly optomistic chorus.

Beechwood Park is a beautiful, elegant ode with some surprising quirks and a gentle melody.

Brief Candles also manages to carry a good melody and a thought-provoking lyric. It's quite beautiful.

Hung up on a Dream turns to describing hippies. It sweeps along almost thematically and is highly poetic. Most of these tracks are, yet none of them come across as pretentious.

Changes (how many songs are called that, anyhow?) juxtaposes a harmonised chorus backed by spare drumming with a certain music hall set of verses that have an infectious melody. It feels a little half-baked, but it makes for a great curiousity.

Everything perks up with I Want Her She Wants Me. It's a jaunty song, featuring gentle verses that clash with a slightly grating harmonised chorus. The rest of the the harmonies are beautiful, of course.

This Will be Our Year is also cheerful, or as cheerful as Colin Blunstone can sound with his voice. It's a bit hammy, like a showtune, but the overall quality is very pleasing.

Which makes Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) all the more shocking. It's a stark view of war, sung by Chris White in a raw voice free of harmonic backups. There's spooky tape loops and organ instead. A sore thumb on the record but a damn good one.

Everything gets sunny on Friends of Mine, a sweet little song about having one's faith in life reaffirmed by seeing friends in love. The chorus listing off half a dozen couples is so charmingly twee that I smile everytime. Even back then, people avoided such bubblegum tendencies in the hopes of being taken seriously...

Time of the Season is the icing on the cake, a soulful, sultry gem. It is immaculate. There isn't a a flaw in the song. The Zombies knew what they were doing in the studio, and again, just listen to the backup voices. It's perfect and deservedly a monster hit.

Okay, it's art/baroque pop with a British slant, and naturally a bit light. But if you like The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society or Deram era Bowie, there is a good chance you'll enjoy this. I know I do.