Announcement

In this long interval, it will have served me right to lose every regular visitor I might have possessed; while I am heartily sorry, I will continue undeterred and build it up again.

The first question is, why the lapse? I was doing such a good job and suddenly the reviews just stopped.

In May, I heard White Light/White Heat. Funnily enough, I rather lost my taste for music after that experience....

In June, I suffered through something of a nervous breakdown, a collapse that halted my many hobbies, including the desire to listen closely to music.

In July, I went on a depression fueled vacation, and I'm happy to say it worked and enabled me to start pulling myself back together.

Now in August I'm stoking the creative fires and on the First of September, regardless of day, I will post a review again. Then you can expect to see a review each Monday, as it was before this remarkably unproductive summer began.

All the best until then.

C.M./R.M.

34th...Soundtrack to a scene

Yes, I've finally returned from the wilderness and am ready to take up reviewing again. You know how it is when there's a family crisis while you're trying to have a vacation? That's the summation of my hiatus. So I've come back and my reviews shall now become even longer in compensation for the long wait. I can hear your applause from here. Introducing...

The Velvet Underground and Nico. Five stars.

Basically, this band was doomed to obscurity from day one, and the reason is easy to sum up: photo realism. Few wanted it in their music in the 60s. Marrying realism to rock music might have been enough by itself, but casting it through the prism of the New York City "underground" guaranteed their status as innovators. They told the story of the life they led without any apologies or hypocrisy (The Mamas and the Papas anyone?). At the same time, you can sense that they weren't trying to shock for the sake of it, they weren't making a statement about freedom of speech, and if it turned out that they never thought of how the public would react, I wouldn't be surprised.

As a matter of fact, the public never did react. The record didn't sell, though the people who did hear it (David Bowie for example) were inspired. So it slowly made the rounds among those in the know, until now it makes all the lists of great records...

On the album itself, New York made its presence known with uncompromising sincerity. Lyrically through the subject matter, musically through Andy Warhol's groundbreaking, still ahead of its time production style (basically non-production), and visually through Andy, who took them onboard the Factory and instilled some European flavour with the unwanted Nico. Meanwhile, Welshman John Cale threw in more of Europe with his feedback laced, demonic viola, and the musical training he received from a handful of avant-garde musicians.

Lou Reed, principal songwriter, could work with the avant-garde, yet was also capable of astonishingly savvy pop songcraft. Sterling Morrison was the guitarist, and nobody pays him any attention so neither will I.

But I've never understood why no one notices the drummer. Maureen Tucker, a rarely seen specimen at that time. Women in bands were generally for singing. This was 1967... How many drummers can you name at that time? They were all men. Once again, however, The Velvet Underground did not appear to be making a statement, and never drew any extra attention to their progressively unorthodox band member.

All that stuff about being influential and daring is nice, but the question really is if they're an enjoyable listen this late in the day. Naturally, they won't be everyone's cup of tea. Two unlovely voices (Lou with a penchant for sneering while he sings), music to match and some rather nightmarish production values, alongside topics ranging from heroin to S&M, with a fair number of weirdos and nutcases thrown in for good measure. All this does make it a window into that time and place, one devoid of patronizing window-dressing.

When I first heard the CD however, I was bemused, got a headache and only liked three of the eleven tracks. However, I was determined to crack the record and revisited it until I acquired the taste.

One of the three songs I enjoyed was the innocuous opener, Sunday Morning. Beneath the echoing drones a beautiful melody lurks, carried on bells and Lou's fragile singing. As misleading as any intro I've heard, yet the words speak of all "the wasted years so close behind." Mixed messages of light and dark, comfort and depression.

You can bid the light goodbye right away, as their signature tune about a junkie's relationship with his dealer is next. I'm Waiting for the Man features no bells or whistles of any sort, just the band pounding away on their instruments with some piano joining the cast later. It tells its story in gutsy, minimalist form, with nary a solo in sight.

Femme Fatale features Nico and the first of the bad, muddy production. The lyric is one of the least inspired, but her aura of ennui puts the whole subject across. She was barely tolerated in the band, but the mystique she provides and her mathematical placement on the album really adds to the cohesiveness. And I still think she was a remarkably brave woman to take up singing as a career.

Venus in Furs in (duh) the S&M song. It is a stroke of genius, thanks in large part to John Cale's viola, which has an evil pseudo-Middle Eastern vibe that Maureen's primitive drumming backs up perfectly. Doubtless the best song ever penned on the subject, the usually journalistic writing style juxtaposed with a poetic, almost non-sequiter chorus.

Run Run Run shifts gears into a generally straightforward bit of rock and roll, though featuring some ear-shredding feedback on the guitar. One of the most undemanding tunes.

All Tomorrow's Parties has Nico at her most stately and grand, backed by drums and keyboards, working with the repetitive sway of hypnosis. Nico sings slightly shifting meditations on a concept that will remain steadily in place from first to last, never mind the 6 minute length. A mood piece, essential for the European mystique to come to fruition.

The epic of the album is Heroin. Supposedly it mimics the effect of the drug; I'd have no idea, but it seems believable if you pay attention to Maureen's minimalist, two beat drum pattern. I can appreciate it more than I enjoy it; the sublime way it rises and falls, the heartbeat drum, Lou's insight into a junkie's mind (and he would know), the way he's drowned yet audible in a tide of white noise...is all undercut by the viola, which finally hits the excruciating point.

Things lighten up with There She Goes Again, a swinging little number about a woman walking the streets and the consequences thereof. The backup vocals may annoy the hell out of you on first listen, though it is a short, easy to digest song, if one ignores the strangely upbeat spin on rough living.

However, a reprise of Sunday Morning's gentleness is allowed with I'll Be Your Mirror. Nico's stilted voice becomes most moving when singing something uplifting, in this case a love song directed to a person filled with self loathing, and likely self doubt as well. So the light comes back for a moment before the final descent....

Demented viola introduces The Black Angel's Death Song, a hallucinatory, free associative poem set to music of a sort. Lou's fast diction reminds me of Dylan, which might explain how this is among my favorite songs on the album. It has the most verses and is easy to return to, struggling and almost finding meaning in the nonsensical rant.

European Son gets through two verses of freshly energized rock and roll before embarking on a jam, heralded by breaking glass. Its replay value is arguable, and the melody trickles away sooner than later. There are better soundscapes than this...on the other hand, there are worse. I'd listen to this twice over before I'd give a minute to Revolution #9. It has energy to spare, mimics hales of gunfire and is generally an avant-garde escapade. Runs to eight minutes.

To conclude, I find The Velvet Underground and Nico a five star CD, and not alone for its place in history. I honestly like the noncommercial sound of it and find it enjoyable as a journey to another time and place. If you don't want to visit the dark rooms and dirty streets of the Velvet Underground, this is not a CD you'll like. It's up to you.

Hiatus

I am on a vacation, and there will be no reviews till sometime in May, a fact I should have alerted my good, kind readers to earlier. As compensation, I've spiffed the blog up a little bit, with a few colour changes and a new banner.

The most important item is the list of reviews. So instead of trawling about looking for what I said about Chelsea Girl or Gulag Orkestar, you can find it via artist in my reviews list. The material prior to "technicolour" (meaning album covers) I view as a sort of dark age, and as my reviews from that time no longer seem up to scratch, I leave them out.

I hope the new changes meet your approval.

33rd...Folklore and tall tales

Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger. Five stars.

Well, you didn't see that coming.

Bo Diddley was a pioneer, the sore thumb in the traditional rock role call: Bill Haley, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and (if you're cool) Gene Vincent. Then there's Bo Diddley, with his "Bo Diddley beat," songs unapologetically about himself and backwoods folklore - a far cry from the hot rods and young love that were the staples of 50s rock and roll. That's reason enough to get a Bo Diddley record, and if you get this one, you'll also benefit from the super cool cover art and all the maracas you could wish for (liberally supplied on every song by Jerome Green). It should be on the list of the great 50s collection, but it came out in 1960, more's the shame.

It gets started with Gun Slinger, a myth making song spinning a ridiculous yarn "about Bo Diddley at the O.K. Corral." One way or another, all the other songs on record tie into this rough-hewn and spirited little invention.

Ride On Josephine is a classic number and a brief excursion into the Chuck Berry landscape of lovingly described automobiles. It happens to be immediately memorable and has a hilarious spoken word exchange between our pushy Bo and the snippy Josephine. We only hear his half, but what's left to the imagination is comedy gold.

On Doing the Crawdaddy he's chatting up a bunch of street urchins (handily supplied by a children's chorus), teaching them how to dance. It's got a believable rapport coming from Bo's add-libbing talents.

Cadillac is another car song, less romantic, as Bo has simultaneous engine and tire trouble. Snazzy saxophone, laughable chorus "C-A-D-I-L-L-A-C?"

Surreally, the first line of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is kiped for Somewhere, a slow ballad, muddily recorded, but sung sincerely, if in roughshod manner.

Cheyenne returns to tall tales, this one about a man "tough as a 10-penny nail." It makes no real sense and practically ends before it starts.

Sixteen Tons is the reason I started listening to this record at all. I seriously love this song. Energetic (hardest rocker in the set) cover of a Tennessee Ernie Ford hit. The lyric actually visits history, in the form of coal mining and debt bondage. To me, this must be the definitive version.

Getting into cheesy doo-wop rhythms for Whoa Mule (Shine). Nothing great, just local color "way down south," about a troublesome mule that our mythological gunslinger knew as a kid growing up.

Doo-wop soul comes to the fore on No More Lovin,' a molasses lament with horribly grating backup vocals. If he was singing unaccompanied, it would be fine.

The final note is Diddling, a fast and furious instrumental duet between, of all things, a guitar and saxophone. Wild.

My dinosaur CD release (from 1988) includes two bonus tracks, stretching the playing time to exactly an half hour. Working Man is a slow running track which might seem lackluster/underwhelming after the powerhouse of Diddling, but the lyric really makes it. Bo could sing this stuff and make you believe in it.

Do What I Say won't win any politically correct applause. "I'm gonna show you who's boss." I can't listen to the blues because of the reams of machismo, and Elvis and the Everlys get unbearably wholesome, so this stuff falls right in the perfect center for me.

If you pick up a more recent copy, you'll get even more bonus tracks. Happy hunting, because this is worth checking out if you've even a passing interest in 50s music. I myself would probably not have given it five stars if the songs were of any length. As is, even the ones that aren't good are too short to be considered bad.

32nd....End of a quartet

Harvest. Four and a half stars.

Put out of commission by a back injury, there was no word from Neil Young in 1971. I am quite sure this contributed to '72's smash hit Harvest. Everyone was keyed up for his latest statement and of course, singer-songwriters had come into their own at the time. James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, etc, so a mild-mannered, folky, dusty, countryish record was destined to sync with the times. Is it perfect? Heck no; the production is all over the place, as we'll soon see.

Out on the Weekend showcases Neil's lovely harmonica first off, over a gentle, wistful melody. It's more a grower than an attention grabber. Dwelling on the classic Young motif of loneliness and isolation, it's everything you'd expect and includes some haunting guitar on the left; however, there is amazingly little lyric for four minutes.

Piano takes over for Harvest, on another soft and pleasing tune. His voice is somewhat rough and thin, an acquired taste that I forgot to mention on my last three reviews because I acquired it so fast. It is my belief that such voices are at many times more rewarding than the classically beautiful.

Onwards to A Man Needs a Maid, still controversial in some quarters. I guess it's supposedly sexist or something. I find the sentiment he expresses touching, for what it's worth. As the song goes on, the whole London Symphony Orchestra rises up around him, adding Musical overtones, but Neil's plaintive singing really saves the whole shebang. Jack Nitzsche produced.

Heart of Gold was the No. 1 hit. Harmonica! There are only two verses, but it's really the delivery that makes it brilliant. Neil's sincerity makes the simplest statements into some of his finest work. Added to a lovely guitar part and with James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt on backing vocals, could this have been anything but a hit?

Now things veer wildly off-center again. Instead of orchestration, Are You Ready for the Country? sounds like it was recorded in the barn on the back cover. This is what the phrase "backwater footstomper" sounds like. You've got the false start, Neil too far from the mike, slide guitar...see what I mean?

Returning to center on Old Man, a bar-none classic sporting one of the lengthier lyrics and a banjo (!), and being another treatise on the lonely. Elegant. Yes, it has a banjo.

There's a World takes up the London Symphony Orchestra again...to lesser results. Instead of joining in later, it starts on full-throttle bombast, sounding more like Les Baxter than anything from Harvest. Harp...flutes...and a singer in plaid shirt and blue jeans? The lyric is one of his more abstruse works, which is the only reason this song can survive. Deliciously eccentric, if nothing else. Jack Nitzsche produced.

Back to the barn with Alabama, very much a Southern Man, part 2. The only real rocker, and it's still a bit staid. However, Neil's singing is better than the earlier southern tune, and the song's progression is actually more complicated and unexpected than Southern Man was. Instant highlight, and it defies the usual gimmick, "hear the banjos" and you listen and there aren't any! Good job.

Miraculously, the jump from a full band to single guitar is pulled off without a hitch. The Needle and the Damage Done is a live recording with audience roar at the end of a brief warning about heroin, chillingly sung and with good cause. Crazy Horse' Danny Whitten would overdose in '73.

Jumping back into full ensemble with Words (Between the Lines of Age), a desolate, trance-inducing work that lasts a frightening near-seven minutes. The lack-luster quality of the guitar noodling adds to the depressionary tone. It's longer than necessary, but makes an exit from the mood of the record and leaves me wondering if it all points to the next phase of the story.

So I've reached the end of the remastered Neil Young quartet, and Harvest is full of personality under the mild-mannered finish. I would argue that the lack of cohesive production is a flaw, making both Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and the neglected Neil Young album better listening experiences. It has the same mix of pros and cons that After the Gold Rush does. I recommend all four very highly, and look forward to the next batch of remasters....

31st... An unknown marvel

Jet. Five stars.

Katell Keineg is amongst the greatest artists I've heard. I now imagine you saying "who? Never heard of her." Such is life. How to describe her? Imagine an Irish folkie with the vocal texture of Nick Drake and a predilection for epic rock, add excellent, slightly obscure lyrics and the capacity to render complicated emotions in the space of sometimes very short songs, and you start to get the gist.

There are two drawbacks to Katell. One: her CDs come out once in a blue moon. Two: her CDs are overstuffed. Jet is 60 minutes, which gets to be a long time with a pair of Professional Sony Dynamic Stereo Headphones clamped over your ears....

The Battle of the Trees is one of the epic tracks and one of the most inscrutable. What starts as a simple guitar and voice morphs into a full band ensemble with a somewhat unorthodox choice of instrumentation and several quick changes of direction.

One Hell of a Life is far more catchy, a pop song and a half (great single in the making here). It's an upbeat epitaph before-the-fact, a perfect vision of a life well lived.

Smile continues in a clear, spacious style with the mix of acoustic building into electric making it soar. There is also a mix of happiness, weariness and content which keeps me coming back to it just as much as the attention grabbing chorus.

It dissolves, slipping into Enzo '96, a very simple story told in haunting drone. Katell draws her voice out in a manner that reminds me of ancient world polyphony and Nico. Rather amazing.

Ole, Conquistador is drawn from Jose Marti, the Latin American poet. Another excellent song, aided by exquisitely mannered (and unorthodox) instrumentation and of course, Katell's voice, expressing everything in a fittingly poetic context.

Leonor is my least favorite. Highly experimental, based on an epitaph for Leonor Fini, the surrealist. Problem one: it sings like prose. The verses, or rather paragraphs, have no melodic value at all and the chorus grows repetitive. It does tell you all about the bizarre life of that particular Modernist.

Veni Vidi Vici is light, with a beautiful melodic line, but it does have the sound of filler. Too many choruses.

The record gets back into its stride with Venus, the monologue of a woman traveling to Illinois on the night train. Very spare, and her flat, tired voice, almost not singing anymore, is riveting. What is this woman trying to get away from? And what is dancing a metaphor to? Is it a metaphor? Jet's darkest song presents nothing but mystery.

Mother's Map is the sinister epic, equivalent to Battle of the Trees dark twin. The switchbacks are even more pronounced, and the percussion in the quiet, and the violins in the loud, form perfect accents to the struggle of a young woman negotiating life. Punkish intensity in the crescendo, then a heartbreaking coda with just an acoustic guitar to accompany her.

Marietta has world music vibes to start and end. "Marietta, queen of pancakes/crawled out of the Bisquick mix/with nothing but her wishes," as Katell whispers in deadpan. Vividly set on the seashore (a recurring setting, the album's theme, as it were), once it gets past the scene-setter and into the song, it loses a bit of edge. However, there is still mystery. Who are these people? Reality? Metaphor?

Hoping and Praying is a home recording, a strange and pagan interlude. Multi-tracked voice, hand claps for percussion and what sure sounds like a banjo with only one string left. It's like she add-libbed it out in the fishing shack one afternoon. Odd, but it adds colour.

The album ends with There You Go, a love song equal in complexity to any of the other songs, yet also breathtaking in its simplicity. "All things said and done/I love you, darling/Is that enough?" Who can really say it better than that?

In the end, even the title, Jet, is hard to fathom, since there would seem no obvious connotation for it. Challenging it may be, but get hold of it. This woman is a treasure. If you want a darker, smokier affair, try O Seasons O Castles. She also has two more recent CDs (this one's 1997, after all) that I will try to get hold of. I hope this review has captured some measure of her uniqueness.

30th...The poet in music

Songs of Love and Hate. Five stars.

This seems as good a place as any to propose my theory that no matter how many artistic mediums you span, an artist's oeuvre will always be informed by their true calling. This is provable. M.C. Escher's prints are the work of a mathematician, first and foremost, with the perfect logic, precision and patterning that comes from thinking in such a mode of expression.

Or David Bowie, natural actor. Even a late work like 1. Outside, complete with character voice overs, is informed by a lifelong career as an actor.

And yet, Escher is remembered for his illustrations and Bowie as a musician. And so we come to Leonard Cohen, mainly thought of as a musician, and whose every song is informed by the sensibilities of a poet. However, by 1971s release, he no longer sounds like a poet. The earlier releases both feature a lot of under emoting, so the first thing you notice about Songs of Love and Hate is a sudden confidence in his singing ability (which the liner notes attribute to his having been on tour); that and that his voice has deepened a few notches. So with increased capabilities of expression and livelier musicianship, sessions were held in Nashville, with a few later additions made in London.

Leonard refused to deal with drums, so the result has a very chamber orchestra feel, particularly on the opener, Avalanche, with about three acoustic guitars and turbulent strings to lend a dramatic flair to a subtly disturbing lyric. I'd previously been introduced to it via Nick Cave's fabulous, psychotic reimagining, compared to which, the original has only a vague air of the sinister.

Last Year's Man makes beautiful, if infrequent, use of a choir of children while the story told is of profound writer's block. The verses take in Joan of Arc, the wedding of Bethlehem and Babylon and a parallel between Jesus and Cain, all of which are carefully rendered but serve no purpose to the man of the title, left still where he started.

Gears shift with Dress Rehearsal Rag, as the camera zooms in on one sorry soul contemplating suicide. The relentless cruelty of the narrator to himself keeps it from being sad per-say, alongside an ambiguous finale and a rather lovely memory of past romance that only serves to further hurt the protagonist. And since I'm a writing geek, I love the way it starts in the first person and switches to the notoriously hard to pull off second person.

Even that song does not prepare you for Diamonds in the Mine, a bizarre pseudo-reggae tune that sure sounds upbeat until he starts singing. It's even got electric guitar, ladies on backups, and the most blatant song structure on record (verse- chorus). But there's also Leonard trying to shred his voice in mad dog rage, chewing up...what? In a series of ugly, entirely unrelated images that seem united only by an absence of life, of any sort of bounty or harvest.

Love Calls You By Your Name returns to the staid manner of usual. There's something of grace in its distance, though I still struggle to find some meaning in the evolving refrain which plays on doubles (windmill and the grain, dancer and his cane, etc). I could do without the horn section, but at least it's subtle.

Famous Blue Raincoat is the album's classic and probably the best song. Framed as a letter, showcasing a numbness brought on by despair, a bunch of insignificant details such as the title's raincoat, and a whole universe in the foggy relations between "L. Cohen," his brother and his wife. The self-destructive indifference of the narrator is actually a little frightening. Musically, it's near waltzing (probably the result of having been written mostly in amphibrachs), with a romantic feel, a complex song structure and the backup singers create the best effect on any Cohen song I've heard.

Sing Another Song, Boys has the distinction of being the only track that sounds like it was recorded in Nashville. No chorus; messiness abounds. Love and hate abound on the record, but this is the only case wherein the song's main players are entirely unaware. Instead, it's the omniscient narrator with his bitter knowledge that the relationship was doomed before it started. The best part of it comes after the song is through and there's an outpouring of "la la las." It's rather touching to hear from a poet, who should therefore be relying on words to get the point across.

Joan of Arc takes her executional pyre and turns it into a poetic metaphor, as she marries the flames. Considering the true events, that makes this the most macabre song, though the lyric turns out as a beautiful rumination on the pain inherent in the love we all seek.

Coming to the end, I realise I have described a ruinously depressing album. So why do I find it just the opposite? It must partially be the measure of grace he brings to despair and certainly also the excellence of the end result, that he would tackle, time and again, these heavy themes without triteness of thought or an easy way out.

I do recognise that such music is not for all tastes, but I recommend this CD all the same.