A to Z Album and Gig Reviews
Dutch based Provogue Records are slowly building up an impressive roster of blues guitarists and Eric Gales is one of a number of high class axe men currently on offer. The Psychedelic Underground is the follow up to his critically acclaimed Crystal Vision and places him firmly in the higher strata of modern bluesmen. Eric has been gradually gathering a reputation since being voted as Guitar World's Best New Talent in 1991 and fans include Carlos Santana, Keith Richards, B.B. King and Eric Clapton. The Psychedelic Underground opens with Wake Up Call and I dare you to sleep through this wall of sound as Eric scorches his guitar. He keeps up the aural assault on Rumble. He plays guitar left hand, upside down and is the frontman of a trio so comparisons to Jimi Hendrix obviously come to mind. There are no arguments from me on that count, anyone for a rumble? Day Of Reckoning is a funky blues with a barnstorming solo and I've Got Something On You has as powerful an opening as I've ever heard. This is churning guitar rock with another of the now obligatory top-notch solos. Dark Corners Of My Mind is a contemporary, slick blues and Pretty Lie returns to the raucous blues rock side of the tracks.
The title track is played in classic Hendrix style and confirms Gales' place in my current top 10 blues guitarists. Eric continues in the blues rock field with Circling The Drain and this rolling blues has wailing, fuzzed guitar breaks that will have you yelling for more. He does not just stay with the blues as shown by Honey In The Comb, a rock song with a bit of soul thrown in a la Kravitz. Someday is a bouncing blues that is simple and straightforward. It has all the usual guitar wizardry and Thomas Pidgen on drums and Steve Evans on bass are the solid rock for Gales to build on. Cross The Line is archetypal blues rock with guitar and pounding rhythm section to match. He closes out with Someone Else's problem which surprisingly has a slight country feel to it but his classic styling leaves us with a stylish, solid finish.
There are a number of excellent blues guitarists out there and I've just found another one.
www.ericgales.net
www.mascot-provogue.com
David Blue March 2007
This is one of those discs of which I didn't immediately have high hopes, with its knowingly jokey title (and a cover shot to match) and laid-back opening track that just sort of ends after less than three minutes, but the weird thing is, its very chumminess insinuated itself into my head much thereafter and by around the time the next track was underway I was finding myself really getting into the band's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, if quirky, take on alt-Americana.
The Galipaygos are an Inverness-based six-piece, formed in 2003 by Andrew Still, Steve Sinclair and Kevin McKenzie. The band's instrumental complement gives a clue as to the appealingly unusual (for Americana, that is) nature of their music: the genre staples of acoustic and electric guitars, banjo and dobro are augmented by bass and drumkit and at times the distinctive timbres of swirling Hammond organ, churning saxes and blazing trumpet. I find the band's attitude to their music defiantly endearing, refreshing, with the everyday experience as often as not raised to a level of art beyond any apparent pretension yet entirely without patronising their captive audience.
Their songs - all bar one penned by Andrew - are on deeper acquaintance more laden with hooks than they first appear to be. There's an unassuming, natural, eager onward propulsion and drive to their songs, a feelgood charm that rather reminds me of the Durbervilles with pop overtones. This abundant charm transcends the superficial mundanity of the lyrics you hear, which concern themselves for the most part with relatively ordinary matters. The best of the songs turn out memorable on several counts: Pickin' Fishes is a cheery Creedence-style acoustic hoedown that you can't fail to clap along to, The Hands uses a breezy jazz-inflected swagger to tell the tale of a felon on the run, the chirpy momentum of Happiness Starts Now expresses the sheer abandon of the early euphoria of a new relationship, and Man About The House is a cheeky homespun ode to the charms of backporch DIY. A definite standout is Shift Patterns: sublime, crafted perfection in a three-minute slice of uptempo wistfulness that recalls vintage Lindisfarne with a cool muted trumpet part. Here, and on the superficially more simplistic lyrics like Goodbye City and Good Luck, Bad Luck, there's a really attractive lightness of touch and texture appended to an earnestness of purpose, a combination that recalls Chumbawamba but without the caustic political edge of the latter. Oh For A Rail's enigmatic nature is belied by the thrust and directness of the backing, whereas The Answer's Always Yes makes a deal encased in grimy rock'n'roll and Don't Start A Band perhaps shouldn't be taken quite at face value.
Elsewhere there's the odd song that seems to go astray, a trail that leads nowhere and stops before it says anything much, but for the most part the Galipaygos have developed their craft well and achieve much from simple, pithy observations and skilful use of instrumental resources. Just occasionally though, I feel that the band's desire to fill each available channel of a track with detail gets the better of them - as in Captain, where a surfeit of sea-sounds washes over and soaks through a really attractive guest fiddle contribution. The Demise Of Gary Lip-Gloss, I've discovered, is already the band's third outing on CD, and on this evidence I'm very much tempted to check out their back-pages asap.
David Kidman March 2008
This band from Inverness haven't been together too long but have now produced a second cd with a sound of their own that is already distinctive - a combination of Andrew Still's light, earnest singing and a band playing in an Americana style. Twangy electric guitar and strummed acoustic is augmented by banjo and mandolin but also frequently by Hammond Organ swirls that I, for one, can rarely resist. The whole is driven along by an insistent drumming style that sometimes contrasts nicely with the gentle, homely nature of the lyric. "Write about what you know" is taken to heart by these guys, and the songs are, almost naively, directly about their lives and the lives of their friends and contemporaries. One of several songs re-recorded from the first cd, "The Band That Had No Songs", relates the tale of their coming together and getting a support slot to Ox, the Vancouver band, before they'd got any material to play.
]What they already do well is to write songs with hooks that aren't obvious but that have a slow-burning persistence. It doesn't always come off but the best of these songs - "Sweetheart Smile" and "Two Mouths To Feed" for my money - have a bit of that magic that makes you start rooting for a band. I hesitate to compare them to Aberfeldy because they're not so wilfully offbeat, but they do have a similar sort of charm that leaves you with a happy smile on your face. Probably not at the top of their game yet, then, but it's going to be fun listening to them as they get there.
John Davey
Rory Gallagher - Wheels Within Wheels (Capo 703)
It had long been Rory Gallagher's intention to record an acoustic, folk-based album. Sadly, he died before he could realise his dream but, after much painstaking research, Donal Gallagher has pulled together a bunch of lost and/or long-forgotten tracks that will ensure his brother's music continues to live.
And what a treasure trove Wheels Within Wheels proves to be; across its 14 tracks we hear Rory Gallagher trading licks with the likes of Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch, Lonnie Donergan and The Dubliners, among others, on material spanning 20 years, from 1974 to the year before his untimely passing.
Strangely, one of the brightest gems among the sparklers on offer here is Flight to paradise, on which Gallagher duels with flamenco guitarist Juan Martin. Recorded in London in 1984 as part of a tour featuring, in addition to Gallagher and Martin, Richard Thompson and David Lindley, it shows the Irishman keeping pace with a master of a genre with which he was surely on no more than nodding terms.
Another example of Gallagher's consummate skill and flexibility is evidenced by the most recent track, recorded at the 1994 Montreux Jazz Festival. Already onstage and expecting to be joined by Bob Dylan, Gallagher is more than a little surprised when banjo-picker supreme Bela Fleck strolls on instead. Unfazed, Gallagher gets the measure of Fleck, with whom he'd never played, with a swift Amazing Grace before the pair, helped by harmonica-player Mark Feltham, spark off each other on Walkin' blues and Blue moon of Kentucky. She moved thro' the fair/Ann cran ull sees Gallagher paired with Bert Jansch for some sublimely sensitive interplay, while Bratacha dubha unites him with Martin Carthy, Chris Newman and harpist Maire Ni Charthasaigh for a lovely Irish/Elizabethan instrumental piece.
Things, as might be expected, get a little more boisterous when The Dubliners join yer man for a run-through of his Barley & grape rag with Gallagher swapping vocal lines with Ronnie Drew and instrumental licks with the fiddle of John Sheahan. The traditional The cuckoo is given a sprightly work-out as Gallagher sits down with Belgian guitarist Roland van Campenhout and the pair get to display some deft fingerwork. Gallagher's famed battered Strat is removed from its case for Lonesome highway, a lovely piece of soft rock on which its owner is backed by his band of the time - 1975 - Lou Martin on keys, bassist Gerry McAvoy and drummer Rod De'Ath.
That band's, and subsequent line-ups', live shows usually featured a section during which Gallagher would show off his prowess on acoustic guitar. This set brings back memories of those shows and also takes us to places we'd probably not realised Gallagher had visited. The recording quality may be a little variable over the course of the album but Wheels Within Wheels is a must-have collection for fans of the much-missed boy from Cork.
Fred Hall
Lennie Gallant - Live (Revenant)
This is the fifth album from Lennie Gallant who's one very special singer-songwriter and performer. That he comes from Canada with it's rich songwriting tradition (Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot etc), tells you something even before you hear him, and there are real echoes of Lightfoot in his performance. Gallant encourages the audience, "put your hands together", and it's impossible to resist joining in his appealing brand of up tempo harmonious folk rock. Assured acoustic strummery and fingerstyle guitar, ever present soaring fiddle from Chris Church, funky percussion (including some highly proficient bodhran playing from Gallant) and bass, drive his songs along. These songs come from a folk perspective and there's a wealth of memorable song-stories, some in French with a Cajun feel; of disasters, journeys, people and places. His voice is as warm and brave as his lyrics. Who says you can't write a great folk song these days?
A live album gives the listener a taste of the live experience, which in Gallants's case is exceptional. This album, recorded at three concerts in November 1999, is not just a 'best of'. There are five new songs, not previously recorded on his earlier albums, plus others from past albums; Breakwater, Believing in Better, The Open Window and Lifeline. Gallant has just played the Pontardawe Festival in Wales and now returns to his busy Canadian tour schedule but, when he returns, go see him. He knows how to entertain and he deserves a wide audience. In the meantime, check out his music.
Sue Cavendish
In my review of Annie's previous album, Pearl Street, barely a year ago, I described her as an unashamedly quirky "spoke-folk" singer-songwriter-cum-beat-poetess, a tag which the unbridled intimacy of Half Of My Crime reinforces. This latest set from Annie shows no letup in her artistic endeavours, and no letup in quality either, for it turns out to be a fabulous, and wholly riveting, collection of challenging new creations (I'd not wish to devalue them by terming them merely "songs") indeed.
The main difference from Annie's previous releases is that this time round the CD's 14 pieces are performed as live-in-the-studio duets with three other musician friends who just happen to be bass players; Sean Kelly, Michael Visceglia and Don Porterfield, with their genuinely collaborative playing, provide some often quite unusual timbres to augment Annie's acoustic or electric guitar and voice, employing basses of the fretless, electric and standard upright variety, or even processing (synthesising) the instrument's sounds (as on the weirdly evocative I Rode The Train).
Each and every song has a strikingly individual character, which on occasion is defined nearly as much by the distinctive timbral quality of the accompaniment as by the song's subject-matter or mood. The level of intimacy that arises directly from Annie's delivery, though, is outstanding - you really do feel like she's sharing her secrets personally with you, and you alone. Her writing is still abundantly imaginative, with a playful and inventive sense of wordplay, a real love of language that's as natural a means of expression for her as singing itself. Already after only a few playthroughs, this ambitiously stripped-down new collection feels like Annie's strongest work to date.
The potent stream-of-consciousness of her characters, and their true-to-life tales of lost love, have never been more vividly conveyed. Standout cuts include the delicate reassurance of Enough, the simple anti-war song Field Of Flowers, the eerie, sensual road-movie Away From The Lights, the deceptive crooning of Almost Forgive, the jaunty onomatopaeic patter of Fourteen Days Of Rain. This fine album also contains two priceless beat-style concoctions - a fingersnappin', prizefightin' jazzy rap for The Contender and a streetwise resigned shrug for Sugar - and a satisfying batch of contrasted storyteller's character vignettes Nineteen-Seventeen, Three Brothers, Avalon and Third Person. And by the way, Annie's own elusive, flyaway cover design perfectly complements the music within.
Finally, after the desperate longing reflection of Free has died away, I'm left in a kind of awed silence at Annie's all-embracing artistry, and I just have to go back and re-live the whole 50-minute experience. An extraordinary achievement, and destined for the status of one of my albums-of-the-year-so-far.
David Kidman
Described as "a collection of linked narrative songs", Pearl Street is "spoke-folk" singer-songwriter-cum-beat-poetess Annie's sixth album release. The term "narrative songs", though, is a barely adequate description of this truly extraordinary work; it's not just a bunch of story-songs like any ol' singer-songwriter could've cobbled together, but a full-blown statement of Annie's tremendous originality and innate inventiveness. It's a song-cycle in all but name, and was originally written as a one-person performance piece that "slips through the cracks between fact and fiction" in following the same characters through ten years of their lives in a sequence of interwoven stories which unfold over historical references to the events and music of the 70s and 80s. Annie's writing uses incisive understatement to convey the often complex psychology of her characters and their responses to issues and situations such as love, betrayal, death etc. The whole project is characterised by an almost phantasmagorical quality that's probably due largely to Annie's own compelling and quirky delivery that's at once highly streetwise and strangely melodic (a bit like Laurie Anderson at times, but with arguably a more interesting range of expression).
Though realistically linked, it's also evident that musically as well as literally each of the ten tracks is very different from its companions; the horse has no name, you might say. Backings make genuinely creative use of electric instruments (notably Duke McVinnie's guitars) and subtle unusual colours from samples and other effects, a bit oddball like Tom Waits maybe would be a good comparison but the difference is probably that here the minute incidental detail seems more to be responding to or commenting on the lyrics than just providing a mere backcloth (uniquely, the contradictions of the narratives are mirrored in the musical settings as they progress throughout the individual pieces).
Thicker Than Water exhibits a breathless stream-of-consciousness sprechstimme that's set against a rattling, pounding beat structure that screams galloping, charging horses. The title cut is uniquely eerie in its rusty evocation of potent memories. Horses pant and ride again through the growing-up saga of Skinny Arms. Grace sets its steamy portrait against a spooky walkin' blues voodoo beat. Jack's protagonist is sketched against a creeping Peter Gunn riff that's speeded up to reflect his picaresque and pacey lifestyle. Betsi Went To Jersey evokes the mood of the dance of life to a sleazy, creaking two-step rhythm. Lori's Long Legs strut their cheeky horse-parade. I Think About Richard brings the guy to life through a menacing twist on the Jean Genie boogie riff. The whole piece comes full circle with a reprise of the opening cut Down The Other Side, and it's then followed by a ten-minute "interview" (of Annie by Annie, explaining it all to herself!) and a "rapped" musical synopsis of the foregoing tale.
Pearl Street is confident and ambitious, and yet stimulatingly enigmatic. It's often difficult listening - Annie herself says it's unpredictable but in a kinda reassuring way, and I see what she means. Definitely challenging, but immensely rewarding. Here comes another contender for album of the year, then - and it's only April!
www.anniegallup.com
Pearl Street is available from www.festival.bc.ca Annie's distributer. They provide a very speedy service to UK
David Kidman
Gamble Brothers Band - Back To The Bottom (Archer Records)
I've got to stop trying to pigeonhole every CD that comes my way and The Gamble Brothers may well be the band to make me do just that. They're blues, they're soul, they're funk and they're even a little bit of reggae. They were the winners of the Independent Musicians World Series last year, beating off over 1,000 challengers. The opening track on this, their second album, Record Store has instant appeal and it's not hard to see why this was selected as a single. It's a slick, sophisticated and extremely well played killer of a track with Hammond played by Al Gamble to the fore. The title track is soulful and funky whereas the Gary Wright cover (one of only two on the album), Love Is Alive is given the Gamble Brothers treatment, complete with rampant horns. Al Gamble takes on the vocal duties for the band and his soulful voice will be a trademark for the band in the years to come.
Share has a little bit of a ska feel to it and like all of the other songs is well constructed and executed. Tiki Bar is a funky soul track in the vein of Steely Dan at their best as is Come On Sam. The Gamble Brothers are predominately a keyboards and horns band but Will Lowrimore on bass and Chad Gamble on drums and percussion have a significant part to play in the bands sound. The now familiar saxophone of Art Edmaiston leads into One Stone, which, rather strangely, reminds me of The Spin Doctors for some reason - don't ask me why, perhaps it's Al Gamble's vocal inflections. Escape Alley is, like most of the tracks, one that will get into your brain with its Crusaders-like riffs. This is one of two instrumentals and I can see where the Booker T comparisons that they have drawn come from.
Old New One has a fantastic chorus with the brothers harmonising to great effect and Land Of Soul has a jazz base with a groove to slip your backbone to. One of my favourite Randy Newman tracks, Little Criminals, is turned completely on its head and, in my opinion, very well done. The closing song, Caddilactopus is a strange one to finish with. It has a downbeat, avant-garde start (perhaps the most downbeat part of the whole album) and goes into an eight minute Hammond and tenor sax instrumental. This is the only down side to the album and it's a shame that they chose to end with this considering the impact that they made with the opening track. I suppose that it's a little churlish of me to have a go at this final track but it does slightly spoil, what for me was, an excellent album. Having said that, The Gamble Brothers are a highly professional, slick outfit, I'm now a fan and this is just the starting point.
www.archer-records.com
www.gamblebrothersband.com
David Blue
Released back in 2004 but only now making its way to the UK, as you might possibly expect from the name and title there's a little of the bohemian hippie about this lot and their double disc. Fronted by Joziah Longo and featuring Tink Lloyd (accordion,cello), Sharkey McEwen (guitars, mandolin) and drummer Tony Zuzulo, they came together in New York some 9 years ago, their music being tagged as Hillbilly-Floyd, surreal Americana and pretty much anything between. Indeed, listen to Gonna Get Up and you may even find yourself thinking of Lennon.
Mostly though, they tread a roots-country, sometimes (as on I Wish) bluegrass splashed Americana path that lines them comfortably alongside such names as The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, Dylan and, in their bluesier moments (Bike, Glide), Lynyrd Skynyrd, a perfect stoner festival outfit. Spread across twenty tracks there's inevitably a little fat that could have been trimmed, but for the most part, whether giving it the country-rock drive of In Her Own World, the acoustic delicacy of Baby Jane, the lysergic country Kristofferson meets Gram anthemics of Sunday In The Rain or the country soul Call To The Mystic, there's more than enough here to warrant exploration.
Mike Davies May 2007
Vin Garbutt - Persona ... Grata (Home Roots Music)
Here's the long-awaited album of new material from folk scene stalwart Vin, who, as you may know, has just recovered from major heart surgery and has emerged performing as strongly as ever. It's the true followup to the well-regarded Word Of Mouth, and contains 11 tracks (10 songs and a tune-set), almost all of which will already be very familiar to his fans from live performance. Yet I experienced not a shred of over-familiarity when playing the CD; it was more like welcoming old friends. All but three of the tracks have been recorded live, just Vin and his guitar (and Emma's backing vocal on one track); the remainder are blessed with spare yet beautifully sympathetic backing involving just the fiddle of Stewart Hardy and the fretless bass of Sean Taylor. I loved the way the sheer intensity of Vin's performance and the excellent recording allowed me to catch every single nuance of his vocal delivery on all of these sincerely heart-felt (pun probably not intended!) renditions - not to mention the finer details of the filigree guitar work, an aspect of Vin's art that can so easily be unappreciated, overshadowed in a live setting by the man's larger-than-life persona (there's that word again!). Persona... Grata presents a canny mix of thoughtfully-chosen covers (many gleaned through Vin's travels around the country's folk clubs) and VG originals. Perhaps even cannier is Vin's decision to lead the CD off with his currently-most-requested song, the tearjerker Morning Informs, which so very movingly depicts the plight of a broken family - and then to follow with Bryn Phillips' equally moving story of a redundant coalminer Silver And Gold, and Dave Wilson's poignant Falklands-inspired lament Storm Around Tumbledown. The mood's then lightened with Vin' spicy setting of Edgar A. Guest's poem It Couldn't Be Done (and yes, of course it could!) before returning to reflection for George Papavgeris's delicately expressive Flowers And The Guns. A brace of Vin's own whistle tunes (breath-takingly performed as ever!) forms the CD's centrepiece, after which (with one exception) the compositional mantle falls squarely on Vin's own shoulders with some of his finest offerings that deal so compassionately with "difficult" subjects, including For An Explanation and Punjabi Girl and finishing on the touching "can't wait to get home" song The Kilburn Horse. One of the principal strengths of Vin's writing is that he keeps us firmly in touch with his Teesside roots, yet visits even his most "local" themes with a powerful sense of universality and genuine humanitarian concern. In every respect, Persona… Grata just has to be Vin's best yet. We're so glad to have you back, Vin – and may you henceforth enjoy the very best of health!
David Kidman
Vin Garbutt - The Vin Garbutt Songbook Vol 1 (Home Roots Music)
A veteran on the folk scene, like kindred spirits Eric Bogle and Dick Gaughan the corkscrew-haired, strangle-voiced Teesside singer-songwriter and self-confessed malcontent's spent some 30 years singing songs about injustice, ecology, social concerns and personal passions. This 17 track compilation, released to tie in with the actual songbook, trawls those three decades to include material from previous vinyl or cassette albums, many long unavailable, including his The Valley of Trees debut, as well as nine tracks re-recorded live or in the studio.
With subjects that range from Teesside's industrial decline, traffic pollution, Thatcherism, and conflicts in Northern Ireland and East Timor, to Tunisian beggars, Spina Bifida, infertility and the exploitation of Filipino maids you don't get much insight into the comedic side of his stage act, but the likes of Lynda, When The Tide Turns and El Salvador are ample, moving evidence of his deeply felt beliefs and crusading conscience. And if you buy the songbook as well you get a fiver knocked off the CD into the bargain.
Mike Davies
Billed as "the original motion picture soundtrack", yet this excellent release is so much more than that, and definitely not just another of those amorphous and tediously-compiled beasts. It's an exhaustive (75-minute) exploration, nay compendium, which exemplifies the supreme instrumental virtuosity and astonishing breadth of musical interest and accomplishment in music-making achieved by these two men. Its genesis comes from David's own suggestion that the hours of video footage of the two of them in performance shot by his daughter Gillian (a film-maker by trade) be edited to form a kind of homage to this landmark musical collaboration. This CD in fact forms the latest in the label's series of albums charting the nature of their partnership. Like the film, it's more in the nature of what Gillian calls "a homemade patchwork quilt"; informal, casual and spontaneous in nature (mirroring the two musicians it celebrates), it gives us not only music from live performances (primarily two California concerts), studio and home-style jam sessions by Jerry and David, but also sets the unique phenomenon of "Dawg Music" in context with a small number of original recordings of other practitioners of the art who have influenced or inspired them - Bill Monroe (represented here by Wayfaring Stranger) and Ewan MacColl (whose rendition of Off To Sea Once More forms an instructive preface to the duo's own version). There's also a slice of vintage Old And In The Way (the super-grass combo featuring Peter Rowan). For those not in the know, I suppose you could best term "Dawg Music" a strangely addictive and fulfilling, special kind of acoustic jazz, and the Acoustic Disc label (started by Grisman) has in its catalogue plenty of typical examples should you wish to listen further. The title track - given in both live and studio formats - is the best possible example of this sub-genre, but equally Dawg's Waltz and the expansive 16-minute workout Arabia both prove that the musical agenda mostly extends deeper than, and way beyond, pure note-spinning showmanship. So this soundtrack also ranges over down-home old-time (Sweet Sunny South, with the pair on non-duellin' banjos!, and the fun Jenny Jenkins) to a bluesy, soulful rendition of a B.B. King number (The Thrill Is Gone) and a choice Dead cover (Friend Of The Devil). This CD is an absolutely essential acquisition for anyone appreciating the finer points of Americana and acoustic music both traditional and contemporary, where it all connects.
David Kidman
Fed up of that old verse -chorus, verse-chorus, middle eight, verse - chorus to fade shebang? Then Jon Garcia's the man for you. Coming to the UK soon with his band, Jon announces himself with this independantly produced cd that is generous in the extreme with its big arrangements and overflowing profusion of musical ideas: probably about half a dozen separate ideas per song, and there's fourteen songs. Most of these songs clock in at around four to five minutes, pretty short by prog rock standards, but the feeling that these are "pieces", rather than songs, changing dramatically in mood as they take you on a ride through some mixed terrain, put me very much in mind of British bands of the early to mid seventies. There's too much variation to make any direct comparison but anywhere in the area of The Enid, Camel or even Be-Bop Deluxe, might give you an idea - not that any of these bands make his list of influences on his myspace site (myspace.com/jongarciaportland), so maybe it's just me. Oh, and there's quite a bit of soul in his vocal stylings, and a smidgeon of jazz in the arrangements at times. When he contains his inventiveness and gives the song a focus, something quite beautiful emerges, as on "Life's String Symphony"; in isolation these songs are memorable and moving, but in the context of the album as a whole, they're a little lost. Pulling off the trick of successfully dealing with both sides of your muse is not easy, at least not in terms of keeping your audience with you. I guess being able to download single tracks on to your MP3 keeps everybody happy. How his more complex arrangements will translate with a touring four-piece band I'm not sure, but I would expect a fair bit of fierce intensity interspersed with oases of calm: could be interesting.
www.myspace.com/jongarciaportland
John Davy September 2007
Larry Garner has been nominated twice for the coveted W.C. Handy award and brings his version of the blues to Europe on this live album.
He is an accomplished guitarist and can turn his hand to many styles. Although the whole album is written by Garner, the opening track, Dreaming Again, is very Van Morrison and the following track Had To Quit Drinking could quite easily have been written by Albert Collins. Garner is like Ry Cooder in that he can fall in and out of the blues almost at will.
Garner is a storyteller and poet and he breaks into "Larryisms" on a couple of occasions. These are stories that lead into songs and are as entertaining as the songs themselves.
There are some epics on the album, namely
Blues Ain't Nothing, Keep On Playing The Blues and Born To Sang The Blues at 12, 11 and 10 minutes respectively. Born To Sang The Blues is an excellent example of Garners storytelling and blues traditionalists will be happy with this and Blues Ain't Nothing. The soulful Somebody brings some crowd participation and Larry gets into a groove with Where The Blues Turn Back and Keep On Playing The Blues.
Larry Garner is certainly not an embarrassment to the blues and on the contrary this album is evidence that he is a fine ambassador.
www.larrygarner.com
www.rufrecords.de
David Blue
Kerry-born Seán moved to Dublin in the 1970s, and became a member of the Pavees group with the Keenan family; he won the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil sean-nós competition in 1982. More recently he's taken up assignments as Singer In Residence and ethnomusicologist for the Uíbh Ráthach Gaeltacht of South Kerry, and last year he won the TG4 Traditional Singer Of The Year award.
The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, which I discover is Seán's second CD, has been out since 2003, but has only just come my way for review. It sure is worth the wait however, for it's brilliant, and without a word of a lie it's one of the best CDs I've heard from an Irishman for some time (and there've been some good ones of late). It's one of those albums that, in covering many bases, is thus likely to catch the casual listener unawares. Taken as a whole, the album has an impressive palindrome-like symmetry, whereby the "bookending" tracks (1 and 12) are neat little guitar instrumentals (one self-composed and one by O'Carolan), the next-in (2 and 11) are persuasive covers of decidedly non-trad-Irish songs, tracks 3 and 10 are "big ballads", tracks 4 and 9 are instrumental tune-sets (lively, raggedy-but-fun session-style interludes where Seán sits in on flute)... you get the drift.
This is one of those records in which you can really luxuriate without a trace of guilt. Firstly, Seán is blessed with an extraordinary singing voice: rich and deep, deceptively mighty, with a degree of resonance that I can only describe as gritty, and an ideal sense of natural ornamentation. His is an enthralling and intense voice, with all the declamatory certainty of the truest sean-nós, whereby its expressive qualities are held within the melody rather than overlaid as distracting decoration or mannerism. This applies whether Seán's singing in English or Irish (and translations are provided!): his renditions of Éamon Mhágáine, The Weary Gallows, Sliabh Na mBan and The Bonny Bunch Of Roses are not only exemplary but also absolutely superb, strongly individual yet definitive. The first-named is sung unaccompanied, allowing the gorgeous nuances of Seán's voice to be heard in all their tonal glory and his intuitive sense of flow to be fully appreciated. In the case of The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, Seán modestly admits in his liner note to have carried out extensive research on the song's evolution (yet that liner-note tells us more than that of virtually any other recording! - typically, Seán's notes for all the songs are copiously-researched and highly literate); it's the only non-studio recording on the album, and such is the frisson it generates that it's no wonder it gave its title to the whole disc. Where Seán accompanies himself on guitar, that accompaniment is genuinely unobtrusive yet possessed of a power and character all its own. Unexpectedly perhaps, Seán's version of Cyril Tawney's Ballad Of Sammy's Bar turns out to be one of the finest on record, acutely lonesome and with a brilliantly evocative harmonica backing from Mick Kinsella. Seán's setting of Henry Lawson's bush ballad Andy's Gone With Cattle is similarly masterly and atmospheric, while his treatment of When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again is affecting and refreshingly unsentimentalised. Other musicians appearing on the disc are Eoghan and Seán Óg Garvey, Liam Lewis and Josephine Marsh, but Seán's forceful yet curiously unassuming personality dominates in the nicest possible way. This disc is a real treasure - no exaggeration.
David Kidman 2007
The Gathering @ Selby (Arts Centre/Town Hall), 21st February 2004
Debby McClatchy is one of the most charismatic performers I know, and I couldn't miss the chance to see her new show where she shared the bill with good friends Tom, Brad and Alice (as in Sauber, Leftwich and Gerrard), all four united by their superb musicianship and lifelong advocacy of old-time and early bluegrass music. Well, it was less a formal show than a friendly gathering of like-minded souls, a quasi-informal at-home soirée that seemed mildly out of place on an actual stage - but no matter, for the minimalist setting ensured clarity and concentration and the sound was generally superb (tho' perhaps Alice's vocals were a tad low in the mix on occasion). The format was simple; Debby (here on her 31st tour of the UK!) opened with a short solo set, putting us all at ease immediately and displaying all her usual charm and good humour on a mix of old-time and minstrel-show repertoire performed in her own individual way with her expert banjo acocompaniment. Tom, Brad and Alice then performed a trio set, gathered together round the one mike in true radio style. Big smiles all round, and a wonderful variety of material that ranged from a Carter Family standard to the beautiful Bob McDill opus Falling In Love (complete with some sublime harmonies) to a couple of fiddle tunes (including the unforgettable Possum Up A Gum Stump, which featured Alice on fiddle-sticks!). The old favourite Shortnin' Bread, in a suitably fresh performance, brought the first half to a vibrant close. The second half followed a similar pattern, but with an extra special guest - produced from out of the front rows of the stalls, none other than Bruce Molsky (in the midst of his UK visit), who leapt onto the stage to provide a brilliant additional fiddle line for a couple of numbers towards the end. At that point, I gained the distinct impression that the second half was being somewhat hastily truncated, and everyone swiftly gathered onstage (after summoning Banjo Ray from the stalls to swell the ranks!) for a suitably down-home finale (an ensemble Will The Circle Be Unbroken? - and hey, I bet Debby had to bite hard to resist lapsing into the Les Barker parody she does so well! - followed by a spate of clogging from Debby), all of which seemed to come round all too soon. My companion and I enjoyed the gig immensely, and came away with a super-warm glow and grinning from ear to foot. However (and I may have got it wrong of course) I felt that a large proportion of the audience weren't actually appearing to enjoy the gig overmuch - there was little joining-in on choruses, and little evidence of smiling visages; the applause was warm but a trifle polite and stilted. Most criminally, though, there was no hint of demand for an encore, and none was proffered (was this to ensure the building could be vacated for an imposed 2230hrs curfew, I wonder?).
www.emergingmusic.co.uk/artists/debbym/debbym.htm
David Kidman
I'm a long-term admirer of Mr Gaughan's artistry, and any album the man makes will immediately guarantee a priority play on my machine. But first acquaintance with the opening brace of tracks on his latest CD has left me wondering whether I've suddenly grown jaundiced, grumpy old ears. And indeed, the overall impression is that, sad to say, Lucky For Some feels an uneven offering, with a number of quite disappointing features alongside some predictedly stupendous cuts. Dealing with those first, there's the brooding traditional-style murder ballad Anna Mae from the pen of Jim Page (for some time a highlight of Dick's live sets, at long last given a suitably passionate studio recording), and a pin-drop rendition of Bleacher Lassie o' Kelvinhaugh on which Dick's a paragon of sensitivity, contrasting with the more typical snarling delivery of The Devil And Pastor Jack. It's no coincidence that these three tracks rely on the bare minimum of accompaniment, since my reservations regarding the album as a whole tend primarily (albeit not exclusively) to centre on an occasional tendency to over-production. However, on the moody (if a tad opaquely "orchestrated") instrumental Dancing With Eagles, we can at least still experience Dick's blistering guitar skills undiminished; it's on the anthemic Come Gie's A Sang that the fulsome arrangement proves most distracting, precisely because its quasi-orchestral pomp actually sounds artificially-generated. Comparative restraint, and the presence of "real" musicians (Mary MacMaster on clarsach, Brian McNeill on fiddle) redeems some tracks (the menacing Different Drum for instance, which also uses backing vocals from Ian McCalman and Stephen Quigg). The closing track, We Got The Rock'n'Roll, is a commendably realistic reminiscence of "life on the road" (Five Hand Reel?) days, dedicated to the late Bobby Eaglesham, yet its fond ambience is compromised by the cheesy effect of a drum machine and weedy synth. Together with further synthesised orchestration, that ubiquitous mechanised beat causes similar distraction on the playout of an otherwise fine performance of the tale of The Hunter Dunne. But returning to the opening impressions, the ultra-disillusioned tone of the first track Whatever Happened is so determinedly downbeat that I'm left with an impression almost of Dick going through the motions with self-parody, a suspicion that even his committed vocal performance can't quite banish (though I'll admit that there've been times since that first play when I've almost been convinced - so maybe...). And the title track's an uncharacteristically anonymous uptempo trucking-opus that's done no favours by being saddled with an understrength guitar sound, sweet-toned vocal chorus and hey, there's that darned drum machine again! So, a decidedly mixed CD, although it still contains sufficient excellent music to justify purchase.
David Kidman, June 2006
Here's two of Britain's finest and most distinctive songwriters, both currently celebrating 35 years on the road. And what better way to do so than to team up for a short tour and raise the profile, presenting a programme of 18 songs that Allan introduced as "songs about the folk who'd affected us and our times on the road"? On the face of it though, even those already familiar with the work of the two artists concerned might feel that putting these two on stage together wouldn't work, since their individual styles couldn't be more different - you'd think! But then, remember that Dick thought highly enough of Allan's Land Of The North Wind to record it on his Sail On album (and latterly, even dubbing it one of his favourite songs)…
Whatever, no fears of mismatch or incongruity here, for the two performers made a great team from the outset, their guitar styles proving interestingly complementary - Allan's mellifluous, finely-judged deftness an ideal foil for Dick's fiery, often breathtakingly unpredictable scattergun approach mixing intricacy with percussive stabbing - and, with an admirably clear balance achieved by the sound desk, you couldn't go wrong. The format for the evening was that each half opened with two songs performed by Dick and Allan together (one associated with each), followed by a set of two songs performed solo by each in turn, then to finish the two came together again for a couple more songs. This worked well, and each gave a properly representative (yet not predictably so!) demonstration of his own special gifts as both singer/interpreter and songwriter. Allan's solo spots concentrated on his own compositions - old favourites Win Or Lose and Roll On The Day were well complemented by two brand new songs, of which Pearls And Wine was particularly touching.
Then, in keeping with his own acknowledged areas of expertise (ie, every bit as much an outstanding interpreter of others' songs as a skilled writer and performer of his own), Dick included both covers and traditional material - Erin Go Bhragh, Si Kahn's What You Do With What You've Got - alongside his own outstanding Childhood's End, written some ten years ago yet still so relevant today, so simple and economical in expression yet so undeniably effective. On the "duo" renditions, the two performers often took alternate verses, losing absolutely nothing in continuity of argument in the process; moreover, Dick's trademark combination of visceral force and classic restraint proved every bit as compelling when matched with Allan's more even (yet every bit as subtly and expertly judged) delivery. It was apparent too that those members of the audience unfamiliar with Allan's work were quickly converted through the canny choice of songs - accessible yet not lacking in emotional depth or impact, like The Traveller and Gently Does It; then It's Good To See You (which is frequently used as an opener) proved the perfect way to leave the stage at the end of the evening.
The whole gig benefitted from a tremendous intimate atmosphere (notwithstanding the quite upfront nature of the sound in the theatre), and encompassed some really magic moments when there was a little more than just a hint of folks joining in with the singing; the combined gentle power of Allan and Dick on Ron Kavana's universally poignant Reconciliation midway through the first half was probably the evening's highlight for me. All in all, this was an absolutely superb evening, with both performers on their very best form; well worth the effort in travelling the extra mileage to the gig.
www.dickalba.demon.co.uk
www.allantaylor.com
David Kidman
Subtitled "a compilation from the first three decades", this two-disc set seems to go against Dick's own predilections - he's known for rarely listening to things he's recorded in the past, getting most of his pleasure out of the recording process itself. But finally last year Dick succumbed to repeated requests from fans for a compilation of his favourite tracks from his own output, mindful of the undisputed fact that some of his recordings have been unavailable for a long time. So this collection's 21 tracks, showing extraordinary artistic consistency, span the decades in 107 well-chosen minutes, from 1975's brief but telling Auchengeich Disaster (from the long-deleted Bonnie Pit Laddie album) and his version of The Cruel Brother (from the early Greentrax release Sandy Bell's Ceilidh) through to 2001's Outlaws And Dreamers release. On the way, there's a welcome airing for Dick's defiantly individual version of The Wind That Shakes The Barley (from the hard-to-get 1997 album Spirit Of Ireland), also the evocative Lassie, Lie Near Me (taken from an obscure 1981 German release), and choice selections from both those classic early albums Gaughan and Handful Of Earth and the more recent achievements Sail On and Redwood Cathedral (Dick's interpretation of October Song from the latter being to my mind one of the most intriguing and rewarding of all recorded versions of this Robin Williamson masterpiece, whilst his seriously epic treatment of Hamish Henderson's Farewell To Sicily from the former has no serious rivals in my book). And no Gaughan collection could be complete without including a Brian McNeill composition (here, Muir And The Master Builder) and at least one of Dick's own (here, Why Old Men Cry). But to those listeners new to Dick's music, the most striking thing that emerges from listening to this compilation is likely to be Dick's total commitment to his chosen material, his unbridled passion and musicality, such a powerful combination that encompasses both the traditional and contemporary/political modes of the song repertoire in equal measure. Concentrating on Dick's solo activities as this set does, his seminal and influential work with Five Hand Reel isn't represented, but you can't have everything, and what we do have here is at once a superlative primer and a sincere tribute to one of the land's premier folk artistes.
David Kidman
Dick Gaughan - Outlaws and Dreamers (Greentrax)
From the sleeve notes: The best way I can describe what this album is about is to quote Yip Harburg, "I am one of the last of a small tribe of troubadours who still believe that life is a beautiful and exciting journey with a purpose and grace which are well worth singing about." Dick adds, "My intention was to try to see if I could create a 'live' album in the studio and it was done within a savage deadline - 40 hours to record, mix and master rather than my usual 6 weeks and, except for a bit of Brian McNeill playing on two tracks, is entirely solo acoustic voice and guitar."
This to put it quite simply as a fantastic album. Dick's voice has never sounded more strong, and indeed angry on some of the tracks. But there is a tenderness there as well especially on 'John Harrison's Hands' (for me the stand out track, about the man who built the first clock at sea to enable sailors to find longitude, but only got the credit late in his life) , and 'What You Do With What You've Got' a song about overcoming the stigma of disability. 'The Yew Tree' is an epic concerning Scottish history, 'Florence in Florence' is a cracking instrumental, 'Dowie Dens of Yarrow' is stark and powerful - sung with just a keyboard drone - works a treat. The Woody Guthrie song 'Tom Joad' sees Dick putting on a slight US accent - but it sounds fine. The title track is Dick's own song about 'Those who know the meaning of making songs out of their dreams' - it's beautiful. A great version of the Phil Ochs song 'When I'm Gone' is next. 'Tom Paine's Bones, 'Strong Women Rule Us All' inspired by the legend of Flora MacDonald, and finally 'Wild Roses' by Kimmie Rhodes round off this exceptional and moving album.
Jon Hall
If you've not already got copies of Gauthier's first three albums, then you'll be finding them harder to track down. Seems they're no longer going to be available, hence this compilation which gathers the best under one CD roof. There's only two taken from debut album Dixie Chicken, the Prine-like Goddamn HIV and the bluegrassing Ways of the World, though you do get a previously unissued live version of I Don't Know Nothing about Love.
However, it was Drag Queens And Limousines and Filth And Fire that really produced the best of her early work with their tales of actors, barflies, writers, drunks, junkies, down and outs, suicides, poets and nuns.
Thus here's the Kristofferson like Long Way To Fall, Burnin' Sugar Cane's snapshot of her birthplace that evokes the first Band album, Karla Faye's story of heroin junkie murderer Karla Faye Tucker, the sinners seeking absolution at the Camelot Motel, Our Lady Of The Shooting Stars desperate hope for salvation, the matter of fact autobiographical I Drink and Christmas In Paradise's poignant tale of the homeless Davey stealing a tree to bring a little cheer to the wreckage of his life. A previously unavailable live version of I An't Go No Home, provides the second bonus. In an ideal world you'd already have the complete albums, but for latecomers this is a perfect place to start playing catch up.
Mike Davies June 2008
Recorded live and produced with an eye to more acoustic rootsy moods by Joe Henry, the Louisiana singer-songwriter's piercingly imtimate fifth album is a quietly world-weary affair about letting go of the past and finding the strength to endure the present and embrace the future, a hard won wisdom born of both bitter and tender experiences.
But unlike much of her past work, here the light shines through the cracks. Last of the Hobo Kings she may mourn the death of a legend and an era, but endings have beginnings too. On the title track her words brush across the nerve endings as she sings of putting aside broken hearts, putting your hands in your pockets and heading off into the distance, trying to get through the long night.
Even on Can't Find The Way (with Van Dyke Parks providing piano), an aching story of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and the need to find your way home, she talks of the determination not to be beaten down by the odds. And at the end of the bruised relationship on Before You Leave, she sings of seeing the light return to her lover's eyes as the chains fall away.
On the pedal steel keening I Ain't Leaving, where she sounds almost like a female Guy Clark, she's defiantly standing her ground and looking firmly in the face of adversity and demons while Same Road sees her reach out to a friend falling into the darkness she's once suffered but finding the courage not to be dragged back down too.
She's not afraid to expose her vulnerability either, the rippling acoustic Please finding her on the road, yearning to be back with her lover. And in Soft Place To Land she talks of balancing safety with desire, ready for the risks of falling into the eyes of strangers but wary that the landing can be painful.
Elsewhere less obviously autobiographical numbers trace the paths between despair and devotion, from the suicide at the end of her tether on Snakebit to Thanksgiving's dust coated story of the families that return year after year for prison visits. It may just be one of the finest, most moving songs she's ever written. Some may lament the absence of the bluesy energy that informed parts of previous albums, but, aided by a fluid and sympathetic band and guest contributions from Loudon Wainwright and Van Dyke Park, Henry's approach beautifully complements the soulfulness and hushed humanity of Gauthier's hushed voice and deeply affecting images.
www.marygauthier.com
www.myspace.com/marygauthier
Mike Davies October 2007
Though oft compared to Lucinda Williams, Louisiana born Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) more accurately sounds like a female version of John Prine or Kris Kristofferson, spinning her half-spoken, half-sung world weary compassion stained country noir tales of lives that 'dangle 'tween hell and hallowed ground', of losers, barflies, junkies, down and outs, bruised lovers and, inevitably, herself.
Now in her forties, she didn't start writing until she was 35 by which time she'd survived a dirt stained world of life battering experiences, filtering them back out through her albums Dixie Kitchen, Drag Queens In Limousines and Filth & Fire. She returns now, debuting on her new label home with her fourth and best, where the opening slow desert blues Falling Out of Love with its lonesome guitar and harmonica adds thoughts of Daniel Lanois, Mark Eitzel and Tom Waits to the gold standard reference points.
It starts in stunning form and just gets better, slipping into the title track, a plea for 'the hand of grace' to end the suffering of family, church and, in a rare pointed political comment, a country where 'people in power ... do anything to keep their crown'.
Bundled together mid-way, the album strikes another rare note in featuring both collaborations and covers. The former's repped by the jaunty but bitter travelling song Prayer Without Words with its desperate need to find roots and peace, the Prine-like bittersweet inherited traits of I Drink (originally featured on Drag Queens) and the spare broken relationship loneliness of Empty Spaces while the latter sees her slow waltzing her weary way through Harlan Howard's She's A Rhymer with producer Gulf Morlix on harmony and Fred Eaglesmith's enigmatic burned and bruised lament Your Sister Cried.
Elsewhere Gauthier casts her cinematic storytellers eye on New Orleans Mardi Gras and its celebratory approach to death with a sultry funky Wheel Inside The Wheel where 'Marie Laveau promenades with Oscar Wilde and big funky Stella Twirls her little red umbrella' while she closes up the album on the hole inside the heart missing you honky tonk waltzer Drop In The Bucket and, to strike a defiant, I will survive note, the Dylanish, growling electric guitar and organ swirling It Ain't the Wind, It's the Rain where, weather-beaten by life she declares 'when the storm clouds are building, when the deluge takes aim I know what's coming, I know the rain.' Get yourself drenched.
Mike Davies
If you're looking for a musician with some 'baggage' to inspire her art, look no further. Experiences like spending her 18th birthday in jail have helped shape Mary Gauthier and her music. As you'd imagine, her music is imbued with sadness and bitterness in pretty much equal measure. Her lyrics tell of physical abuse, drug problems, poverty...the whole shooting match.
By my reckoning, this is her fourth album. Though the nature of the subject matter hasn't changed much over those albums, the music now takes on more of a band feel to it as well as some added production sophistication. The dragging blues beat of 'Falling Out Of Love' along with its wailing backing vocals could equally well be a soundtrack to a Tolkein epic - the more evil parts, of course. 'Mercy Now', the title track, returns to a simpler acoustic style requesting mercy for us all but in particular for the family that she fled. The lyrical content needs no musical sophistication and the strong tune sits happily enough with some strings behind it. We have the rather wonderful Gurf Morlix to thank for this sensitive approach to the production controls.
Indeed, his presence and the expanding array of musicians is probably what caused Mary to re-visit 'I Drink' though, to be frank, I thought her earlier version was fine. Like some of her earlier material, titles such as 'Your Sister Cried' tell you that the pain in these songs is stark and straight from the heart. Yet, the closing 'It Ain't The Wind, It's The Rain' reveals that Mary is now providing a more developed imagery - try 'When the wild winds let up, when the violence wanes, you'll think of me, then, when you're watching it rain'. So, another fine record with some real standout tracks and signs of a developing style - you can't argue with that.
Steve Henderson
Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight (and the stolen family car) at 15, spending her 16th and 18th birthdays in detox and jail respectively, then studying philosophy and opening an award-winning Boston restaurant before turning to music, Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) has been around and seen a load. It's a life that informs her self-style country noir songs that draw on her own experiences and characters observed, the actors, barflies, writers, drunks, junkies, down and outs, suicides, poets and nuns who populate the stories that made up her last album, Drag Queens In Limousines, and now its successor Fire and Filth..
Coming across like a female Kris Kristofferson (notably so on Long Way To Fall) and John Prine, though Burnin' Sugar Cane, a snapshot of her birthplace, could have come from the first Band album, there's turbulence here, but there's also humanity as her smoke stained drawl spins wry stories laced with empathy and affection for the rejects and misfits balancing between the edge and the verge, dealing with the hands they've been given, walking through the fire alone in the hope of emerging burned but perhaps with their fear, their wounds, also cauterised.
On Drag Queens memorable encounters included heroin junkie murderer Karla Faye Tucker, executed in Texas in 98, and a young kid playing at home alone with his toy train. Here among her simple, acoustic songs we meet the "cheaters, outlaws and fallen angels" who seek to hide from their sins and find absolution in each other's arms at Camelot Motel, the girl On The Ledge torn between putting an end to her desperate life or clutching at one last thread of faith, the homeless Davey stealing a tree to spend Christmas In Paradise with a little dignity and human warmth under the Cow Key Bridge, and in For Rose, the unspecified narrator drifting directionless from one life wreckage to the next.
While you're unlikely to emerge at the end of the album filled with sunny optimism about the bright side of life, her songs will burnish you with a humble there but for the grace of god awareness of the fragile nature of being human. Quite essential.
Mike Davies
With a title like 'Drag Queens in Limousines', who could resist a listen to the new album from Mary Gauthier? More pleasing still is the news that this is not a case of great title but shame about the music. The title track opens the record and sets the tone of the rest of the album with characters reminiscent of a walk on the wild side with Tom Waits and music with that sad feel that Country at its best achieves. The approach of Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) is more personal than the more observational style of Tom Waits. This leaves you, the listener, more attached to the record and counteracts what can be a rather one paced musical style. The personal style comes from the fact that she 'stumbled through her early years' and the characters that feature in the songs are her friends. Guys whose view of life is 'fish swim, birds fly, lovers leap. I drink', 'Karla Faye' about the fated life of someone who went the way of death row, etc. Yet, it's not all colour and characters. Sometimes, she relies on simple poetry in tracks such as 'Different Kind of Gone'. This is definitely a good find. If you like sad and lonesome, get this record.
Steve Henderson
Three musicians with impeccable credentials have got together to play the music they evidently love to bits - that's where this review might end, and that tag alone might well convince you that the CD is worth buying. But I'm duty bound to tell you some more about it..... You might first consider this an unusual release to come from a label primarily associated with the cream of Scottish traditional and contemporary folk music - true, but when the quality's as good as this there need be not a murmur of dissent, for the three men surely do both themselves and the label proud. Frankie is quite simply regarded as one of Ireland's finest fiddlers, while harmonica virtuoso Rick has feet both in the bluegrass and Irish traditional camps, here playing concertina and jaw-harp; Tim Edey provides a wide range of emotional support (sensitive to pyrotechnic) on guitar (with some keyboard work too). Quite what circumstances brought these three together we aren't told, but I'm rather glad they did collaborate for this record. It's basically a twist on its title, whereby a selection of mainly Irish traditional tunes are infused with bluesy inflections and rhythms (except for the opening track, Baby Please Don't Go, where that blues standard is to all intents and purposes "jigged up" by being imaginatively linked with the hornpipe Pol Ha'penny). The playing throughout the album is uniformly scintillating, distinctly feelgood and often very breathtaking indeed - I specially enjoyed the Frank Quinn's Reels set (how Rick keeps such control over that twangin' jaw-harp is a miracle!), and the swing-infused set of hornpipes forming track 4 (Kitty's Wedding & Plains Of Boyle), while there's contrast in the form of some beautiful slower pieces (Cill Cais, Ge Do Theid Mi Do M'Leabiadh and Eagle's Whistle). Unfortunately (and most unusually for Greentrax), there are no liner-notes to the tunes themselves, not all of which are well-known by any means - this presentation aspect is the only blemish on a musically most appealing release. Then again, all credit is due to Greentrax for licensing the recording for wider circulation through their G2 imprint.
David Kidman April 2008
I rather like this one. Edinburgh-born fiddler Amy has been a stalwart of that city's session scene for some years, but has more recently achieved fame as a composer (tunes on albums by Catriona MacDonald and Fine Friday) and teacher too. Edinburgh-born guitarist Sandy also sings and writes his own songs, while he's in great demand as a session musician, having also appeared on the CD Birlin' Fiddles and in projects by Simon Thoumire. Amy and Sandy first teamed up for their album Over The Sky To See (great title!), and this proved the beginning of a charismatic musical partnership, which on the evidence of album number two, Little Bird, is gathering strength. There's a tensile quality and forward drive in the two musicians' playing that's very refreshing after some of the cool, over-controlled offerings we hear nowadays, and this is carried through onto all of the instrumental tracks here (seven out of 12). Sandy's playing is both elegant and inventive, with a spring in its step that ideally matches the high level of forward momentum that Amy brings to her fiddling; to be fair, I do hear occasional lapses in intonation, but the spirit's always there in abundance and it's hard not to be captivated and drawn along by this sprightly duo. For instance, Amy and Sandy open this album judiciously with "some of the oldest and finest", three session tunes which are played up to the hilt (as if they needed to justify that tag! ha!). The cracking strathspey The Laird O' Drumblair is also accorded a stirring performance, as is the pipe retreat march Far O'er Struay (the latter by Amy in solo mode), and the duo make a good fist of conveying the exhilarating breathlessness of the Gaelic mouth music on the Puirt set. Sandy's "jazz tutorial" Sogarth Castle provides an attractively poised, languid contrast, although The Weasel (a set comprising a brace of Amy's own compositions) doesn't quite catch fire in comparison for some reason, even if the guest banjo contribution of "Desirée Parvenu" (hey, this has gotta be a pseudonym for Amy herself?) on the second of the tunes goes some way to compensate. It's the vocal tracks that are likely to divide listeners, I feel, for in one respect they almost make too much of a contrast with the tunes. First up, there's the Burns song John Anderson My Jo, which is given a cool jazzy backing that at times rather seems to conflict with Amy's singing style, which is a pity. The remaining four songs are all Sandy's own compositions, and a mixed bunch: The Silver Geese is a beautiful poetic song set to a quasi-oriental melody, while the quirkier Little Bird (which could also be said to be orientally-inflected) is one of two that (unusually) features a trombone in its backing. There's Na Snaw is dubbed a "kind of unplanned tribute to Mick Marra", and I can see why. In all, I'm not quite convinced that James' singing voice is strong enough to carry the songs, although they do need a delicate touch to bring off, while on the other hand Cannonball suffers from its engineering, being given a deliberately "boxy" (20s) sound to the voice. Whatever my reservations though, there's still plenty on this disc to maintain interest, and I'd be interested to hear how the duo progresses in future years.
David Kidman December 2007
Born in Toronto, Anne Louise relocated to Whitehorse, Yukon some twelve years ago. Anne Louise was one-time winner of the songwriting competition at the Alaska Bald Eagle Music Festival, which isn't surprising, for her writing displays an evocatively rootsy lyrical sensibility that's very much allied to the old-time branch of country. Indeed, several times on first playthrough I was reminded of latter-day Emmylou, but in overall feel rather than in any specifically derivative sense. Anne Louise's songs are honest and immediate; they comprise reflections on life, death, love, the usual things, though with an intimate, relaxed and totally natural expression that makes for a charming and hauntingly refreshing listening experience. Perhaps in the final analysis her music isn't as immediately compelling as that of fellow-Yukonite Kim Barlow, and I don't find her full and resonant vocal style quite as individual or striking, but she still emerges very well from comparison with the myriad of other US-based singer-songwriters. Her musical settings are imaginative, with effective use of dobro, harmonium, deeply twangy guitars, percussion and other unusual colourings from a small ensemble that includes Nathan Tinkham, Roly Mitton, Lonnie Powell and Annie Avery. Together with Kim's own album (Gingerbread), Anne Louise's Trouble is a distinguished product, and convincing proof that the Yukon Territory is home to some pretty impressive musical talent.
David Kidman
You might not immediately recognise the name, but it's a reasonable bet that most filmgoers will have heard her work at sometime or another. As co-composer of the score for Gladiator alongside Hans Zimmer, Gerrard notched up 10 award nominations, including a Golden Globes win. She also received Golden Globe nominations for Ali and The Insider and won four international awards for Whale Rider. In addition, she has either scored or contributed film music to Heat, Mission Impossible 2, Constantine, Black Hawk Down, Collateral. King Arthur and Layer Cake while her TV credits embrace CSI and West Wing.
But she is singer as well as composer. Born in Melbourne, Australia, the young Gerrard apparently used to stand on her fence and sing to God. Appropriate enough really since she has the voice of an angel. As a teenager she expanded her audience, performing in local pubs and clubs before meeting Brendan Perry in the early 80s. Quitting his band The Marching Girls, Perry then formed Dead Can Dance, inviting Gerrard to join on percussion and some singing.
Relocating to London, they secured a deal with the fledgling 4AD, a home to artists with musical visions that saw beyond the mundane. Beginning with their self-titled debut in 1984, over the next eleven years they would release nine albums, each one exploring a rich and ever expanding musical canvas with Gerrard's otherworldly voice soaring through influences that embraced folk, medieval chants, baroque classicism, Celtic atmospheres, electronics, world music and New Age ambience.
In 1995, however, it became clear that it was time to spread her own wings, making her solo debut with The Mirror Pool, accompanied by the Victoria Philharmonic on songs that dealt with the separation from Perry, the death of her brother and the birth of her daughter. Not only did it mark her solo recording career, it also began her long association with film, Michael Mann making effective use of several tracks in Heat. He continued to champion her work, not only using two numbers from her second album, Duality, a collaboration with Pieter Bourke, for The Insider, but commissioning them to create new music for the film.
Following on from her work for Gladiator, in 2004 Gerrard released her third album, this time working with Irish composer Patrick Cassidy to create the hauntingly mournful Immortal Memory while last year saw her fourth, and for many finest, work with The Silver Tree.
Curiously, although she personally selected and sequenced the 15 tracks on this career spanning compilation, there's nothing from her two most recent solo albums and only one track each (Sacrifice, Swans) from the others. Inevitably, with music from Gladiator taking up three tracks, not all nine DCD releases are represented here.
There's nothing from either The Serpent's Egg or Spleen And Ideal, but there's individual cuts from Spirit Chaser and Aion plus two tracks apiece from Into The Labyrinth (Ariadne, Yulunga) and Within The Realm of A Dying Swan (Persephone, The Host of Seraphim). A pity though that, by way of underlining the musical range, room couldn't have been found for their version of The Wind That Shakes The Barley.
However, with music from Ali and Whale Rider completing the line up it remains an intoxicating, haunting and indeed often spiritually incandescent introduction to and celebration of one of the most individual and gifted musicians of the last twenty years.
Mike Davies February 2007
Romney Getty - Fill In Your Gray (Augustus Records)
I'm sure that a few years ago the army had a recruiting slogan that ran along the lines of 'if it's in you, we'll find it', they wouldn't have to look too far to discover the blues in Canadian Romney Getty, they're right in your face. In fact, she's got so much they've got to go somewhere or she'd explode.
From the opening moments of the opening track, Roll On, think Bonnie Raitt meets Janis Joplin and then duck because the sparks fly.
Romney Getty's version of the country blues is the sweaty, sensual kind, Cryin The Blues comes with its own thunderstorm, it's hot, heavy and about to burst, she has a voice so humid that it makes the back of your shirt go sticky.
It was advisable to check that all the songs were Romney Getty originals because Someone To Somebody has the scars of a lifetime's pain on its back, it's as much a psychotherapy session as a song.
And, although as a raw gravelled-voice blues singer she is a real find, it would be wrong to think of her as a one-trick pony, there is a deep and subtle pathos to Leave Tomorrow. Helped in no small manner by a guitar part that is direct and played with purpose. I can think of at least one of her compatriots who would benefit from listening to how a ballad really should be done.
It's impossible to deny that part of the attraction of Fill In Your Gray is that she's sounds so damn sexy, this is an album that generates its own sensual heat. That will carry you a long way but Romney Getty has the added attarction that she's a gritty, down to earth. honest to goodness blues woman. She doesn't carry on the legacy, she enhances it.
Michael Mee
Jennifer Getz - Makin' History (Self-produced)
Now here's a record that makes an impact right from the opening chords. Jennifer's voice glides effortlessly yet strongly over some melodically impressive material, all self-penned, to a backdrop of glittering guitars both electric and acoustic, some piano keyboards and sparkling rhythm track. This alt-country-roots-rock sound-world is reminiscent of any number of latterday s/s efforts from Kasey Chambers on down, but there's something else in the mix that makes you sit up and take notice, I can't quite put my finger on it. So it feels churlish to have to resort to quoting the press handout and even mention that the record is "an homage to a dog, but definitely not a dog of a disc". In fact, although Bonus Track #11, written literally at the eleventh hour before mastering, is a deliberate tribute, the whole CD's every bit as much of an homage, or memorial, to its producer John Herron, a respected musician and composer, who by a cruel twist of fate was struck by a car on his way to the studio to finish the final session for the album (he spent seven months in a coma before passing on). The production work in itself is very much state-of-the-art, with a believable presence and upfront personal signature that proves just right for Jennifer's songs, which convey a telling combination of forthrightness and melancholy reflection, emotions expressed with a fearless and confident honesty that comes over as completely natural. It's quite an achievement, too, that the backing band, which comprises noted musos Gregg Sutton (bass), Rick Schlosser and Zeke Zinngiebel, sounds larger than it is without getting out of control or overblown in any way. I've got one little complaint tho' - the scrawly writing on the booklet pages ain't very readable against the photo backgrounds, so it's real hard to get the lyrics.
David Kidman
"Last evening I fell for a vampire..." - and you yourself are every bit as likely to fall for Ghost Bees' unique brand of spooky-folk when you're sucked in by that opening gambit, compellingly vocalised in eerily shifting girl-sibling harmony after a minor-key prelude of gently plucked rhythmic mandolin, guitar, droning viola, glissando violin and t(w)inkling glockenspiel, the imagery dancing into your ears in queasily appealing waltz-time. It's a strange but aggressively beautiful, and often melancholy, sound-world (reminiscent of the weirder experiments of the ISB, Fit & Limo or Kate Bush), which spills over into, nay fairly characterises, the rest of this teasingly brief (35-minute) yet highly treasurable disc from "twin telepaths" Romy and Sari Lightman who hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The seven songs making up their debut offering are as tales told by a two-headed balladeer, replete with distinctly whimsical, occasionally overwrought but intensely evocative language, recounting or reflecting on matters of fantasy and ancestral nostalgia. Literacy is a byword: and yes, I had to look up the esoteric album title too! - it denotes the practice of tea-leaf reading! Indeed, the art of divination will, I suspect, also stand you in good stead with the duo's chimerical lyrics, which address the bleak and frightening in our lives (for instance, the experience of birth in Sinai, infanticide in the malevolent Goethe-gothic of Erlking and the terror of the Pol Pot regime in Tear Tassle Ogre Heart).Sometimes enigmatic, but invariably enthralling listening; I'm still not sure what it all adds up to, even after several plays, but I'm downright enchanted and sufficiently intrigued to persist and listen again - and closely. I'm sure Ghost Bees have chosen their name carefully, for their music creates somewhat of a spectral buzz for sure - an insistent thrumming ambience that just won't go away: and genuinely scary!
David Kidman May 2008
Imagine The Velvet Underground strained through the Tindersticks with 16 Horsepower's dark visions and you'll come so way to getting a handle on this self-styled chamber-folk music NYC quartet fronted by Dusty Wright and featuring the haunting contributions of cellist Matt Groeke. Cinematic Americana with the projector stuck on noir, you'll be reaching for the Nick Cave meets Johnny Cash references listening to the spooked desert moods of folk ballad Tempest where Wright's coal throated voice is complemented by the siren background vocals of Laura Fay Lewis while Intimidation lopes along on a devil stalking the prairie note that makes the Walkabouts sound positively like Steps.
It's not all heavy musical gloom, Masquerade sways to a hypnotic tribal African hand drum percussion and cello that curiously evokes thoughts of Men Without Hats fronted by Gordon Lightfoot, Harder To Understand drives along a similar heated David Byrne highway on squealing beat tyres, Lost Again is gorgeous arpeggio tinkling folk song and Awaken a lowing Eastern flavoured snake-charmer. Ironically though, the stand-out is their cover of Eno's Baby's On Fire twangily done as if it had been designed for the Talking Heads. At the risk of being stoned to death for the pun, GIANTfingers deserve a really big hand.
Mike Davies
Giant Sand @ The Talk Of The Town, Tuesday 2nd May 2000
I'll start at the end. No encore. "OK, we have copies of our official bootleg in a suitcase. Just put £10 in the case and take one." Band exits and a thronging audience does just that. Suitcase, heaps of money, empty stage. This is a most hands-off merchandising experience from a laid-back band who give the impression that a lot of magic mushrooms have been eaten along the way in Tucson, Arizona.
The music? It was heard through a haze of serious drinking. White tablecloths at the Talk of the Town with waiter service and a two-hour delay before Giant Sand could start (the musical 'Cats' next door had to finish first) fuelled a hot evening! From the opening bars, it cleansed the jaded musical palette. Loud, quirky and inventive alt.rock/country/blues. Hand-held tape samples into the microphone. Guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, special effects. Instrument swapping, strange chords, tempo changes, and through it all there was Howe Gelb, sounding more than a little like Lou Reed, with his surreal stream-of-consciousness poetry.
Get the new Giant Sand CD 'Chore of Enchantment' (Loose Records), one of this year's essentials. Whilst you are about it, check out late band member, Gelb's good friend and collaborator, and National Steel blues guitar master, Rainer Ptacek. Rainer died of a brain tumour in 1997, the year his musician friends, Gelb, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Emmylou Harris and Jonathan Richman released a benefit album 'The Inner Flame' (Atlantic), recorded whilst he was still alive and able to participate. Rainer's wonderful instrumental album 'Nocturnes' is available from Glitterhouse who are now releasing his back catalogue, since deleted by Demon, and the posthumous release 'Alpaca Lips' - quote 'Blues, folk and ambient improvisation: Son House meets David Byrne at the crossroads'. You are in for a real treat.
www.giantsand.com
www.glitterhouse.com
Sue Cavendish
Beth Gibbons & Rustin' Man - Out Of Season (Go Beat)
Portishead remain silent, but Gibbons hasn't been sitting round on her hands. This sees her collaborating with long time friend and former Talk Talk/L'Orang man Paul Webb for an album that melds the comedown moodiness of both bands but without any beats and a more delicate, soul-folk ambience. Recording with proper instruments affords a far more organic feel to the music, a sense that here are actual emotions to be twisted and chewed over as Gibbons' expressive voice moves between deep torch song soul and ghostly folk. The latter's well in evidence on the opening Mysteries, a delicate hymnal of the heart, the sombre piano driven Show in which she sounds like a more intense Janis Ian, Sand River's autumnal decay (nature images figure large throughout, informing themes of mortality and the shifting of well, seasons) and Spyder where echoes of Leonard Cohen's melancholic splintered melodies ripple through Webb's guitar. Drake rather inveitably summons the ghost of Nick but with its mournful harmonica turns out to be in more of leafy jazz musical frame of mind that more accurately harks to the 40s colours of Billie Holiday that inform Gibbons' soul influences. You'll hear Nina Simone in there too, though the bluesy Romance is pure Eartha Kitt down to the adenoidal kittenish sleaze.
Tom The Model comes with big brass and orchestral flourishes and an unmistakable hint of the early big Italian-drama soul of Dusty Springfield mixed into the surging swells, but it's the downbeat and hushed sadness that gives this project its beguiling magic, working its spell to consummate effect on the lengthy Holiday-ish Funny Time Of Year with only the sonic experimentation of Rustin'Man itself, one of the first tracks to emerge from the collaboration, with Gibbons' voice treated through a vocoder, spoiling the overall reverie.
Mike Davies
Steve Gibbons - The Dylan Project (Woodworm)
As cover versions go this selection is very good. However, I don't know whether it is to be taken as just that or has Steve Gibbons turned into a Dylan tribute act. If it is the latter then he certainly has Dylan's vocal inflection off pat although the total sound (harmonica included) could be construed as too clinical and not as rough as the Dylan originals.
The songs, such as the classic Highway 61 Revisited, It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry and I Want You are complemented by When The Ship Comes In and Down Along The Cove to provide an album of surprising quality. Gibbons is ably backed in this endeavour by British music luminaries Simon Nicol, PJ Wright and Dave Pegg with special mention to the rocking slide of Wright on the aforementioned Highway 61 Revisited.
It may have taken some time to come to my attention but this will be on my CD player more often than some others.
David Blue
Barely a year has elapsed since I pronounced the Gibsons' Long Way Back Home album a long way in front of the pack of new bluegrass/country albums in the racks, and here's another fresh set from the boys already! Fortunately, Leigh and Eric both share a real enthusiasm for recording, and Red Letter Day was recorded amicably and productively during a period of relative transition for the brothers (their band having undergone a change of mandolinist from Marc MacGlashan to Rick Hayes, also adding fiddle player Clayton Campbell to the lineup in the process), by tapping into Nashville's reliable pool of crack sidemen including Ronnie McCoury and Jason Carter. Everything just clicks into place, yet without that hint of auto-pilot that you find in some Nashville records. Red Letter Day brings together what's arguably even more eclectic a selection of cuts than its predecessors, once again matching the brothers' excellent songwriting with their ever-astute song-collecting skills. Casting their net far and wide, they cover with equal integrity material as diverse as Fred Moore's What A Ways We've Come (a superb contemporary song very much in the accepted tradition), the traditional Prisoner's Song (given an unusually energetic treatment) and Twenty-One Years, alongside Ray Charles' I Got A Woman and Bobby Womack's It's All Over Now. But the cream of the crop comes with the original compositions, notably Eric's glorious "sad old-time" opus We Won't Dance Again (featuring a fine harmony vocal from Andrea Zonn) and Leigh's chucklesome tale of Sam Smith (get the breweries onto that one!). Red Letter Day is that rare beast among bluegrass albums, one of a satisfying length (50 minutes), a welcome antidote to the over-before-you-know-it short-measure of the 35-minuters or less that we're accustomed to these days. If you're in the mood for some bona-fide contemporary bluegrass with plenty of spirit and you're also up for discovering some classy new material, then the seriously talented Gibson Brothers will fit the bill in every way you could possibly imagine.
David Kidman
David Kidman
David Kidman
Connecticut-born singer-songwriter Melissa relocated to Nashville some ten years ago, and has so far produced several albums of her own material, number four of which is In Your Corner. It's a pleasing collection of generally optimistic songs, much in the Mary Chapin Carpenter mould but with not quite the same degree of emotional depth, possibly because, as she readily admits, she's "less concerned with the melancholies of life and more concerned with getting beyond them". You notice straight away that Melissa has a warm, attractive singing voice, of that there's no doubt, and it soothes the ears. Also, Melissa certainly has the knack for writing a good radio-friendly melody, of which there are a dozen examples on this CD; she also has the benefit of a talented backing crew and a clear, bright recording. Taken on its own, each individual song is a pleasant experience, and gently uplifting without pushing any boundaries or issuing any musical challenges - easy-going listening much in the manner of Melissa's influences John Denver, James Taylor et al., and nothing wrong with that. The drawback with so consistent an approach and world-view, though, is that while never for a moment do you doubt the genuineness of Melissa's uniformly positive stance, her lyrics portray her as almost too good to be true, expounding her simple and life-affirming philosophies that always, always (trust me!) work out. Life never plays it this safe now does it? - or is it just that Melissa's been lucky? Either way, she seems all too easily to rise above the darker side to be entirely convincing.
David Kidman April 2007
Susan Gibson's 'Chin Up' is packed full of good songs. Hardly surprising when you consider that she wrote one of the biggest selling songs in country music history with The Dixie Chicks' 'Wide Open Spaces'. This, her first solo record following her involvement with The Groobees, opens with the sprightly, fiddle driven swing of 'Anything To Keep From Crying'.
The pace drops with 'Christmas In Houston' where you sense her feel for a melody and some intriguing lyrics. 'Trophy Girl' has a more obvious biting lyric about a boyfriend's view of his lady friend. Yet, again, the latter displays another strong tune and hook whilst, on 'One Roller Skate', there is sadness for a missing lover with its 'as useless as one roller skate' tale. A lyric that is typical of her clever skills in this area.
The backing is mainly driven by the fiddle of Eleanor Whitmore along with the dobro, mandolin and pedal steel of Jeff Plankenhorn. Occasionally, as on 'Clumsy Hands' and 'Sourpuss', you'll find a more rock based bass/drums sound. So, other than that, there's quite a rootsy feel to the record that is typified by the closing title track with its simple banjo based backing to an almost spoken delivery. It delightfully pokes fun at her inability to pass the Presidential fitness test at school. Hey, who cares? She passes my test.
Steve Henderson
David Kidman October 2007
Her first new studio release in three years, opening track Emerald Street finds Gilkyson in sunkissed upbeat mood, warm brass adding Memphis soul while she whistles and sings how the little birdies go 'tweet tweet tweet' all because she's in love. She doesn't even care that the 'whole world's goin up in smoke'. Except, it soon becomes clear she does.
This may be a musically bright affair, rocking it up on Dream Lover or pouring soulful organ across The Party's Over, but her politically hued songs are barbed with a sobering awareness that, as on the aforementioned lament for contemporary America ("the house is a shambles, broken glass in the streets guttering candles, blood on the sheets"), we've been living it up like there's no tomorrow and now there very may well not be. We are, as she puts it on the gutsy touch country Runway Train, racing into the wreck.
The bluesy, moody electric piano based title track celebrates what it says but notes how 'billions of years come down to a point in time, setting the stage for the folly of man' and on 40s jazzy waltzer closing cut Unsustainable, backed by pedal steel courtesy of the marvellously names Cindy Cashdollar, she could well be talking about the gods deciding to 'tear it down and start all over'.
And if it's not eco themes then, on Dream Lover, it's daddy's little telling how she became an on line porno queen or, on the smoke curling soulful Rare Bird with its echoes of both Janis Ian and Ben E King, the loneliness of celebrity where everyone wants a piece of you.
But, she remains an optimist. The rippling country folk Wildewood Spring with its fiddle and cittern, talks of the urban survivors seeing revival in a new baptism and finds hope in romantic love. It's there on the jangling Clever Disguise where Baez and Emmylou join spirits, and it's there on the tender He Waits For Me.
And, above all, that flicker of optimism is there on the album's finest track, the softly Prine-like, whispery sung The Great Correction that sees judgement coming as she talks about suffering "at the hands of our American dreams" and how "we'll all be burnin in the same big sun". But it also sees that "the future waits on the horizon line for our daughters and our sons" and that if " the light burns brightest in the darkest times" then (echoing the theme to Unsustainable) perhaps "the end could be the start of something new" if love and compassion can squeeze us through the eye of the needle. Hopefully, there'll be singers and songwriters like Gilkyson to celebrate the new world as well as mourn the passing of the old.
www.elizagilkyson.com
www.myspace.com/elizagilkyson
Mike Davies June 2008
Eliza Gilkyson - Paradise Hotel (Red House Records)
Two years ago, Land of Milk and Honey saw Gilkyson getting political with songs that left you in no doubt about her feelings in regard to the Iraq war and the Bush administration while also, on tracks like Tender Mercies and Ballad of Yvonne Johnson, showing a deep humanity and compassion for the suffering of those brought down by circumstance and life.
If anything, the fire burns stronger here.
With a chorus line that includes Shawn Colvin, Slaid Cleaves and Ray Wylie Hubbard, Man Of God is a bluesy account of the 'cowboy' who 'came from out of the west with his snakeskin boots and his bulletproof vest, gang of goons and his big war chest....startin' up wars in the name of God's song gonna blow us all the way to kingdom come.' But, it's not just Bush that's the song's target, it's all the hypocrites within the moral majority whose professed religious beliefs sit uncomfortably with their actions.
It's the most direct track on the album, but throughout, making potent use of images of storms and seas, she paints a portrait of a world labouring under dark clouds as human souls struggle to find the light and faith to carry on. Fitting then that she chooses to cover Is It Like Today, World Party's questioning, troubled meditation on the cyclical nature of history. Requiem, where she's accompanied by daughter Delia Castillo, is a powerfully moving tribute to the victims of the tsunami, the opening pedal steel driven Borderline (where her voice soars like a cracked angel) and the bluegrassy Think About You ache to take a chance on love, while the title track offers a bittersweet hymn of uncertain hope that trails away with her humming the melody to A Whiter Shade of Pale.
Elswhere, the bluesy folk Jedediah with its pump organ textures is a remarkable number that draws on letters written by her ancestral grandfather, Brigadier General Jedediah Huntington, who fought alongside George Washington in the War of Independence, Bellarosa is a romantic border ballad sung in Spanish, and the honky tonk, fiddle waltzing Calm Before The Storm, where Colvin again provides harmonies, is a gorgeous song of fortitude in the face of the gathering darkness. It's a note she returns to on the closing, banjo dappled, When You Walk On, a song about finding peace in the life beyond, away from the world's fears and tempests. Unless you're George Bush, of course.
Mike Davies, May 2006
Eliza Gilkyson - Paradise Hotel (Red House Records)
It can't be the easiest thing for a young musician to carry around with them, the fact that your father wrote Memories Are Made Of This. But if Eliza Gilkyson were ever truly in the shadow of her father Terry, then her 2003 induction into the Austin Hall Of Fame surely saw her acknowledged as a major talent. She sits comfortably alongside fellow inductees Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt and Nanci Griffiths.
However her credentials as a musician of serious purpose were established long before 2003. They began with 1987's Pilgrims continued with Hard Times In Babylon, her first release for current label Red House Records and culminate in Paradise Hotel. Eliza Gilkyson is not an artist to be taken lightly.
Nor is she the easiest musician to listen to or review, it takes a little effort to get to the core of Paradise Hotel.
If she's a folk singer as Borderline and the album's title track would suggest, then Man Of God casts her in the role of accuser and executioner. There's no redemption for 'the cowboy who came out of the west' with his 'corporate cronies and chiefs of staff, the wolf masquerading as a man of peace'. Man of God is a chilling indictment and a moment of blinding clarity in a world where the lines are increasingly fogged.
Jedediah 1777 sees Gilkyson assume the mantle of historian and weaver of magical tales but there's also a poetic romanticism about Paradise Hotel, it's obvious in the exotic Bella Rosa and not just because it's sung in Spanish but it's also there in the more basic Think About You. Eliza Gilkyson deals in feelings that are clear and unequivocal and that makes everything she does that bit more pointed.
It is fitting that she finishes off Paradise Hotel the way she began, with When You Walk On, a folk song that is both warm and engaging because in between she stirs the emotions in a way that few have the talent to match. For any of the songs on Paradise Hotel, the superbly unadorned cover of Is It Like Today or the simple joy gleaned from the love poured into Calm Before The Storm - a song that could easily have been written a century ago rather than today - Eliza Gilkyson is a worthy companion to the likes of Joan Baez.
However, the suspicion has to be that in a world where injustice grows, the place of 'voices of reason and conscience like Eliza Gilkyson will become ever more important.
Michael Mee
Eliza Gilkyson - Land of Milk and Honey (Red House)
Billy Bragg's not the only one unearthing previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. Written somewhere between 1951-53, Peace Song was lost until it surfaced in a Guthrie songbook in 1963, And there it remained until Gilkyson found it in an out of print edition loaned by Guthrie's daughter during the tribute tour to her father.
With Patty Griffin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Iris DeMent (and where's her overdue new album!) Lending a vocal hand, it finally makes it to disc as the final track here, its simple "bugle call of peace" a fitting conclusion to a folk rootsy album of pointedly political material that perfectly catches the zeitgeist, directed, as she notes, "at a generation that won't stand idly by its vision of improving the quality of life on earth seems ever clouded by a dust-storm of politics, power, greed and global unrest."
With collaborators that include Stephen Bruton, Slaid Cleaves, Rich Brotherton, her son Cisco Ryder, Gilkyson leaves you in no doubt where she's coming from with a sleeve photo that turns God Bless America poster into God Bless The World, and an opening track, Hiway 9, that sounds a wake up call about the oil agenda behind the Iraq war and the way all of America's implicated in the policies of the White House.
There's no chest beating protest bombast here though; Gilkyson imbues everything with the female perspective, veining the political with the personal. Thus, the title track is a simple Shaker style hymn, building from voice and piano to choir as she laments the foolishness of mortals while inspired by a photograph of a young boy diving into a smelting plant waste pool near the Kosova/Albania border, Tender Mercies is a poignant account of a female suicide bomber married to a mother's prayer for her children and Ballad of Yvonne Johnson (co-written with the song's subject) is the prison confession and plea for forgiveness of a Native American who committed murder to protect her children from the sex abuse she's herseld suffered.
It's not all such downbeat or harrowing stuff. Not Lonely is a statement of self, Wonderland a jaunty celebration of physical attraction and even Separation embraces the fall if it means feeling the flame. Elsewhere Dark Side of Town, co-penned with sister Nancy, pays homage to the lust for life of their late singer-songwriter father Terry (he wrote Memories Are Made of This as well as The Bare Necessities) whose own skippy folk gospel Runnin' Away is also included here. It may not be her best album (Lost and Found still occupies the high ground of her career to date), but it's almost certainly her most resonant.
Mike Davies
Any new album from Eliza is an event, and Land Of Milk And Honey proves to be another highly consistent effort that's no let-down after 2002's exceptional Lost And Found. It contains eight originals and two covers (her father Terry's Runnin' Away and - most interesting of all - a superb, and inexplicably pre