August music reviews
James Blunt: Back To Bedlam
Atlantic
In the Elliot Smith/David Gray school of singer-songwriters, I thought I must check it out. Oops, time to move on. This has a banality that had my 12 year old daughter singing along after a single play. Upon complimenting her remarkable memory, she said she hadn't come across anything so simple since Barney. A release from a guy who proudly states in his bio that he fell asleep during sociology classes. Pity - he may have found something to say to make the time I spent with this release worthwhile. Move on. Allan McFarlane
Turin Brakes: Jackinabox
Virgin
The potential for beauty suckered by cliché. You're an ascending Brit pop-folk song-writer duo; you have three responsibilities - and then one more. One, you dress those acoustic/electric chords with sleek and sharp licks. Second, you go the whole way (if necessary) with your voices, together/alone; and three, your imagery makes us think and feel. And that key extra one: you've built your own thinking and feeling since we last heard from you. Knights and Paridjanian, with their inventive finger-picking plus the harmonies that can ache and hurt press the buttons potently enough on the first two counts. But it's those platitudinous lyrics which jeopardise their credibility so vividly. When we're down to the likes of "no good flappin' around like a headless chicken" or "leave your woes behind/start the car and drive", and then the persistent inveigling plague of rhyme, you have to concede that we're not stepping forward much. Uneven? Yes, sometimes plausibly rueful, other times whining. Undercut by pain? Intermittently convincing, probably. Expanding and adventurous? - Gone fishing. Paul Green
The Dave Brubeck Quartet: London Flat London Sharp
Telarc
Dave Brubeck is one of the most accomplished jazz composer/pianists of his generation and arguably, of all time. What is amazing is the freshness of his music from a career that spans nearly 50 years. This album had it's genesis during the 40 th anniversary tour of the UK in 1998, where they stayed for a time in London flats. The title track "London flat London sharp" is typical of Brubeck's inventive writing, with the left hand moving chromatically down in flats while the right hand moves up chromatically in sharps.
Brubeck has a playful and whimsical approach to music, which is excellently displayed in the song, Yes, we all have a cross to bear . He doesn't take it too seriously. Mixed in with the new tracks are some old tracks that receive new treatment. My favorite is the 1965 classic, Forty Days, which slowly builds through an extraordinary performance by saxophonist Bobby Militello to a dramatic piano that leads us through despair and anger to acceptance. Even during these demanding technical pieces the Brubeck Quartet never sound clinical.
This album is an interesting mix of old and new and whether you are Brubeck fan or not it belongs in your collection. One thing I never understand is why an album which is recorded in DSD is not released as an SACD. Richard Nelson
Rita Coolidge: And so is love
Concord Records
This is a honey of a recording. Rita does the American Jazz Songbook in style with old favourites such as Come Rain or Shine, Cry me a river, Sentimental Journey, or Don't Smoke in Bed. After 30 years performing; this is an artist who is easy with herself and her material. Don't expect to be sitting on the edge of your seat. This is an album to be left on repeat while you wander around the house. This is not an album to use to impress your anorak-clad friends. I am not saying it is badly recorded, on the contrary this is a smooth untroubled singer backed by some of America's best jazz musicians and the recording is very clean with instruments well delineated. There is no attempt to impress you by emphasizing the presence band and putting the artist in your lap. Everything is beautifully balanced in the mix. Natural is the word that comes to mind. Buy this album, put it on in the background and make like you have got a life and you will be surprised how often your attention is drawn back to enjoying the music. John Groom
Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms 20th Anniversary Edition
Mercury
The 20th anniversary edition of Brothers In Arms is a bit of an event, as it includes a surround sound mix on this hybrid SACD. First released in 1985, the album sold bazillions of copies. Yet many people, myself included, quickly found that the album began to pall, breaking down into a couple of good tracks and a bit of filler. However in recent months this writer has been re-exploring the Dire Straits catalogue and, to my surprise, I found that Brothers In Arms was a lot stronger an album than I remembered. As the album is very well known I'll concentrate on issues of sound.
Brothers In Arms was a rarity at the time - a digital multi-track rock recording (the previous album, Love Over Gold , was recorded at 30 inch per second analog tape). The recording, while otherwise regarded as good, always had a touch of the "digitals" about it. The early CDs (mine is a West German pressing on the Vertigo label) accentuated this by thinning out the midrange and accentuating the treble.
The remastered CD is better tonally (thanks to Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering) but has a compressed dynamic range (usually this is imposed on the mastering engineer by the record company, wanting the CD to sound "louder"). My New Zealand vinyl is a very nice listen, with a better tonality than the early CD. It also has shorter versions of several songs, improving them in my view!
My listening to the 20 th Anniversary Edition has mainly been to the surround mix on SACD. Surround mixes are usually either very aggressive, with "ping pong" effects, or very "ambient", with little apparent sound from the rears. This mix is terrific, with enough happening in the surround channels to be interesting, yet restrained enough so to not be disconcerting.
The sound quality of the surround mix is a distinct upgrade over my original CD as well. Despite being an early digital recording and sounding like it, there seems to be something about taking a digital recording into DSD that makes it sound better (better and smoother filtering, perhaps?). The SACD sounds more organic than my original CD and more like my vinyl copy.
The CD layer sounds as if there has been some extra overall dynamic compression used, compared to my original CD. In this, it's much like the remaster version of the CD that appeared a few years back.
There's no point buying the 20th Anniversary Edition if you already have the remastered CD. But for SACD surround, Brothers In Arms is one of the more persuasive arguments in favour that I have heard. Michael Jones
Do Me Bad Things: YES!
Must Destroy/Atlantic
How important are the 90 seconds following the first press of the play button? Someone in the nine-piece outfit, Do Me Bad Things, has worked out exactly how important. As a result, you find yourself bouncing off the walls well under a minute into the first track, Time for Deliverance. Comparisons are always a blunt instrument, but this crowd rocks like Skunk Anansie ripping off The Darkness after a month locked in the same room with Squeeze and the Human League.
Currently taking the UK by serious surprise, DMBT are just a big bag of musical exuberance, and impossibly-polished to boot. Featuring three lead vocalists, who take turns on different tracks, the band exhibits a dedication to big catchy rock. There's nothing mould-breaking here, but Spinal Tap fans will be pleased to know the sum of the nine parts is at least eleven. On the band's website their fanbase is categorised as girls under 16, music aficionados, and lunatics. As I don't recognise myself in two of those categories, just call me Britney. Brent Burmester
Adam Faith: The Very Best of
EMI
Sometimes I agree to review an album just for a trip down memory lane. This is such an experience. A few bars of What do you want and I can hear the 'portable' (mono) record player with its rugged noisy idler wheel and double figure distortion. I am not long out of shorts: self-conscious, staring hungrily at the girls but having no idea what they or 'it' is all about. Adam Faith is one of those people who spoke for us in the late 50s and early 60s, when love was simple and clear. We wrote the words down from the radio and before the Beatles he spoke for our emotional incoherence.
Some of the music is still foot tappingly good. It is hard to hear Someone Else's Baby without feeling the heart beat a little faster. The lyrics were very simple in those days. "You have a face like an angel's face" is not exactly an original line. The sound was easy to dance to and if all else failed you knew that the lines were going to rhyme. I enjoyed a lot of the tracks as the original 45s and tracks like 'Knock on wood' were simply fun. The problem is what happens when you put 60 of these tracks together across two CDs (including the B sides) and play them end-to-end. There is sameness to the sound that can wear thin. It is difficult to know what the market will be for these CDs. There are probably not a lot of us early baby boomers who want to go back to a quality of recording that is of 'historical interest' at best, so it's probably one for the Faith fanatics. John Groom
The Futureheads: The Futureheads
Warner Music
Does the world need a four-piece rock band's cover version of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love ? Yes. Yes it does. The offending four-piece in question are The Futureheads, a British bunch of unkempt ne're-do-wells if ever there was. Coming over like Manic Street Preachers after a week's wet holiday in a shed armed only with an old turntable and the collected works of The Jam and XTC's Drums and Wires , this lot simultaneously manages to sound new and part of the great tradition of Angry Art School Pop. Played the first couple of times over my PC speakers, I didn't really see the point, but the inventiveness and underlying sense of wry disgruntlement was immediately apparent when funneled through my main system. Recording quality is what you might expect, but the 'no compromise' attitude of the band comes across all the same. Get this if you're tired of listening to Coldplay while waiting for the next Franz Ferdinand release. Brent Burmester
Barn Jungr: Love Me Tender
Linn Records
UK singer Barb Jungr first attracted my attention with the wonderful album Chanson: The Space In Between, an album of French or French-oriented songs a couple of years back.
Love Me Tender is mainly about Elvis, mainly containing songs made famous by Presley. Jungr's wonderful voice is backed by deceptively simple and often stark backgrounds by Jonathan Cooper and Adrian York, usually piano or synth based.
Perhaps the best on the album is the arrangement of Are You Lonesome Tonight? Framed by a piano backdrop, Jungr slowly asks "are you lonesome?" three times, before finally finding resolution with the word "tonight". Wonderful stuff.
The album slows down towards the end with two Dylan covers (on an Elvis record? Why?) and a Jungr/York original Looking For Elvis which goes nowhere. The final track, the gospel number Peace In The Valley, brings back the quality, with Jungr backed by a gospel trio.
The album is a hybrid SACD, playable on both CD and SACD players. The surround on SACD is subtle. The recording is superb - of demonstration quality. In fact, that's how I first heard it - in the demonstration room of the Linn Hi-Fi distributor. Michael Jones
The La De Das: The Happy Price
EMI
In any list of "albums that would never be on CD" I would have included this album from 1960s group The La De Das. It's a concept "rock opera" album released in 1969. It never sold very well - in fact I'd never seen a vinyl copy of it.
The La De Das started in Auckland as an R&B/soul covers band and were the band in New Zealand through 1966 and 1967. They had five hit singles - including the first #1 single for a New Zealand band in the local charts - and two successful albums before making the classic NZ band move to Australia.
Trevor Wilson, band bass player and one of their main writers, was the instigator for an album based on the tale of The Happy Prince . First conceived in 1966 (yes, way before The Who released Tommy ), the album wasn't recorded for a couple of years and finally released in April 1969.
And the album? Considering that the La De Das were an R&B band in New Zealand, it came as a shock to this listener. The Happy Prince sounds like a hippy-dippy, late -1960s, psychedelic, marijuana-influenced recording. The funniest part has to be the very camp narration by Adrian Rawlins.
The album is repeated on the CD without Adrian Rawlins' narration, "in an attempt to show how the album might have sounded as a collection of songs," as the CD liner notes put it.
It's possible that the master tapes for this album has long been lost or destroyed. The CD is obviously taken from a copy of the original LP, with some record noise audible. Simon Lynch, who mastered the CD, did a good job on this. The LP sounds well played, but Lynch has managed to remove the worst of the record noise without removing too much of the music.
This writer is thrilled to see EMI records releasing so many older New Zealand recordings on CD. The Happy Price should be available at your record store for under $15. Michael Jones
Mariza: Transparente
EMI
Faint praise: it's melodious and it's mildly melodramatic. In world music terms, Mariza appears to have it already sewn up: a sharply-styled image, a la Latina Annie Lennox, a widely-touted passion for reviving fado, the Portuguese urban folk that allegedly emerged from the brothels and taverns of 18th century Lisbon, reviews which swoon over her lyricism and soul-shafting sound, and legions of Womad-inspired web-site admirers whose shrill choruses declare her to be something along the lines of the diva of the doldrums. But - each to their own.
Unconvinced criticism: a taxing bout consisting of fourteen three-minute rounds, all fitting basically the same formulaic maudlin mould. Calculated sentimentality. Over-rehearsed, and plagued by transparently contrived crescendos - courtesy of mundane acoustic guitar and orchestral strings in conjunction with voice and volume knob. A suitable soundtrack for a turgidly-directed Meryl Streep movie, or a microwaved candlelit dinner. Sorry! Paul Green
Juice Newton: Juice/Quiet Lies
Raven
US country/pop singer Juice Newton hit is big with her Juice album in 1981, with three US top ten singles ( Angel of the Morning, Queen of Hearts and The Sweetest Thing). Her next album, Quiet Lies, was another big hit in 1982. Yet curiously the availability of Juice, her biggest album, has been spotty on CD, with copies fetching some good money on eBay.
Australia's Raven Records continues building their reputation for great reissues with this CD. Combining the two albums, the CD also includes a minor (and earlier) chart single of It's A Heartache - best known in the version by Bonnie Tyler.
The sound of this CD is a good match to the original vinyls - fortunately Raven saw no need to "improve" (sic) the sound. The early 1980s originals were a bit pushed in the upper midrange and that is maintained here.
A great reissue offering excellent value. Michael Jones
Renee Olstead: Renee Olstead
Reprise
Another debut release from yet another beautiful woman singer. Very young and with the help of air brushing looking barely legal. The album is a good selection of the old standards starting with a sultry version of Summertime and cruising serenely through Taking a Chance on Love ; a sweet version of Someone To Watch Over Me is followed by a gooey Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. We wind up with a gutsy Midnight At The Oasis and finally a somewhat forced Sentimental Journey. A patchy album at best, from a young woman who has not yet found her own voice. Her voice wanders with a bit of Nora here, a bit of Dolly there and a touch of Jewel for good measure. Don't get me wrong - she can sing and when she settles has a sweet sound. She has just been pushed into the limelight too soon.
The production is also mixed. The sound is clean and for a big band backing well resolved. Instruments are clearly separated and don't overwhelm the voice. In the final mix the upper treble has been cut, like listening with the Dolby on, and while this emphasizes the clean quality it imbalances the whole tonal range so that the bass is fat and unfocussed. This will sound fine in some low volume and low-fi settings. For all my criticisms I think that Renee is someone to look out for. John Groom
Ernest Ranglin: Surfin'
Telarc
It's hard to be hard on Ernest: that elder statesman's shining smile, the mission to dispense warm reggae fuzzies to accentuate the positive at your social gatherings. And on his latest contribution to the market, he's as nimbly ambient as ever, skipping and shuffling along the frets, rustling about while the backing band dutifully do their backing. It's the familiar Ranglin formula, and here it's rarely more than mellow and middling. Swingalonga Ernest. That jazzy guitar is adroitly flicked or picked but it doesn't pierce or pause. The band are similarly accomplished in their compliance, faithfully trotting out repeated phrases and creating little in the way of counterpoint as the maestro ripples away. So, no tensions, nothing much being pushed to any limit. Most songs fade out at apparently arbitrary points, seemingly weary of their own inability to advance any further. Ultimately, the peaks Ranglin reaches for are too modest. Innocuous, unobtrusive, but more likely to re-surface as a mood tune on some tv travel programme than in the heart of your CD collection. Paul Green
Nitin Sawhney: Philtre
V2 Music
Probably prime amongst Nitin Sawhney's evidently many talents is his ability to fuse western and eastern styles. Within the opening handful of this album's 17 songs, he's mixed and juxtaposed blues harmonica and slide guitar with Indian folk, fragile flute with fearless dance-floor bass, and sitars, flamenco guitars or vocals with any one or more of jazz, hip-hop, soul, Indian classical, drum&bass or trance genres. But this music is about vitality as well as versatility. It is a celebration, an inspired feast of rhythms, voices, textures and tones that's never too rich or (that virtuoso's achilles heel) over-assured. Sawhney is a master conceiver, able to write, perform, and engineer his way into apparently any domain - the poetic or uncompromising, the mystic or industrial. By drawing on a dozen different guest vocalists (Euro/Indian, male/female...and even his mum) and exploring such a diversity of instrumental sounds, he sustains persistent infectious interest. And there's a seamlessness between and within songs which gives the continuity and feel of a soundtrack or DJ set. Plenty to savour, too, in the lyrics which allude to perennial problems such as "will I succeed or will I fall short" or "lost in the dark - misplaced my spark" with unaffected clear-cut honesty. Sawhney is looking for answers, and this interpretation of the odyssey sweeps us along through brooding, lush and sometimes sublime musical territory. Paul Green
Shihad: Love is the New Hate
WEA
Pacifier have dropped pretences and reverted to the name Shihad. With the return to their old name they have dropped the lighter, happier approach of Pacifier. Teenage angst seems to have evolved into full blown paranoia. Love is the New Hate is darker, angrier and altogether more cynical. Day will come, Empty Shell, and All the Young Fascists paints a bleak picture. However, the return to powerhouse Shihad does pay off in Big Future and Dark Times which are well crafted and reminiscent of earlier glories. Richard Nelson
Sting: Bring On The Night
A&M Records
In the mid-1980's the now ex-Police Sting somewhat masterfully assembled a new band that included jazz greats Omar Hakim (drums), Kenny Kirkland (piano), and Brandford Marsalis (saxophone). The result was some of his very finest work particually on the album The Dream of The Blue Turtles . The album became a hit, with "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," "Love Is the Seventh Wave," and "Fortress Around Your Heart" reaching the American Top Ten. Sting brought the band out on an extensive tour, which was captured on a documentary called Bring on the Night, which appeared in 1986, along with a live double album of the same name.
Now this was an exciting entry into the release sheets. Advertised as "Newly Digitally Remastered" I thought, finally they must have got these tapes into some sort of listenable mix. The short answer is... not yet. The overblown bass and indistinct middle remains, Sting himself suffers from too many 'close enough is good enough' moments. This was a great tour at the time (I caught them in LA in 1985) but sadly the new transfers still don't get anywhere near what I suspect is hiding on the tapes. Keep the studio versions and again, move on. Allan McFarlane
Various: Atlantic Gold
Atlantic
As the cover says, here's "75 soul classics from the Atlantic Vaults". Atlantic records recorded (and, through their arrangement with Stax Records) distributed much of what is now regarded as the classic soul and r&b music of America. This generous triple CD brings together 75 songs, many of them stone cold classics. Recorded over a 22 year period, from 1952 to 1974, this area of US music still inspires many with its quality, the musical arrangements and its soul.
It's hard to know where to start with an album that contains Ray Charles, the Drifters, Otis, Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave and Booker T and the MGs. Suffice to say that this is the real stuff, some of the greatest music released.
Recording quality is variable, of course. Fortunately the mastering is honest, with no attempts to manipulate the sound into something it never was. Michael Jones
Various: North African Groove
Putumayo
What is, and what might have been... Fusion is a touchstone of much of world music's appeal - the fresh mix of traditional and modern, indigenous and international; the cultural crossroads, the cutting edge. And it could be contended that doing fusion justice means a melding or enmeshing of generic styles, rather than a superimposition. Putumayo's latest addition to a burgeoning global grooves catalogue is inclined too far towards the latter approach, overall. There are exceptions: the sparky infectious Algerian-Cuban combination Jomed, and the Egyptian/German/Turkish collaboration with the possibly unlikely name of Eastenders - musicians whose innovation is subtle and lucid. More often than not, though, the gurus of choice have gone for safe recent Arabic disco pop hits. So we're thinking Maghreb Bee-Gees (with lots of stirring pledges to 'habibi') instead of the equivalent of perhaps a Groove Armada or New Order - and they must be out there. Paul Green
Karl Jenkins: Requiem
EMI
Some reviews are difficult to write. This is one of them. On the one hand we are talking about Karl Jenkins, who has been called the 'the most popular living composer' and who writes music that 'speaks to audiences around the world'. On the other hand I dislike much of this album. Maybe I am just a BOF (boring old fart) who thinks that classical music has to be at least a century old to qualify.
The Requiem takes up the first 13 tracks of this demanding CD. If you like it then you will find it dramatic and powerful in that it incorporates Western melodic style and Japanese harmonies and melodies. As the Requiem has been written in dedication to Karl Jenkins's late father it is difficult to be disrespectful. Some of the quieter tracks such as the haiku based The Snow of Yesterday and From deep in my Heart are beautiful gentle pieces but then these are interspersed with others that set my teeth on edge.
Perhaps it is best for me to simply let some of the Amazon reviewers speak: 'This is a truly moving experience... the CD of 2005... beautifully recorded... will give great comfort... a must buy.' Alternatively 'a few good pieces... I have never been so disappointed... dismal... just not Jenkins' best'.
But wait, there is more. The last five tracks are the new work by Karl Jenkins to celebrate Welsh culture: 'In these stones, horizons sing'. Again this will move you; either to great passion or to the off button. Approach with caution. John Groom
Anthony Ritchie: Piano Preludes
Sharon Vogan (piano)
Atoll
This is a very important release. One of New Zealand's contemporary composers who manages to break new ground while working largely within orthodox frameworks and instrumentation, Anthony Ritchie has amassed an enviable opus of works spanning a wide variety. Returning to his primary instrument and with the luxury of an opportunity to evaluate the direction he had travelled and search out the great "where next?" these pieces show the benefit of a considerable reflection and the workings of a highly inquisitive musical mind.
Paying tribute to a number of his great keyboard models, Bach, Chopin, Debussy and Shostakovich, Ritchie has laid out his 24 preludes in a highly original manner, fully explained in the detailed liner notes that for once are not dumbed down. Impeccably recorded and I must assumed played (not having the scores to hand) by Sharon Vogan this is a highly illuminating release.
So, what of the music itself. I have to that it took a while for me to come to terms with these pieces. First there is the brevity of each Prelude. While this fits with the overall concept I found the set as a whole is made up of individual statements and as such I would have liked more to be uttered. Perules they are, but the longest stays for a mere 3:18. I like some of these works very much indeed, but there is an unquenched thirst created by snippets of such brevity. The other matter that surprised me is that given the virtuosity that a number of the previous sets of such preludes require is the apparent reluctance for Ritchie to show off. I know him to be a very fine pianist indeed, and as such I expected a more dazzling display. A gain, not having seen the scores it is possible the Vogan's skill just makes them sound "easier" than they in fact are. However they are hardly likely to enter the international repertoire at professional pianist level as a result of this apparent reticence to show off.
Having said that, I feel the whole enterprise is well worth investigation. A welcome addition to the growing Ritchie discography. Allan McFarlane
Rózsa: Three Choral Suites
Ben-Hur; Quo Vadis; King of Kings
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra; Mormon Tabernacle Choir conducted by Erich Kunzel
Telarc
As Telarc's liner notes say, "By the 1940s, the big Hollywood studios employed resident composers and music directors, among the most renowned of whom were Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Miklós Rózsa. Late in his brilliant career, Miklós Rózsa had begun rearranging portions of his scores to Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, and King of Kings as choral suites. But Rózsa died in 1995, and the project was left to friends, pupils, and admirers--including Christopher Palmer, Julian Kershaw, Daniel Robbins, Joseph D. Price and Erich Kunzel - to bring the idea to fruition. With the assistance and encouragement of the composer's son, Nick Rózsa."
Having experienced some of Christopher Palmer's other reworkings of classic film scores and being aware of Rozsa's reputation for writing for voice I was pleased to be offered this CD for review. Having a longstanding love of big choral works and knowledge of how well Telarc captures such works the anticipation eagerly increased. What I heard however was a stitching together of some very B-grade ideas into an emotionally bereft and at time plain embarrassing medley of all too simple ideas. Perhaps a greater familiarity with the original would have helped. Perhaps. My suggestion would be to stay with the well-known recordings of the earlier works or even the film score reissues. Highly praised elsewhere, for me this release is not a success. Allan McFarlane
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