Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Stopgap

Just a quick message to say I will be posting here again very soon. Things have just been a bit hectic with recording and gigging commitments, plus trying to sort out arrangements for my new flat and new job. All should be sorted soon and I should have time to comment on all the albums I promised I'd write about in previous posts.

There's always one week in the musical year that turns out to be the big one - it seems that 29th May has been the most significant release date for albums so far in 2006 - I heartily recommend new releases from Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Matthew Herbert, The Handsome Family, Scritti Politti and Burial.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Laying The Ghosts To Rest

Bruce Springsteen and The Seeger Sessions Band, Hammersmith Apollo, 8/5/06

Having already written at length on the 'We Shall Overcome' album, I was simply going to state that this was one of the most enjoyable gigs I've ever seen and leave it at that, but I've since decided further comment is necessary after all.

Back in 1975, Bruce Springsteen's first live show in the UK was heavily promoted with an advertising campaign stating 'finally London is ready for Bruce Sprinsteen'. Although the concert has since been released on both CD and DVD as part of the 30th anniversary reissue of 'Born To Run', it actually seemed that Springsteen wasn't ready for London (he considered the show a poor performance). Tonight, returing to the same venue for the first time since that fateful performance, he is in rejuvenated form.

This Seeger Sessions show worked brilliantly as much because of the audience as Springsteen himself. Mercifully, nobody seemed to have come here expecting a run through of hits, although the five original compositions in the set were rapturously received. This audience completely engaged with the traditional material, indulging in a supremely entertaining mass singalong with 'Pay Me My Money Down' at the end of the main set, and even taking Bruce by surprise when shouting back the 'blown away!' responses during the choruses of 'My Oklahoma Home'. At least partially as a result of this game participation, the show had all the righteous energy of an E Street Band performance.

Seeing Springsteen in a venue of such relative intimacy can only be described as a privelege - he remains the gutsiest performer in the business, and the gritty growl he deploys on many of these songs only adds to this. He's a superlative bandleader too, counting off the songs and directing the soloists. Yet, more remarkable still is the space he gives to the rest of the band. Lead vocals are frequently traded with wife Patti Scialfa (who leads a haunting reading of 'How Can I Keep From Singing?') and his guitarist. Soloists are encouraged to move to the front of the stage where they can bask in the glow of spotlights. There's a spirited, rough 'n' ready feel to much of the set - as Sprinsteen would have it 'the sound of music being made not just being played'.

Highlights include a savage, blistering 'Jesse James', a bluesy reworking of Nebraska's originally stark 'Johnny 99', a medley of 'Cadillac Ranch' with 'Mystery Train' and a brilliantly arranged gospel take on 'Long Black Veil'. The centrepiece of the show, however, is an altered reading of Blind Alfred Reed's 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?' with new verses that specifically reference Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Bruce precedes it with a rant aimed squarely at 'President Bystander'. It's a powerful moment, and one that suggests that traditional protest music, through being recontextualised, can still ring true even in these most cynical times. There's adventure as well as rediscovery going on here.

The huge band taps into gospel, folk, country, blues and New Orleans jazz traditions, drawing them all together into a wildly energetic and captivating mesh. Even the more tentative tracks from the album work well in the theatrical setting. The album recording of 'We Shall Overcome' perhaps sounds a little tentative - but here Bruce truly does manage to turn it into a prayer. Similarly, 'Eyes On The Prize' sounds like the work of a true believer.

The encore includes 'My City Of Ruins', written for his hometown of Asbury Park but then performed for New York City in the aftermath of 9/11, it has now been co-opted by New Orleans as well. In this context, it demonstrates just how neatly Springsteen fits into this songwriting tradition.

They close with a spare, intensely vulnerable reading of 'When The Saints Go Marching In', and Bruce makes this most familiar of melodies entirely his own. It's a moving end to an extraorinary concert - as I said at the start, one of the best I've ever seen.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Big Epic Round-Up Part 1

As I said before, there's just far too much to write about, 2006 proving to be another excellent year. So, without further ado...

It's great to see Hot Chip still going from strength to strength. As promising a debut as 'Coming On Strong' was, it lead to them being unfairly pigeon-holed as lightweight ironists in certain quarters, and it didn't quite manage to elevate them to commercial success. Their excellent second album 'The Warning' should change all that pretty quickly. The single 'Over and Over' has already secured cult status and is a deserved dancefloor smash. With insistent cowbells, a whole plethora of weird and wonderful synthesisers and some deceptively simple lyrics praising the power of repetition, it's as immediate and infectious a song as the band have yet made. The album doesn't attempt to repeat the trick though, instead opting for a variety and depth that 'Coming On Strong' perhaps didn't quite achieve. There is a greater emphasis on Alexis Taylor's lingering and melancholy talent for melody. 'Colours' is simple harmonically, but layers its cascading vocal parts very effectively. New single 'Boy From School' is outstanding, combining a repeating synth line with an exquisitely vulnerable melody and a typically oblique lyric. Best of all is 'Look After Me', which harks back to 'Making Tracks' from the early San Frandisco EP in its sweet appropriation of deep soul. It could easily be a cover of a William Bell or Garnet Mimms classic, so authentic does it sound. Elsewhere, the sonic invention is impressively wild - 'Careful' mixes swirling synth sounds with an assault of off-kilter beats and distorted basslines that could easily have been inspired by grime, whilst 'Tchaparian' and 'Arrest Yourself' are stuttering and delightfully unpredictable. There's still an ironic streak of humour at work (particularly on the title track), but Hot Chip's genuine appreciation for the music they appropriate (with a concurrent disdain for genre conventions) is now coming through in their recordings as much as their deliriously entertaining live shows. Consider yourselves warned.

Proving that having your music commandeered for TV fixtures such as Grey's Anatomy and The OC needn't necessarily spell artistic doom, the second album from Domino signings Psapp makes for a refreshingly playful and engaging listen. For the most part, they sound like a direct cross between Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits and the pure pop sensibilities of St Etienne. What should make for an uncomfortable combination seems to work wonders in their hands, with a whole range of peculiar rhythmic noises (often sounding like sampled pots and pans) providing the unusual background clutter for some infectious pop melodies. With song titles like 'Tricycle' and 'Hill Of Our Home', it's not entirely surprising that it's a slightly whimsical confection, but with the bouncy zest of tracks like 'Hi' and the endearing qualities of the string-laden 'New Rubbers', 'The Only Thing I Ever Wanted' is an original and bold collection.

Over the course of their short career, Grandaddy have proved a disappointingly frustrating outfit. 'Under The Western Freeway' had plenty of scuzzy charm and the whole project crystallised wonderfully with the conceptual 'Sophtware Slump' album. Unfortunately, the undoubted artistic success of that album left them nowhere else to go and third album 'Sumday' sounded more than a little tired and one dimensional. Last year's mini album 'Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla' saw them taking a step back, with satisfying results, but their final album 'Just Like The Fambly Cat' doesn't provide any clues as to how they might have escaped what turned out to be a rather stultifying chugging indie rock template. It might be an elegiac last will and testament, but I can't quite resist the conclusion that it's actually a bit dull. There are certainly great moments, particularly in the form of infectious single 'Elevate Myself' and 'Jeez Louise' but the pace is kept mainly to the mid-tempo chug or the protracted ballad. Several songs are at least a minute too long, and Jason Lytle, to these ears at least, sounds a little tired and jaded throughout. As Grandaddy's albums have effectively been solo works anyway (Lytle plays all the instruments except drums here, Grandaddy's unusual working methods perhaps providing some clues as to the source of internal frustrations), it's difficult to see how anything Lytle does in the future will escape this cul-de-sac.

I'm finding it particularly difficult to judge the acclaimed 'Everything All The Time' from Band Of Horses, mainly because it sounds pretty much exactly like My Morning Jacket circa 'At Dawn'. There's perhaps a little more jangle here, but Benjamin Bridwell is such a vocal dead ringer for Jim James, and the band do such a good job of capturing that dense country rock sound, that any listener would be hard placed to distinguish between the two bands. There's no denying that this is a supremely accomplished record. The epic 'Funeral' is powerful, 'Our Swords' rhythmically propulsive and the closing 'St Augustine' delicate and spare. It covers its ground with a quiet mastery, it's just that the ground has already been covered in pretty much exactly the same way by MMJ.

More to come...

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Sometimes You Have To Look Back To Move Forwards

Even a songwriter as questing as Bob Dylan found that, in an extended period of writers' block, it was helpful to revisit the traditional songs that most inspired him in his early days. The resulting two albums 'Good As I Been To You' and 'World Gone Wrong', whilst derided for vocal deterioration and lack of original material on release, have since been (rightly) revisited as the fond recapturing of a timeless American heritage. Bruce Springsteen has now followed in his hero's footsteps, releasing 'We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions' a mere twelve months after his last solo album, the intermittently powerful 'Devils and Dust'. Springsteen has recently admitted a new awareness of his mortality, and that his life as a recording artist might be drawing to a close. Throwing caution to the wind, he now seems to have entered a new prolific period with little concern for charts or maintaining his popularity. Bloggers in the US reacted angrily - they wanted the rumoured new E Street Band album and tour and they certainly didn't want to hear an artist of The Boss' stature 'descend' to the level of 'Froggie Went A Courtin'. Hopefully, on hearing 'We Shall Overcome', they will all eat their hats. It is, plainly and simply, a brilliant record.

The emphasis on Pete Seeger is at least slightly misleading. Springsteen has avoided Seeger originals - there's no 'Turn Turn Turn', 'If I Had A Hammer' or, perhaps wisely, 'Where Have All The Flowers Gone?'. Instead, Springsteen has opted for a series of traditional American folk songs that Seeger recorded or performed and which Springsteen has clearly rediscovered through a new appreciation of Seeger's work. Invited to record the title track for a Seeger tribute album in 1997, Springsteen conceded that he knew little of Seeger's work, and this project has been slowly developing since that recording session sparked his interest. Perhaps Seeger, unjustly infamous for pulling the plug on Bob Dylan's electric set at Newport (he has since claimed he didn't object to Dylan 'going electric', simply that the ugly sound mix was obscuring his lyrics), may gain a whole new audience at the age of 87.

Springteen has assembled a huge band for this project and the sound is riotous, unhinged and celebratory. With Springsteen audibly calling out the individual solos (best moment comes with a cry of 'everybody solo!'), it is the joyous sound of music not just being recorded, but being made. All the recordings are single live takes. With Soozie Tyrell's woozy violin, gospel-tinged backing vocals and a superb dixieland horn section dominating the mix, the sound is as much New Orleans jazz as banjo-laden Appalachian country. Although Springsteen's natural resistence to provocation has perhaps directed him away from overtly political material here, many of the songs here have contemporary resonances. 'My Oklahoma Home' could easily just as much relate to New Orleans post-Katrina and Springsteen has been dedicating the Irish anti-war ballad 'Mrs McGrath' to Cindy Sheehan at recent gigs (an act likely to be more contentious with many Americans than his role in the Vote For Change tour).

Springsteen's voice is at its most commanding and varied here. He adopts a primal howl on a furious rendition of 'John Henry', a tone of sombre reflection on the title track and 'Shenandoah' and even a Waitsian gravel voice on the superb 'Erie Canal'. Behind him, the band frequently rip it up, but the live setting has allowed for plenty of variation in dynamic and texture, and as a consequence the music is far more unpredictable and exciting than the over-produced layers Brendan O'Brien concocted for 'The Rising'. It's fascinating to hear how Springsteen truly comes alive in this setting, recontextualising these songs and drawing out their magic. Even the most lightweight material (nonsense songs such as 'Old Dan Tucker' or 'Froggie...') work brilliantly because they fit in well with the overall sense of fun. Given that Springsteen is, not entirely unfairly, regarded as one of America's most earnest songwriters, the unbridled gallop of these songs, together with the unrestrained joy with which Springsteen delivers them, will be refreshing to many Sprinsteen agnostics. Best of all is a sterling version of the gospel standard 'O Mary Don't You Weep', which not only provides the obligatory inclusion of a Mary, but also clearly demonstrates Springsteen's heritage in blues, gospel and soul. He sounds completely invigorated here.

It's a bonus that the album comes with an excellent 30 minute short film about the making of the album, including some rollicking live performances. My ticket for next Monday's Hammersmith Apollo show arrived this morning. Whilst understandably focussing on standards (including some songs not recorded for this album), the show apparently includes a small clutch of Springsteen originals rearranged for the folk band. It promises to be a fanastic evening. Sprinsteen's great achievement with this project is to prove just how timeless the American folk tradition is - this music still sounds completely and utterly alive, and Springsteen has made it his own.