Recent CD Purchases

[Jack of All Parades]

JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys' "Fidelity"- really having fun with this record. It is a pleasure to have her voice front and center and engaged in some adult material. She appears to have caught inspiration from what I can only assume is an inspiring new love in her life, this case a younger man who has her fired up and firing on all cylinders with her music. There are sparks on this record between her and her new 'friend' JP Jones and they have allowed for some fine playing and singing and emotional engagement. There is something empowering and meaningful about a middle aged woman finding romance and fun in an adult relationship. She doesn't shy away from exploring all its implications from pure lust to the interrogative doubts contained in the song, "Leave Me if You Must". I like the love affirming final song "Fidelity!'. This line from the opening song on the album sums up the intelligent fun of this record for me:

"I found my perfect lover but he's only half my age
He was learning how to stand when I was wearing
My first wedding band
I found my perfect lover but I have to turn the page
But I want him in my kitchen and standing on my stage."

Why do women have to punish themselves over their joy? Love how she even works in a Shakespeare reference 'Shakespeare was good, but you're even better, you're tragic and comic to the last letter". Nice record all around.

[Jack of All Parades]

Richard Thompson's "Dream Attic". Not really a live album but cut in front of a live audience with the resulting audience noise left to a minimum but fortunately Richard is invigorated by them along with his band and is allowed the freedom to stretch himself on numerous cuts with limber and athletic guitar playing. He is in good form on this record and takes dead aim at several bugaboos like greedy Wall Street types in "The Money Shuffle", a song that does a better job than EC's song "National Ransom" in turning a vitriolic eye on the damage done to us over the last decade by the elite. He does not hide his contempt behind pseudo names like Cut-throat Cuthbert and Millicent St Cyr but instead goes full on at the greed of those people and mocks their and our acceptance of the rape with a sneering "Spread it wide, wide as you can to get the full benefit of my plan." I love his poke at Sting and others in "Here Comes Geordie" with the line "Here comes Geordie in his private plane, Got to save the planet once again, Good old Geordie, righteous as can be/Cut down the forest just to save a tree". His satire is barbed and dead on.

I also like the reflective number "A Brother Slips Away" which seems to recall former band mates from his Fairport days and the two 'love' songs on the album "Stumble On" and "If Love Whispers Your name" with its subtle promise to be ready should the opportunity presents itself to the singer again. It would not be a full record without some ravers and he does not disappoint with songs like "Haul Me Up" and "Bad Again" with its image of being in the dog house and not knowing just why he is there[something I can empathize with occasionally].

A good record- glad I bought it and glad he chose to cut it live- it is very fresh for that approach.

[Jack of All Parades]

"The Five Ghosts"- Stars- that other good band out of Montreal by way of Toronto. Enjoy the way the two voices of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan mesh. It may be a 'one note' album but it is a delicious one note. The theme of dealing with being haunted by the past- a life of regrets and perhaps missed opportunities fills the songs. I particularly liked "Fixed" for this theme. Enjoyed the way the two singers taunt one another in the song "I Don't Want Your Body". My favorite song on the record is "Changes" with its essence of patient regret and I have a soft spot for the final song "Winter Bones" perhaps because that season is approaching with its intimations of death and haunting regrets.

[ice nine]

I do enjoy 'In Our Bedroom........' Very Sritti Politti-ish

Purchased 'Replay' by The Alison Brown Quartet. She's a banjo player backed up by her jazz band. More jazzy than Bela.

[Jack of All Parades]

Ice Nine- "In Our Bedroom After The War" is great fun-"Take Me to the Riot", "My Favorite Book"- you know it passes muster when your daughter takes it and puts it on her Ipod- that is when I know an album has passed muster. My personal favorite is "Set Yourself on Fire". I also love the EP "A Lot of Lies for the Sake of one Big Truth". Am not familiar with Scritti Politi. Will have to check out Ms Brown on Pandora Radio.

[Jack of All Parades]

Spending the last few weeks absorbing the new effort by Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice- Jenny and Johnny "I'm Having Fun Now"- a reasonably ironic title given a fair bunch of the songs on the record. Great harmonies fill the tracks as the two banter back and forth instead of really dueting, their voices do work well with one another. The album is filled with Ms Lewis's characteristic dry wit-take this from the song "Straight Edge of the Blade"-"It's a real shame that you don't drive/Since you don't drink, you should be driving me around". Her sensibility is dominant on this record and it is nice to hear the solid 'pop sound' they have evolved building on one another's voices with songs filled with wise cracking dialogue. I like that the instrumental arrangements are simple and bright- they bounce along and the music passes quickly. My favorite tracks are "New Yorker Cartoon" with its endearing attempt to picture and frame their love for one another in terms of that magazine's artwork, "Big Wave" with its disarming look at today's economy and "Just Like Zeus" which I can picture blaring out of my car as I roll down the road as the singers do in the song.

[Jack of All Parades]

It has taken me several weeks to get acclimated to the new Robert Plant album, "Band of Joy". I am listening yet again to it right now and can happily say it is a most enjoyable listening experience for the most part. In truth, I like it better than "Raising Sand". That may well have to do with the production touch of Buddy Miller and the accompanying vocals of Patty Griffin, both out do their predecessors T Bone Burnett and Allison Krause. I am in love with the murky, bottom heavy sound that Miller gives the songs and his muscular guitar playing. Griffin's earthy background vocal assists boost the songs she appears on. Plant gives a lively reading to the Los Lobos song "Angel Dance and to Richard Thompson's "House of Cards" with its Dylan hints and general sense of coming apocalypse. I love the traditional songs on the record- "Cindy I'll Marry You Some Day" and "You Can't Buy My Love". Miller and Plant and Griffin, make them come alive with an energy I found lacking on the previous record. I think my favorite piece on the album is a reading of Townes Van Zandt's "Harm's Swift Way". It's punishing sense of loss and it's recriminations is telling. Plant is alive and connecting, at least with me, on this album.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Five star reviews over here too, e.g. from Guardian's Alexis Petridis. The Guardian, with tedious predictability, didn't even review the splendid new Lloyd Cole CD 'Broken Record'. Apparently Rolling Stone gave it 4.5. First record in ages (since The Negatives) with a band and real drums, and not just any drums, the excellent Fred Maher, who was on his early solo stuff. It does make a difference, much as I like his solo in his home studio efforts. He raised the funds by getting his fans to pre-pay online. Fine though I am, $45 for the version with bonus demos CD was too much. Genevieve is a fantastic pop song, and it's nice to see Lloyd fixating on a woman's name starting with a 'j' sound, just like in the old days. There are several really good songs, but the overall effect is more consistent and impressive than his recent work. Can't wait to see him in the lovely Union Chapel in Nov, with two guitarists, first time seeing him non-solo apart from with the Commotions.

Elsewhere, Wilco's 'Being There' cos it was £5 in Fopp and they played three songs off it live. It drags a bit on CD2, and is nowhere near as thrilling as theyt later become, from Summerteeth on, but still very worth having. And £3 for Magazine's 'The Correct Use of Soap', a Hannett-produced classic I never bought back in the day but knew most of. Contains some brilliant songs, e.g. the Morrissey covered, Dostoyevsky-referring Song From Under the Floorboards and Because You're Frightened.

And tomorrow the Station to Station reissue is finally out, a mere four years late. Would love the £80-90 excess edition, but will settle for the regular one.

[Jack of All Parades]

"Le Noise" by Neil Young- it will take multiple listens to fully absorb but initial playings have only reinforced my earlier interest as fostered by songs being played on the radio- I really like this album and what Neil has attempted. Not an unequivocal liking but I will keep this in a rotation.
He does something here that I have only witnessed being pulled off once before, and most successfully, and that is to turn himself into a one man band with just his playing either electric or acoustic guitar, with some electronic assistance from producer Daniel Lanois who opens up the sonic landscape in the songs. Previously it had been an astounding performance of over three hours on stage by Richard Thompson in Ridgefield, CT several years ago. Neil's chop style of playing is amplified in these songs as he builds a set of songs from scratch. The guitar noise is fearsome at times but not the 'noise' that made "Weld" and "Arc" almost unlistenable for me in the past. He plays with chord textures here that subtly build dynamics within the individual songs. He is wood shedding and seeming to have a wonderful time doing so.

The songs themselves deal with aging, passing friends and Neil's continued interest in the American Past and its myths. Several of the songs like "Walk With Me" and "Sign of Love" seem skeletal as if he is never going to flesh the words out and that can be off putting. But there are two songs that should go in the Young pantheon- "The Hitchhiker" and "Peaceful Valley Boulevard" which in itself is mini microcosm of Young concerns over the years from the rape of the West to the ecological concerns of today. When combined with his athletic acoustic guitar it creates an immediate impression. But the song that sits most in my ears is the fiery "Love and War". Here you hear Neil working right from scratch to build a song and at the same time echo past work. As he says in the song-"Then I sing in anger, hit another bad chord but I still try to sing about love and war." This album is in my top 10 for 2010.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Gonna have to get it, though one review scoffed somewhat at Lanois' assertions that due to perfecting his acoustic recording set up, he's coaxing sounds you've never heard from the guitar before, as excessive self-hype. I have to measure the finances though, so for now have finally, a full 5 days after it hit the shops, ordered the 3 CD 'Station to Station' reissue. My original RCA vinyl still sounds great, but does have bad scratch. I'd love the vinyl box set, but £80 just ain't feasible, so this will do. One sound-fidelity obsessive on Amazon claims the main CD analogue remaster is very good, but the Nassau bootleg remaster is very poor, which will be disappointing if so, but often I find these obsessives are so obsessed with fidelity that they have lost the pleasure of just listening. It was £18 in Fopp, and the Amazon price has gone up from £12 to £13, still as good deal. Fopp had the box set, behind the counter with a special security device on it, for a mere £100. Sigh.

When in Fopp I also picked up Magazine's 'The Correct Use of Soap'. All of £3. It's a funny thing to buy a CD in 2010 of a record I heard on Peel and elsewhere and wanted to buy when it came out in 1980, but never got round to, and to be paying the same or less than I would have done back then. I'm not complaining. The incisive songs like Because You're Frightened and Song From Under the Floorbaords and Martin Hannett's typically flawless production still sound great.

[nord]

'The Correct Use of Soap' is a very good record. I recomend the 3-cd box called (Maybe it's right to be nervous now).

The cd's are cheap now. I bought 6 Dylan cd's for 20,- from Amazon.uk (that's about 200,-, NOK the NO tax free limit).
In the early 80's a so called 'nice price' album was priced at 39,- NOK, about 4,- UK pounds. 25 years later I pay less.

Why pay one dollar pr. song on iTunes?

[Otis Westinghouse]

Nice stash. Am drooling over Station to Station. Drifted off to the land of nod with TVC15 on the iPod. Title track sounded great with excellent use of stereo. Definitely one of Bowie's finest and therefore a pinnacle of human achievement.

[Jack of All Parades]

"Sinners & Saints"- Raul Malo--it seems like he has spent an eternity pumping out mushy romantic ballad albums of late. This record finds him restoring some pep to his sound with a mix of nine covers and originals. The sound hearkens back to the "Trampoline ' days with an eclectic mixture of tex-mex, ballads and duane eddy style guitar chords with a driving beat and swirling organ as back drop. As always the selling point for me is his rich tenor. His songwriting is weak and he would be better served with more judiciously chosen covers. He does demonstrate some guitar chops. Part of this record has an almost "Leave It To Beaver" feel- a view of family life that can be very saccharine to the ear. The two best things are covers of Rodney Crowell's "'Til I Gain Control Again" and Los Lobo's "Saint Behind the Glass" which is a definitive version for me.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Was excited to know Sufjan had finally done a proper new LP to follow-up from Illinois, though I appear to have a missed a 60 minute 'EP' (only Sufjan!) somewhere along the way. Here he extends the notion that he might be more than a little bit bonkers with weird electronica and drum machine, a repeated line that he's 'fucking around' over a large chunk of one song, a 25-minute closer called Impossible Soul and a more intimate and rather downbeat feel to it all. Some of it seems wonderful, some plain weird, and you'd be hard-pressed to want to play it in one sitting, though I did manage an hour of it (including the long one) in Sainsbury's supermarket, which was an interesting experience. It's gonna take 10 more listens to get my head round it. I applaud him for abandoning the States concept and not just repeating the formula. there are 5 or 6 pieces on Illinopis which were simply outstanding (I used to obsess over John Wayne Gacy Jr, then it was Casimir Puaski Day, and now it's always The Predatory Wasp of the Palissades that I go back to, as it's so tender and unique), and I'm not sure anything here matches up, but maybe with time... It's nice to be challenged by one as musically inventive as Sufjan.

[Jack of All Parades]

"The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964- The Bootleg Series vol.9- I am having a fascinating time with these vestiges from the old tin pan alley days. Recorded to be promoted for other singers to consider recording[ and a good many of them were cut by others and turned into commerciial hits], they are often rough and unfinished- you even hear Dylan admonish with a let's just cut this one. But it is a tremendous record[horrible pun] of an artist finding his voice, lyrically and vocally. That a 22 year old kid from the Midwest was channeling this music is something to comprehend. His mastery of folk ballads, blues, surreal ramblings, social topic songs, stream of consciousness voicing is impressive. You hear him trying out various vocal inflections, fleshing out the music and the lyrics on the run. The mastery of words and inflection is scary. He can write in so many voices. One thing you spot right away is that he had to leave the dead end of topical songs. You listen today and feel that young listeners would need footnotes to get the various references, so much time has passed. Whereas the songs of pure imagination are still so fresh today. To be touched with the gifts he was given and then to use them so effectively, I will always be amazed by this skinny kid from Hibbing.

[verbal gymnastics]

I'm listening to the same CD. I got the CD through play.com which also has the Live at Brandies CD with it.

This is a fantastic set and as Christopher says, it's amazing to think of the quality of writing from such a young person.

[bambooneedle]

I'm listening to the same CD. I got the CD through play.com which also has the Live at Brandies CD with it.

This is a fantastic set and as Christopher says, it's amazing to think of the quality of writing from such a young person.

Brandeis. I've not heard that performance as yet but have been excited reading many reviews of this - not an especially "great" performance but great nevertheless in its charm. Can't wait to get this set.

[Jack of All Parades]

Managed to pickup at Newbury Comics this weekend while visiting family Cassandra Wilson's new CD "Silver Pony". It is a most impressive return to form for her. Her voice provides great shadings to old standards like "Lover Come Back to Me", "Beneath a Silver Moon" and "Went Down to St. James Infirmary". But where she really stands out for me is in an adventurous reading of the Beatle's "Blackbird" and a song by Stevie Wonder "If It's Magic". I know of no female vocalist these days who can breath new life into old pop songs like her. Really like this record.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Seen some very good reviews for that round these parts too.

[Who Shot Sam?]

Picked up the latest Gorillaz album for $5.99 in the Amazon Black Friday sale. Also got Broken Bells and the vinyl reissue of Pavement's Brighten the Corners when I was up in Toronto.

[ice nine]

[pophead2k]

Just received in the mail my copy of Ryan Adams & the Cardinals III/IV, the great 'lost' albums from a few years ago. One and a half listens through and enjoying very much. Won't convert anyone, but if you liked Easy Tiger and Cardinology as much as I did, there is a lot here to recommend.

[bambooneedle]

Like Ryan Adams' version of Wonderwall and a lot of other stuff of his. One of the best songwriters of the last 10 years.

[Who Shot Sam?]

Not purchases per se, but my sis sent me Peter Case's "Wig!", The Feelies' "Crazy Rhythms" and Robyn Hitchcock's "Goodnight Oslo" for my b-day.

[ice nine]

11:11 - Rodrigo y Gabriela

I remember a couple of years ago someone on this board talking about artist recommendations for the spanish guitar. I recommend this couple.