Rock - what are you listening to?

[cybot]

Listening in hushed reverie to this double vinyl collection of Sandy's songs. When you play something like this nothing but nothing can follow it. When the last refrain fades into the ether you may as well just switch off. Absolutely mesmerising.....

[mcq]

Beautiful music, Dermot, and I know just what you mean about those timeless late night moments when you really connect with your music on a profoundly spiritual level.  All the stars are aligned and your heartbeat synchronises with the pulse of the music and everything clarifies and harmonises with your soul.  And then you look at your watch and realise that you really should have gone to bed an hour ago.  But it's late anyway and you may as well replay that record/CD one more time to recapture that moment and reconnect to what is really important and to come even closer to the truths embedded in the music.  

So many great Sandy songs but I do love Solo.  This is some priceless amateur footage of her performing the song live in 1974.  Video quality is poor but I am so thankful that it exists at all. 




By the way, I picked up this Fairport Convention box earlier this year.  



Beautifully curated by a long-term fan who has judiciously selected the very best live recordings and radio sessions, this makes more sense of the Fairports post-Thompson than many of the official LPs when they seemed to be flailing for direction and recording too much generic soft-rock and not enough folk.  And then Sandy rejoins and her voice shines clear and pure and goes straight to your heart.  She was really a special talent and, like many such maverick talents, she had her wayward moments but I think she was at her best when everything was stripped down to the bone like what you're hearing on that compilation.  Like all of the great singers, she put her stamp on her songs and made it well nigh impossible for other singers to cover the same ground.  Perhaps it is her sense of phrasing, her voice's unique tonal qualities or the impressions of a life well-lived with which she imbued her songs. It is a combination of all of these things that make her recorded legacy so special.

However, I do think that Cat Power's deeply personal version of Who Knows Where The Time Goes is a wondrous, beautiful gem.  I have viewed it many times and it just breaks my heart.  You get a real sense of the singer in deep communion with the song and it becomes a profound meditation on the passage of time and the emotional scars which are left behind.

[cybot]

Thank you for your heartfelt response Paul. Magic moments are all too rare and when they arrive like a mysterious Visitor all you can do is surrender to the sublime.....

That smudged up footage is priceless and more proof that it's all about the performance/song that really matters irrespective of the sonics especially when someone like Sandy is in our midst.....

That Fairport compilation looks good too.

My favourite moment of that Cat Power footage is at the very end where, it seems, she's trying to summon the ghost of Sandy to offer a humble thank you. Silly I know but I know what I feel.....

Sandy at the piano is my favourite and the following BBC session is equally priceless. Sometimes I just switch off the sound and just watch her....





"Time moves slowly and it goes by so fast. And who knows how long the days will last."

Here's a review I always go back to:

[mcq]

This is a wonderful new discovery for me.  Over the past week I have been immensely enjoying the third album by The Barr Brothers, Queens of the Breakers.  This is a deeply rewarding album that demands sustained and attentive listenings, inwardly nourished by an emotional fire that resonates in the mind long after the final track has concluded.  



Here are two wonderful sessions recorded recently that showcase the band in full flight.






However, the standout track which has completely captured my imagination is the achingly beautiful Song That I Heard.

Sometimes songs come along which gradually obsess and take hold of me and seduce initially by virtue of a perfect marriage of melody and lyric but whose hold gradually but inexorably deepens upon me with successive listens as I pick them apart in my mind.  There have been some heart-stopping songs for me over the past couple of years such as Julien Baker's Vessels and Big Thief's Masterpiece, songs whose transformative holds have tightened around my heart and this one from the Barr Brothers is, I feel, of similar importance to me.  

To my mind, Song I Heard  is about the transformative power of music and how it can elevate and give purpose to what can seem a meaningless life without substance.  It is about being gradually but irrevocably consumed by music and how, by opening your heart completely to its multfaceted wonders, you bear witness to a creative enlargement of a life that formerly appeared to be narrowly proscribed and limited and finite.  It is about the friendships you encounter in life, friendships with people who may pass in and out of your life but whose impression will continue to reverberate within you, and other, more lasting, more complete long-term relationships.  Ultimately, this song is about how music effectively makes the world less cold and alien, and how it makes the world around us feel a warmer, more inclusive place.  

Of course, I may be creatively misreading the song when I define the song that Brad Barr heard as solely a reference to music.  Like all great songs, the breadth of Song That I Heard is wide ranging and may also reference any creative urges that steer us down life's many paths.  Barr is taken down one path when he moves to Montreal and then another when he meets the woman that he would eventually marry.  The final verse references a whole series of wrong turns and cul-de-sacs that life takes us down, never really knowing until we reach that particular road's end whether it was a mis-step or something that would ultimately prove to be something lasting and permanent.  But we blindly travel down that road, consumed by a nameless passion, taking on yet another of life's many roles, falling in step to that siren song that we hear.  



When I hear this song, I am reminded strongly of John Cale's amazing contribution to Songs for Drella, Forever Changed, which from the very first time I heard it, as part of a concert film where the entire record was performed and which was broadcast on Channel 4 back on 1990, has continued to resonate deeply within my heart.  Like all great songs that you hear in your youth, your understanding of it develops deeply and profoundly in tandem with your understanding of yourself and the world around you as you grow older.  

This song essays the the singular moment of transformation that art visited on Cale's soul, which, although not referenced explicitly in the song, refers to the life-changing decision that he made to quit his studies in London and travel to New York.  It is, essentially, a microcosm of all that makes Cale for me one of the songwriting greats.  It is incredibly succinct and from that succinctness it derives its power.  Not a single note or word is wasted.  There are no flowery rites of passage lines here nor any over-ornamented musical passages.  The music is spare and minimalist, comprising a series of staccato, repetitious keyboard lines offset by incisive guitar work from Reed which essentially serves as his own personal meditation on the memories which Cale's words summon up within him.  

From such an apparently simple structure, Cale conjures something quite extraordinary in its visceral impact.  The impression on this listener is akin to a smack on the face. Perhaps the most important lines are "My life disappearing, disappearing from view ... I left my old life behind and I was forever changed".  I think of these lines rushing through Cale's mind not only at the time he wrote the song, in reflection, but also at that point in time when he was a young man, rudderless and adrift.  He must have felt his whole life slipping away beyond his control and the final decision to leave his homeland must have been a fearful one.  It is in Cale's impassioned vocal phrasing that you hear this anguish but also you sense the firmness of mind which gravitated by instinct to a life less ordinary.  It is a song to transport and inspire, endlessly rewarding and an eloquent homage to that formative song that Cale once heard as a young man.  

[mcq]

One of the great reissues of this or any other year was the release of the mono recordngs of Laura Nyro's first two albums, beautifully entitled A Little Magic, A Little Kindness, which is as apt a description as I have ever heard of the great gifts of this woman's music and her incredible voice.

Her assertive, declamatory voice is a thing of wonder; an infectious, joyful, intimate, exultant, tender, impassioned instrument which, once heard, tears its way straight to your heart and takes up permanent residence.  And, on these mono recordings, it has never sounded so intoxicatingly pure.  She is so vividly present in these recordngs, singing so sweetly into your ears.  

The mono recordings of her first album were long thought lost forever until discovered for this release.  Her traditional musical influences  - gospel, Brill Building pop, soul  -  shine clearest here.  She would compose more original songs on Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New Year Tendaberry and the musical arrangements are straightforward and there simply to serve her glorious voice.  And that voice, like that of Ella's or Aretha's, is one to immerse oneself in and luxuriate in.  To take just three examples, just listen to He's A Runner, When I Die or I Never Meant To Hurt You.





But step forward to the follow-up album and her first masterpiece, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, and the difference is immediately striking.  You can immediately sense the unbounded glee and unbridled joy in her voice on this album where she was given full creative control for the first time.   Despite the undoubted craftmanship on display (both musically and vocally), this is in no way cerebral music.  It is deeply soulful music which runs the gamut from intimate and poignant to ecstatic and enraptured.  It simply transports you to a plane of the purest emotion.  It insists on taking hold of your heart and infusing it with a resounding, overwhelming breathless passion.  

The sound for Eli was originally recorded in stereo and released in that format, and this mono version is a mixdown from the stereo masters which was distributed to radio stations.  However, despite its provenance, it is a version well worth preserving.  Laura had a preference for the mono mix and you can hear exactly why.  The tonal clarity of her voice is preserved here as well as the sheer physical presence of her voice.  It all sounds so immediate to my ears, so truthful and so pure.  The rest of her recorded work demands to be collected together now and presented with the same care and dilligence.  

[mcq]

I've been listening a great deal recently to the new, eponymously titled, album from The Weather Station, which is essentially the nom de plume of Tamara Lindeman.   This is one of the most lyrically dense albums I have come across in recent years, and, indeed, when you read the lyric sheet, the lyrics are presented as prose poems without the line breaks that you normally expect.  You read them independently of their musical context and are immediately reminded of something by Raymond Carver or Richard Ford, tiny glimpses of lives observed in microcosm.  My initial impression upon listening to this music the was the ease with which Lindeman phrases these words and I immediately thought of Joni Mitchell and the way she broke down conventional song structures in her albums (especially on her masterpieces The Hissing Of Summer Lawns and Hejira).  In these albums, Mitchell replaced the conventional verse/bridge/chorus with a continual series of words that were unified by little recurring melodies underpinning the lyrics that gave the songs their structures.  Musically speaking, the musical arrangements that Lindeman employs here are much more conventional and linear than Mitchell's, but the virtuosity of her vocal phrasing is comparable to Mitchell's, ensuring that the listener is never fatigued by the lyrical density.  The natural ease with which Lindeman can swoop into her upper vocal register also reminds me of Joni and this extended vocal range allows her to express herself with warmth and intimacy, enhancing the very personal nature of this work.

The sheer lyrical density of this album initially proved a barrier to easy assimilation, presenting a perfectly opaque exterior that proved quite resistant to any attempts to penetrate through to its emotional underbelly.  However, as is usually the case, patient and close listening paid dividends.  In particular, it is the flexibility of her vocal phrasing that illuminates the songs from within as she twists and bends the onrush of words into something that is entirely natural and deeply human.  Every single word is chosen with immense care and imbued with a sense of singularity and purpose.  Nothing is superfluous here and you can hear in her vocal delivery just how she anchors her words with a delicate precision that is striking.

Thematically, this album is a profound meditation on the nature of freedom, how narrowly we can define freedom for ourselves, and how that narrow definition of personal freedom is only confronted in times of extreme personal upheaval.  It is about how establish our own realities as a bastion of defence against the outside world and how we learn to depend on these walls we put up and resist any attempts to dismantle them.  Ultimately, the album confronts the delusory nature of solitude and essentially argues that the natural human state is sharing our life and love with other people.





This work is about the fluid nature of self-identity, how we manufacture our own identities as defence against  the outside world, believing them fixed and permanent like a stone edifice, but even the grandest buildings are eroded by nature and time.  In Lindeman's case, her identity gradually becomes subsumed into that of another person's identity as a relationship develops.  The fear of losing control as her identity and sense of personal freedom is relinquished as her growing sense of mental security and well-being is reinforced by her love's gentle presence, a presence that she clings to as fiercely as she once clung to her own solitude.  

"Put no walls around me, I will lay the stones myself, and lay down with my body but give nothing else.  Still living with the feeling pent up in my chest, my old lifelong companion, the one I know the best."

 Listening to Thirty obsessively on repeat was the moment that opened my heart to this music.  It is an incessant torrent of words spewed out with anger and frustration and relief and joy.  It is a joyous  epiphany in song.  The range and depth of emotions it conjures up in the mind of the listener is astonishing.  The first few times I heard this song, I heard anger and frustration as the walls of her carefully constructed solitary life come crashing down.  And then I listened some more and I began to hear joy and relief as well as she realises just how the event horizon of her life's possibilities has expanded immeasurably.  The way in which she essays this transformation is especially fascinating, in the smallest of human gestures which hold the most lasting currency for her:

"There was a time when you put your heard in the small of my back.  I was surprised when you touched me like that.  But there in your hand was a current of life I could hardly stand ... Oh, you got the kindest of eyes, I cannot look twice without falling right into the sweet and tender line between something that can and can never be.  And just then, an ambulance passed in the street and you took my hand reflexively."

And, as well as that, the pacing of the song is also striking as it builds inexorably until it explodes with the words, "Gas stations I laughed in, I noticed fucking everything: the light, the reflections, different languages, your expressions.  We would fall down laughing, effervescent, and all over nothing, all over nothing.  Just as though it were a joke, my whole life through, all of the pain and sorrow I knew, all of the tears that had fallen from my eyes; I can't say why.  We walked in the park; under the shade, I avoided your eyes.  I was ashamed of my own mind, no SSRIs, my day as dark as your night."  There is a lifetime of emotion expressed in these words, a visceral intensity that is shocking and grows in the mind of the listener as you spend more and more time with the song.





The other highlight of the album is the closing The Most Dangerous Thing About You, an exquisitely beautiful mood-picture that musically reminds me very strongly of the emotional landscapes employed by Joni Mitchell on the Blue album, but the lyrics in this song refer not to bittersweet loss but, rather, an almost inexpressible joy.  The scene is a dinner between Lindemann and her lover, apparently innocuous as he talks through his working day, but the feelings that well up inside her are of immense personal significance:

"I woke up in your life - I was passing behind your eyes before I knew what was yours and what was mine.  I listened; I took it all in stride, your ideas and distorted pride, while learning by heart all your thoughts and your visions.  The most dangerous thing about you is your pain - I know for me it is the same.  It was restless;  you felt it, but you could never call it by name.  It was yours for life to have and hold, a companion that you had never known, a shadow you saw but never knew that you cast.  And all the sadness you can't explain poured from you like a summer rain, hand in hand with your child in the morning."



This is one of the most beautiful and heartfelt songs that I have ever heard.  One could not wish for a more complete conclusion to this extraordinary album, a work that is as emotionally complete as it is lyrically dense.  

[mcq]

First listen tonight to the new King Crimson live album, recorded in Chicago last June.  Initially, Fripp planned to release a recording of a show in Vienna from 2016 but, on hearing a playback of the Chicago concert, he pronounced it "simply exceptional" and insisted on its immediate release.  This is a wonderful concert and the best record yet of the current Crimson incarnation and it is easy to see just why this line-up has totally revitalised Fripp.  There is an additional drummer utilised here, Jeremy Stacey, and Bill Rieflin is now a full-time keyboardist.  Apart from that, the line-up remains the same as on the earlier Radical Action.  The repertoire has been expanded to include Cirkus and The Lizard Suite from the neglected Lizard album.  The entire performance is infused throughout with a wild exploratory energy which is utterly compelling.  I think what Fripp finds most satisfying in this incarnation of Crimson is just how cohesive the band sounds. There are no dominant personalities here hogging the spotlight, just a finely honed ensemble making great music together. In summary, this is very recommendable, especally for those Crimson fans who have not yet sampled the pleasures of this particular line-up.  I just wonder what next year holds for Crimson now that Fripp and Adrian Belew have smoked the peace pipe and there are plans to re-introduce Belew to the fray.

Here is Schizoid Man from the same line-up, recorded a few weeks later in Mexico City:

[k99_64]

Going back to John

[markof]

Choice stuff from the early days of Decca Records. Brings a smile to my face.
Mark

[Derek]

Going back to John

Funny had this on earlier