I picked this up for half price at the weekend! Just some good old-time country music recorded live on a cruiser. Buddy Miller organised the sessions and he got...
Kris Kristoffersen, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams, Richard Thompson and others to perform. Great value only €9.99 for an LP!
Rock - what are you listening to?
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
It's a long, long time since I heard that good old-time country music.
Sounds like a good time was had by all. Great value too.....
Sounds like a good time was had by all. Great value too.....
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
Great in the room performance and sound, just what the doctor ordered.
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
Next up Little Feat's Shake Me Up all of €6, Just not the same without Lowell George but the groove is fantastic.
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
This is the only LF I've got. Only trouble is it'll take me a week to find it :)
Last edited by cybot on Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
Enjoying this on vinyl at the moment. I've forgotten how good he was....
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
I was incredibly moved by The Weather Station's eponymously titled fourth album, one of the very best of this or any other year, and I recently picked up its predecessor, Loyalty, which was released two years ago.
The greatest difference between the two albums is the move towards a more driven sound - with a greater reliance on electric guitar - on the later album, which was a conscious decision on Tamara Lindeman's part to communicate the emotions embedded in the songs with greater urgency and directness. Loyalty is a quieter listening experience, but it is informed with the same qualities that distinguished the later album. The lyrics are eloquent, deeply felt, meditative and very personal. But the way she sings and phrases and inhabits these words makes them sound uniquely compelling. Even before you have fathomed their meaning, there is an intuitive understanding on the part of the listener as to what Lindeman is trying to express. There is a palpable intensity and presence to the lyrics - the phrasing of the words call to mind a constant awareness of the weight of words, how each and every one has a heft that is held aloft in the mind's eye and employed with delicacy, precision and insight. Every song is informed by the passion of pure emotion, articulated purely and finely with a delicacy and elegance that is profoundly intimate. That is what draws me to the very best singer-songwriters - that ability to break down the artificial barrier between performer and listener, and to communicate something of the greatest importance with the casual intimacy of a friend putting a hand on your shouder and whispering words of comfort in your ear.
Nowhere is this more exemplified than the emotional centrepiece of the album, the breathtaking Tapes. The irony here is that this is the most sparsely written - but most personal and intensely felt - song that Lindeman has yet written. The majority of her songs are densely written, the torrents of words that are eloquently spun out a testament to a literate and articulate and restless songwriting mind. But Tapes stands apart and may be the most important of her songs in that it directly refers to an experience that formed her as a songwriter. It is about a young man that she met and fell in love with when she was 19 but who tragically died 6 months later. The "tapes" of the title refer to the tapes that he would use to record melodies for songs that he hoped to record with Lindeman one day. And this song is an expression of the emotions she experienced when she listened to these tapes many years later in preparation for what would be the "Loyalty" album.
I recently came across this clip online where Lindeman explains the background to this song. The way she tells the story is significant - starting off self-assured, you notice how she graually becomes more emotional and then almost falls apart and only starts to pull herself together when she finds her true voice as she starts to sing the song.
The timbre of her voice when singing this song is markedly different, darker and more subdued. There is a loose, swaying, unsteady beat which brings to mind the image of Lindeman listening to these tapes late at night, perhaps with a drink in her hand, playing them over and over and overcome by the memories and emotions which are triggered by the experience. And the way she replicates her lost lover's singing on those tapes as a mournful wail is intensely heartrending. For once, she simply could not find the words to express her feelings. The crucial line here is "Trying to sing what you meant, late at night - it was too important". This song is an attempt to preserve a memory which will one day fade - the intensity of the loss remains, but there remains a fear that, one day, she will no longer recall in her mind's eye just what he looked like or what his voice sounded like. The sense of overwhelming grief and shock in her voice as she delivers the last line, "I'm older now than you ever were, or ever would become" is acutely harrowing. This song is about the fissure that develops in your soul in the wake of some terrible tragedy, the scab that is initially formed - the sandpapering over the cracks - but which gradually becomes weathered away as time goes by, revealing suddenly a reservoir of raw emotion that is released with unmerciful and unrelenting force as the long-dormant memories are suddenly awakened. To my mind, the greatness of this song is how all of these emotions are expressed with just a handful of lines, perhaps the most pared-down and most agonised that Lindeman has ever written.
"I found the little tapes that you kept under your bed, and I played and played and played them over and over again. Years ago, walking alone, you sang 'Oh'.
In your high strange voice, your feet scuffing along the pavement. Trying to sing what you meant, late at night - it was too important.
I'm older now than you ever were, or ever would become."
Finally, I cannot overstate the importance and significance of the current generation of songwriters in their twenties who are emerging already fully formed, having absorbed the influence of past masters like Dylan, Cohen and Mitchell, but, rather than being intimidated by these forebears' past achievements, they are instead emboldened to go further and extend and develop the language of the human psyche and insinuate themselves into the songwriting canon. Personally speaking, I am incredibly excited about the prospect of following these songwriters' careers as they develop.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
Re: Rock - what are you listening to?
Ah that was so beautiful and heartfelt! She's definitely the real deal......with an emotional rollercoaster of a song with a kind of a keening cry that's buried deep in our own ancient traditions too. There's nothing wrong with opening your heart and finding your place in this 21st century world where there's more people lost than we think. We need more people like her. Thanks for posting Paul.....