Tír Na HiFi

Ivor wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:02 pm

cybot wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2017 9:35 pm Nice one Ivor! Listening to Margaret Mary O' Hara, to me, is exactly the same as listening to some wild spirit improvising away. Doing it their way and to hell with everyone else....Definitely one of the very few 'one of a kind'...

I was lucky enough to see her live on the Hal Wilner production of Cohen songs " Came so far for Beauty" (it's success helped bring Cohen out of retirement) and she was just magnificent. Obviously not everyone's 'cup of tea' but singing Hallelujah she brought up notes from her toes and her soul and it was just spellbinding - she also had to contend with the attention whore Gavin Friday! A lot of people got up during her set to just walk around... fair enough. Her purity and unique style doesn't fit with everyone.

There's a link to the night below, ignore Dick Straub's review, it's utter nonsense.
https://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/dublin.html

Wow Ivor thanks for that! God, you were very lucky to see her live. I can just imagine her version of Hallelujah......it must have been magical.

Edit: She did a duet with Gavin? God help us.....As for her next album maybe good 'ol Rick (Rubin) might want to start flailing his hands in her direction?

Listening to Big Thief's debut album, Masterpiece.  This is special, very special.    The emotional core is Adrienne Lenker, vocalist and songwriter, and  a woman blessed with a voice that cuts right through you in the manner of Kath Bloom and a lyrical imagination to wonder at.  Lyrics to puzzle over but you are guided home in time to their elusive meaning by Lenker's heartfelt, intuitive sense of phrasing.  

Her partner in this band is Buck Meek, a gifted guitarist who enjoys a noticeably simpatico relationship with Lenker.  There are some touching moments in the live clips below when the camera catches him watching Lenker, following her every move, mouth agape in seeming amazement.  His singing voice is reminiscient of Robbie Robertson when he harmonises with Lenker but his guitar playing is more discordant and jagged than Robertson and closer to Tom Verlaine.   Meek's contribution is to give passionate voice to the brutality and tenderness that coalesce and cohere in Lenker's songwriting.  Big Thief's music would be far less effective with a more conventional guitarist.  It is the contrast of Lenker's ethereality and Meek's more grounded physicality that make Big Thief work so effectively.  Just listen to the fury of his playing on Real Love in response to the lines, "Having your face hit/Having your lip split/By the one who loves you/Real love makes your lungs black/Real love is like a heart attack".  

The title track, Masterpiece, may be just that and the single track to convert the sceptical.  Lines about the transformative power of love intermingle with a heartbreaking reflection on the loss of loved ones with a penetrating force that belies Adrienne Lenker's mere 26 years.  

"Old friends, old mothers, dogs and brothers,
There's only so much letting go that you can ask someone to do
So I will keep you by my side, I will not give you to the tide
I'll even walk you in my stride, Marie.

Cause I saw the masterpiece, she looks a lot like you
Wrapping your left arm round my right
Ready to walk me through the night."



Two wonderful snapshots of this great band in action followed by two songs from their upcoming second album, due in June.  Speaking from a personal perspective, I cannot begin to put into words just how much joy it brings me to stumble on this band and Julien Baker this year.  Life is impossibly generous when handed with such great gifts.

Nice find Paul! They had completely passed me by! Love the edgy guitar playing.
Feist has a new album out especially for my birthday! Can't wait...

Two very unusual looking people. Hard to watch the guitarist but at the same time you just can't take your eyes off him. As for Adrienne L what can one say? Ah if only No Disco was still on the telly we'd find out all about this music. So thanks to you Paul for keeping us informed! And yes the edgy guitar playing (good description Claus!) is something else!

On a diffeeent tack: Claus did you manage to get some photos at Hedvig's gig? What did you think of it? Do you remember when she jumped off the stage after only five minutes? She landed right beside me and looked straight into my eyes! Wow what a moment :)

Finally sitting down to listen to this unfettered monster from 50 years ago. 50 years!!!!!!!
The first thing that comes to mind is how did they survive that punishing, relentless schedule? Madness was only a heartbeat away.....

What do think of THAT tone Shane? Was that you whistling at the end ;)










Julian Cope:
'The recording was taken off the house mix featuring Clapton’s guitar clearly defined with sustain, indicating a performance at top volume. His amplification was comprised of four Marshall 4x12 cabinets with two 100 watt amplifiers which possessed a capacity to retain sustain and distortion effects at varying volumes simply because it was so loud. This extreme use of volume in turn helped to mutate Clapton’s stock blues riffs into something else entirely. It also allowed for a finer control of volume, tone and dynamics as well as the ability to rattle the rafters and pummel the punters so badly that on one occasion during Cream’s first American tour, it was reported the volume from their amplifiers ‘shook a lighting bridge free of its moorings.
There was no real leader of the band although it’s pretty obvious Clapton was the lynchpin during the dark heat of the improvisational moment as his name is called out about fifty times over the din by Bruce and Baker during the performance. Here, Clapton is a clipper ship with naviguitar his only compass, charting a course throughout the shifting reefs of Bruce and Baker’s rocky shorelines that submerge and reappear as if trying to scuttle EC’s hull but his strong adherence to and guidance from the Three Kings Freddie, Albert and B.B. ensure a harrying, hairy but safe passage nonetheless. That’s not to say E the C don’t get shipwrecked a coupla times during his passage of several Capes of Good Horn, Good Hope and probably even better dope but he’s already refashioned a riff raft from junked blues vessels and reanimates it through roaring dual Marshall stacks: blessing it with several wavering, sustaining waves of his psychedelicised Gibson SG and he and his rhythm section cohorts are back on course, unexpectedly landing several hundred leagues above the sea and weathering entirely different circumstances until it’s time to head back into the ‘song.’ Whether it be “N.S.U.,” “Sweet Wine” or even the dreaded “Spoonful” there are enough moments of supreme heaviness that if one was to edit them together into a 30 minute suite...well, it would baffle most people you’d play it to.'

What do think of THAT tone Shane? Was that you whistling at the end ;)

As this guy might say "Niiice"

tweber wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2017 9:23 am

What do think of THAT tone Shane? Was that you whistling at the end ;)

As this guy might say "Niiice"

LOL :)))))

cybot wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2017 11:44 am

tweber wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2017 9:23 am

What do think of THAT tone Shane? Was that you whistling at the end ;)

As this guy might say "Niiice"

LOL :)))))

Always preferred Clapton's pre-strat stuff anyway myself.
Just started listening to this, this evening:
Happy so far! Nice version of Statesboro blues.

cybot wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2017 6:34 pm Two very unusual looking people. Hard to watch the guitarist but at the same time you just can't take your eyes off him. As for Adrienne L what can one say? Ah if only No Disco was still on the telly we'd find out all about this music. So thanks to you Paul for keeping us informed! And yes the edgy guitar playing (good description Claus!) is something else!

Nice indeed, thanks Paul - that NPR tiny desk site is always worth checking out for new and old stuff.

tweber wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2017 6:44 pm
Always preferred Clapton's pre-strat stuff anyway myself.
Just started listening to this, this evening:
Happy so far! Nice version of Statesboro blues.

Do remember the sale I was telling you about recently? Well the Allman's Live one above was going for......£9.99. Arrrrrrgh! Anyway glad you're enjoying it, that's the main thing. A nice version of Dreams too.