Album review: Bruce Springsteen spins the jukebox to cover soul classics — and succeeds
At 73 and on album No.21, Bruce Springsteen’s voice is deep, ripe and grainy, and the songs clearly chosen to suit its tone and character, and his ability to convince us.
Album reviews for week of November 11, 2022:
SOUL/POP
Only the Strong Survive: Covers Vol. 1
Bruce Springsteen
Columbia Records / Sony Music
“Old Rocker Records Soul Album” is not likely to be a headline that makes you sweat excitement; even a terminal Springsteen fan like me becomes unenthused. A slew of videos in recent years that seem Rushmore-carved adds to a feeling The Boss is getting lost again in his Everyman significance. But goddamn: Only the Strong Survive, an album of towering soul covers and radio staples, is just too good to resist and, dare I say it, probably the perfect Christmas album. Songs like The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore and Turn Back the Hands of Time are such gold-plated standards it’s almost impossible to do them badly, other than every club band and station having played them into the ground. How in God’s name do you stake a fresh claim beyond the adequate? Now 73, Springsteen does not attempt some jazzy nonsense or synthesiser interpretations. He rides on his love for the music of his youth, its rejuvenating presence in his aged voice, and the consummate musicianship that surrounds him.
On his 21st album release, there is nothing jaded here; nothing pretentious or dishonest. Jerry Butler’s Hey, Western Union Man and William Bell’s I Forgot To Be Your Lover (featuring Sam Moore) are my favourites. They offer two sides of a transcendent coin, and Springsteen gives them all he has got. A brother and sister to gospel, soul music was the spiritual and sexual sound of Black America healing itself and opening a vein for the American Dream to flow again in the 1960s. Accordingly, this album has the feel of unlocking a jukebox code to what shaped Springsteen’s own belief in a democratic music. It’s also incredibly well-constructed; the man does not make random collections, he creates journeys. His voice here is deep, ripe and grainy, and the songs clearly chosen to suit its tone and character, and his ability to convince us. Forgetting himself remains the key dilemma to Springsteen’s authority as an artist, and a paradox we listeners likewise seek: to hear a song and become it. If you want me to be critical, yes, a few songs are simply crowd-pleasingly good for the backyard BBQ — but I’m hoping that, after three years of pandemic, fire and flood, you won’t be the grinch when everyone starts singing.
Mark Mordue
ACOUSTIC POP
Heard You Got Love
Jeremy Loops
Universal
If you’ve heard pop music on the radio in the past 10 years, you’ve heard all of this before. The salt-scented summery atmospheres, the folky tropes, the loop pedals, and the silky purring for love lost in the sunset; Jeremy Loops is everything the charts wanted in 2011, and a cafe’s playlist dream in 2022. Now on to his third album, the South African singer-songwriter teamed up with Ed Sheeran to write lead single Better Together, which offers a template for what to expect: easy-on-the-ear hooks bathed in sugary, feel-good acoustic pop. The other 12 tracks attempt to capture the same market-friendly spirit, to no avail. Only on This Town – featuring a cameo from fellow South African performers Ladysmith Black Mambazo – is there any real sense of adventure, with the traditional melodies and harmonies of his countrymen slotting beautifully alongside the smooth vocals. If music for the masses is your poison, consider this toxic. If thoughtful songwriting and careful artistry are what you’re looking for, the same warning applies.
Alasdair Belling
INDIE ELECTRONIC
When The Lights Go
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
Nice Age / Liberator / I OH YOU
One of the breakout stars of Britain’s electronic wave in the 2000s, Orlando Higginbottom’s Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs project always felt somewhat removed from the trends of the times. Even when he aimed his bass and drums at the dancefloor, his delicate melodies retained a certain buoyancy, like they belonged on parallel pop tracks from the 1970s or ’80s. After a string of one-off singles, he returns a decade later with an album of sumptuous, beautifully produced love songs that slow down the BPM but showcase the strength of his writing. Synth-heavy ballads Be With You and Crosswalk marry Hot Chip with Hall & Oates, while early standout Never Seen You Dance is all pirouetting ‘piano house’, with agogo bells and plonking keys to boot. Higginbottom has said that the experience of not owning his masters the first time around made him double down on making better music that was entirely his. On this – and many other sonic fronts – the new dawn of TEED truly delivers.
Jonathan Seidler
INDIE ROCK
Expert In A Dying Field
The Beths
Ivy League
Tighter and more vibrant than ever, The Beths’ sound is honed by renewed touring on the New Zealand quartet’s third album. Singer/guitarist Elizabeth Stokes’s bleak one-liners are still very much intact (“You can scream at the void but it never replies”), yet they’re less scene-stealing and better integrated into the band’s increasingly classic songwriting. Similarly well utilised is Jonathan Pearce’s compact, thrilling lead guitar. Case in point, Silence Is Golden is an anxious portrait of auditory overstimulation that peaks with a frenzied solo, followed by an a cappella repetition of the title phrase, while fellow highlight Head in the Clouds is composed of whiplashing power-pop stacked with hooks and harmonies. Where some of The Beths’ earlier work lacked variation, Expert in a Dying Field mixes things up in a satisfying way. Even as so many songs still barrel ahead with nervous adrenaline, the two-minute-long I Want to Listen provides a softer, sweeter counterpoint to the overriding preference for relentless forward momentum.
Doug Wallen
ELECTRONIC
Anomaly
What So Not
Counter Records
Every artist has a story of dealing with ‘the pandemic years’. For Chris Emerson, time off the hamster wheel of hectic touring afforded the opportunity to withdraw and reset the What So Not sound, and ultimately move away from the melancholy of 2018 debut Not All The Beautiful Things towards feelings of joy, confidence and excitement. With nods to trap, indie dance and hip-hop, Anomaly is an energetic, adventurous and polished outing. The building intro track Alive sets the scene, as Emerson’s own vocal repeats ‘let me feel alive’, leading into the snarling title track that oozes intensity with its shuffling, stuttering beats. Continuing at pace his collaborative streak, Emerson enlists Louis The Child, Captain Cuts and JRM for upbeat and summery current single On Air, while Oliver Tree and Run The Jewels rapper Killer Mike balance mellow meanderings with more aggressive spits on Mr Regular. Elsewhere, earlier single The Change sees Sydney three-piece DMA’S link with Emerson for a bumpy, rave-inspired number.
Tim McNamara
Album reviews for week of November 4, 2022:
ROCK
The Car
Arctic Monkeys
Domino
Burnished strings and cavernous open space anoint Arctic Monkeys’ seventh album. That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, since the British quartet swapped the leather-jacketed rock aplomb of 2013’s AM for a surreal piano-bar vibe on the moon-set 2018 concept record Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. The Car is even more sedate and streamlined, with frontman Alex Turner committed to a wry, knowing style of crooning in between playful falsetto turns. Piano and other keyboard instruments are often more of a focal point than standard rock signifiers, though guitarist Jamie Cook gets in some slow-burn solos. Helmed once again by longtime producer James Ford, these songs would slot in nicely with Turner’s moody, retro-minded side project, The Last Shadow Puppets. It may spurn immediacy, yet Turner’s considered singing and enigmatic lyrics radiate sneaky charisma. The string arrangements from Ford and composer Bridget Samuels are uniformly gorgeous, with Big Ideas playing like a Bond theme from a parallel universe. Turner even calls attention to the strings in the lyrics there, to ominous effect: “But now the orchestra has got us all surrounded / And I cannot for the life of me remember how they go.”
It sounds as if he’s recounting an anxiety-inspired nightmare, and a similar dream logic informs several other meditations on performance and creativity. The floaty ballad Jet Skis on the Moat mentions shooting in Cinemascope and being happy “to sit and watch the paint job dry”, while Mr Schwartz cites both heavy metal and love songs over finger-picked acoustic guitar. Perfect Sense recounts scribbling down a tune on a hotel napkin, promising “revelations or your money back”. Sculptures of Anything Goes takes that theme even further, musing about art against a slow, distorted beat and glacial synth tones. Turner seems to be nudging critics of the band’s divisive last record, singing about “puncturing your bubble of relatability with your horrible new sound”. These self-aware torch songs recall the more downbeat eras of David Bowie and Scott Walker; superb opener There’d Better Be a Mirrorball also conjures images of Cole Porter. Stubbornly slow-moving, The Car offers another absorbing evasion of expectations in its zigzagging catalogue.
Doug Wallen
SOFT ROCK
Jude
Julian Lennon
BMG
So titled for the nickname bestowed on him as a five-year-old by the Beatles’ evergreen 1968 single Hey Jude, Julian Lennon’s seventh solo album confirms he’s not only come to terms with his heritage but is having fun with it. The now 59-year-old songwriter has littered Jude with quotes from the songs of his famous father: “war is over”, “don’t let me down”, “round and round” and, most blatantly, “love is all and love is real”. Sonically, it’s produced within an inch of its life with no fewer than six keyboard players, a string quartet and two full orchestras, while Lennon’s list of co-writers runs to 16 (including seven on one track, Lucky Ones). Four singles have already been lifted from the album, two of which are highpoints: Every Little Moment, a driving Tears for Fears-like funk rocker that features a rare solo from guitarist/co-producer Justin Clayton, and the epic ballad Breathe, a firm rebuttal of his father’s often naive idealism: “I can’t believe the lies they’ve told / There’s no more vision to behold / We’ve lost it all, we’ve all been sold”.
Phil Stafford
INDIE/FOLK
My Boy
Marlon Williams
Virgin Music Australia
Since releasing his 2018 album Make Way for Love, New Zealand’s Marlon Williams has fostered a side career as an actor, appearing in such films as A Star is Born and The True History of the Kelly Gang. Williams says some of that character work has informed his songwriting, and his third LP certainly features a great many scene changes. There’s everything from chilly synth-pop (River Rival) to Polynesian-tinged guitar reveries (Easy Does It) and Paul Simon-esque breeziness (Morning Crystals). Williams is especially compelling when he’s chewing said scenery: Soft Boys Make the Grade references Robyn Hitchcock’s early band the Soft Boys in both its title and lyrics, while the New Romantic melodrama of Thinking of Nina verges into Future Islands territory. His darkly fluttering voice thrills most on a closing cover of 1981’s Promises, a disco-licked Barbra Streisand song penned by Barry and Robin Gibb. In Williams’s capable hands, it becomes a compellingly desolate valentine that nearly outshines the rest of this record.
Doug Wallen
HEAVY METAL
Patient Number 9
Ozzy Osbourne
Epic/Sony
Such does his reputation precede him, reviewing a new Ozzy Osbourne album might seem fruitless: spoiler alert, it sounds like Ozzy. What makes this one different, however, is context. It’s his second album since recovering from pneumonia, and serves as part of his renaissance while he continues to defy ailing health at 73. It also marks his first solo album to feature Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, as well as including some of the final drum tracks recorded by the late Taylor Hawkins. Even with this framework, however, album No.13 succeeds on more than merely compassionate grounds. The mane-thrashing title track, the downtuned crunch of Parasite and quasi-Sabbath reunion Degradation Rules are among the strongest, sharpest songs Osbourne has released in the past few decades. Furthermore, he sounds as though he’s having fun with this set – far more than you can say for 2010’s phoned-in Scream. While not reaching the heights of his 80s-era classics, this is a worthy addition to a surviving, continuing legacy.
David James Young
R&B/ELECTRONIC
Natural Brown Prom Queen
Sudan Archives
Stones Throw/Inertia
A self-taught violinist, songwriter and producer, US artist Brittney Parks carved her own lane early with her irrepressible 2019 debut. She returns with an album so phenomenally original that she’s basically built her own highway, an absolute sonic blitzkrieg that mashes wildly different styles and personas in a sophisticated hybrid that recalls the best work of fellow female trailblazers Missy Elliott and M.I.A.
From the latter, Parks inherits an ear for global sounds and parses it through rambunctious hip-hop beats. Inventive, brash and restless, her mad professor experiments are most evident on the album’s title track, which collects four disparate musical movements in one suite, but also on the G-funk-meets-Soulquarian strut of Flue and the Santigold-esque ballad Homesick (Gorgeous and Arrogant). Left-field artists this accomplished typically make their way to the venerable Stone’s Throw label; that Parks has found her art a home here comes as no surprise. Boundary-pushing but eminently listenable, it’s one of the most assured records of the year.
Jonathan Seidler