Steve Earle’s touching tribute to his son Justin Townes Earle
Released in the week that would have marked his 39th birthday, J.T. stands as a towering testimonial to the talent of one of the finest Americana-styled singer-songwriters of the past decade.
Album reviews for week of January 16, 2021:
AMERICANA
J.T.
Steve Earle & The Dukes
New West Records
★★★★½
A more apt or indeed timely tribute would be hard to imagine. Launched just four months after Justin Townes Earle’s premature death from an accidental overdose, and in the very week that would have marked his 39th birthday, J.T. stands as a towering testimonial to the talent of one of the finest Americana-styled singer-songwriters of the past decade. That it comprises versions of 10 of his compositions, hand-picked and delivered by his father and band with due reverence to the various roots music settings and old-school storytelling of the original recordings, makes it a veritable valedictory “best of” collection. Starting with a couple of short and snappy tongue-in-cheek, devil-may-care numbers from Justin Townes Earle’s early years — a rousing road song and a bar-room blues — the selection ends with two of the most potent and arguably portentous pieces from his back catalogue.
Steve Earle (pictured above, with son on lap) and his band educe extra pathos from the dark and brooding Saint of Lost Causes, the title track from JT’s eighth and final album. He hits the heart strings hard with every word and chord before letting rip in Harlem River Blues, the popular title track from JT’s third album, with a rollicking upbeat blend of gospel and country-rocking blues that belies subject matter suggestive of suicidal thoughts (“I’m going uptown to the Harlem River to drown”). The set signs off, appositely, with Last Words, a starkly delivered and heartbreaking song written by Steve Earle in the wake of his son’s tragic death, in which he reveals their touching final phone conversation — “Last thing I said was I love you … your last words to me were I love you, too” — before adding, “I was there when you were born, took you from your mama’s arms … I wish I could have held you when you left this world”. The tracks preceding that tear-jerker — a celebration of his firstborn’s short but productive life — include several folkie songs that give a world-weary nod to his namesake, the legendary Townes Van Zandt, and a disillusioned Civil War soldier.
Tony Hillier
PSYCHEDELIC ROCK
American Head
The Flaming Lips
Bella Union
★★★
Sparkling, effervescent ‘70s vibes are channelled through Tom Petty-esque folk-rock vocals, Grateful Dead psychedelic rock and the signature dazed deliciousness of frontman Wayne Coyne and his tribe of misfits. Now a seven-piece band, The Flaming Lips embraces its roots in fuzzy electric guitar, drawled and twangy vocals, lyrics soaked in hippy flowerchildren dreams of love and peace. This is Alice in Wonderland on an acid trip, if Stevie Nicks was cast as Alice. At the Movies on Quaaludes, Flowers of Neptune 6 and Mother I’ve Taken LSD are all typical of Coyne’s tie-dyed, neon explosion of an American Dream. He has invented a story for the album around listening to imaginary, unreleased Tom Petty recordings while high on an older sibling’s supply. It’s sweetly nostalgic, celebratory and full of wonderment.
Cat Woods
INDIE POP
First Date
Adele & The Chandeliers
Orange Carpet Records
★★★
The cover of Adele Pickvance’s new record, First Date, pictures her British parents on a night out in 1965. The former Go-Betweens bass player makes no apology for exploiting close family members for the good of Adele & the Chandeliers, a brittle pop trio Pickvance (vocals, bass, keys) has formed with guitarist Scott Mercer and drummer Ash Shanahan, who she met through Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. Minimalist, melodic and almost manic in places, First Date recalls the off-kilter pop of the B-52’s, Modern Lovers and the Buzzcocks, whose Love You More is covered here along with nine original songs. Picks of these are opener German On My Mind; Gourami Fish, the album’s most convincing pop song; and Looking For Something, also well worth a second date.
Phil Stafford
ELECTRONIC
Edge of the Horizon
Groove Armada
BMG
★★★★
Tom Findlay and Andy Cato retreated to clubland following 2010’s Black Light, preferring thumping house EPs and DJ sets to the pulsating live performances they’d long been revered for. A reunion in 2018, however, sparked a creative resurgence. Edge of the Horizon isn’t so much a return to form after a 10-year album hiatus, but a confirmation of the British duo’s expansive and enduring musical talents. Long-time fans will recognise and embrace the mix of soaring, downtempo (ish) vocal cuts and — admittedly fewer — hands-in-the-air dancefloor moments, that together form an immersive foray into melodic, moody electronica. Leftover tracks and ideas from Black Light reheat well, particularly opener Get Out On the Dancefloor featuring a David Byrne-like vocal from PNAU/Empire of the Sun’s Nick Littlemore.
Tim McNamara
ROCK
CMFT
Corey Taylor
Roadrunner
★★½
The most recent album from Slipknot, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, saw the mask-wearing US metal band deliver one of the year’s strongest records, running circles around bands half their age with twice the conviction. Now, however, we arrive in unexpected territory: CMFT marks frontman Corey Taylor’s solo debut, leaving him with the cleanest slate and freest range he has had in a long time. Why he optioned for such an unfocused, one-size-fits-all rock album is really anyone’s guess. Ballads such as Black Eyes Blue and Home cruise down the middle of the road, inconsequential by both design and execution. Culture Head has some kick, and CMFT Must Be Stopped sounds like it was lots of fun to make. The issue, however, is cutting through the treacle to let Taylor’s vast talents properly shine.
David James Young
DANCE/DISCO
Roisin Machine
Roisin Murphy
Skint Records
★★★★
Roisin Murphy, best known as one half of ‘90s trip-hop outfit Moloko, was born to be a frontwoman. The Irish singer’s throaty, dynamic vocals range from peanut-butter smooth to darkly seductive as it melts over throbbing synths. Squelchy, bassy house beats provide the foundation for album No 5, which explores themes of ennui, loneliness (Narcissus) and yearning (Something More). The joyful clapping of hands, confident melody of piano chords and twangy bassline that kicks in on tracks like Murphy’s Law signals that this is not an album to signpost endings or grieve for better times; the better times are right here. Murphy shunned big labels to go solo, independently and her Machine is a glorious, pulsing heartbeat of disco-meets-house in a world where all women are queens.
Cat Woods
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Album reviews for week of January 9, 2021:
ALTERNATIVE POP
McCartney III
Paul McCartney
Capitol/Universal
Paul McCartney was just 14 when he started knocking out songs at home on the family piano. That was 64 years ago and, coincidentally, among the first of these was When I’m 64. There are bigger, rounder numbers related to McCartney III, the third (and final?) iteration of the former Beatle’s “trilogy” of DIY solo albums. The original was released in 1970, the year his first band broke up; the second in 1980 as Wings, his next outfit, crash-landed; and now this one, 50 years after McCartney I. Recorded during Britain’s first COVID lockdown last year, McCartney III bears all the hallmarks of its sole creator. Its 11 tracks are a melange of whimsy, multi-instrumental prowess, storytelling, social commentary, gardening tips and toilet humour. It’s bookended by an overture of sorts, Long Tailed Winter Bird, reprised as a brief coda before McCartney sings a laundry list of chores to be done on the farm ahead of the first frost: “Must dig a drain by the carrot patch / The whole crop spoils if it gets too damp.”
Recalling the rustic simplicity of his 1971 album Ram, When Winter Comes is typical McCartney: never reticent to write about what he knows, even if it’s quotidian routine. Contrast that with the knowing Pretty Boys, a reductive, seductive pop song about male models dispassionately analogised as “a line of bicycles for hire / Objects of desire”. Or Lavatory Lil, a bawdy music-hall ditty that calls out a gold-digger who’s “acting like a starlet but looking like a harlot”, stopping just short of scatology or misogyny. This is the skill of McCartney, a man who can write in almost any genre and is unafraid to cross-reference the fleetingly trite and intensely personal. Take Deep Deep Feeling, the album’s centrepiece, as nakedly honest a love song as he has ever written. Addressed to no one in particular, it’s also an instrumental and vocal tour de force, a two-songs-in-one mini-epic that betrays the conflicted emotions at its core: “Sometimes I wish it would stay / Sometimes I wish it would go away.” Add the psychedelic rifferama of Slidin’, the Beatlesque Seize the Day, Deep Down’s churchy groove or The Kiss of Venus, just Macca’s falsetto with guitars multitracked to resemble a Bach fugue. At 78, is there anything left he can’t do? Whatever that is, I’d like to hear it.
Phil Stafford
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JAZZ
Secrets Are the Best Stories
Kurt Elling
Edition Records
This brilliant, difficult album has taken to high art what is known as vocalese, the craft of putting lyrics to instrumental works or recorded solos by great jazz musicians. Kurt Elling’s lyrics are poetic, mysterious and opaque. His collaborator in this ambitious project is Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Perez, known as a social activist. Two tracks feature works by Jaco Pastorius and there is one each from Wayne Shorter and Vince Mendoza. Otherwise much of the music is composed by Perez, who leads an orthodox rhythm section, used sparingly; drummer Johnathan Blake is heard on only two tracks. In his 2018 album The Questions, Elling encouraged his fans to be aware of social issues, but this striking album takes that process one step further.
Eric Myers
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WORLD
Peradam
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith
Bella Union
Infused with the mysticism, earthly and cosmic rituals of South Indian-Tibetan music and spirituality, this rattling, pulsating, slithering beast of an album is “a gateway to the invisible”, as Patti Smith intones on the title track. A peradam is an object revealed only to those who are seeking it, here in the birdsongs, singing bowls, breathy echoes and spare beats. Smith’s candid, confident voice sounds more like a prayer than a song, surreptitiously snaking over the mesmeric sitar. The weaving of voices, samples, empty space and imagined worlds deftly become one sacred sound. Anoushka Shankar channels the divine through her sitar. Musicology of sacred mountains meets spoken word on a work that invites quiet contemplation in solitude.
Cat Woods
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GOSPEL
Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso)
Vika & Linda
Bloodlines
“You may not be an angel, you may not go to church,” Linda Bull sings on It Don’t Cost Very Much, a song first recorded in 1956 by Mahalia Jackson and one of a dozen gospel classics covered here. The inference is you don’t need to be a zealot to appreciate it. As its subtitle suggests, Sunday is the Bull sisters’ push against lockdown, a joyous poke in the eye of COVID-19. Along with Etta James’s Strange Things, Nina Simone’s Sinnerman and the apposite Memphis Flu, a 1930s song about another pandemic, Sunday features Vika & Linda’s sublimely faultless takes on the more universally known Bridge Over Troubled Water and Amazing Grace. Sole new song Shallow Grave was written by Kasey Chambers and fits seamlessly into such esteemed company.
Phil Stafford
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ELECTRONIC
Free Love
Sylvan Esso
Loma Vista/Caroline
In the early 2010s, a side project for Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath and Megafaun’s Nick Sanborn quickly evolved into their main focus. Sylvan Esso served up several memorable moments of dreamy synth-pop, but on its third album the duo seeks a degree of staying power. To its credit, aspects of Free Love comfortably achieve this: Ferris Wheel joyously twirls and lights up with its infectious melodies and joyful exuberance. The slick half-hour running time also offers slinking grooves such as Runaway and the wafting electronica of Ring as easy highlights. These moments, however, are thrown off balance by poor production and grating vocals on afterthoughts such as What If and Frequency, which prove that Sylvan Esso’s approach is best measured in singles rather than albums.
David James Young
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GOTH ROCK
We Are Chaos
Marilyn Manson
Loma Vista
Like Halloween decorations, there’s a limited window in which ghoulish novelties have their moment of glory before they’re disposable kitsch. Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, had his glory days back in the mid-1990s. We Are Chaos sees the American horror-rock purveyor warn Don’t Chase the Dead as he pursues the bristling, dark, vibrant energy of releases such as Portrait of an American Family (1994). The spoken word of Red Black and Blue belongs in Twin Peaks, while the zombie-meets-Rod Stewart melodic chorus of the title track offers nothing more than Bela Lugosi-style villainous vocals from the depths of his Hollywood crypt. The saving grace is a changing soundscape veering from acoustic to driving, whirring industrial symphonies. For hardcore fans or Halloween party soundtracks only.
Cat Woods
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