Joe Strummer; Dan Barnett; Jackie Marshall; The Aints; Marc Ribot
Joe Strummer was the greatest of the original punk songwriters. This is the first compilation of his work outside of the Clash.
ROCK
Joe Strummer 001
Joe Strummer
Caroline/Ignition Records
5 stars
Joe Strummer was the greatest of the original punk songwriters. His band the Clash started in London in 1976 but quickly showed its incredibly wide songbook, branching out into ska, reggae, dub, rock ’n’ roll, funk and rockabilly through six studio albums between 1977 and 1985. Its blueprint was rebel music in all its forms; Strummer was the fierce, highly political frontman.
He died suddenly at 50 in 2002. Joe Strummer 001 is the first compilation of his music outside of the Clash, barring two demos, and it is an absolute beauty. It spans 1975 until 2002’s London is Burning, the last song he recorded, written originally for a trade union benefit and echoing one of his earliest punk anthems, 1977’s London’s Burning. It is one of a dozen unreleased or obscure songs in the package, many of which are demos, out-takes and songs from films.
Thus we get the stunning, Pogues-like Pouring Rain demo from 1994 with the Clash, and a wonderful live dub demo Czechoslovak Song/Where is England, which became This is England, the centrepiece of the final Clash album, Cut the Crap. It’s all incredible stuff for completists and mad fans, but still a good, detailed summary for others. Rose of Erin shows the raw, Irish bar-room style Strummer loved, yet it previously was heard only on a 1993 American indie film, while The Cool Impossible is an unreleased jazz track unearthed on two-inch tape.
The release was compiled by Strummer’s widow, Lucinda Tait, and restored and remastered. Even the very early material from Strummer’s pre-punk band the 101ers — Letsagetabitarockin and Keys to Your Heart, with Strummer headlong into his Eddie Cochrane obsession — sound clean and vital. There’s tracks from the Sid and Nancy soundtrack and a bunch of great choices from all three Mescaleros albums. I love Trash City from the short-lived band the Latino Rockabilly War featuring Keanu Reeves, who recorded songs for the film Permanent Record, made as Strummer’s former Clash bandmate Mick Jones was making electro-pop hits in Big Audio Dynamite. I also love his version of the ska classic Ride Your Donkey, written by the Tenors in Jamaica in 1968 and included on Strummer’s first solo album, Earthquake Weather; and I doubly love the stunning Burning Lights, from a Finnish art film called I Hired a Contract Killer. Like many of the wise inclusions here, it shows this great songwriter at his rugged best: impassioned to the point of implosion, imbued with a fanatical roots-music heart, and singing and shredding as if there was no more to come. What a giant figure he was.
CHRIS JOHNSTON
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JAZZ
Through Her Eyes
Dan Barnett
Independent
4 stars
Jazz standards such as Come Rain or Come Shine, You Don’t Know What Love Is and Here’s That Rainy Day are normally treated as slow, sensitive ballads. On trombonist-vocalist Dan Barnett’s eighth album, however, the versions are big, bold and swinging. Barnett — who sings on 12 of the 14 tracks — has a devil-may-care approach that sweeps everything before him, and he is well supported by an octet including the cream of Sydney’s mainstream jazz musicians.
Two octogenarians (drummer Cyril Bevan, 87, and trumpeter Billy Burton, 83) are still playing beautifully, while splendid guitarist Chuck Morgan — who recently died — is featured. Craig Scott excels in several double bass solos, which are articulated with uncommon clarity.
In Just Squeeze Me and Just You Just Me, George Washingmachine adds rich harmonies to Barnett’s vocals, and gets off the ground with spirited violin solos. The dialogues between Barnett’s trombone and other musicians provide most of the album’s variety. In the boppish tune Sultry Serenade, for instance, the improvisations begin unusually with Barnett’s trombone trading four-bar breaks with Paul Furniss on alto saxophone. Furniss knows all the licks but can also be relied on to play unusual lines.
In I’ve Found a New Baby and Bourbon Street Parade, he switches to clarinet; and with the addition of Burton’s trumpet, New Orleans jazz is given a solid workout. Peter Locke’s tasteful piano solos and fills are a delight throughout. The sole original is When You Lose the One You Love, a ballad composed by Burton, who plays a lovely flugelhorn solo over attractive chord changes.
ERIC MYERS
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ALT-COUNTRY
Lilith Shrugs
Jackie Marshall
Sugarrush Music
4 stars
Brisbane singer-songwriter Jackie Marshall began her career as part of a crop of Brisbane alt-country performers in the early 2000s alongside the likes of Chris Pickering, Kate Miller-Heidke and Women in Docs. Her 2006 debut Fight N’Flight was shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize, and her 2010 album Ladies’ Luck drew wide critical acclaim. Then life got in the way, as it tends to do. Birth, death, cancer, mental illness and the mess of falling in and out of love have filled her days, and also provided the emotional and lyrical fuel for third album, Lilith Shrugs.
Album opener Little Birds is a declaration of strength and intent with just a touch of Travelogue-era Joni Mitchell, complete with saxophone. “No ovenbird gonna calm my thrill / No mockingbird gonna sing me still / No butcherbird gonna pick me clean / No peacock gonna dash my dream,” Marshall sings towards the mocking dawn chorus. Long-time friend Roz Pappalardo makes an appearance on the single I Know You, while on Darling Etc and You Can Take Me Riding Marshall leans into the country side of alt-country, waltz and all.
Marshall always had more swagger than her contemporaries, but the passage of time has given her the ability to temper the swagger with introspection and dry humour. It’s a shame that, as an industry and a culture, Australia doesn’t really know what to do with its mid-career musicians because Lilith Shrugs is a beautifully crafted album. It deserves to land Marshall on festival spots around the country. We need more albums like this, and a brighter spotlight shone on songwriters of her intellect and experience.
Sophie Benjamin
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ROCK/PUNK
The Church of Simultaneous Existence
The Aints
ABC Music
4 stars
The Saints may have lost out to the Go-Betweens for the greatest Brisbane song in a recent public poll conducted by Guardian Australia but Ed Kuepper probably has been too busy with his hot-blooded new Saints offshoot to give it much thought.
The Aints revisit material Kuepper wrote but never recorded for the Saints four decades ago and, while that premise alone doesn’t guarantee success, these dozen tunes are given a knockout delivery that’s blissfully unburdened by history. Teaming up with bassist Peter Oxley (Sunnyboys), drummer Paul Larsen Loughhead (the Celibate Rifles), pianist Alister Spence and trumpeter Eamon Dilworth, Kuepper sounds absolutely invigorated.
Better yet, he expands the Saints’ punky brief to encompass about a half-century of rock ’n’ roll, with passing nods to Nick Cave (the lackadaisical pub noir of Demo Girl Part 2) and the Byrds (the title track’s sprightly jangle). And Dilworth’s horn arrangements are less incidental scenery than a proper lead character, capable of far-flung emotions. They lend a surprise party twist to the growling garage rock of opener Red Aces, and even add some Burt Bacharach-esque melancholy to You’ll Always Walk Alone.
But the album’s prevailing mood is raucous and celebratory, the songs lively with motion and distortion. Again, Kuepper and co have no problem making plain their influences: Good Night Ladies (I Hear a Sound Without) is an epic Stooges flashback, while The Rise and Falls of James Hoopnoch Eefil makes overt homage to the Kinks’ winking character sketches, complete with a breezy run of whistling.
DOUG WALLEN
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ROOTS
Songs of Resistance 1942-2018
Marc Ribot
Anti/Cooking Vinyl
4 stars
Although he has released 25 solo albums, Marc Ribot is mainly known as a stellar sideman and session player. Left to his own devices, this genre-jumping guitarist extraordinaire tends to gravitate towards alternative and avant-garde projects. Songs of Resistance is no exception — and not only in a musical sense. Palpably prompted by the incumbent US President, Ribot and some left-field New York vocalists chronicle events and movements in a politically charged album backed by his idiosyncratic electric/acoustic guitar playing. Two songs hark back to 1940s Italian anti-fascist anthems: the familiar growl of Ribot’s erstwhile employer Tom Waits inhabits Bella Ciao, while Meshell Ndegeocello’s softer rendition of Fischia Il Ventsung (updated as The Militant Ecologist) makes a bigger impression.
After a discordant opening salvo with We are Soldiers in the Army — free-form jazz, distorted guitar et al — eclectic songstress Fay Victor shines in an ultra-funky rendition of John Brown, and in a more mellow flute-embellished duet with Sam Amidon in the civil rights-inspired How to Walk in Freedom. Steve Earle puts an alt-country accent on a couple of Ribot compositions, one relating to Sikh immigrant Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was gunned down last year by a racist who mistook him for a Muslim. A Mexican protest ballad, Rata de dos Patas, features actor Ohene Cornelius and an upbeat Latin rhythm reminiscent of Ribot’s band Los Cubanos Postizos. Knock That Statue Down has the Golden Palominos’ Syd Straw singing a song that evokes the infamous right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
TONY HILLIER
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