Music reviews: Springsteen; Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin; Rufus

For fans of Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 opus The River, this reissue is a gold mine stacked with gems.

The Ties That Bind - The River Collection, Bruce Springsteen.

For fans of Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 opus The River, this reissue is a gold mine stacked with gems.

ROCK

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection

Bruce Springsteen

Sony

5 stars

Fans often wondered why Bruce Springsteen would spend so long in the recording studio. For every record that saw the light of day, the Boss would record enough material for another one or two albums. Until The Tracks anthology in 1998, most of that unreleased material remained under lock and key. Occasionally one of the songs would emerge as a B-side.

The River is Springsteen’s double-album opus from 1980. The original collection features the singles Hungry Heart and the title track alongside vignettes that attempt to unravel the mysteries of adult life. There are detailed portraits of Springsteen’s relationship with his father (Independence Day) and hefty dollops of good-time fraternity rock (Sherry Darling and Cadillac Ranch among them).

The River album (produced by Springsteen, Jon Landau and Steve Van Zandt) is included here alongside an early draft of the project, the single-disc The Ties That Bind. Slated for release before Springsteen’s wide-screen revisions, and boasting original mixes from Bob Clearmountain, The Ties That Bind includes some material we know from The River as well as the rarity Cindy, Be True (later a B-side), an alternative take of Stolen Car and the rockabilly track You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch). For Springsteen The Ties That Bind lacked the requisite “unity and conceptual intensity”. Jewels from the Springsteen canon are often found in the margins of his recorded output, or they come directly off the live mixing desk. This is an artist who didn’t include calibre songs Fire (a hit for the Pointer Sisters) and Because the Night (a hit for Patti Smith) on his previous album Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978); enthusiasts are on red alert whenever they get a whiff of an unreleased tune.

This collection treats us to 22 studio outtakes and features 11 previously unreleased songs (a swag of which have stayed out of the clutches of even the most ardent bootleggers). Highlights include the blistering Meet Me in the City, Party Lights, the noir-like Stray Bullet and the searing
B-side Roulette. Then there are curios such as a barebones demo of Mr Outside. Offering a window into Springsteen’s creative process, odd lyrics found in the outtakes later pop up on the sparse Nebraska album or even find a place on a song on The River.

The collection is capped off with a twin-DVD concert that captures the mighty E Street Band tearing it up in Tempe, Arizona. The Jersey Devil opens the live show with Born to Run, a move once suggested by a critic as being akin to Cecil B. DeMille starting his film The Ten Commandments by parting the Red Sea.

There’s a coffee-table book with 200 photos and facsimiles of Springsteen’s notebook from the period. A newly commissioned documentary from long-time collaborator Thom Zimny features rehearsal footage filmed back in the day, through to Bruce perched outside his garage last year, strumming a few tunes on his acoustic guitar and discussing the work.

For Springsteen fans this collection is an essential part of the artist’s narrative.

Sean Sennett

ALSO REVIEWED:

FOLK

Watershed

Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin

Dragonfly Roots

4.5 stars

Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin’s ascent from busking ranks to the top tier of contemporary English folk has not engendered complacency.

Since receiving a BBC award for best duo, this multi-instrumental, singer-songwriting partnership has engaged a drummer and an equally deft double-bass player. So, apart from being an impressive follow-up to their 2013 release Mynd, the aptly titled Watershed signals a change in direction towards a more expansive sound, albeit with Henry’s imaginative dobro, guitar and harmonica work and Martin’s evocative fiddle, viola and banjo playing and enchanting vocals as the salient feature.

The album’s atmospheric cornerstone, Foundling, with its heartbreaking narrative concerning migration taken from family history, is delivered with the new rhythm section in a style that evokes memories of Pentangle.

A short instrumental, Lament, featuring Henry’s ringing slide guitar, provides a perfect bridge to London, a more rock-oriented take on the foundling tale, but with a fiddle-air coda. Also in uptempo mode, Stones takes issue with the UK Independence Party’s stance against same-sex marriage. Henry’s mellifluous vocals lead in Yarrow Mill, a song inspired by his paternal grandfather. Elsewhere his partner’s voice predominates — most notably in January, a short a cappella ballad in which Martin’s singing reveals the influence of June Tabor. The pair’s musical philosophy and modus operandi are perfectly expressed in a line she delivers in the stirring opening title track: “We take the path that fits us right.”

Tony Hillier

ELECTRONIC

Bloom

Rufus

Sweat It Out

4 stars

The pressure to re-create and improve on a
well-received debut album can eat away at bands like a cancer. Whatever doubts Sydney electronic trio Rufus might have had while completing the follow-up to 2013’s No 1, platinum-selling Atlas must have evaporated late last year when Bloom’s first single, You Were Right, landed the ARIA award for best dance release. From the summer bounce of album opener Brighter, it’s apparent that Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt have stuck to a well-worn but further developed path on their sophomore album. Bloom combines moody synths, Lindqvist’s inimitable, atmospheric vocals and dance-floor kick to create an accessible and emotive journey. Either side of radio-friendly but impactful singles You Were Right and Like An Animal lies a darkness and emotion born of Rufus’s endless travels and distance from normal life. A few months spent in Berlin contribute to this feeling, too, most notably on latest single Innerbloom, a nearly 10-minute, admittedly super-indulgent, synth-heavy epic that is both euphoric and melancholic (“If you want me / If you need me / I’m yours”) and demonstrates the quality of writing throughout Bloom. It sits alongside the more mellow grooves of Say a Prayer for Me and the brilliant Be with You, which with its anthemic, hands-in-the-air hook, dreamy backing vocals, shiver-inducing keys and dirty bassline is textured house music at its finest. One of Rufus’s strengths has been the ability to translate synth-heavy electronic tunes to the stage, and Bloom promises a similar challenge. However, having just signed a US label deal with Odesza’s Foreign Family Collective, Rufus Du Sol, as the band’s known in North America, seems destined to spend much of the next few years touring, as it did last year. If such a transient lifestyle leads to material as striking as that on Bloom, it’s time well spent.

Tim McNamara