Reviews: Emma Donovan; Pink Floyd; Black Cab; Miguel Migs; Mark Turner

EMMA Donovan is one of Australia’s most gifted female singers and on Dawn she bares her soul.

Dawn, Emma Donovan & The PutBacks

EMMA Donovan is one of AustraliaÂ’s most gifted female singers and on her Dawn she bares her soul.

SOUL

Dawn

Emma Donovan & The PutBacks

Hope Street/Rocket

4 stars

DAWN is an album that Emma Donovan was destined to make. It’s a record on which one of Australia’s most gifted female singers bares her soul — stylistically and lyrically — and, in the process, invokes echoes of some legendary American divas.

Shades of Aretha Franklin, Irma Thomas and Etta James lurk close to the surface as Donovan huskily belts out the words to Black Woman, the defiant and defining opening chunk of soul funk, over a bed of vintage wah-wah electric guitar and Hammond organ-generated rhythm. Later in the set, Donovan and her backing band and singers strike a classic Motown vein (think Diana Ross and the Supremes) in Keep Me in Your Reach.

A few tracks earlier, she spits out the chorus to the power ballad Mother — “I ain’t gonna be a mother; ain’t gonna be a sister too … I wanna be a lover” — with the conviction of a blues siren, between a couple of well-constructed and understated guitar breaks. Come Back to Me builds impressively in intensity, the singer conveying desperation and frustration through her expressive delivery. There’s exquisite appreciation of dynamics in the more sensitive numbers, too, with Donovan tender voiced in the Sly and Family Stone-inflected title track Dawn and Over Under Away, the album’s superbly soulful R ’n’ B-infused curtain closer. In penultimate track Voodoo, her singing is more spellbinding than the song itself, which refers to the problem of alcohol abuse.

The PutBacks inject urgency and edge into Daddy, hitting a veritable frenzy via a manic walking bass line and reverbed guitar solo, as Donovan sings pointedly: “Ain’t no use tryin’ to set me free / I can see what you’re hiding from me”. It’s testament to the band’s innate musicality and the efficacy of its soul grooves that the absence of brass in no way lessens the sound. Plaudits, in particular, go to the band’s bassist Mick Meagher, Donovan’s co-writer and collaborator on the songs.

Local record label Hope Street merits praise for an album that sounds as though it could have been made in Memphis or Detroit in the mid-1970s rather than Melbourne circa 2014 (recording on eight channels of analog tape and using a single room for the instruments and a separate booth for the vocals obviously aided authentic ambience). Dawn is a timeless album. It may be derivative, but it has an indigenous soul.

Tony Hillier

ALSO REVIEWED

ROCK

The Endless River

Pink Floyd

Columbia

3 stars

PINK Floyd’s “new” album was always going to be one that struggled to meet the great expectations placed on it, and so it has transpired. Those who liked earlier albums such as Obscured by Clouds may view it more favourably than the millions who joined the fan club with Dark Side of the Moon. Mike Oldfield fans and people who enjoyed Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack albums also may be in the favourable camp. However, it is possible to appreciate how others may view it as lacklustre. It’s enjoyable, fluid and easily accessible. Brilliant and edgy it is not. The Endless River is a homage to keyboardist Rick Wright, taken by cancer in 2008, and features him on all but a couple of tracks. It’s essentially unused stuff from the vaults that has been dusted off and embellished for one last great gig in the sky. Veering at times towards the ambient and mainly instrumental, it is an album that needs to be played several times before settling in. The producers have built up a lush soundscape to showcase David Gilmour’s distinctive guitar and Wright’s ethereal keyboards, which were such an intrinsic and important part of the band’s sound. The tracks gently flow into each other and it is not hard to get carried along with the current. It is not until the last track, Louder than Words, that Gilmour’s voice features, although there is an effective voiceover by Stephen Hawking on Talkin’ Hawkin’. While there’s nothing particularly new or funky in this album, it is a pleasant epitaph for a great and often under-appreciated keyboardist.

Steve Creedy

JAZZ

Lathe of Heaven

Mark Turner Quartet

ECM

4.5 stars

THIS is the first recording since 2001 by Mark Turner as a leader, his chordless quartet adding trumpet, bass and drums to his tenor sax. Turner has been dubbed by The New York Times as “possibly jazz’s premier player”, and this is his first album for ECM, although he has been an important sideman for Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jeff Ballard, Enrico Rava and many others. Turner’s approach is cerebral, but a soul infusion is always present. The pairing with Avishai Cohen on trumpet works extraordinarily well, both together and in their individual solos. The opener and title track — all six are Turner originals — has the trumpet stating the theme as the sax moves underneath and gradually Joe Martin’s bass adds a couple of notes every two bars, until Marcus Gilmore’s drums join in as Turner vigorously lifts off. Ethan’s Line invokes pianist Ethan Iverson, from the Bad Plus, with whom Turner has collaborated, and its gracious theme gives trumpet and sax space for inspired solos. Martin’s thoughtful bass solo begins Sonnet for Stevie, a tribute to Stevie Wonder, imbued with a blues sensitivity that Turner explores using the entire range of the horn. Cohen’s lengthy solo is reminiscent of Miles Davis’s work on Kind of Blue. The duo theme playing on Year of the Rabbit is sensitive and precise, and Cohen delivers a marvellously soaring solo ahead of Turner’s improvisations. This is a collection in mostly medium tempos, always rhythmically flexible, where intelligent ideas are brilliantly interpreted.

John McBeath

ELECTRONICA

Dim Division

Miguel Migs

Soul Heaven

3.5 stars

AS a name synonymous with the deep sounds of west coast house music, Miguel Migs is an evergreen figure in electronic music circles. From late 1990s releases on labels such as San Francisco’s classic Naked Music and Bristol’s NRK, to more recent EPs and remixes on OM Records and his own Salted Music imprint, the Californian DJ-producer has made big, bumpy basslines, soulful vocals and dalliances into down-tempo and even dub territory a hallmark of his steady studio output. His fourth album, the follow-up to 2011’s Outside the Skyline, doesn’t break much new ground musically but nonetheless it’s a quality foray into soulful house and down-tempo electronica. Heading, in Migs’s words, in a “dance-driven direction”, the album benefits from contributions by various guest vocalists who add emotive, late-night vibes throughout. I Can Feel It (Stripped Version), with its dreamy piano-led opening and filtered vocal stabs, opens proceedings on a mellow tip, a direction continued through the low-slung and moody Give Me Somethin, the first of a few tracks featuring long-time collaborator Lisa Shaw. Running Away, featuring soul singer Martin Luther, ups the tempo with its bass-driven groove and is one of several “remix ready” tracks on the album. Luther also features on standout first single and club favourite Let It Play, an offering that serves as testament to Migs’s love of music. Dim Division sees Migs resist the temptation to reinvent the wheel, with impressive results.

Tim McNamara

ELECTRONICA

Games of the XXI Olympiad

Black Cab

Interstate 40/Remote Control

4.5 stars

A THRILLING artistic vision based on sporting achievement, Games of the XXI Olympiad is an album unlike any other. It’s the fourth LP in 10 years by Melbourne rock band Black Cab, whose immersive, stadium-ready sound was last heard on 2009’s excellent Call Signs. This time the band has ditched the electric guitars in favour of electronic sequencing, synthesisers and percussion, and the result is its best work yet. It’s a concept album based on the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympic Games, where doped-up East Germans topped the medal count and no Australian won gold. Seventy minutes long and bookended by tracks named for the opening and closing ceremonies, its first proper song is a 10-minute long rave-up “tribute to performance-enhanced swimming”, according to the publicity material. Elsewhere, another upbeat track is named for Kornelia Ender, who won four goal medals in Montreal. If all this sounds like a bizarre obsession for a few blokes from Melbourne, keep in mind that their first album, 2004’s Altamont Diary, was based on the Rolling Stones’ disastrous free concert in 1969. Principal songwriters Andrew Coates and James Lee are clearly fond of drawing inspiration from historical events, and what they’ve achieved here is masterful. The German-centric themes are solidified through the inclusion of earlier singles Sexy Polizei and Combat Boots, while the euphoric mood of Go Slow is the singular highlight.

Andrew McMillen