Reviews: Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Paces, Moxie, Khoury Project

Octogenarians Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson have delivered late-career highlights.

Supplied Editorial lynn and paces

Octogenarians Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson have delivered late-career highlights.

POP/COUNTRY

Full Circle

Loretta Lynn

Sony

3.5 stars

Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin

Willie Nelson

Sony

3.5 stars

Two American masters and octogenarians have just released new albums, but Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson have very different recent track records. It’s been 12 years since the self-styled coalminer’s daughter put out her last album, the Grammy-winning, Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose.

On the other hand, Summertime is merely Nelson’s first album this year. In fact since this was released he has already unleashed another song, the timely and quite true at time of writing Still Not Dead Again Today. There’s no attempt to hide the years in their voices. There is wear and tear to be heard, for sure, but both Lynn and Nelson retain the core of what has made them great singers all these years.

For Lynn, it is her proud backwoods brazenness. She’ll be 84 in a couple of weeks but she has such thundering conviction that when she offers a lift to Fist City you believe she could still find it on the map, without reading glasses. Nelson (83 next month) remains a master of phrasing and, given the quality of material on show, Summertime is an understated delight, one that was presumably inspired by his selection as the 2015 recipient of the Library Of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

Full Circle is reportedly the first batch of more than 90 songs Lynn has recorded with daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash as producers. In it she revisits a couple of her hits and some Carter Family favourites, but there are also a few new songs including a co-write with Todd Snider. Lynn applies her hard-won wisdom (is there any other kind?) to Always On My Mind, and the regret and self-pity at the centre of previous versions (including a country chart topper for Nelson) falls away. To hear her repeatedly sing “ditn’t” takes some of the polish but none of the shine from the song.

You can take the girl out of Butcher Holler but ...

Similarly, when the Carters’ I Never Will Marry is placed in these knowing hands, the song instantly becomes a heartbreaking widow’s lament.

While Summertime does not rank with the very best of Nelson’s recordings, it is a grand study in how to tackle standards.

In front of a hand-picked band that blends studio guns such as co-producer Matt Rollings and Dean Parks with his band members Bobbie Nelson and Mickey Raphael, Nelson gets inside the songs. He delights in delivering Ira Gershwin’s wordplay and yet also croons with all the intensity of one who has just fallen in love for the first time. In each song he lets George Gershwin’s melody do the heavy lifting as he creates recordings that are instantly recognisable as belonging to both the Gershwins and Nelson.

Nelson guests on Lynn’s album closer Lay Me Down, the single highlight of both albums. It is a warm but unflinching look to the end of the line. Oh that we all could be in this shape this close to our stop.

Polly Coufos

FOLK

Planted

Moxie

Lyte Records/Planet

4 stars

A quintet of inventive players from Ireland’s windswept west coast is putting a fresh new spin on the proverbial craic. The product of youthful elan and jamming flair, Moxie music melds a range of elements with rich folk heritage, a compellingly rhythmical modern sound that’s predominantly acoustic and free of artifice.

Having an unorthodox line-up — two tenor banjoist/guitarists, a brace of button accordionists (one doubling on keyboard) and a percussionist — in no way restricts the band’s pursuit of musical adventure.

Each of the eight tracks on Moxie’s debut album contains changes in feel and flavour, fostering abundant light and shade. The hard-driving opening title track goes through a few phases during its 10 minutes before reaching a delicate conclusion. The empathy between the instrumentalists and the thirst for exploration is even more evident in a funky curtain-closer, 1st Degree, that’s underpinned by dissonant guitar chords, intricate banjo picking and a mid-track key change. A contrasting extended workout, Liberty, offers an evocative jazzy dreamscape. A quasi-rock intro to Death of the Den is the precursor to an upbeat accordion groove.

Drakeman begins with neoclassical piano before hitting rock dynamics. In another staggered entry, Mullaghmore features acoustic guitar strum, piano and button accordion. Incorporating a couple of familiar reels, Black Widow is closer to a conventional Irish medley. Innovative backbeat is provided by percussion that includes cajon as kick drum, conga as snare and traditional bodhran.

It might take a cue from progressive American bands such as Snarky Puppy and Punch Brothers and the Scottish trio Lau, but Moxie marches to its own beat.

Tony Hillier

WORLD

Revelation

The Khoury Project

Enja records

3.5 stars

The Sydney-based, Egyptian-descended Tawadros brothers, Joseph and James, have taken oud and percussion-driven Middle Eastern-derived compositions into jazz realms in recent years. Palestinian-born, Jordan-raised and for the past nine years Paris-based siblings Elia, Basil and Osama Khoury have utilised the Arabic lute — albeit one of Turkish rather than Egyptian origin — as well as qanoun (zither) and violin in a not dissimilar capacity. Like their Aussie counterparts, the Khourys manage to break free of the stylistic shackles in which musicians of their background often find themselves while banishing the insipid cliches associated with the genre nebulously dubbed world music fusion. But, while Revelation might be a better-than-average meeting of minds and modes, one in which Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music, maqam and Major-Phrygian scales merge with jazz chops and improv, there’s a tad too much meandering and insufficient melody for the Khourys’ latest release to be favourably compared with any of the Tawadros brothers’ ARIA-garnering albums. Tracks imbued with rhythmic charge from the projects’ percussionists — Cuban-flavoured from Inor Sotolongo; orientally oriented from Youssef Hbeisch — and French jazzman’s Guillaume Robert’s upright bass provide the set highlights. The percussionists push violinist Basil Khoury to Jean-Luc Ponty-like flights of fancy in a 13-minute-plus cornerstone piece, A Walk in the Old City, and accompany meaningful exchanges between Osama K’s qanoun and Elia K’s oud before soloing themselves. Zither plays the part of flamenco guitar in a riveting 10-minute-plus rendition of Paco de Lucia’s Zyryab, the sole cover. The stringed instruments in Gypsy Trance cast a spell that’s reminiscent of the great Roma band Taraf de Haidouks.

Tony Hillier

ELECTRONIC

Vacation

Paces

etcetc Music

4 stars

Budding producer Mike Perry hails from the Gold Coast, a fact that might explain the summery undercurrent on his debut album. Starting with opener God Mode, this sunny aesthetic is hammered home on Vacation via the intermittent sounds of waves crashing, a sample that would quickly grate if not for Perry’s ability to evoke images of white sand, sun and smiles on nearly every song. It’s an upbeat and cohesive effort where worldly percussive elements and soaring synths underpin performances by 12 guest vocalists, including Brazilian electro-pop outfit Bonde do Role, who add vocals in Portuguese on the stomper Cafucu. Last year’s big single Nothing’s Forever still endears, with Kucka’s high-pitched vocals layered over a leathery bass line and thundering beats on an album standout. The new single and tropical electro-pop bounder 1993 (No Chill), featuring Jess Kent, arrives a month too late to achieve summer anthem status.

Work Me Out combines the moody vocals of US rapper Rye Rye with heavy bass and flourishes of steel drums to form one of several dance-floor grinders, while Playback employs steel drums, layered chiming bells, keys and epic synths behind Reija Lee’s powerful vocal.

Desert is a pensive closer, opening with a delicate key line before graduating to a crisp beat, letting Guy Sebastian’s yearning vocal shine; lovely stuff.

With heavy doses of shimmering synths, Vacation is in some ways reflective of a sound being pushed by many of Perry’s contemporaries over the past year or two, and one that may be fast approaching its zenith.

Yet he manages to largely avoid a sense of sameness on Vacation through the performances of his wildly eclectic roster of guest vocalists, and prioritising a sense of bouncy fun amid an endless summer backdrop.

Tim McNamara