http://gu.com/p/xjgt8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/oct/14/popandrock.shopping
Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, the twin peaks of American
rock'n'roll, have lately fallen into a rhythm. Last April the pair
released protest albums at the same time, Young making pleas to 'impeach
the president' on Living with War, while Springsteen, on We Shall
Overcome, reworked some Pete Seeger anthems that had involved a previous
American adventure abroad.
Now both have chosen the same month to
release studio albums that mark a return to roots. For Magic,
Springsteen is back with the E-Street Band for the first time since The
Rising five years ago, while Young, for Chrome Dreams II, has
reassembled old friends like Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and steel
guitarist Ben Keith from Harvest days. This retrenchment seems highly
conscious in both cases, a taking of stock. Young recorded his album at a
garage studio in Redwood City, California, which features vintage
petrol pumps on the forecourt and well-worn recording equipment inside.
Springsteen put Magic together down south in Atlanta.
Listening to
the results side by side, you are reminded of how, more than any of
their contemporaries, more than shape-shifting Dylan, Young and
Springsteen have always traded primarily in authenticity, and how they
have come at that virtue from entirely different directions. Young has
won his integrity by always following his eccentric muse, and forever
testing his audience's faith; Springsteen by never letting his ego get
in the way of the music, always putting in a full shift for his fans.
Young has been 'Shakey' so long, true to an ever-wavering sense of self
and belief, that it has often seemed that only his guitar keeps him
upright. The values formed in Asbury Park, New Jersey have been
Springsteen's consistent touchstone. Young has been a hippie and a
supporter of Ronald Reagan; Springsteen has never taken a narcotic and
has never stopped doing union benefits.
As songwriters, they are
both interpreters of the common American man, but Young, the son of a
Canadian sportswriter, has always dramatised himself as the outsider,
looking on, wearing his angst as a badge of honour; Springsteen, whose
father was a bus driver, rarely recognises a distinction between himself
and his subjects; his voice suggests they win together and they lose
together. They are both obsessed by the American road but Young sees it
in Kerouac's sense, with no particular end in sight; Springsteen comes
at it through Steinbeck, as the way back home. You can hear this
stand-off in their harmonicas; Young's always sounds like it is played
in a howling desert, Springsteen's asks for a campfire or a back-room
bar.
Either side of 60 - Young is three years Springsteen's elder
at 61 - both have produced classic albums in their own image. Chrome
Dreams II grows out of a familiar Young legend. It is the sequel to a
record that was never made. (Chrome Dreams, scheduled for release in
1977, is one of several ghost ships in his archive, victim of a sudden
shift in obsession.) It is characterised by its absence of coherence.
The opening three tracks were first recorded in the Eighties or were
occasionally performed live then; they, along with what follows, are a
tentative kind of primer in Young's catalogue of the past 40 years,
veering suddenly from the grungy guitar of 'Dirty Old Man' (I'm a dirty
old man, I do what I can/ I like to get hammered on Friday night') to
the saccharine gospel of 'Shining Light', which is Young in best
bed-wetting mode, with the kind of simpleton falsetto ('shine light, you
always show me, you always guide me') that only he can get away with.
The
12 tracks are held together by two things: a tremulous kind of optimism
that sometimes extends to a dippy faith - an antidote to the righteous
anger of Young's last, political outing; and by the 18-minute epic
'Ordinary People', which Young defiantly plans to release as a single.
Backed
with the gusto of big horns, Young's guitar is once again a thing of
wonder on this track, now slashing and burning, now playing transcendent
dance riffs. The song itself, dating back nearly 20 years, is a
tracking shot of the margins of American working life, of the kind
Springsteen has made home territory. Young invests it with more
alienation, producing a sort of paranoiac 'Penny Lane': there's a man
'dealing antiques in a hardware store... with five pit bulls inside,
just a warning to the people'. Young can catalogue American individuals,
like a latter-day Walt Whitman, but always in the context of a song of
himself. 'Everyday people, I got faith in the regular kind,' he wails,
but it's more in desperation than hope.
One of his strategies to
save himself from despair is to employ something that Springsteen has
never properly risked: little fragments of comedy. Young finds it in the
nursery rhyme bathos of the splendid 'Ever After' which offsets a Hank
Williams mood with a classic Young piece of wisdom: 'A man had many
boxes/ And he liked them quite a lot/ But they would not be opened /
'Cause the value would be shot.' And he suggests it, too, in the surreal
comfort blanket of the album's pay-off, 'The Way', in which the
plinking of Young's piano and the piping voices of the Young People's
Chorus of New York City are reminiscent of 'There's No One Quite Like
Grandma' and St Winifred's School Choir: 'This is the way, we know the
way, we've found the way' trill the choristers as the troubled Pied
Piper Young leads them along some primrose path to who knows where.
There
aren't laughs on Magic, or even many surprises. Springsteen's songs are
all new, and they all seem to come from almost exactly the same place.
Magic is an uptempo rock album, back to the basics of love lost and
found and smalltown tragedy after the overt rabble rousing of the past
three years that began with his Vote for Change tour around the election
of 2004. Springsteen has always been a lyricist capable of achingly
great lines, but as ever he uses them sparingly; you are lulled with
plenty of 'Your world keeps turning round and round' before you get a
'Pour me a drink Theresa in one of those glasses you dust off/ And I'll
watch the bones on your back like the Stations of the Cross.'
There
are no 18-minute tracks on this album. Springsteen does not wilfully
try patience. There is, though, also a lack of genuine event; some songs
will only come alive on stage. This sense of 'and the next, and the
next', is partly redeemed by the lust and energy that Springsteen still
finds with his band, in particular the testosterone sax of the great
Clarence Clemons. There are one or two tracks that might eventually
stand up alongside 'Glory Days', 'Your Own Worst Enemy', say, or 'Long
Walk Home', though nothing with the heart of Nebraska or The Ghost of
Tom Joad. This album is, as the Boss announces on the opening track
'Radio Nowhere', about 'finding his way home' after a few years of
excursions into other territory. 'Is there anybody alive out there? I
just want to hear some rhythm...' You can picture the arms raised in
response.
The title track, 'Magic', suggests how easy this rhythm
has become for this band: 'I got a coin in my pocket, I can make it
disappear/ I got a card up my sleeve I'll pull it out your ear' - but
that doesn't make it any less energising a sound. And one thing
Springsteen does share with Young is that his years of sincerity allow
him to pull off the big sentimental finale, though this one could hardly
be further from 'The Way'. 'Terry's Song' was a late addition to the
album written for Frank 'Terry' Magovern, Springsteen's personal
assistant for 23 years, who died in July. It is, unlike much of the
album, one from the heart, with a refrain - 'when they built you
brother, they broke the mould' - that proves there is still no cliche
yet written from which Springsteen's voice can't wrench full-scale
pathos.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Doves Some Cities Review
For a band who have built a rock career out of being rain-lashed,
rueful Mancunians, Doves begin their third album on an
uncharacteristically sunny note. Andy Williams's insistent drums on the
title track are pure Motown - belying, perhaps, the trio's dancing roots
as Sub Sub. Brother Jez Williams's reverberating guitar rings out
boldly on 'Some Cities', as though communing with U2 from across the
Irish Sea. Singer Jimi Goodwin has never sounded so upbeat, his voice
momentarily free from the gruffness that cloaked it on preceding Doves
albums, 2002's The Last Broadcast and their debut, Lost Souls.
Where is the obligatory miasma of old industry and dirty weather, you wonder; the thunderheads stripped of silver linings? Even the next song, 'Black and White Town', swings perkily (as its Top 10 status last week confirmed) as it tells of the emptiness of satellite towns. Later, there are even more opalescent musical episodes that, strangely, recall the fairyscapes of Mercury Rev, the polar opposite of Doves' northern, urban, down-in-the-mouth, would-be epic rock.
The Dove-grey fog sets in later, after a fashion. But Some Cities ' sprightly opening throws into relief a set of expectations about Doves that don't necessarily hold water. Misunderstandings hover around the Manchester trio like steam. They are not really that dour, for instance. Doves' debut, Lost Souls, may have slotted easily into the grim-up-north canon, but its sequel, The Last Broadcast , strove, albeit in a lugubrious way, to find a bright side, even while its title smacked of finality. So does Some Cities.
The main misunderstanding about Doves, though, is that they are a great band whose moment - unlike, say, Radiohead or Coldplay - has never quite come. Although Doves scored a No 1 album last time around, Some Cities looks likely to crank the trio up a few more notches in the nation's estimation - not least because significant portions of it sounds like U2 (especially 'Walk With Fire') or Radiohead circa OK Computer, except with a few more bells and filigree. Producer Ben Hillier (best known for his work for Elbow and Blur's Think Tank) has presumably brought this technologically literate spangle to Some Cities, adding mysterious new dimensions to the likes of 'Almost Forgot Myself' and 'Snowden' (sic). But although it will doubtless be regarded warmly come next December's best-of lists, this still isn't a great album, merely a pleasant one.
Doves make the kind of serviceable, melancholy rock that reassures otherwise bluff men that emotions - especially emotions about Manchester - are things it's OK to have. But there is just something rather uneventful about the plodding anthemics at the heart of these songs. They make majestic shapes, but remain trapped in a four-square rock dynamic. 'The Storm', for instance, borrows a bit of what Portishead had, but the heavy atmospherics don't sufficiently disguise the lack of a viable song.
'One of These Days' boasts both clever oscillations and straight-ahead guitars but, for all its layers, remains curiously unmoving. The more melancholy songs, such as 'Ambition', use effects such as echoes to create a sense of plangent scope that the songs don't warrant.
Doves are at their best when they don't live up to cliches about themselves - when they surprise us. 'Sky Starts Falling' deploys those Motown drums again, joined by an edgy guitar. Goodwin, Williams and Williams have remembered to write a tune and when their guitars crash in, it's with purpose and vitality. Wallowing is what everyone expects of them, but Doves really prove their worth when they perk up.
Where is the obligatory miasma of old industry and dirty weather, you wonder; the thunderheads stripped of silver linings? Even the next song, 'Black and White Town', swings perkily (as its Top 10 status last week confirmed) as it tells of the emptiness of satellite towns. Later, there are even more opalescent musical episodes that, strangely, recall the fairyscapes of Mercury Rev, the polar opposite of Doves' northern, urban, down-in-the-mouth, would-be epic rock.
The Dove-grey fog sets in later, after a fashion. But Some Cities ' sprightly opening throws into relief a set of expectations about Doves that don't necessarily hold water. Misunderstandings hover around the Manchester trio like steam. They are not really that dour, for instance. Doves' debut, Lost Souls, may have slotted easily into the grim-up-north canon, but its sequel, The Last Broadcast , strove, albeit in a lugubrious way, to find a bright side, even while its title smacked of finality. So does Some Cities.
The main misunderstanding about Doves, though, is that they are a great band whose moment - unlike, say, Radiohead or Coldplay - has never quite come. Although Doves scored a No 1 album last time around, Some Cities looks likely to crank the trio up a few more notches in the nation's estimation - not least because significant portions of it sounds like U2 (especially 'Walk With Fire') or Radiohead circa OK Computer, except with a few more bells and filigree. Producer Ben Hillier (best known for his work for Elbow and Blur's Think Tank) has presumably brought this technologically literate spangle to Some Cities, adding mysterious new dimensions to the likes of 'Almost Forgot Myself' and 'Snowden' (sic). But although it will doubtless be regarded warmly come next December's best-of lists, this still isn't a great album, merely a pleasant one.
Doves make the kind of serviceable, melancholy rock that reassures otherwise bluff men that emotions - especially emotions about Manchester - are things it's OK to have. But there is just something rather uneventful about the plodding anthemics at the heart of these songs. They make majestic shapes, but remain trapped in a four-square rock dynamic. 'The Storm', for instance, borrows a bit of what Portishead had, but the heavy atmospherics don't sufficiently disguise the lack of a viable song.
'One of These Days' boasts both clever oscillations and straight-ahead guitars but, for all its layers, remains curiously unmoving. The more melancholy songs, such as 'Ambition', use effects such as echoes to create a sense of plangent scope that the songs don't warrant.
Doves are at their best when they don't live up to cliches about themselves - when they surprise us. 'Sky Starts Falling' deploys those Motown drums again, joined by an edgy guitar. Goodwin, Williams and Williams have remembered to write a tune and when their guitars crash in, it's with purpose and vitality. Wallowing is what everyone expects of them, but Doves really prove their worth when they perk up.
R.E.M. Accelerate Review
http://gu.com/p/xk8c8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/mar/16/popandrock.shopping1
There comes a point in any established band's career when looking backwards seems to be the only possible way to move forwards. When they entered the studio last year to make their 14th album with producer 'Jacknife' Lee, REM were effectively a busted flush. They had lost their way around the turn of the millennium, a fact made inescapable by the abundance of lacklustre songs littering their last two albums. Anyone who heard 'Wanderlust', which sounded like a tribute to the Wonder Stuff, could only marvel at how far they had fallen.
Accelerate, then, is the album REM had to make if they were to retain any sense of purpose. It's blissfully short and sharp - 11 songs in less than 35 minutes - and cannot help but re-ignite memories of a time when they were the torchbearers for American alternative music in its mid-Eighties prime.
Beginning with the 'Just a Touch'-like fervour of 'Living Well is the Best Revenge', it's full of little nods and winks of affirmation to the long-suffering fan, intent on marrying Reckoning's liquid guitar pop to the more mature crunch of Life's Rich Pageant. From the ringing riff that pops up halfway through 'Hollow Man' to Michael Stipe once again feeling 'gravity's pull', throughout REM explicitly acknowledge the bittersweet reality of their predicament: after 25 years of record-making, returning to somewhere close to where they started is now all people really require of them.
They duly oblige. Ditching the mid-paced piano-led confections of recent times, they instead bring back to the fore Peter Buck's primitive guitar lines and Mike Mills's endlessly inventive bass playing and high, keening harmonies. Any danger of dutiful self-parody, however, is blown away by the conviction of the performances and the strength of the songs. Crucially, a reinvigorated Stipe has relocated both his sense of mischief and his ability to write a melody that doesn't evaporate as soon as it hits the air. 'Man-Sized Wreath' is big, bold and brilliant, while 'Supernatural Superserious' is their finest single in a decade, a crunching, sing-along hymn of teenage empathy. Best of all is 'Horse to Water', a galloping Proustian rush straight into the heart of 1984, which rather improbably features Stipe caught in the crossfire of a 'Friday night fuck-or-fight pub crawl.'
This youthful swagger reaches its zenith on 'I'm Gonna DJ', a consciously dumb-ass V-sign to mortality, but Accelerate isn't all about mapping out some foot-to-the-pedal second adolescence. 'Mr Richards' is a lovely slice of druggy, droney late Sixties pop, while both 'Houston' - two exceedingly dark minutes of muttered paranoia - and the minor-key ballad 'Until The Day I Die' recall the battered acoustic beauty of Automatic For the People. Only 'Sing for the Submarine' makes any claim to epic status, slowly shifting up through the gears as it twists and turns into a beautifully realised lament for something that's 'destroyed then built again,' but even then there are no ostentatious production flourishes.
Accelerate isn't that kind of record. Instead, it's mostly fast and unfussy, convincing and committed. For those of us certain that the fire had gone out completely following the insipid Around the Sun, it provides a stirring, joyous rebuke. The inescapable side effect, of course, is that in the process of reminding us what a great band they can still be, REM also remind us what a truly phenomenal band they once were. This far down the line, that's probably the best anyone can expect.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/mar/16/popandrock.shopping1
There comes a point in any established band's career when looking backwards seems to be the only possible way to move forwards. When they entered the studio last year to make their 14th album with producer 'Jacknife' Lee, REM were effectively a busted flush. They had lost their way around the turn of the millennium, a fact made inescapable by the abundance of lacklustre songs littering their last two albums. Anyone who heard 'Wanderlust', which sounded like a tribute to the Wonder Stuff, could only marvel at how far they had fallen.
Accelerate, then, is the album REM had to make if they were to retain any sense of purpose. It's blissfully short and sharp - 11 songs in less than 35 minutes - and cannot help but re-ignite memories of a time when they were the torchbearers for American alternative music in its mid-Eighties prime.
Beginning with the 'Just a Touch'-like fervour of 'Living Well is the Best Revenge', it's full of little nods and winks of affirmation to the long-suffering fan, intent on marrying Reckoning's liquid guitar pop to the more mature crunch of Life's Rich Pageant. From the ringing riff that pops up halfway through 'Hollow Man' to Michael Stipe once again feeling 'gravity's pull', throughout REM explicitly acknowledge the bittersweet reality of their predicament: after 25 years of record-making, returning to somewhere close to where they started is now all people really require of them.
They duly oblige. Ditching the mid-paced piano-led confections of recent times, they instead bring back to the fore Peter Buck's primitive guitar lines and Mike Mills's endlessly inventive bass playing and high, keening harmonies. Any danger of dutiful self-parody, however, is blown away by the conviction of the performances and the strength of the songs. Crucially, a reinvigorated Stipe has relocated both his sense of mischief and his ability to write a melody that doesn't evaporate as soon as it hits the air. 'Man-Sized Wreath' is big, bold and brilliant, while 'Supernatural Superserious' is their finest single in a decade, a crunching, sing-along hymn of teenage empathy. Best of all is 'Horse to Water', a galloping Proustian rush straight into the heart of 1984, which rather improbably features Stipe caught in the crossfire of a 'Friday night fuck-or-fight pub crawl.'
This youthful swagger reaches its zenith on 'I'm Gonna DJ', a consciously dumb-ass V-sign to mortality, but Accelerate isn't all about mapping out some foot-to-the-pedal second adolescence. 'Mr Richards' is a lovely slice of druggy, droney late Sixties pop, while both 'Houston' - two exceedingly dark minutes of muttered paranoia - and the minor-key ballad 'Until The Day I Die' recall the battered acoustic beauty of Automatic For the People. Only 'Sing for the Submarine' makes any claim to epic status, slowly shifting up through the gears as it twists and turns into a beautifully realised lament for something that's 'destroyed then built again,' but even then there are no ostentatious production flourishes.
Accelerate isn't that kind of record. Instead, it's mostly fast and unfussy, convincing and committed. For those of us certain that the fire had gone out completely following the insipid Around the Sun, it provides a stirring, joyous rebuke. The inescapable side effect, of course, is that in the process of reminding us what a great band they can still be, REM also remind us what a truly phenomenal band they once were. This far down the line, that's probably the best anyone can expect.
Neil Young Chrome Dreams II Review
http://gu.com/p/xjfje
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/oct/21/popandrock.shopping
You could never accuse Neil Young of being a cars'n'girls songwriter. But Chrome Dreams II, named after an old Young album, Chrome Dreams, which was abandoned on the cusp of release in 1977, is, at least in part, about cars and what they stand for. It has little in common with its namesake, although Young-spotters will be glad to hear that the man's loping pace and guitar squalls are undiminished.
The cover image features a stark car bonnet logo. The US car industry, meanwhile, features heavily on 'Ordinary People', an 18-minute epic that rolls on like an indestructible station wagon. As the 'ordinary people' of the song cope with crooks and dealers, car factories are closing. Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca (saved the company, laid off thousands) gets a name-check on this hitherto unreleased classic. It dates from 1988, but feels much older, not least for the quaint way that Young mythologises his 'patch-of-ground people'.
Young's rear-view mirror takes in much more: fans of his bootlegs might recognise 'Beautiful Bluebird' (as twee as it sounds) and 'Boxcar' (as cliched as it sounds) as new recordings of older songs. Young was meant to be releasing an archive set this year. Instead, he's chosen to reupholster unreleased tracks here, accompanied by newer material.
The choicest cut of the fresh meat is 'No Hidden Path'. It's a love song, of sorts, brimming with purpose, despite its length, the 'girl' counterpart to all the 'car' revving.
The easy-going waltz of 'Shining Light' and the soul-lite 'The Believer' are two more pleasant lurches backwards in sound - to the Fifties and Sixties; bright, dewy-eyed times. In the Fifties, chrome was everywhere; a symbol of North American aspiration and faith in the future. Now, we have wars for oil and environmental meltdown. Even Young, a notorious car-hog, has woken up to the shattering of the chrome dream. There are several songs about finding a way back on to the righteous path; one decent ('Spirit Road'), one terrible ('The Way'). But perhaps the most fun is the pitch-black, incorrigible 'Dirty Old Man'. A protean clatter, it raises two fingers at the rest of the album, then drives off a cliff.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/oct/21/popandrock.shopping
You could never accuse Neil Young of being a cars'n'girls songwriter. But Chrome Dreams II, named after an old Young album, Chrome Dreams, which was abandoned on the cusp of release in 1977, is, at least in part, about cars and what they stand for. It has little in common with its namesake, although Young-spotters will be glad to hear that the man's loping pace and guitar squalls are undiminished.
The cover image features a stark car bonnet logo. The US car industry, meanwhile, features heavily on 'Ordinary People', an 18-minute epic that rolls on like an indestructible station wagon. As the 'ordinary people' of the song cope with crooks and dealers, car factories are closing. Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca (saved the company, laid off thousands) gets a name-check on this hitherto unreleased classic. It dates from 1988, but feels much older, not least for the quaint way that Young mythologises his 'patch-of-ground people'.
Young's rear-view mirror takes in much more: fans of his bootlegs might recognise 'Beautiful Bluebird' (as twee as it sounds) and 'Boxcar' (as cliched as it sounds) as new recordings of older songs. Young was meant to be releasing an archive set this year. Instead, he's chosen to reupholster unreleased tracks here, accompanied by newer material.
The choicest cut of the fresh meat is 'No Hidden Path'. It's a love song, of sorts, brimming with purpose, despite its length, the 'girl' counterpart to all the 'car' revving.
The easy-going waltz of 'Shining Light' and the soul-lite 'The Believer' are two more pleasant lurches backwards in sound - to the Fifties and Sixties; bright, dewy-eyed times. In the Fifties, chrome was everywhere; a symbol of North American aspiration and faith in the future. Now, we have wars for oil and environmental meltdown. Even Young, a notorious car-hog, has woken up to the shattering of the chrome dream. There are several songs about finding a way back on to the righteous path; one decent ('Spirit Road'), one terrible ('The Way'). But perhaps the most fun is the pitch-black, incorrigible 'Dirty Old Man'. A protean clatter, it raises two fingers at the rest of the album, then drives off a cliff.
Bruce Springsteen Magic Review
http://gu.com/p/xjg88
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/sep/30/popandrock.springsteen
With itchy guitars still in vogue, these are not air-punching musical times. But anyone braving a festival this summer cannot have missed the Hold Steady, tourers of vintage rock. Lyrics apart, the Steady have been channelling the manly musicality of Springsteen's E Street Band - bold chords, honky-tonk pianos, rousing choruses and all, energetically priming old timers and neophytes alike for the return of classic Boss.
Magic is the record that many Springsteen fans have been waiting for since 2002's The Rising, the last time Springsteen and his faithful E Streeters plugged in together. It will be his most adored since the Eighties, when this anti-war liberal was the guitar hero of all America. The 18-wheeler roll of these muscular pop songs, meanwhile, harks back to Springsteen's Seventies Jersey Shore sound.
After last year's Seeger Sessions disc and tour of traditional folk songs, and 2005's subdued Devils and Dust, Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.
If you want to get a song played on the radio in America, lyrics including 'radio' and 'America' can't hurt and these are words that Springsteen's lead single 'Radio Nowhere' deploys quite purposefully. The unease in the lyrics is taken up by the urgency of the band, evidently overjoyed to be rocking out.
And so it continues: puissant rock songs, as tight as drumskins, carrying little fat but saturated with Clarence Clemons's sax, Sopranos star Steven Van Zandt's guitar and mandolin and Roy Bittan's piano and organ, not to mention a 15-strong string mob. 'Livin' in the Future' is a good-time bar-rocker that announces its arrival in a blare of brass.
Listen closely, though, and Springsteen is nursing a broken heart oozing with political allegory. His last E Street Band record, The Rising, dealt maturely with 9/11; on Magic his thoughts turn again and again to the current war ('Devil's Arcade') and the rift in American society that the body bags have brought about ('Gypsy Biker'). No one can lace musical triumphalism with mordant protest like Springsteen, whose 'Born in the USA' remains the exemplar of the genre.
Superbly balanced between the joy of a big rock sound and the troubles of the age, Magic is a saddened, pissed-off record, dancing to forget on a Saturday night, as the 'bodies' get 'stacked up outside the door'.
There are even more surprises. Magic may be a return to heartland Springsteen, but even this familiar landscape can remind you of other places. On 'Girls in Their Summer Clothes', Springsteen is a minor-key crooner, whose wry downturns sound remarkably like Stephin Merritt (who records as the Magnetic Fields), an indie singer songwriting minnow compared to Bruce.
The most pristine moment comes in the first verse of another, less political, love song. 'Pour me a drink Theresa/ From one of those glasses you dust off/ And I'll watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross,' goes 'I'll Work for Your Love'.
In it, there is drinking, some redemption and the burn of traditional blue-collar Jersey Shore Catholicism. Indeed, these are Bruce key notes that echo in the songs of his cheerleaders, the Hold Steady. But no one can perform the marriage of sophistication and ordinariness or hymn everyday joys and tragedies with nuance quite like Bruce Springsteen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/sep/30/popandrock.springsteen
With itchy guitars still in vogue, these are not air-punching musical times. But anyone braving a festival this summer cannot have missed the Hold Steady, tourers of vintage rock. Lyrics apart, the Steady have been channelling the manly musicality of Springsteen's E Street Band - bold chords, honky-tonk pianos, rousing choruses and all, energetically priming old timers and neophytes alike for the return of classic Boss.
Magic is the record that many Springsteen fans have been waiting for since 2002's The Rising, the last time Springsteen and his faithful E Streeters plugged in together. It will be his most adored since the Eighties, when this anti-war liberal was the guitar hero of all America. The 18-wheeler roll of these muscular pop songs, meanwhile, harks back to Springsteen's Seventies Jersey Shore sound.
After last year's Seeger Sessions disc and tour of traditional folk songs, and 2005's subdued Devils and Dust, Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.
If you want to get a song played on the radio in America, lyrics including 'radio' and 'America' can't hurt and these are words that Springsteen's lead single 'Radio Nowhere' deploys quite purposefully. The unease in the lyrics is taken up by the urgency of the band, evidently overjoyed to be rocking out.
And so it continues: puissant rock songs, as tight as drumskins, carrying little fat but saturated with Clarence Clemons's sax, Sopranos star Steven Van Zandt's guitar and mandolin and Roy Bittan's piano and organ, not to mention a 15-strong string mob. 'Livin' in the Future' is a good-time bar-rocker that announces its arrival in a blare of brass.
Listen closely, though, and Springsteen is nursing a broken heart oozing with political allegory. His last E Street Band record, The Rising, dealt maturely with 9/11; on Magic his thoughts turn again and again to the current war ('Devil's Arcade') and the rift in American society that the body bags have brought about ('Gypsy Biker'). No one can lace musical triumphalism with mordant protest like Springsteen, whose 'Born in the USA' remains the exemplar of the genre.
Superbly balanced between the joy of a big rock sound and the troubles of the age, Magic is a saddened, pissed-off record, dancing to forget on a Saturday night, as the 'bodies' get 'stacked up outside the door'.
There are even more surprises. Magic may be a return to heartland Springsteen, but even this familiar landscape can remind you of other places. On 'Girls in Their Summer Clothes', Springsteen is a minor-key crooner, whose wry downturns sound remarkably like Stephin Merritt (who records as the Magnetic Fields), an indie singer songwriting minnow compared to Bruce.
The most pristine moment comes in the first verse of another, less political, love song. 'Pour me a drink Theresa/ From one of those glasses you dust off/ And I'll watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross,' goes 'I'll Work for Your Love'.
In it, there is drinking, some redemption and the burn of traditional blue-collar Jersey Shore Catholicism. Indeed, these are Bruce key notes that echo in the songs of his cheerleaders, the Hold Steady. But no one can perform the marriage of sophistication and ordinariness or hymn everyday joys and tragedies with nuance quite like Bruce Springsteen.
Bjork Volta Review
http://gu.com/p/xj5gm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/apr/22/popandrock.shopping1
The last time she was here, with 2004's Medulla, Bjork treated listeners to a smorgasbord of avant-garde vocal ideas and no instruments. It was a clever bit of techno-ethnography, but little else. 'A trip to the shops with my iPod - gosh, what I really want to hear is some Inuit throat music.'
This sixth album finds her, at least notionally, offering something for those who like Fun Bjork (the ear-popping sprite who, over a decade ago, was 'Violently Happy') and those who appreciate dress-eating Art Bjork.
So Timbaland, taking time off from reinventing pop music, contributes to three tunes. None will have Nelly Furtado complaining that the uber-producer short-changed her. But the car-assembly-line beats and synth squelches of 'Innocence' suggest that Sugarcubes featuring Justin Timberlake would have been the best group ever. 'Earth Intruders' is pretty good, too, its martial robo-stomp lent much-needed soul by experimental Congolese band Konono No 1 (no, me neither). But the third Timbaland tune, 'Hope', sounds like an explosion at the BBC World Music Awards - an unfortunate image, given the awkward lyrics: 'What's the lesser of two evils?/ If a suicide bomber made to look pregnant manages to kill her target or not.'
Best not to listen too closely to the words. As ever with Bjork, they're more about feeling than meaning. 'I am leaving this harbour, giving urban a farewell/Its inhabitants seem too keen on God,' she coos on the beautiful 'Wanderlust', its beats working well with trumpets, despite the latter being credited to a 'Facilitator of Conceptual Brass Ideas'.
Which brings us to Antony 'and the Johnsons' Hegarty, aka 'Supplier of Pissed-Up Pub Singer Theatricality' - his pseudo-castrato flights on the operatic 'Dull Flame of Desire' and the minimal lament 'My Juvenile' suggest that Vic Reeves has wandered into the studio.
That's the trouble with Volta. Listen intently, repeatedly, and you'll hear much to widen your consciousness: the next time someone offers me a Chinese pipa, I'll know to admire its fluttering stringed majesty rather than eat it. But listen for, you know, enjoyment and you'll be left wanting. Bjork shouting through the lumpen 'Declare Independence' ('don't let them do that to you') is like watching Teletubbies with a headache. The mournful brass of the elegant 'Pneumonia' is an example of how great things might have been. Couldn't we have more - and better - tunes as well as the restless, boundary-pushing innovation?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/apr/22/popandrock.shopping1
The last time she was here, with 2004's Medulla, Bjork treated listeners to a smorgasbord of avant-garde vocal ideas and no instruments. It was a clever bit of techno-ethnography, but little else. 'A trip to the shops with my iPod - gosh, what I really want to hear is some Inuit throat music.'
This sixth album finds her, at least notionally, offering something for those who like Fun Bjork (the ear-popping sprite who, over a decade ago, was 'Violently Happy') and those who appreciate dress-eating Art Bjork.
So Timbaland, taking time off from reinventing pop music, contributes to three tunes. None will have Nelly Furtado complaining that the uber-producer short-changed her. But the car-assembly-line beats and synth squelches of 'Innocence' suggest that Sugarcubes featuring Justin Timberlake would have been the best group ever. 'Earth Intruders' is pretty good, too, its martial robo-stomp lent much-needed soul by experimental Congolese band Konono No 1 (no, me neither). But the third Timbaland tune, 'Hope', sounds like an explosion at the BBC World Music Awards - an unfortunate image, given the awkward lyrics: 'What's the lesser of two evils?/ If a suicide bomber made to look pregnant manages to kill her target or not.'
Best not to listen too closely to the words. As ever with Bjork, they're more about feeling than meaning. 'I am leaving this harbour, giving urban a farewell/Its inhabitants seem too keen on God,' she coos on the beautiful 'Wanderlust', its beats working well with trumpets, despite the latter being credited to a 'Facilitator of Conceptual Brass Ideas'.
Which brings us to Antony 'and the Johnsons' Hegarty, aka 'Supplier of Pissed-Up Pub Singer Theatricality' - his pseudo-castrato flights on the operatic 'Dull Flame of Desire' and the minimal lament 'My Juvenile' suggest that Vic Reeves has wandered into the studio.
That's the trouble with Volta. Listen intently, repeatedly, and you'll hear much to widen your consciousness: the next time someone offers me a Chinese pipa, I'll know to admire its fluttering stringed majesty rather than eat it. But listen for, you know, enjoyment and you'll be left wanting. Bjork shouting through the lumpen 'Declare Independence' ('don't let them do that to you') is like watching Teletubbies with a headache. The mournful brass of the elegant 'Pneumonia' is an example of how great things might have been. Couldn't we have more - and better - tunes as well as the restless, boundary-pushing innovation?
Doves Kingdom of Rust Review
http://gu.com/p/26x8g
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/15/doves-kingdom-of-rust-review
Doves are from Wilmslow, Cheshire, and the north-west has long been a presence in their work. We're not talking about the kitchen-sink dramas of the Smiths' Manchester or the Beatles' Liverpool here, but the topography of the entire region. This is a band who not only named a track on their second album, 2002's The Last Broadcast, after the M62, the motorway that links Hull to Liverpool, but recorded said track under one of its flyovers. Social division was the subject of their best single thus far, the northern soul stomp of Black and White Town, from 2005's Some Cities; there's even an old B-side called Northenden, after an area of south Manchester that was once rural but was absorbed into the city years ago. Visitors be warned: apparently "the kids are deranged" and "love guns and kidnap".
Recorded on a Cheshire farm, fourth album Kingdom of Rust sees
singer and bassist Jimi Goodwin, guitarist Jez Williams and drummer Andy
Williams finally develop these threads at length. It's a meditation on
their surroundings, peaking on the title track, and current single, with
its juxtaposition of heavy industry and natural beauty, of "cooling
towers" and "thunder booming out on the moors", the scenery accompanied
by driving, stadium-sized rock, the kind U2 have temporarily forgotten
how to create. In fact, this bid to render the landscape in musical form
makes Kingdom of Rust a Lancastrian Joshua Tree and, should anyone miss
the point, the heartbreaking video for the title track is a snowy road
movie, destination Blackpool, Vegas of the north.
Previous albums never quite lived up to the band's facility for knockout singles, but this one holds the attention. There's a dreamy, addictive sadness to proceedings, their customary gruff melancholy now inflated to match the panoramic setting. It's present in Jetstream's fantasies of escape, an airport scene whose clattering drums deliberately evoke an airliner juddering to life, but most prominent on Birds Flew Backwards, the mid-album breather that wistfully marks the changing of the seasons. "Summer's on the way/ Now the swallows have arrived," notes Goodwin, coming over all Bill Oddie.
Despite the occasional misstep - Compulsion's monochrome funk seems to have come from another album - it's hard to shake the feeling that Doves have found an extra gear. It's probably down to nothing more than maturity, which, given all Elbow's recent accolades, is a more valuable currency in an era when blinking means you risk missing most artists' entire careers. Doves' record company will doubtless be hoping for an Elbow-style second wind of their own, and in some ways the bands are similar - sad sack blokes who never make bad records but, until recently in the case of Guy Garvey's mob, could never locate a properly mainstream audience either. However, Doves continue to lack a figurehead: Goodwin has Garvey's beard, but not his easy charm. Instead, they'll have to make it on the music alone. It's good enough.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/15/doves-kingdom-of-rust-review
Doves are from Wilmslow, Cheshire, and the north-west has long been a presence in their work. We're not talking about the kitchen-sink dramas of the Smiths' Manchester or the Beatles' Liverpool here, but the topography of the entire region. This is a band who not only named a track on their second album, 2002's The Last Broadcast, after the M62, the motorway that links Hull to Liverpool, but recorded said track under one of its flyovers. Social division was the subject of their best single thus far, the northern soul stomp of Black and White Town, from 2005's Some Cities; there's even an old B-side called Northenden, after an area of south Manchester that was once rural but was absorbed into the city years ago. Visitors be warned: apparently "the kids are deranged" and "love guns and kidnap".
Previous albums never quite lived up to the band's facility for knockout singles, but this one holds the attention. There's a dreamy, addictive sadness to proceedings, their customary gruff melancholy now inflated to match the panoramic setting. It's present in Jetstream's fantasies of escape, an airport scene whose clattering drums deliberately evoke an airliner juddering to life, but most prominent on Birds Flew Backwards, the mid-album breather that wistfully marks the changing of the seasons. "Summer's on the way/ Now the swallows have arrived," notes Goodwin, coming over all Bill Oddie.
Despite the occasional misstep - Compulsion's monochrome funk seems to have come from another album - it's hard to shake the feeling that Doves have found an extra gear. It's probably down to nothing more than maturity, which, given all Elbow's recent accolades, is a more valuable currency in an era when blinking means you risk missing most artists' entire careers. Doves' record company will doubtless be hoping for an Elbow-style second wind of their own, and in some ways the bands are similar - sad sack blokes who never make bad records but, until recently in the case of Guy Garvey's mob, could never locate a properly mainstream audience either. However, Doves continue to lack a figurehead: Goodwin has Garvey's beard, but not his easy charm. Instead, they'll have to make it on the music alone. It's good enough.
Massive Attack Heligoland Review
http://gu.com/p/2e2qe
Just as you can tell a lot about a person by the company he or
she keeps, so the scale of a band's ambition can be gauged by their
guest vocalists. On paper, then, Massive Attack's first album in seven
years should mark a return to their glory days and the unparalleled Protection and Blue Lines.
There are contributions from Elbow star Guy Garvey, 3D's old mucker
Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval of 90s dream pop cult act Mazzy Star and, on
the opener, Pray For Rain, TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe. Best of
all, perhaps, for those who hated 100th Window, a 3D solo album
passed off as a Massive set, Daddy G has returned from his
"sabbatical", eager no doubt to save 3D from himself and inject a note
of something other than despair.
And yet, for the first half of Heligoland at least,
the Bristolians' fifth proper album is less than the sum of its
impressive parts. In a recent preview of the year ahead, one broadsheet
journalist described it as "ambitious" and a contender for the Mercury
award. Odd, given that unlike Portishead, say, who used their time in
exile to reinvent themselves, their fellow West Country act, in 2010,
sound as listless as they did seven years ago. As on 100th Window,
Mushroom's absence is pronounced, while 3D does little more than mutter
to himself – a one-time heavy hitter who's fallen on hard times. "I
want to get clean but I've got to get high," he half-raps on Rush
Minute, an intriguing opening in dire need of a song. Equally
forgettable are Babel and Psyche, both of which are sung by Martina
Topley-Bird and, like every record she has made since Maxinquaye, betray her desire to return to the mid-90s when drum'n'bass-flecked woozy soul was quite the latest thing.
Then, six songs into a characterless album, one on which ambience takes precedence over tunes, 3D and Daddy G unveil three stunning numbers that compare with anything in their back catalogue. The first, Guy Garvey's Flat of the Blade, evokes the weightless soul-jazz once particular to John Martyn, although the beats are shiny, skew-whiff and modern. "Things I've seen will chase me to the grave," warbles Garvey, the music reflecting his audible unease. It's followed, brilliantly, by Paradise Circus on which Hope Sandoval, both innocent and seductive, whispers her equivalent of Tracey Thorn's Protection over a minimal piano and handclaps. Then, on the mystical Saturday Come Slow, his cracking voice implying he's been up for half the night, Damon Albarn lays bare the vulnerability that his public air of self-confidence conceals. "Do you love me?" he cries over gently plucked strings, once again a pimple-faced, angelic teenager.
It's a question that must secretly trouble Massive too. Do we still love one of the best outfits of their age, a group that can still, infrequently, elicit accolades? Yes, but, if truth be told, the passion is subsiding and the 20-year itch is starting to kick in.
Then, six songs into a characterless album, one on which ambience takes precedence over tunes, 3D and Daddy G unveil three stunning numbers that compare with anything in their back catalogue. The first, Guy Garvey's Flat of the Blade, evokes the weightless soul-jazz once particular to John Martyn, although the beats are shiny, skew-whiff and modern. "Things I've seen will chase me to the grave," warbles Garvey, the music reflecting his audible unease. It's followed, brilliantly, by Paradise Circus on which Hope Sandoval, both innocent and seductive, whispers her equivalent of Tracey Thorn's Protection over a minimal piano and handclaps. Then, on the mystical Saturday Come Slow, his cracking voice implying he's been up for half the night, Damon Albarn lays bare the vulnerability that his public air of self-confidence conceals. "Do you love me?" he cries over gently plucked strings, once again a pimple-faced, angelic teenager.
It's a question that must secretly trouble Massive too. Do we still love one of the best outfits of their age, a group that can still, infrequently, elicit accolades? Yes, but, if truth be told, the passion is subsiding and the 20-year itch is starting to kick in.
Delicious Bookmarks in Firefox 4 and 5
- Start FF and navigate to “about:support”
- Click “Open containing folder”
- Navigate in the newly opened explorer window to subfolder “extensions\{2fa4ed95-0317-4c6a-a74c-5f3e3912c1f9}”:
- Open install.rdf and find the line with “em:maxVersion”
- Change the value to “4.0” (or "5.0")
- Save the file and restart FF.
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