Feb 212024
 

Nouvelle Vague is back with a new collection titled Should I Stay or Should I Go? I’m going to hesitate in answering that question, as there is the one more demanding, about how this lot are still going. No offense intended, mind; back in the day, Nouvelle Vague’s bossa nova revisiting of punk and new wave songs was really something to behold, with both the novelty and the application well worthy of praise and merit. But now? I know a version has been touring, but I hadn’t appreciated they were still marketing something new, or, more to the point, new to them. So, is this a soft sophisticated samba swirl through the song cycles of Eilish and Swift, Sheeran and whoever else the young people adore? Ummmm, nope. This is a further trawl through the hallowed dusty halls of the last century. Or, more to the point, hoping the audiences who loved them near two decades ago will still love them now, and are still listening to their tired old record collections.

I needed to check out the rationale, hastening to the requisite website. The fact that one of the originators, Olivier Libaux, is now the late Olivier Libaux should be enough confirm him spinning gently, counterclockwise, in his grave. I am presuming his then co-conspirator Marc Collin is still at the helm, as the agenda is seemingly unchanged, setting up a set of chanteuses unfamiliar with the originals, ironically perhaps all the more available as time flits by. So why does it seem now to, largely, pall, where it once delighted? Follow me…..
Continue reading »

Feb 142024
 

(hangs head) How did I not hear of this? How did Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth, a slice of prime r’n’b/jazz–acid jazz if you must–slip under the Cover Me radar last year? Alerted by the end-of-year lists of others, a quick shufti confirmed this demanded our attention. And it comes with quite an impressive back story to boot.

There are two Billy Valentines. There’s the 98-year-old blues and r’n’b man, William A. Valentine, and there’s 73-year-old who was one of the Valentine Brothers, r’n’b hitmakers of the 1970s into ’80s, best known for “Money Too Tight (To Mention),” to be later catapulted into ubiquity by Simply Red. (Their version is better…) This is the latter of the Valentines, however much I secretly hoped it the former.

After the brush with fame offered by “MTT(TM),” with their own version sinking under the lack of promotion capable of their then-tiny independent label, Valentine took on work with Bob Thiele Jr., as a writer for hire. Thiele Sr. was the boss of Impulse Records, when their roster covered acts such as Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane; later her served as the boss of Flying Dutchman Records, which had championed Gil Scott-Heron. Valentine and Thiele Jr. sold songs all over, ahead of some later traction of soundtracks: Valentine was one of the featured singers for The Sons Of Anarchy series, with a number of featured cameos. Come 2020, with Thiele Sr. deceased, his son felt it as good a time as any to revive the Flying Dutchman imprint, as part of the Acid Jazz family. Valentine was his first signing.

Taking a while to gather together the right combination of material and musician, Billy Valentine and the the Universal Truth dropped last March. It features eight songs drawn from the more militant factions of black music, or at least songs that reflect on that. There is some Gil Scott-Heron, some Curtis Mayfield and Pharaoh Sanders, with Stevie Wonder and Prince in there for good measure. Musicians include the likes of Immanuel Wilkins, Alex Acuña, Jeff Parker and Pino Palladino, so the album is class personified. Let’s play it!
Continue reading »

Dec 042023
 

Honeysuckle SwitchesThe last time we featured Amos Lee on this site, about a year ago, he was subject to such a savage kicking that even I felt bad, so it is with utter delight to discover Honeysuckle Switches: The Songs of Lucinda Williams. So often do we feature Lu here, given her prodigious thirst for covering the songs of others, it becomes especially good to see the compliment returned.

Lee and Williams have form; always a fan, Lee had a dream come true as she collaborated with him, for “Clear Blue Eyes,” on his 2011 break through album, 2011’s Mission Bell. Returning frequently to her songs in his concert settings, he says of her that “her vulnerability opened my heart,” citing how “she embraces sadness but is never enveloped by it.” I think that sentiment perfectly embraces the bittersweetness so often apparent in her songs, and Lee shares that quality in spades, a fragile strength that bears witness to his having maybe faced similar battles along the road.
Continue reading »

Dec 012023
 

Blimey, but hasn’t George Ivan been busy. He’s churned out four albums in the past three years; Accentuate the Positive is the second one this year to catch our eye. If Moving On Skiffle was his skiffle album, Accentate the Positive is Van Morrison’s homage to rock and roll, or the roots thereof. A wedge of tunes largely from the late ’40s into ’60s, this is the the sort of stuff that must have caught his ear as he was starting off himself, as a fresh faced r’n’b shouter from Belfast. And once more, by making this a parade of idiosyncratically offered cover versions, he avoids the problem that his recent streak of original material had in spades, that of his bluntly critical lyrical bombast. Which I, for one, salute, as this is mostly a joyous set of songs.
Continue reading »

Nov 202023
 

There is something happening, but you don’t know what it is, as someone once said, and they may well say it again, following this daring further adventure in the wonder of Ms. Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power. Despite a healthy and reliable back catalog of her own material. she has become quite the regular on these pages, care of her regular re-interpretations scattered liberally about her output. Sure, she has “done” Dylan before, but she has never, nor anyone else to my knowledge, taken on quite such a doughty challenge as she has on Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.

A legendary recording, initially only available on bootleg, Bob Dylan’s “Royal Albert Hall” concert (ask your hep uncle why that’s in quotes) has passed into the annals of not only Dylan mythology, but of the whole development of 20th century music. Few would ever risk such an endeavor as recreating, let alone in a live setting, let alone in the same live setting as the original. (OK, as the original claimed to be, the Dylan program actually coming from a concert at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. Plus, given that Manchester venue is now a Radisson hotel, it would be tricky.) But, ever the free spirit, this is what Cat Power did. And here we have the evidence.
Continue reading »

Nov 172023
 

Juliana Hatfield ELO
The Electric Light Orchestra, over a journey lasting 50 years and counting, have never been contemporaneously cool. Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood formed the band to allow them to fuse their love of pop with their classical training and knowledge. Orchestra was clearly a statement. Wood soon moved on to other things, but Lynne has stayed with the concept ever since. They have never been at the forefront of a trend, and only reluctantly acknowledge following any. During their rebirth in the 2010s, one journalist called them “anti-cool“, from a position of deep love and appreciation.

The music did all the talking, and it was in magnificent voice. Lynne himself liked to hide behind his Aviator glasses, thus providing a role model for Daft Punk hiding behind helmets. As Punk, the art form, was starting in their home country, ELO were touring the United Streets, beguiling live and TV audiences with a lineup including two cellos, a French Horn, and a Mellotron. However, the music was amazing. Classically influenced, prog adjacent, concept album addicted, disco flecked at times but with true song-making craft combined with expert musicianship. Lynne was clearly appreciated as a ‘musician’s musician’, with a remarkable catalogue of collaborations with some of the greatest of them all, but the public was behind the artists. Everyone got there in the end, and today ELO are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Lynne is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and many artists have sampled their work in acknowledgment of their influence.

Juliana Hatfield is a regular participant in tribute records, although she is sometimes not personally happy with the outcome. Since joining the American Laundromat label she has leaned into the tribute album as an art form in itself, with her well-received Police and Olivia Newton-John albums. She is also cool, by any reasonable measure. Nevertheless, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO is, by far, her most ambitious effort in that arena. The Police started as a three-piece, easier to mimic with limited resources. Olivia Newton-John (except, of course, when backed by ELO) had a manageable backing band. ELO, not so much.

There is also the size, and nature, of the canon: 15 studio albums over more than 40 years, ranging from bestsellers to “niche” successes.  Concept double albums. Disco influenced pop records. When selecting the material Hatfield had many challenges. Some could be dismissed on subject matter (there is a reason why “Evil Woman” is not extensively covered now), the sheer complexity of the sound, or a mixture of both (the pop opera story of a British suburban drone’s love life in the 70s might not resonate). One final level of difficulty: a worldwide pandemic that consigns artists to their studios/bedrooms. How difficult is it to recreate the sound of an orchestra as a three-piece sending files over the ether from confined spaces to create magic? You can transpose the string parts to guitars, or even vocalize them, but can that replicate two cellos? Hatfield has to harmonize with herself on vocals. She describes the whole project as a “labor of love,” and it is easy to sympathize.

What is left when you de-layer complex tunes and concepts and recreate them in small spaces 50 years later? Pure, joyous pop magic.
Continue reading »