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Pop
and Contemporary Music
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Bernard Allison - Kentucky Fried Blues Live
RUF Records RUF 1092 Reviewed
by AH
Bernard Allison comes from prime blues stock, his father being the late, great, Luther Allison, a performer of legendary status and a lot to measure up to. When Bernard was a young boy he used to accompany his father on lengthy tours around the states, and by the age of seven was dreaming of becoming a guitar hero. By the time he'd graduated from high school, Allison had earned himself a slot as lead guitarist in Koko Taylor's band. He then formed his own band - honing his singing and playing skills -before returning for a second spell with Miss Taylor. He left to accompany his father on a European tour as bandleader and then struck out on his own again, releasing a string of critically acclaimed albums and backing them up with incendiary live performances, of which Kentucky Fried Blues is a perfect example. Allison plays with fiery passion and it's not difficult to spot his influences. Elements of Albert King, Freddie King, Johnny winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan are on show here, along with a fair amount of his father's explosive technique. One of this album's highlights is an 18 minute romp through Buddy Guy's 'Leave My Girl Alone', which features some beautiful soloing and showcases Allison's guitar talking trick (it has to be heard to be believed!) Bernard Allison's going from strength to strength with every release - and he's still only 37 years old.
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The Bluetones - Luxembourg
Superior Quality Recordings Blue 019 Reviewed
by MC
When a band fails to set the world alight, then disappears for a suspiciously long time you rightly treat their return with caution. The Bluetones then, have never been huge, have never been radical, have always simply made good music, quietly in their own little world. And so, three years after Science and Nature, the Bluetones return with Luxembourg. They gave up trying to satisfy the critics long ago, and in doing so set themselves free from the vagaries of fashion. So just as Science and nature was a low-key gem, so Luxembourg shines in its own modest fashion. This album would never get a 10/10 from me, but to ignore it would be your loss. With Luxembourg the Bluetones move back towards the Britpop brilliance that made them, with clipped guitars and superbly tight production the record sounds brisk and nervy. But ultimately this is the sound of a band that are no longer young, no longer fresh, but entirely happy with that fact. Beautifully understated, Luxembourg contains humour and emotion in equal parts. Crisp performance and intelligent songs make this an album only the Bluetones could have made. I love it.
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Tom Ovans - 15 Unreleased
Floating World FW014 Reviewed
by RP
A chiselled voice and the jaundiced eye that captures each and every dark and strikingly desolate image of modern American life has seen Tom Ovans become an almost unrivalled chronicler of the morose. In an age when morality, integrity and principle are at best traded as commodities, that serrated edge to his highly individual blend of folk-blues cuts through this plutocratic skin and works at the very sinews which have and still continue to hold an iniquitous society together. Those painful and frequently uncomfortable observations, which have been sharpened over more than three decades of song writing roam across personal and public themes. There's the doomed romance of 'Dance With Me Girl' which also metaphorically ruminates on the probable fate of North America. Then there are those brutal realities of a disjointed Reagan foreign policy, which turned much of Central America into a war zone ('Little Child') and seems destined now to be repeated throughout the Middle East some twenty years on. Although many of these fifteen previously unreleased songs were written in the 1980s they do still possess a disturbing degree of topicality. To me it suggests two things. The songs have enduring qualities and that despite the passages of time little has changed to redress the imbalances.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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Cornershop - Handcream for a New Generation
Wiiija Records WIJCD1115 Reviewed
by MC
Handcream for a New Generation has taken a long time to climb high enough
in my mental album chart to warrant a review, but climb it has. Cornershop
certainly waited long enough after their superb When I was born for the
seventh time, and in that time music had moved on, so it should be no
surprise that with this album they changed their own sound dramatically.
Underneath it all Cornershop's basic rhythm guitar and drums structure
remains, as does Tjinder's monotonous lexical brainteasers. But now the
band more closely integrate the sounds of Tjinder's dance project Clinton.
Samples, loops and sequencers fill the album with warm analogue textures.
Guest vocalists also make a striking addition, with everything from funk
to reggae making an appearance. In Handcream... Cornershop drop their
old focus on songs and begin to strip things down to beats and textures.
It's this sparse production that makes the album such a slow grower, but
it's also this that gives it its enigmatic attraction. It's seventies
funk with a modern dance framework. Cornershop have managed the transition
from classic guitar band to post-modern studio entity with a skill rarely
seen, and made a strange a wonderful album in the process.
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Gerry Rafferty - Another World
Hypertension Hyp3218 Reviewed
by AH
Most people (knowingly or unknowingly) have been exposed to Gerry Rafferty's music at sometime in their lives, if not through Stealer's Wheel's 'Stuck In The Middle With You' then certainly by 'Baker Street', his massive solo hit featuring that sax solo. 'Baker Street' gave Rafferty a hit album, City to City, which topped the charts in Europe and America for months. Over a career spanning 30 years Rafferty has released a string of fine solo albums, but the last recorded output (excluding the 1996 compilation 'One More Dream') was 'Over My Head' in 1994, so this album has been a long time coming. Another World features 14 mainly self-penned songs recorded in a variety of locations around the globe and includes contributions from Mo Foster, Pino Palladino and Mark Knopfler, who guests on three tracks. It's a good, strong album but opener 'All Souls' (with it's Enigma-Esque spoken intro) and 'Land Of The Chosen Few', are the standouts for me. Rafferty doesn't have a powerful voice but it's very distinctive and he certainly has a fine ear for a catchy melody. He sat himself in the producer's chair for Another World and for the most part has done a fine job; the only gripe to my ears being an over reliance on the infernal drum programming, which just occasionally takes the album into dreaded chart territory.
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Grace Griffith - Minstrel Song
Blix Street Records G2-10088 Reviewed
by RP
In the States, Grace Griffith is an acclaimed interpreter of both contemporary and traditional folk songs. Here her pure, hauntingly attractive voice caresses and underscores ten lovely and frequently reflective ballads that remain heavily weighted in favour of works by modern songwriters. Intimate and compelling performances of John Martyn's 'May You Never', Jane Siberry's 'Bound By The Beauty' and the Richard Farina 'Swallow Song' sit comfortably alongside a pastoral gem like the Scottish 'Searching For Lambs' or the themes of the seashore in an Irish 'Kind Friends and Companions.' There is also a nice guest appearance by Dougie MacLean who harmonises for his 'Feel So Near'. They all benefit from some beautifully simple arrangements which rarely stray beyond the guitar, cello or piano in their effective and complementary support of those alluring Griffith cadences. She is definitely a fine singer who represents an easily accessible alternative to the outstanding crop of young English Folk musicians that include those contrasting talents of Eliza Carthy and a more traditional performer like Kate Rusby. On Minstrel Song these new and old Worlds of the folk song entwine rather than collide.
Supplier: www.hotrecords.uk.com
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Jim
Kweskin Band with Samoa Wilson - Now and Again
Blix Street Records G2-10078 Reviewed
by RP
These timeless and quite charming performances of ten swinging country blues and jug band songs include a vivid exploration of classic Leadbelly, Nina Simone, Joseph J. McCoy and Arthur Hamilton material. Enlivened acoustic arrangements for 'Linin' Track', 'Sugar In My Bowl', 'Why Don't You Do Right' and 'Cry Me A River' cleverly feature the guitar, mandolin, upright bass, fiddle, harmonica, piano and alto sax playing of an ensemble who draw out a series of refreshingly diverse and wistful insights. Yet it's the sweetly innocent and airy qualities of the youthful Samoa Wilson vocals, combined with Jim Kweskin's distinctive, but slightly old fashioned and comfortingly reminiscent delivery, which provides a memorable musical centrepiece. Infectious, foottapping and passionately rhythmic numbers such as Leadbelly's skiffle-like 'Linin' Track' reveals just how much fun there is still to be had from a kind of thoroughly relaxed jam session that could have come straight from the late 1950s. An unfussy and solidly engineered digital recording then sympathetically reproduces these telling moments with accurate and coherent instrumental images that dovetail into some nicely weighted and correctly proportioned singing.
Supplier: www.hotrecords.uk.com
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John Mayall - Stories
Eagle Records EAGCD223 Reviewed
by AH
On his 51st recording (2001's John Mayall and Friends - Along For The Ride) Mayall enlisted the help of some of the blues world's most talented players - past and present. Peter Green, Otis Rush, Steve Millar and Gary Moore rubbed shoulders with youngsters Jonny Lang and Shannon Curfman to produce a memorable release. But for this latest album he's decided to stick with long serving members Tom Canning, Joe Yuele (His drummer for 17 years!), Hank Van Sickle and scintillating Texan guitarist Buddy Whittington. Its fair to say that some of Mayall's releases over his 40 year career have been a bit patchy, but Stories has a consistently strong set of songs and Mayall sounds as hungry here as he did on the seminal album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton in 1966. The Bluesbreakers have always been a springboard for some of the rock and blues world's greatest guitarist and Stories allows current master Buddy Whittington plenty of room to shine. On Rick Vitto's 'Feels Just Like Home', Buddy's guitar chugs and slides all over the place, while 'Romance Classified' (his own composition) features some muscular rhythm playing and wonderful rock-fuelled soloing. Gorgeous seven minute closer 'The Mists Of Time' is the album's highlight for me; Tom Canning's organ playing melts into Whittington's lovely fluid soloing, creating the perfect backdrop for Mayall's laid back vocal and meandering piano. Highly recommended.
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Kevin Coyne - Carnival
RUF Records RUF 1087 Reviewed
by AH
Before he became involved with music Kevin Coyne was a social worker and a therapist at a psychiatric hospital, experiences he later incorporated into his early solo works with Virgin Records. He cut some fine albums for the label, especially 1973's Marjory Razorblade and 1978's Dynamite Daze, an album that garnered praise from none other than Johnny Rotten! In 1980 he parted company with Virgin and released a couple of albums for the independent Cherry Red label, but by this time his creative juices had been sapped by alcoholism and a painful marriage break-up. Relocating to Germany, he began recording for local labels as well as publishing books, exhibiting his paintings and acting in films and on stage. This latest album is recorded on German label RUF and finds him in inspired form, with a collection of songs that rank alongside his best work. Coyne's often described as 'Eccentric' and 'Strange' (which he finds very annoying) but Carnival is an uplifting record, mostly written by himself (apart from blues standards 'Rolling And Tumbling' and 'Sugar Mama') with the emphasis firmly on creating a fun filled record. This he achieves admirably with tracks like 'The Wobble' and 'Party, Party, Party' but he shows his tender side as well with the achingly sad 'Missing You', the most poignant ode to lost love that I've heard for many a year.
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King
Curly - Familyman
Hot Records Hot 1085 Reviewed
by RP
King Curly, fronted by rhythm guitarist and singer/songwriter Steve Appel,
is a much-talked about band from down under that proves itself be the
very antithesis of those familiar Antipodean macho rock stereotypes. Appel's
songs, like the autobiographical title track and 'I Wish I Was A Girl',
reveal enviable amounts of sensitivity as they describe the way in which
your life changes when you have children. Or as they reflect on the time
when you stop being a child and puberty kicks in. That burst of testosterone,
the confusion and frustrations of those teenage years, leads to what must
be a remarkable confession for an Australian man to make - the desire
to change one's sex and experience it all from the girl's point of view!
Sparse "Garage Cabaret Pop" arrangements, which includes the careful use
of viola, accordion, sax, trumpet, harmonica and double bass are coupled
to a relaxed vocal thread that personifies an honest, intelligent and
unaffected approach. No wonder Appel has been called a "...thinking woman's
sex symbol". His angst is real life and his demons are instantly recognisable.
He simply humanises these themes knowing that we can all identify with
love handles, the precarious job market, blinding moments of crass stupidity
and those primitive teenage urges in the trouser department.
Supplier: www.hotrecords.uk.com
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Mark Knopfler - The Ragpicker's Dream
Mecury Records 063292-1 Reviewed
by RP
Knopfler, courtesy of those yuppie anthems with Dire Straits in the 1980's, inevitably drags a cartload of musical baggage around behind him. Almost to a point where we are probably better off thinking of him not as yesterday's superstar, but as the seasoned session player who has quietly graced countless albums in the last decade. It's easy to forget that this is a guitarist who's regularly backed the likes of Clapton, Van Morrison and Steely Dan. When coming from this direction it affords us a far less clouded view of his song writing talents and that instantly recognisable, pithy but resonant and extremely dextrous, fretwork that has distinguished his playing down the years. Here this stylised contemporary folk-blues pensively guides the listener through a North-Eastern landscape where songs such as 'Why Aye Man' and 'Fare Thee Well Northumberland' echo speech pattern rhythms as they flesh out the themes of unemployment and homesickness. Elsewhere, the "Englishness" of 'Old Pig Weed' and 'Hill Farmer's Blues' butts up against unmistakable American currents found in songs like the title track, 'Coyote' and 'Daddy's Gone To Knoxville' as Geordie meets the crackers.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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Oh Susanna - Oh Susanna
Hot Records Hot 1093 Reviewed
by AH
Recently I attended my first Oh Susanna gig at the Talking Heads pub in Southampton. What struck me most (apart from her fantastic band) is just how much more powerful Suzie Ungerleider's voice appears live. What's also evident is the control she has and how little effort it takes her to go from a seductive whisper to blow-the-shed-down hurricane levels. Suzie played most of the songs off this new CD as well as some old faves and simply dazzled us with her amazing talent. She gave each song an introduction; why they were written, where, who they're about etc, and she made the whole evening so personal - it really was a joy. That's not to say that on record she's disappointing - nothing could be further from the truth. When you can write songs as good as these and sing with a voice capable of reducing an angel to tears, you can't possibly fail. All the songs weave magic, but four or five are born-to-be classics. The treatment she gives to little known Dylan song 'I'll keep it with mine' is truly heart stopping -as is 'Billy', a song about bass player Bazil Donovan's cousin, a heroin addict very close to death. Twelve great songs, great playing, awesome vocals - Oh Susanna has it all. Its well worth 14 quid of your hard earned money and you'll be hard pressed to find a better live act anywhere.
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Minnie Riperton - Les Fleurs Anthology
Stateside 7243 5 35127 1 2 Reviewed
by RP
Chicago roots. That soaring multi-octave voice. A career of many missed opportunities. The stellar hit single and an untimely death in 1979 at the age of thirty-one after three years fighting against breast cancer, summarises, but doesn't even come close to really describing the impact that Minnie Riperton had on Seventies soul music. This collection, from the experimental soul rock of the opening 1971 track 'I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun', right through to those songs like 'Every Time He Comes Around' and 'Reasons', which are taken from the Stevie Wonder produced Perfect Angel LP, focuses on her incredible voice and the natural feeling she had for music. Riperton and her husband, Richard Rudolph, wrote many of these songs, including the last two mentioned and of course 'Lovin' You', which bravely doesn't make its appearance until side four. Patiently playing through the preceding numbers first helps make sense of how such a timeless hit came about. Another eleven tracks lifted from the solo albums Stay In Love, Minnie and Love Lives Forever completes this window on to a remarkable body of work.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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Canned Heat - Friends In The Can
RUF Records RUF 1066 Reviewed
by AH
Friends In The Can is the first recording of the 21st century from the latest incarnation of Canned Heat, and this time around they've invited some of their friends - past and present -to help them out. Most of the songs on this album were tried out on the road over a two-year period, one of the main reasons why it has such a great 'live' feel. The song writing is consistently strong and the guest players weigh in with some inspired performances. Walter Trout sings and plays to his usual high standards on his own composition 'Home To You' and Taj Mahal delivers an impassioned performance on John Lee Hooker's 'Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive'. The award for best guest performer though has to go to Robert Lucas, an excellent singer with a voice that could stop a herd of rampaging wildebeest dead in their tracks. Original members Larry Taylor and Harvey Mandel join in the fun with a rousing rendition of the old chestnut 'Let's Work Together' and Taylor turns up again on 'Little Wheel', a song left over from John Lee Hooker's Healer Sessions and featuring the great man (Canned Heat's premier inspiration) on vocals and guitar. Friends... comes packaged in a sexy little tin which Canned Heat say you can use to "store your stash". However, it's not necessary to be chemically influenced to enjoy its contents!
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The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Warner Bros. 9362-48141-1 Reviewed
by RP
An awesome and incredibly visual live band, On stage The Flaming Lips happily make use of giant romper suits, glove puppets, glitter and buckets of fake blood! In the studio they are just as unpredictable and inventive. Indie pop from Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins has seldom come in so many shapes, forms, programmes and mixes Yet beneath this breathtaking kaleidoscope their music features a chunky bottom end which (together with the quite ethereal melodic line) rhythmically stabilises a truly surreal thematic thread. The five tracks on side one are heavily indebted to Manga and the Godzilla Japanese B-movie genre. Here their heroine, an unlikely highkicking and black-belted young girl, Yoshimi, fights those none too threatening and rather comical pink robots seen on the cover art. Part homage, part piss take, this is an album which may even stretch to some underlying messages about the plight of the individual in a mechanised ethos. Either way there's weird shit aplenty going on here and side two with tracks like 'Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell', 'Are You A Hypnotist?' and 'Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon' doesn't get any saner. Throw it all together and press it on cherry red vinyl and you get a refreshingly original and hugely entertaining release.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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Michael Hill's Blues Mob - Electric Storyland Live
RUF Records RUF 1088 Reviewed
by AH
Michael Hill is a bluesman with a social conscience. Born in the Bronx in 1952, young Michael grew up listening to Jimmy Hendrix and politically driven artists like Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, and this shines through in his song writing. Electric Storyland Live is a double CD packed with songs from Hill's first four studio albums and also features two brand new songs, ' Heart Of New York' and 'Something In The Sky' - both inspired by the events of September 11th. Disc one comes from an intimate club setting called The Roadhouse' and exhibits what Hill Calls "That Old School Vibe". Operating as a three-piece with Hill on guitars, Bill McClean on Drums and Pete Cummins on Bass, the band tear the place up with some high octane playing, fusing reggae, soul, rock and funk into a blues stew that challenges the way the genre is portrayed. Disc two is recorded at a much larger venue called the union hall, a setting with "More modern instrumental separation", according to Hill's liner notes. The tighter of the two sets, it includes a fine ten minute tribute to cream called 'Chocolate Cream Jam', and 'Young Folks Blues', a ferocious rocker featuring a rousing guest performance from another RUF recording artist, Ana Popovic. Michael Hill is one of a handful of artists giving modern blues a fresh and exciting twist He's a shining light in an increasingly sterile world.
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Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ
Warner Bros 9362-47955-1 Reviewed
by RP
Tom Petty's latest release has an unquestionably worthy subtext, one which is as distinct in his own mind as the black and white photography used for this album sleeve. Rock music has lost its edge. Earnings potential increasingly drives bands and the Record Industry in general. The music has little importance other than being a means to that end: 'Money Becomes King' and 'Joe' (the C.E.O.). Their songs have become a by-word for an absence of quality. He doesn't name names but clearly talent, musicianship and writing with a social conscience do not figure in today's formula for success. Make up your own mind who this cap fits. The Last DJ sets out to show us what we've been missing. Scott Thurston (lap steel guitar) joins accomplished core Heartbreakers Campbell, Ferrone and Tench. Between them they give us plenty of catchy rock hooks to get our teeth into, the durable Petty, of course, delivering honest and unpretentious vocal lines that drip with integrity in tracks like 'When A Kid Goes Bad', 'Lost Children' and 'The Man Who Loves Women'.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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The White Stripes - Elephant
XL Recordings XLCD 162 Reviewed
by MC
When I last wrote about The White Stripes (issue
13) their albums were only available from their own independent label,
on US import. Little did I realise they were about to reshape the acceptable
face of music: Oh my, haven't they grown. Elephant is The White Stripes
with professional production values: harder, tougher and all-round better
than anything they have done before. The songs here are slightly more
experimental, and slightly less histrionic than their previous material,
but only slightly. This is, whatever people might say, simply a progression
for Jack and Meg, and not a step change. Octave pedals and bass amps give
the songs a fuller sound, and better production gives it all a rough gloss
coat, but the stripped down guitar/drums combo remains the founding principal.
Meg's drumming seems to have improved markedly (although her new found
singing duties will give her something else to work on for now) and Jacks
voice is still astonishingly camp, but this is a guitarist's album through
and through. Elephant is everything you could have hoped for from the
follow up to White Blood Cells, seeing The White Stripes accepting the
20th century on their own terms. But whilst it is undeniably excellent,
it still leaves them room to grow, to build and progress. The White Stripes
are a band with a future.
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The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
Dress Up / Polydor Records 076 061-2 Reviewed
by MC
At last the Yeah Yeah Yeahs debut album is with us, and what a surprise it is. Based on their previous records it would have been safe to expect the album to contain a handful of first rate new-wave singles and a similar number of album tracks dedicated to white noise and uncontrolled screaming, and I for one would have been quite happy with that. Instead Fever to Tell gives us a fully developed concept, with the band reigning in their live excesses to produce something with considerably greater range. The white hot singles are still there, but now they sit in the company of more mature and well paced tracks. Of course Karen 0 still sounds like a bunny on Red Bull, the bass amplified guitars still take the place of the genuine article, and the drums are, if anything, even more complex than ever. If there can be any criticism of Fever... it would be that perhaps they could have pushed it all that little bit further, perhaps they could have made it that bit more liberated. That aside, it's a cracking debut from the hottest property in rock.
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Cat Power - You Are Free
Matador Records OLE 427-1 Reviewed
by RP
Singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, has in the past been branded the "Queen of Sadcore" mainly because of the carefully enunciated lyrics, deliberate tempos and an untrained Southern voice whose feline qualities were deceptively well-suited to her tortured worldview where drowning in pain seems to be an everyday experience. Musically, well, here she sometimes reminds me of a rudimentary and sparse-sounding Foo Foo and The Boy, but with large dollops of melancholia thrown into the mix. On other occasions the empathy, warmth and emotional strength in her singing has more in common with a tradition that includes Mitchell, Vega and Shocked. You Are Free is her fourth album and the best. The alternative rocker gives way to her pop heart. Tracks like 'Good Woman', 'He War', 'Shaking Paper' and 'Speak For Me' are propelled by the dynamic presence of drummer Dave Grohl and more encouragingly paced vocal come-ons and side steps from Marshall. Meanwhile, the lyrics continue to tackle the toughest of subject matter. 'Names', for example, treads a difficult path through adolescent sex, crack addiction and incest. Only Chen Marshall's acknowledged lack of ambition could stop her becoming one of the great siren-like artists who can effortlessly marry these harrowing images to beautiful vocal constructs.
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Beth Orton - Daybreaker
Heavenly Recordings HVNLP37 Reviewed
by RP
Beth Orton's delicious voice and cool intelligent writing has almost single-handedly made the folk influenced pop idiom a fashionable genre amongst U.K. clubbers and serious listeners alike. Charming and obviously autobiographical songs about destructive relationships and a lonely childhood spent in the Norfolk countryside occur less frequently now. They have given way to romance's universal truths where the fissures and fractures carved into the human heart figure strongly within new tracks like 'Concrete Sky', 'God Song', Ted's Waltz' and a delightfully prophetic, 'This One's Gonna Bruise'. The beautiful throaty singing: Orton's poise, timing and effortless smoky delivery of lyrics that can in an instant shift from a soaring optimism found in new love to those bruising realities of being dumped, has the capacity to move you to tears. Supporting musicians include guest spots by the great Emmylou Harris and an irrepressible Ryan Adams. A genre bending production hints at those trademark British folk rhythms but augments and updates them with an intensity of the clubland sound. This is an album that sheds light on each of these seemingly disparate forms and in the process evolves into an engaging hybrid medium of its own that should satisfy parties from both camps.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
Columbia 508000-1 Reviewed
by RP
His mantle as the mouthpiece of blue collar America may have slipped and been passed on to a new generation of less affluent musicians, but Springsteen has remained an affectionately held institution nonetheless. He is and continues to be a phenomenal and intuitive rock star who perhaps senses the incongruity of still writing about those working class issues like the job, his hometown, the girlfriend or his beaten up car when the trappings of success are outwardly so obvious. The songs, along with the man, have mellowed some with this passage of time and now tracks like 'Lonesome Day', 'Waitin' On A Sunny Day', 'Worlds Apart' and 'Mary's Place' seem content to mull over troubled relationships where the economics play a less significant part. The cutting edge lies elsewhere in an unmistakable subtext whose images in 'Empty Sky', 'Into The Fire', 'You're Missing' and 'My City Of Ruins' slice through those unforgettable New York scenes during that fateful September day. Thoughtful music superbly supported in the studio by those old friends from the E Street Band and members of the Nashville String Machine, Alliance Singers and the Asif Ali Khan Group.
Supplier: The Cherished Record Company - www.cherished-record-company.co.uk
(44)(0)1579 363603
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