Review 13: Show all the love in your heart

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Carole King's "Tapestry" album, photographed by Jim McCrary

Tapestry
Carole King
Nominated by Kim Davis

Tapestry was one of the biggest selling albums in the world on its release in 1971 and it’s still marvellous. I knew more of the songs than I realised and it was superb to listen to the full album in one sing-along go. (My musical backdrop for making lemon curd in my new pressure cooker).

Where Setting Sons was boys talking to boys, this is a woman talking to other women, or maybe just to herself.

Her rendition of Will You Still Love me Tomorrow? is a thoughtful pondering, maybe a question to a sleeping partner (or maybe, back in 1960 when she co-wrote it with Gerry Griffin, to the departing figure of a man she’d chastely kissed goodnight). The song was a hit for the The Shirelles, making them the first all-girl group to reach number 1 in the USA.

She’s wrestling with the uncertainty of relationships in I Feel the Earth Move, So Far Away, and the title track Tapestry, and sitting alone in her bedsit for Home Again.

And You’ve Got a Friend – well that’s for everyone. ‘I’ll come running to see you again.. It’s winter, spring, summer or …’ sniff. Carole King got me. I knew it was going to happen.

There are certain pieces of music where I might make it to the chorus without convulsing in tears, but usually it’s three bars and I’m gone. It can get embarrassing. If anyone out there really understands how music works at this semi-conscious, instinctive level, I’d love to know more.

A few examples – Father and Son (Cat Stevens original only), Glenn Campbell’s Wichata Linesman and the theme tune to the Onedin Line. (At least that’s the Adagio of Spartacus and Phyrgia by Khachaturian, rather than something by Tony Hatch). And don’t get me started on the trailer for the film version of War Horse.

But I digress.

My favourite track is Beautiful.
‘You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes, you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel’

That’s so right. It’s a lovely, lovely song, beautifully sung.

And accidentally capturing the zeitgeist, Beautiful is the title of the juke-box musical about King that’s just opened in Broadway. I know a slow burner when I hear one…

A footnote on the album cover. Photographer Jim McCary moved King’s cat, Telemachus, from a pillow across the room to the windowsill to create a shot that brings the viewer in. He looks a bit confused, but I think it was worth it.

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Review 12: Left me standing like a guilty schoolboy

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Setting Sons
The Jam
Nominated by Andy Blake

This is lads talking to lads. There’s no ‘I’m sorry, please love me’ songs on Setting Sons, no trying to impress the girls.

The songs are tribal – I’ve read this was originally conceived as a concept album about three friends who go to fight in a war. And it is angry, and hostile, and sneering about the suburbs they want to escape.

Eton Rifles is the stand-out track – with the brilliant chorus line:
‘What a catalyst you turned out to be:
Loaded the guns, then you run off home for your tea
Left me standing like a guilty schoolboy’

But  the other tracks are interesting too – Girl on the Phone is funny (a one-night stand who remembers a lot more than he did?), Thick as Thieves is full of nostalgia (But we seemed to grow up in a flash of time, While we watched our ideals helplessly unwind), and Saturday’s Kids … live in council houses, Wear v-necked shirts and baggy trousers. A life very neatly sliced up into class divides? Pitying both the trapped commuter in Smithers-Jones and those baggy trousered kids?

I feel contractually obliged to mention the Winter of Discontent and Thatcher coming to power in 1979, when the album was released. But I’ll stop there, because I was only 8 and I’d be getting well out of my depth.

And I’m just a bit young to place this album. Boys were ‘dressers’ and ‘casuals’ in their Kappa jackets when I was a teenager.  The Mods had moved on by then – shame, I think I would have liked the sharp suits.

And I can picture those boys dancing to this, cool but bouncy, sharp elbows and fierce expressions. It’s good music.

The album cover shows three ‘boys’ brought together as St John’s Ambulance Bearers, a bronze statue cast in 1919 by Benjamin Clemens. In 2007 at least, this was the only way the statue could be seen, because it was kept in the archive of the Imperial War Museum. I haven’t had the chance to check, but wonder if it’s surfaced in this First World War centenary year.

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Review 11: A bit of sweet relief

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Searching For Sugar Man (Orange)

Searching for Sugar Man
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Nominated by Jackie O’Dea

Searching for Sugar Man did what music is meant to do, it distracted me when I couldn’t sleep last night. I put it on at 2am thinking (hoping) I’d nod off by the third track, but I heard it through to the end.

Though I didn’t concentrate enough, or check track titles, I can say Sixto Rodriguez, the Sugar Man of the title, is a very good down-to-earth singer of some very good down-to-earth songs. I think I can imagine why they appealed in South Africa, when they did. They’ve got some gravitas, but also always a catchy hook, a bit of melody that makes you sing along. A bit of joy in the darkness?

I want to see the film now.

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Review 10: Royal Blood – there’s only two of them!

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Royal Blood
Royal Blood
Nominated by Ben Mellor

Tenth of September,  10th review, my 43rd birthday, and what a brilliant album to celebrate with. Pounding real rock with big beats, damn good guitar riffs, and a smouldering vocal.

Genre? Garage rock, grunge, Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Nirvana, Muse? Just really good in their own right?

‘Nothing better to do
When I’m stuck on you
And still I’m here
Trying to figure it out’

And there’s only two of them pumping it out.  Bassist and singer Ben Kerr and drummer Mike Thatcher got together last year and were one of 15 bands on the BBC Sound of 2014 playlist. This was the fastest-selling British rock debut in three years and made it to number 1. There isn’t a weak track.

What can I say? Its my birthday, I had Prosecco with my breakfast, so I rock and so do Royal Blood. Buy, download, listen!

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Review 9: Murmurations

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Murmur
R.E.M
Nominated by Martin Carroll

Another debut album, that’s the third this month. I don’t think I need to worry about being careful with R.E.M’s feelings though – this was where 85 million album sales began.

R.E.M take me back a bit further than Hunky Dory. My friend this time, at 6th form college, was considerably more fierce. She always wore the same jumper, albeit an expensive, designer jumper, and R.E.M were on her revisionist ‘must listen’ list of bands, along with Husker Du and Sonic Youth. She was so disappointed when the Georgia band hit the mainstream with Green.

Happily for this review, I’ve no memories of enforced appreciation of Murmur, and come to it fresh. And happily for me, I loved it.

It’s a great listen, with a range of interesting and mature songs. I need to accept that I can’t understand what Michael Stipe is singing. There’s the odd word that leaps out clearly – often the track’s title – Radio Free Europe… Catapult… ‘Standing too soon, shoulders high in the room’ … which I was really pleased I worked out (and what an awkward image that creates).

If you read the lyrics, they make wonderful clever sense, but I wonder how many times I’d need to listen to hear them.

But that really doesn’t matter – its a great soundscape, you get the feeling of the song and can just sing along, maybe with the wrong words. Has every R.E.M fan got a different version of each song? ‘But I thought it said…?’ It could come to blows.

But, debut or not, there’s no damning with faint praise for Murmur. An auspicious beginning for a great band.

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Review 8: Acoustic versions inspire devotion

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Devotion
Jessie Ware
Nominated by Kirsty Asquith

The Gold Edition of Jessie Ware’s debut album reveals her talent more than the standard one. The ‘live from London’ acoustic versions of songs including Devotion, Wildest Moments and Running are a real bonus.

They sound different, almost beyond recognition in places, and prove Ware can sing, very nicely indeed. She’s been likened to Adele (a friend) and Sade, and I think there’s a bit of Lisa Stansfield in there too.

And listening to the stripped-back tracks made me appreciate the produced versions better. Soul inspired music for the end of the night.

One doubt I can’t shake off – the lyrics seemed a bit simple and clunky in places.

‘You’ll be my night light, there when I go to sleep’.

Ping! A child’s bedroom appears in my mind’s eye, softly lit maybe, but I couldn’t make it go away. The ‘shadow man’ she sings about pops to the kitchen for some warm milk, resigned to reading another bed-time story.

Perhaps I was listening too closely for this review. Just let Jessie Ware wash over  you, and it gets better and better.

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Review 7: Living on solid air

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Solid Air
John Martyn
Nominated by Clive Featherstone

You shouldn’t listen to Solid Air while you’re doing the ironing. It demands your full attention, and it definitely improves after a glass of wine.

This folk-jazz album is one of the most critically acclaimed British records of the early 1970s and the guitar playing is fantastic, but I struggled to really enjoy it as a whole, even after the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Can I say it was good, but that I didn’t really like it?

Let’s be clear – it’s not him, it’s me. He’s an electrifying guitarist and singer, who blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues. The recorder was the peak of my musical accomplishment. What do I know?

I wanted to shout ‘stop mumbling!’.  I got annoyed when a well-formed song dissolved into a dubby free-form … something. I almost really enjoyed a lot of it – much of the music was brilliant – but the vocals kept tripping me up. Where are you going? Come back, that was good!

I always like to know where the exits are, and I guess I like to know where songs are going too. This album needs more time, and probably more red wine, to reveal its form and fire escapes to me. I’d recommend you try it.

As an aside, the album cover is an example of schlieren photography, which demonstrates the ‘solid’ nature of air. I think I can grasp that.

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Review 6: I’m not the only one

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In the Lonely Hour
Sam Smith
Nominated by Aoife Nowell

Sam Smith has endured more than a lonely hour, judging by his debut album. It’s been a lonely eternity for him, very bitter-sweet and simply beautiful in places.

Always wanting and waiting, confused and defeated, but keeping on. I can see why he’s got lots of teenaged fans. The lyrics are grasping for a romantic paradise that’s always out of reach.

But this isn’t packaged angst pop. Smith is a good songwriter who’s testing his amazing soul voice.

Money on my Mind, Stay with Me, Like I Can and La La La  (I’m covering  my ears like a kid) are big, passionate songs.

Some tracks take me back to the 80s, when I was a teenager into pop. Slap bass and sophisticated funk soul was music for ‘older’ people then, so it automatically sounds ‘older’ now. How can I de-programme myself and hear those sounds for the first time?

I prefer it when voices like Smith’s keep it simple, steering clear of ‘over-souling’ which squeezes lots of notes into each syllable.

Which brings me to my favourite song on this favourite album, I’m not the Only One, which is simply perfect. Piano, a persistent back-beat tying it together, and brilliant lyrics.

You say I’m crazy, 
’cause you don’t think I know what you’ve done
But, when you call me baby, 
I know that I’m not the only one.

Sam’s lonely but his songs are truthful and it’s worth keeping him company.

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Review 5: Everything’s hunky dory

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Hunky Dory
David Bowie
Nominated by Neil Hallows

David Bowie’s Life on Mars? has become bound to time travel, thanks to the synonymous TV series.

And the album it came from, Hunky Dory, has thrown me back nearly 25 years too.

I didn’t think that I knew Queen Bitch and The Bewlay Brothers, tracks on the more challenging B-side. But I did. They took me back to my first weeks at university and my then new friend, the wonderful Eleanor Parker. She’d been in a play about Myra Hindley in her A-level drama course, and she loved David Bowie (He was new to me, apart from the scary Ashes to Ashes video of 1980. ‘We all know Major Tom’s a junkie…’ gulp, I didn’t).

The Queen Bitch is ‘In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat’. It’s the ‘bipperty-bopperty hat’ that I can see and hear Eleanor singing. So full of energy – you’d all love her. We’ve lost touch, so big hugs to you Ms Parker if you happen to Google your name and find this.

That’s the power of music. Two bars and you can be zipped back to a time, place or person, whether you like it or not.

But back to Bowie. This album is packed with big songs, Life on Mars?, Changes and Oh! You Pretty Things… are ‘best of’ must-haves. The chorus to Pretty Things is so catchy, it’s one of my very favourite little bits of music.

Do these seem better songs than the rest of the album because they are so familiar, or because they are actually quite amazing, compared with anything? Discuss…

There’s no duff tracks on Hunky Dory, Bowie’s fourth album, though and for me lots of pop references. Song for Bob Dylan is funny – a homage, or a parody? He certainly mimics the singing style. Is there a bit of the Kinks in Kooks? (‘Don’t pick fights with the bullies or the cads ‘Cause I’m not much cop at punching other people’s Dads’.  Lovely). And some Velvet Underground in Andy Warhol?

It’s funny to think that I didn’t quite exist when this record was released in the summer of 1971. It doesn’t seem old enough. I guess time travel keeps you young.

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Review 4: I’ve been Tango’d!

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La Historia del Tango (Disc 1)
Astor Piazzolla
Nominated by Juan Ganduglia

Astor Piazzolla is so big in Argentina there’s an airport named after him. He revolutionised tango in the 1950s, bringing in new instruments and musical structures, to create Tango Nuevo.

(Last Tango in Paris? Tango and Cash? I don’t know anything about tango and I’m a little adrift without lyrics to write about, but I’ll give it my best shot.)

On Strictly Come Dancing, the Argentine Tango is all about sexual frustration and fierce expressions. There are many more emotions and feelings here – joy, sadness, hope and excitement – and the pace is less, hmm, melodramatic?

This music is jazzy and free-form, without being free-form jazz. It could be a film soundtrack, a backdrop for scenes of love, escape and danger.

To pick a few tracks:
Caliente is lively and cheery, getting faster and faster, like a merry-go-round, which then slows to a halt.

Resurection del Angel is a mournful mood that gradually picks up and decides the day isn’t so bad after all.

And Adios Nonino starts as the jazziest of the lot, before melting into a lovely romantic ripple of piano and violins.

I’ve been well and truly tango’d!

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