Log #178 - Black Budgie

Sometimes one needs a complete change and following some relatively light folk over the last couple of weeks I just wanted to blow some cobwebs away with some heavy rock for week #178. 

Radiohead - Kid A

Black Keys - Attack & Release

Black Sabbath - 13

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die

Budgie - The Best Of

AC/DC - High Voltage

The Black Sabbath listening has been part of my research for my latest ranking article which you can find here >>

Over the last couple of weeks I've played 24 Black Sabbath albums which has been an illuminating experience. I already knew the first 8 albums well (the vintage Ozzy years), plus the first couple of Ronnie James Dio albums. I also had a copy of the 2013 comeback album 13 which I last reviewed favourably here >>

13 is a powerful album that doesn't sound dissimilar to some of the band's '70s albums. Never Say Die! (Ozzy's last album before the comeback) ain't too shabby either and was also favourably reviewed here >>. Unaccountably it gets a bad rap from Sab fans.

What was most interesting though was hearing the "more recent" albums - post 1982, mostly for the first time. Most are relatively anonymous to be fair but there were a few that stood out from the bunch >> The Devil You Know (2009) and Dehumanizer (1992) fared fairly well in the ranking.

The period was fraught with a revolving door of band members, many only staying for one record, many quitting and returning (Dio himself came and went 3 times) - the one constant member, guitarist Tony Iommi, firing and hiring at will forever seeking a return to the glory days. However for the most part his band became followers of the heavy metal fashions of the '80s and '90s rather than the innovators they once were.

Reaction on Twitter was concerned...

Welsh rockers Budgie imo were a very underrated band. I don't think the band name helped:

I loved the idea of playing noisy, heavy rock, but calling ourselves after something diametrically opposed to that.

Burke Shelley

I must admit I haven't heard many of their actual albums and this Best Of is ostensibly their best stuff, and it is cracking good rock full of exciting guitar riffs. They remind me a bit of Rush actually, and actually even look like Rush physically. Much of the iconic Budgie artwork was designed by Roger Dean.

Budgie

You know what you are getting with AC/DC, ie. basic good riffing rock. Most their songs start off with an Angus Young riff, before a one note Cliff Williams pumping bass comes in, followed by crashing Phil Rudd drums, and then a squawking Bon Scott or Brian Johnson singing about birds and booze. Great stuff! This album, High Voltage, was their first international release in 1976 combining tracks from two albums that had had limited release in their home country Australia only.

So I was expecting basic rock, but not this basic. This album is a lot more bluesy than subsequent albums I have heard.

It's also got the classic It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock N Roll) made famous by the Jack Black School Of Rock film.

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Log #176 - Magpies Drinking Wine In Bombay

The Unthanks Mount The Air

Bombay Bicycle Club So Long, See You Tomorrow

Free The Free Story

Trees On The Shore (bonus disc)

Iron And Wine The Creek Drank the Cradle

Lal and Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus

Just the two new entries this week - both charity shop pick ups. 

Good value for my £ was Iron and Wine's debut album. It's fairly predictable solo acoustic strumming with whispered voice stuff from Sam Beam. This was what attracted fans to him in the first place, and some were disappointed when he went a bit more electric around the time of Kiss Each Other Clean in 2011 (which I loved), and then again when he went a bit more avant garde jazz (yes, really - I saw him at Black Deer Festival in 2018 and have no idea what he was playing).

As for the other new entry I wasted a £. Even the CD case is broken. I should have guessed. With a silly name like that, Bombay Bicycle Club were bound to be insipid middle of the road electro indie pop - file with Mercury Rev, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and Florence and the Machine - in other words in the bin.

Thank goodness for the Unthanks. Lovely stuff. Their rendition of Magpie (as first heard on The Detectorists) is haunting although I was intrigued why it stopped at 7 when I think I saw 8 the other day. There are various versions of the rhyme, but it seems the most common in folklore is the 7 version:

One's for sorrow

Two's for joy

Three's for a girl and

Four's for a boy

Five's for silver

Six for gold

Seven's for a secret never told

Devil devil i defy thee

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Log #175 - Folk Old And New

The Unthanks Mount The Air
Felice Brothers Felice Brothers

Free The Free Story

Trees On The Shore (bonus disc)
Felice Brothers Undress

Lal and Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus

It's all about the folk this week with two significant new entries - one from modern day, one from days gone by. 

Firstly The Unthanks make a welcome return with their Mount The Air album which won BBC Folk Album Of The Year in 2016. 

I can barely get over how good this album is. It's beautiful chamber pieces are based around gentle piano supplemented by strings and horns. And then there are the sisters' voices too. Completely unique. Sounding both modern and ancient.

Bright Phoebus on the other hand sounds just ancient. It's a very unusual record which is much admired as an underground classic in folk (and wider rock and pop actually) circles. It is dark and haunting (save for a couple of more upbeat country rock numbers and the whimsical opening song Rubber Band). 

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Log #174 - Uncovering A Psych-Folk Classic

Johnny Flynn A Larum
Trees On The Shore

Harmonia Tracks And Traces

The Comet Is Coming Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery 
Nick Cave Skeleton Tree

Nick Cave Ghosteen

I've enjoyed all these albums this week. Johnny Flynn's debut A Larum is brilliant - great songs delivered with a great voice. What differentiates this from the middle of the road? - what's that band? - I can't even remember their name but you must know them - folk stomp stuff with waistcoats. Something brothers is it? I honestly can't remember their name but often think of them. Must have blanked it again. It will come to me. 

It's hard to put your finger on it (or in your ear) but I think it is simply the songs and the voice. Flynn sounds authentic - he has a great range with just the right amount of gravel. He reminds me of Dave Swarbrick. Most the songs are great folk but this one really stands out as a rock song:

Coming as an after the event collection of extras (with Brian Eno) the Harmonia Tracks And Traces album is generally overlooked in preference for their two mainstream albums Music Von and Deluxe. It is indeed quite different but in its own right a classic ambient collection which I expanded upon in my Log #154.

Good honking enjoyment to be had from modern electronic jazz trio The Comet Is Coming. It's relatively exciting as jazz goes, I guess. I'm a bit indifferent to it so far, as I was to the similar sounding (as far as I know) Kamasi Washington. There's a rap number with Kate Tempest (an artist, or genre to be honest, I've not got into yet).

More absorption of the two Nick Cave albums. Both growers. Still prefer the Skeleton Tree, marginally more accessible.

If you are about to listen to On The Shore for the first time, then you are to be envied. In an era of mass communication and commercial misappropriation, there are few genuinely lost treasures to be discovered.

I couldn't agree more and my highlight this week has undoubtedly been the brilliant Trees album. This has become a bit of an underground classic over the years. I first heard it a few years ago and unaccountably only just got round to purchasing a copy. This issue comes with a bonus disc of demos and alternative versions but to be honest that is superfluous to the original (the differences are even spelt out in the sleeve notes which may be a sign one might not notice otherwise).

On The Shore sits with Fairport Convention's best Sandy Denny fronted folk rock albums (Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief). Half the tracks are traditional reinterpretations, half originals. All are delivered with the emphasis on rock with searing electric guitar and crystal clear high vocals from ex-opera singer Celia Humphris. Apart from the guitar-centric Richard Thompson influenced Fairport Convention the other band they remind me of actually is Free: there's a track The Streets Of Derry that extends into a guitar solo over rising bass which sounds just like Free's classic Mr. Big. Then the centrepiece of the album, the 10 minute Sally Free And Easy is a response to Fairport Convention's groundbreaking A Sailor's Life. But what the album is most remembered for, like the Fairport's Liege And Lief, are the brave reinterpretations of traditional folk songs in a rock format as with Geordie below:

The haunting cover which matches the psych-folk music within was shot in the grounds of Inverforth House in Hampstead. The young girl photographed on the front swinging a bottle of water (which I thought was a skipping rope before looking closely) was a musician friend's daughter.

Nothing else happened for Trees after their only two albums - this from 1971 and the debut, The Garden Of Jane Delaney (1970). The original members are still around I believe, which makes it odd they've never had a reunion - I'm sure a tour of On The Shore supplemented with the debut album and a few more covers and traditionals would be very popular but I guess they're all doing other things and perhaps don't want to spoil the mystery. Bizarrely Celia Humphris' voice can now be heard on the pre-recorded London Underground announcements.

Nice simple website here.

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Log #173 - Fireflies By Night - Rush With Nick Cave

It's not hard to remember why Rush were so exciting to a teenage boy - the music is so fast and tight, it's heavy yet progressive, with grand concepts, titles like By-Tor And The Snow Dog *, fabulous album covers, and a lead singer with the ultimate scream of the day. It was the thinking man's (or boy's) heavy metal.

Fly By Night was the band's second album, and the first with the late Neil Peart on drums.

* This track, although a modest 8 minutes in prog terms, has the following parts to give it its full title!:

By-Tor & the Snow Dog
I. "At the Tobes of Hades"
II. "Across the Styx"
III. "Of the Battle"
i. "Challenge and Defiance"
ii. "7/4 War Furor"
iii. "Aftermath"
iv. "Hymn of Triumph"
IV. "Epilogue"

Note part III (roman numerals of course) was sub divided into a further 4 parts. Such prog ostentations would only gather pace with Rush on subsequent albums throughout the 70s until, like a lot of rock and prog bands, they scaled down their sound and scope in the 80s with albums like Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures which have generally stood the test of time relatively better.

So what does one think 40 years later? Well, the musicianship is astounding, still. The pace is frenetic, not only on the rock numbers as you'd expect, which take up the whole of the first side, apart from a brief gentle passage around the "Aftermath" (I'm guessing) section of said By-Tor... but also on the acoustic based numbers that start Side Two.

But then there is something very different - penultimate track Rivendell is a lovely unexpected piece (save for the Lord Of The Rings lyrics that is, which was of course all the rage at the time). Backed by classical guitar and flute/recorder good old screamer Geddy even sings in a normal register and sounds lovely: 

You feel there’s something calling you
You’re wanting to return
To where the misty mountains rise
And friendly fires burn
A place you can escape the world
Where the dark lord cannot go
Peace of mind and sanctuary
By loudwater’s flow

Rivendell then segues into the monster In The End guitar riff, one of Rush's greatest rock masterpieces (this one for me echoed the brilliant Working Man from their debut album - all the best rock albums from the 70s had to end with a monumental extended rifftastic rocker didn't they?). And that's it. 8 tracks, barely 35 minutes and it's all done and dusted, in the can. Who needs these hour plus albums of 15 tracks these days?

Johnny Flynn A Larum
Van Morrison Hard Nose The Highway

Pink Floyd Meddle

Rush Fly By Night
Nick Cave Skeleton Tree

Nick Cave Ghosteen

And now Nick Cave. The tragic circumstances surrounding his last two records are well documented. But apparently the majority of the first of these, Skeleton Tree (2016), was actually written before the death of his son in 2015, and the trajectory of the music through this album, to the new one Ghosteen, does seem to follow a logical path which began on the preceding Push The Sky Away. It was on that 2013 album Nick Cave (and Warren Ellis) started experimenting with unusual song forms and new instrumentation. Skeleton Tree continues this drift towards electronics, ambience, spoken word and choirs. Ghosteen takes it further: the tracks are even less song based, characterised more by sounds, space, stillness and poetry.

And everything is distant as the stars, and I am here and you are where you are.

Fireflies

I heard Ghosteen first and it was pretty much what I expected. It's relentlessly down and a hard listen. It's an atmosphere piece - one that may begin to make sense after half a dozen plays, preferably at 3am with wine. There are long chords and drones, distorted synthesizers, single line piano lines, and wailing backing vocals. It feels a bit like David Bowie's Black Star, but slowed down, like a 33 1/3 rpm played at 16. The album comes on two CDs, the second containing a couple of tracks over 12 minutes long. Having said that some tracks seem to have unexpectedly early fade outs. I've played it three or four times and must say it does improve with familiarity (there's a lot more here than first meets the ear but I couldn't help thinking I'd stick to Gas or Eno if I wanted to hear this sort of music). 

With trepidation I moved to Skeleton Tree which I imagined might be even rawer, but actually was pleasantly surprised. It is more song based and I think I like it better than Ghosteen, and certainly better than I was expecting. It is easier to get into on the first few listens. 

Neither are as good as Push The Sky Away in my opinion, but in the circumstances, and in the face of the universal acclaim bestowed upon both Ghosteen and Skeleton Tree it is difficult to be objective and just assess the albums on their musical merits. I have no idea whether I will revisit these albums as masterpieces in the years to come or they will just burn bright for the briefest of moments... like fireflies. I'm actually looking forward to finding out.

At the opposite end of the depression scale comes the brilliant Johnny Flynn. Like many fans (and I'm certain he's sick of hearing this) I came to him through the brilliant theme tune to the brilliant Detectorists TV series. I wanted to find him at his most raw and solo, and haven't quite achieved this aim just yet with A Larum but nevertheless it's a brilliant rootsy folk record. Flynn has an amazingly strong and authentic voice for one so young. A brilliant new find to start 2020.

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Log #172 - Also Sprach A New Generation Of Songwriters

A mixed bag, as you'd expect, from Mojo's presentation of "A New Generation of Songwriters"; a compilation from the "Communion" label given away with their magazine in 2011. This "generation" mostly refers to the folk revival of the end of the noughties led by artists represented on this disc:

Johnny Flynn, Mumford & Sons, Ben Howard, and Matthew And The Atlas, plus a few other singer songwriter types outside of folk like Michael Kiwanuka.

There are also bunch of artists I've not heard of on this 15 track CD. Tell you what - see for yourself:

Tell me a tale (Michael Kiwanuka) -- Three tree town (Ben Howard) -- Circle in the square (Marcus Foster) -- Vintage red (Jay Jay Pistolet) -- More than letters (Benjamin Francis Leftwich) -- Sister (Mumford & Sons) -- Walk through walls (Communion version) (Kyla La Grange) -- In the honour of industry (Johnny Flynn) -- Hands in the sink (Alessi's Ark) -- Fictional state (To Kill a King) -- Emily Rose (Three Blind Wolves) -- I will remain (Matthew and the Atlas) -- Sculptor and the stone (Jesse Quin and the Mets) -- Peter (Daughter) -- Early spring till (Nathaniel Rateliff)

Which of this new generation has gone on to great things a decade later? Probably about half a dozen of them, which isn't a bad hit rate. The classiest tracks I've noticed on the record have tended to be from these now established artists - Kiwanuka, Howard, and Flynn. The Marcus Foster is a good track too - an artist I may explore. Same too for To Kill A King - their Wiki profile says they have been compared to Grizzly Bear and Frightened Rabbit, and they've toured in support of Dog is Dead (I just found all that slightly amusing).

Mojo Presents Communion
Van Morrison Hard Nose The Highway

Pink Floyd Meddle

Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra
Holger Czukay Moving Pictures

Nucleus Elastic Rock

Richard (1864 - 1949) is the Strauss who wrote the main theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey: Dahhh Dahhh Dahhh... Da Da!!! Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom - you know the one.

One of the most famous riffs in classical music

He is not Johann Strauss (strictly II) (1825 - 99), who did write a lot of the famous waltzes also used in the 2001 film. They are not related, although Johann was related to other composers - his father (strictly known as Johann Strauss I, and brothers Josef and Eduard) - just to add to the confusion.

There's some rock trivia for you then.

The title translates as Thus Spoke Zarathustra as inspired by the book of the same name by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Who was Zarathustra? He was a religious prophet type geezer who hung out around Persia (now modern day Iran) we think around 600 BC or so. Dates and details are a bit sketchy. He also goes by the name Zoroaster.

More rock trivia.

By the way what a great film, and story, 2001 was: such a brilliant concept. Intelligent aliens arrive at Earth 2 million years ago. Find a bunch of apes scrabbling around in the dirt. Decide to run an experiment to see how long it takes them to reach the moon, but not before giving them a shot of intelligence via the mysterious monolith. Jump to present day, the apes have evolved into space explorers. Man uncovers a monolith on the moon which sends an (alerting) signal into space and the mission begins to track its source.

All the more amazing that the film came out just a few months before the real moon landing in July 1969. What perfect timing. Talk about the planets aligning.

Meanwhile back on earth much delight is being had hearing Meddle again. Not just the brilliant Echoes, but the nice acoustic songs (and they are real songs) on Side One. And the Van Morrison is a long lost (to me) classic (1973) which is pitched between St. Dominic's Preview (1972) and Veedon Fleece (1974) in chronology, and sounds exactly like it should. Not particularly like either of them, but a perfect transformation between those two most excellent records.

Moving Pictures is typically obscure and odd, from Holger Czukay. Some spoken word over lots of ambience. Not as invigorating as, and not to be confused with, his classic album in my opinion, Movies. No songs here, but a nice background listen which is as unique as most things Czukay did.

Also loving Elastic Rock from 1970. A superb jazz fusion album with lots of electric guitar riffs, hypnotic walking bass guitar, and Ian Carr's trumpet melodies over the top. Nucleus should have been a lot more famous than they were. No songs here either, just great instrumentals.

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Log #171 - A new decade, a new Van

Thinking Roxy Music were just a glam pop outfit? Think again after hearing For Your Pleasure - their second album released in 1973 and one containing as much rock and electronic experimentation as your next serious rock band.

Roxy Music For Your Pleasure
Van Morrison Hard Nose The Highway

Pink Floyd Meddle

Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell
Holger Czukay Moving Pictures

Elbow The Seldom Seen Kid

Then there's Meddle. Some people's favourite Pink Floyd album. It's not my favourite but it's up there in the top 3 or 4. I'm not sure what my favourite is actually. It used to be Wish You Were Here but I probably play Animals the most. Then again The Wall is an amazing project and I've recently spent some time discovering some of the band's groundbreaking early records like Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. Meddle's greatness lies in some excellent acoustic songwriting songs on Side 1 and then of course the epic Echoes on Side 2 which could be their greatest achievement. This track was just mind-blowing for a school kid growing up in the 70s - with its submarine sonar opening, it's beautiful theme, and the funky heavy bit in the middle. #TopClass

Talking of prog Elbow offer something a little different. This is the only album I have heard of theirs. It seems to offer a very gentle laid back version of prog rock with subtle dynamic changes employed instead of the usual pyrotechnics associated with the genre. The Seldom Seen Kid is the Manchester band's 4th album and won the Mercury Prize in 2008. This is Elbow's first appearance at the blog.

Speaking of gentle we move to Sufjan Stevens' very very gentle Carrie & Lowell album. Whispered singing and sparse instrumentation it's gentle... and lovely, although you have to be in the right mood. The album is an ode to Stevens' parents, pictured on the cover. Interesting to note as Log #171 brings us into a new decade, Carrie & Lowell appeared in my first ever blog post Log #1 back in October 2016 along with Suede, Afro Celts, Paolo Nutini, Carole King and Badly Drawn Boy.

Final word to the great Van the Man. I have no idea why I have not heard this classic Van album before. It's up there with the best of his first 8 albums which took him on a golden run from Astral Weeks through to Veedon Fleece, the album with which this one shares its tone the most. [Astral was actually his 2nd album but the first one doesn't really count and was not officially sanctioned by Morrison. Ed]. It's a joy to discover a new Morrison album from his hey day and as this one is going to be less familiar to me (and I expect other fans too who may not have gone much beyond Astral and Moondance) I feel it is going to get a fair number of appearances this year/decade.

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