Log #165 - Beauty, Happiness, Peace and Low

After The Gold Rush is one of those albums that I feel I know so well I hardly have to play it any more. What was nice hearing it again though is recalling the excitement on first hearing it all those years ago. For me NEIL YOUNG was one of the first singer-songwriter artists I discovered, along with Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, who took my listening experience to a new level following a diet of rock bands up until then. And After The Gold Rush is a perfect singer-songwriter album with its mix of rock numbers (actually only two - the searing Southern Man and the honky piano When You Dance placed midway through each side) and poignant acoustic love songs (with Young's lyrical prowess at its zenith). More on this album and Nils Lofgren's contribution at Log #122 from January this year (so actually it wasn't such a long time ago I last played it).

Neil Young After The Gold Rush

Ludovico Einaudi In A Time Lapse

Low Double Negative

Rokia Traore Beautiful Africa
The Lumineers The Lumineers

Peace Happy People

THE LUMINEERS is a new band on me. I discovered them through the passage ways of The Felice Brothers (via Simone Felice especially) and The Decemberists. This album (their 2012 debut) is nearly all acoustic. It contains a bunch of jaunty sing-a-long folk rock numbers including their big hit Ho Hey. More to hear here I'm sure but initial impressions are the band is slightly closer to the Mumford Sons end of the spectrum rather than the aforementioned The Felice Brothers and The Decemberists. 

I didn't really get on with the LUDOVICO EINAUDI album this time around - very easy listening in a Michael Nyman The Piano soundtrack sort of way, but with a lot more strings. Heck, they even look identical:

Separated at birth? Nyman and Einaudi

I love ROKIA TRAORE's wavery powerful voice. Some good rock and some trad. African stuff on this excellent album. Some songs in French. Africa is beautiful as is she.

PEACE are an indie guitar band hailing from Worcester, England. Happy People is their second (of currently 3) albums. I fleetingly liked an indie guitar pop band called Dodgy way back in the early 90s (they made a bit of a comeback recently). Their songs were very catchy but shone very briefly in my consciousness. I feel much the same about this music: Peace's decent throwaway pop is a throwback to Britpop but doesn't really leave a lasting impression. They're good and probably excellent live but don't seem quite to have the swagger and originality of say The Happy Mondays of that time, or contemporaries The Arctic Monkeys for example.

Last out the blocks this week is the album Double Negative by LOW. Much acclaimed this album appeared in many best of lists of 2018. But be warned, it's not an easy listen as demonstrated by a visitor to Bamyasi Towers this weekend who asked me to change the music as it was just too dark. Perhaps the band's distorted soundscapes are more for the critics than the listening public - I was surprised to see their appearance at Glastonbury so poorly attended, for a band who had just achieved such a critical breakthrough. Personally the album is not one that grabs me immediately, but is one that I will want to return to for a deeper dive (but it will have to be when I'm alone!).

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An Album Of Contemplative And Meditative Pleasures - Bowmboi by Rokia Traore

On paper Rokia Traore is a bit of a radical. She's one of Mali's leading new singers, although she's not a traditional griot musician. She tries new ideas, combining traditional instruments that aren't usually brought together, and on this album works with the classical musicians, the Kronos Quartet.To my untrained ear her experiments are entirely successful.

The daughter of a Malian diplomat she built her career in France before returning to Mali and is only now becoming a star there.On this, her third album, she sounds right at the heart of the traditions of West African music.

Rokia's vocal style is very much her own. She doesn't have the high pitched, keening, attack of Oumou Sangare, or the rougher, deeper tang of Kandia Kouyate, both of them great female artists from Mali. Her voice is quavery and bird-like, soft, fragile and attractive. Curiously, it reminds me a little of Ethiopian and even Asian vocal styles. But it has an inner power, and on the faster paced songs she sings with impressive authority. Mariama is a passionate, intense duet with male griot singer Ousame Sacko, and one of the album's highlights.

The gentleness of Rokia's voice means this album is a reflective, subtle experience even on the faster songs like Sara or Kote Don. And the two collaborations with The Kronos Quartet work extremely well. The strings lay down a pulsing layer of shifting tones and Rokia murmurs and declaims over them, and on the lovely Manian there's a little vocal part that sounds like Laurie Anderson's O Superman. These tracks don't feel like experiments at all; they sound like something that could have been created in West Africa anytime in the last thousand years.

This is an album full of contemplative and meditative pleasures. If you love Malian music you will probably already have heard of Rokia. If you haven't Bowmboi is certainly worth adding to your collection.

Rokia Traore is Director of this year's Brighton Festival.



Review by Nick Reynolds at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/xwmq/ licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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Log #98 - The Spirit of '68 (1) and My Favourite Record of All Time

The stories about the recording of Astral Weeks are well known and I don't need to add a lengthy analysis to the numerous reviews and articles already out there about Van Morrison's seminal album suffice to say it is, and has been for many years, my favourite record of all time and one that has truly enriched my life.

The gentle jazz tinged music ebbs and flows and meanders like a mountain stream, the lyrics are simultaneously fantastic and down to earth recalling places and feelings many of us have experienced.

I can't listen to this album as background music, it demands my full attention and it makes me feel things very few other records do... think green, earthy, organic, wet, lush, celtic, spring, sunshine, dewdrops, rain, rainbows, walks in the woods, trees, stone circles, nature, rivers, childhood, family, the past, the future, in the beginning and afterwards... and ultimately life and death. 

And I will stroll the merry way

And jump the hedges first

And I will drink the clear

Clean water for to quench my thirst

And I shall watch the ferry-boats

And they'll get high

On a bluer ocean

Against tomorrow's sky

And I will never grow so old again

And I will walk and talk

In gardens all wet with rain

Is there a more evocative lyric than the oft quoted "gardens wet with rain" from Sweet Thing. Look at the cover too, it's all perfect.

Van produced a lot of great music in the late 60s and early 70s and several albums do approach this greatness. For many Moondance is it's equal although it has quite a different flavour being more brass based than string backed. Personally I think Saint Dominic's Review and Veedon Fleece come closest to Astral Weeks but just don't quite capture it's atmosphere.

Greil Marcus's Listening to Van Morrison is a personal account about how he feels when err... listening to Van Morrison. As such it does exactly as it says on the tin and in leaning heavily on Astral Weeks does not pretend to offer another autobiography or comprehensive review of the whole of Morrison's output. I thoroughly enjoyed this short book and find such accounts enhance my enjoyment of the music.

1. Midlake - The Courage of Others

2. Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

3. Rokia Traore - Beautiful Africa

4. Badly Drawn Boy - Have You Fed The Fish

5. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

6. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

And this week Astral Weeks is in good company with 5 excellent albums including the gorgeous americana folk rock of Midlake, the bluesy afro rock of Rokia Traore, the perfect pop of Badly Drawn Boy at his peak, and a classic Floyd which was also once my favourite album before I moved on. What a great week!

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