Absolutely not an end of year 'Best Of...' List. Not At All.

Wait, Am I Still A Tastemaker?

They remain the most obligatory, and yet still infuriating, opening statements that morph into questions after being introduced: “So, you’re into music...so, what’s the best album of all time?” often followed with the related “Music’s so shit now…why don’t they make records like Sgt Peppers/Dark Side Of The Moon/OK Computer/*insert title from questioner’s generational era* anymore?”

Before you ask, my stock answer to the first usually runs something along the lines of “Born To Run/London Calling/Hourly Daily/Yankee Hotel Foxtrot/*insert title from questioner’s generational era*”  , although it doesn’t really matter what you say – they’re often just looking for the chance to argue their favourite, and/or disagree vehemently with your choice: “The Clash? Come on, they were crap compared to the Pistols, maaaaaaaate….”, and go from there. My response to the second query is usually the somewhat more snappy: “Well, it could be that it’s not 1967/1972/1994 anymore, chief…” which thankfully usually leaves me alone with the cabanossi and cheese at the party.

Conversely, the need to know about the new hits its peak around now, with the equally obligatory end-of-year ‘Best of…’ lists. There’s conventions here too: you’ll forget the one that came out in January, the work-experience writers will deliberately pick something from out of their comfort zone of music to show how ‘open-minded’ they are to an audience that really doesn’t give a shit: the guitar music guy will throw in Gambino or Kendrick, the electronica fan will namecheck Gang Of Youfs’ emotionalism. Because they think they should. And I’ll still stand by Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange being a terrific record of its time, transcending all pigeonholes. And, of course, somebody will loudly and angrily squawk ‘Whaddabout….?’ as you’ve missed their singular favourite. Come at me, bro.

But, as ever, the 1-to-10 list has always shit me. Music as a ranked and competitive thing has always struck me as a bit silly. So, I’m not doing one. And you can’t make me. However, there are 2018 records that are affecting in various ways, that you probably should know about – and who’s gonna tell you if I don’t. Then there’s that one that I actually might call my favourite of the year, but I won’t mention contradicting myself if you don’t.

Now, when you reach the time where the media outlets talking about you preface your name with ‘veteran’ - although I much prefer ‘venerable’, it giving me an adjectival flavour of a monkish aesthete, which you’ll admit is me all over – you may crave the familiar. So, a couple of these names may have appeared in rants, screeds, or dribbling words of praise from me before – although this year’s works may have come with some sort of twist or another. Thus, things I’ve listened to a bit, and you probably should too:

Tell Me How You Really Feel was the apt title for Courtney Barnett’s (surprisingly-not-all-that-) difficult second album. At times blunter and more angry than previously, she could still be wry and observational - but appropriating Margaret Atwood’s line “…Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them..." had more people hear it - and hopefully understand it - than ever before. While that’s Courts’ #2 record, Warm is probably about the 20th to have Jeff Tweedy’s name on it – although a little bizarrely the first collection of new and original material with just his name on the marquee. He philosophises and ruminates on a stroll around the human condition, perhaps revealing a little more of his songcraft and wordplay than he would have with the sometimes intimidating virtuosity of Wilco in the room.

Getting even more minimal, and even more in contrast to what went before, St Vincent recast the shiny technological art-pop of Masseduction as Mass Education – basically the piano and guitar sketches of the songs. Never has an album of ‘demos’ been so austerely beautiful, and so totally different to the final (or maybe more accurately, the ‘other’…) result. Further blurring of gender roles and musical styles to crystallise an artist’s identity came in Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer – the best Prince album this century, not the least due to some posthumous input from the little purple himself. And from purple to Blue Poles, Jack Ladder made another album suitable for moody brooding. Touchstones: Bowie, Cohen, Ferry, things dark and crooning. This he does very well. Also contains some Benet and Callinan, as it should.

As for songwriters who know their history, and increasingly their place in it, Elvis Costello gave the faithful the health scare to just worry about how much we might miss him, and presented an album to make us appreciate him again now. Look Now was Declan at his most crafted. At times baroque, with a tumble of words, other times just utterly graceful and gliding, it’s the record to put next to the glistening ‘80s gems like Imperial Bedroom and King Of America. Yeah, that good.

 

Having waded through my pleasure in all of the above, then there’s the one so original that three months on I’m still working it out. Emma Louise is already ‘successful’ – in the sometimes odd terms of music in the 21^st century: Label-signed, ‘hit’ songs of chart position, even that one that got used in a perfume commercial and as meaningful mood-setter on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. That was Jungle – you’ll need that as a trivia quiz answer one day, I imagine.

So, with a new album to do, she debunked off to Mexico, and made Lilac Everything, a record of her typically clever and well-made pop songs – including one called Mexico about debunking off to Mexico to get over a busted heart. So, autobiographical broken relationship songs? Yeah, maybe – but maybe not.

Some previous messing with the technology of recording had seen Emma discover the perfectly monikered effect of ‘dragging’ – slowing and down-tuning her voice to an veering-to-male-sounding croon so distinctive she even gave it a name as a different identity. ‘Joseph’ delighted many, and equally upset some of the faithful who lamented the loss of her more usual bell-like clarity. But the artist went with idea for whole record. And it so works.

But yeah, it would have just been a gimmick – albeit a pretty good one – if the songs couldn’t stand on their quality. Falling Apart, Wish You Well – yep, crumbling emotions and eventual acceptance still often make the best tunes, gender irrelevant. Although get to Never Making Plans Again, with its soul-ly tinge - and if the handlers haven’t got around to offering it to Adele or Norah Jones, they’re not earning their money.

You need to hear this record. Make up your own mind about the central conceit of it, or just listen to something truly original.

Visions of sugarplums, customers.

Me And Billy Bragg have a natter way back when.

HEARTS AND MINDS

You don’t so much interview Billy Bragg as have a conversation - with him asking as many question as you - as he prepares for one his semi-regular Australian tours.

His previous visit, a short hit-and-run for a music conference with a just couple of shows shoe-horned in came a few days after the 2013 election. ”I think a lot of you were in a state of shock,” he notes. “So how’s the Abbott thing working out for you?” We trade phrases suitable for song like ‘Inept arseholes’, and ‘All going down the pan’ of the situations both here and in England, before talk comes back to the music.

The death of folk music legend Pete Seeger is still a touchstone. For the music, the man, and what he represented. “He was taking on the world with just a wiry voice and a banjo,” Bragg explains. “I remember being at some ceremony for him, looking down and finding him doing cycling exercises on the floor – he must have been near 80. That’s 100% better than twerking.”

It was not just the physical vitality that impressed him. “Even in his nineties he still had work to do, things to achieve. And this was a man who had travelled with Woody Guthrie, wrestled the Klu Klux Klan as they tried to stop (legendary black singer) Paul Robeson performing. He actually walked alongside Martin Luther King. You were shaking hands with history.” Conversely, Bragg plays down moments from his own life. Being at the frontline of the Miners’ Strike in Thatcher’s England, visiting Russia as Communism collapsed, and the campaign to free Nelson Mandela among other things, just doesn’t seem to have the same currency to him.

“I don’t want to think about that yet. I want to live in the present - I still have plenty to do. History will judge us on what contribution we make, but that’s for history, not for now.”  For Bragg, it all comes back to the work: “Not all music, but some can carry a message - an idea that can just carry and take hold. You have to have a faith that sometimes that’s going to happen.”  

In another twist this most English of singers’ latest album, Tooth And Nail, has seen him embraced by America as never before. Getting labelled as ‘alt.country’ or even ‘Americana’.  “Americana is a quite broad word,” he says in that quite broad accent. “It can be Johnny Cash, it can be Booker T. - any music that has its roots in American roots music. Whatever that is.”  

“I was just trying to find my way back to Mermaid Avenue,” he recalls the celebrated - if slightly fractured - collaboration with Wilco of Woody Guthrie songs, which gave all the participants a wider audience. “I wanted to find more of that sound, that idea, that Wilco and I sometimes got in the studio. But I got sidetracked – that’s been known to happen before,” he muses.

Those thoughts dovetailed with his homeland’s view of the music. I throw one of his quotes back at him: ‘The English don’t get folk music - it’s what the Scots and Irish do when they’re drunk.’ He pauses. “Did I say that? I might have been drunk,” he adds with a laugh.  

He quickly and politely clarifies: “Maybe what I meant that our Celtic neighbours still use folk music as part of their identity, where in England it’s quite different – it’s much more marginalised.”

Does that mix in with the natural English reserve? “An embarrassment in letting go?,” he asks himself. “Like Morris dancing? Everybody tends to be embarrassed by Morris dancing - sometimes even those actually doing it. Then again, I have Scots friends who are mortified when they see some bad singer get up in a kilt.”

Mr Bragg can also see the upside: “The folk audience – wherever they’re from - still want to hear topical songs, and that’s died out a lot in much other contemporary music.  Do people not want to think? Sure, to switch off and relax - I’m fine with that. But don’t tell me that music’s only purpose - it can be more than that. It can be about any part of the human condition.”  

While knowing the past, Billy Bragg knows things have changed, via a keyboard and a screen. “When I was 19, I really only had one outlet – learn to play an instrument, write songs, do gigs. If you were really lucky, go into a cheap studio and make a record. A 19-year-old now has so many more options: Write a blog, make a film and stick it up on Youtube, tweet up a crowd.”

“Music has probably lost its vanguard role, where in the second half of the 20^th century music was our social media. It used to be three chords and a chorus - now it’s 140 characters.”

The Clash: And you know what they say? Well, some of it was true...

The Clash

London Calling
(1979)
CBS/Epic

 

Ye olde punk rock tends to fall in and out of fashion. Sometimes a legitimate musical touchstone. Sometimes just a safety-pinned Halloween costume. But The Clash get treated better than many of their contemporaries and peers. Took themselves a little too seriously at times? Got a bit indulgent as the revolution turned to shit? Sure.

But there’s still some regard. Their biggest ‘pop’ hit, Should I Stay Or Should I Go, seems to get trotted out every few years to sell something: jeans, perfume, Subarus. Snatches of their songs sampled by The Beastie Boys, Garbage, MIA and more for hits of their own. Even having a surviving member in your band has cachet – ask Damon Albarn, who delights in namechecking Jones and Simonon as sometime parts of Gorillaz or The Good, The Bad, And The Queen.

But for the longterm faithful, the highwater mark of the band – and maybe that whole punk thing, whatever that word now means – was not that song that’s now often drunken karaoke fodder, but something from a couple of years earlier. Something as defiantly old-school as the vinyl double album – the self-styled last gang in town offered London Calling. Two discs, not much of which is not essential, and crossing a widescreen range of styles - redefining not just themselves, but the musical movement of which they were at least nominally a part.

The winter of 1979 was not a real cool time for those bands that emerged in punk’s first spits. The Sex Pistols had already disappeared up the dead end of their own orchestrated outrage. The Damned were well on their way to being a gothic cabaret turn. The Stranglers always slightly out of place weary cynicism becoming a bit meandering and merely misogynistic – admittedly they embraced that and resurrected themselves a couple of years on. A dozen others had already shot their bolts and went back to the obscurity they often richly deserved – Slaughter & The Dogs, The Lurkers, The Vibrators. And yeah, I know some trainspotter will get upset I mentioned their favourite in that selection.

Which pretty much leaves our boys and The Jam as last ‘men’ standing, with both putting out second albums not quite the towering standard of the rest of their careers. Weller’s This Is The Modern World mostly sounding like the rushed effort of leftover songs from their utterly wired debut In The City it probably was. But the artistic redemption of their third, the glorious All Mod Cons had occurred a year earlier – so there were heights to aim at. Appearing at roughly the same time was The Clash’s polarising Give ‘Em Enough Rope. An unashamed attempt to crack the American hard rock market, Blue Oyster Cult producer Sandy Pearlman polished them up – and hating Joe Strummer’s broken-toothed yelps and Mick Jones’ perhaps faux Sarf London accent, mixed the drums up and over most of the words. Nonetheless, some of it is terrific: Tommy Gun’s rapid fire, Safe European Home’s discomfort of finding your dreams of Jamaica were a bit romantic and reality was a bit harder. And those that clunked a bit: Guns On The Roof is not the guerrilla rebellion the title might suggest, but a whinge about being arrested for shooting racing pigeons with an air-rifle. To the barricades, comrades!

So, after the perhaps aptly named Pearl Harbour Tour of the US - but who bombed whom? - The Clash came home, and as a gapfiller flung out The Cost Of Living EP. It’s the one with that ripsnorting version of The Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought The Law, that’s now probably better known than the original. Wiser, and angry again, they then holed up in Wessex Studios outside London with producer Guy Stevens. Despite having produced things of note like Mott The Hoople, Guy was a bit a wreck. Damaged by the usual rock and roll excesses, but obviously with something to prove, he was the right, er, *guy* to focus the band’s own slightly messed up work ethic.

But something had happened. Maybe just because of all the business shit going down around them, The Clash decided they’d do exactly what they wanted to – they grabbed at a dozen musics they loved, found reserves and talents they maybe didn’t even realise they had. Mickey Gallagher, keyboardist with Ian Dury’s wonderfully bent Blockheads became another eclectic and eccentric presence, and just about fifth Beatle for the increasingly sprawling enterprise.

The creative core of Strummer and Jones had always flirted with other song and performance styles. Reggae was almost The Clash’s second default setting – the six-minute lope of Lee Scratch Perry’s Police And Thieves sitting a little oddly on their debut album amid the two-minute, two chord thrashes. But for what would become London Calling, they just dug into their record collections and musical knowledge. Country, jazz, ska, soul, rockabilly, cabaret – pick one, it’ll likely be in here somewhere. And did it better than anybody.

Let’s deal with this in some old-tech terms – drop the needle nearly anywhere across its two slabs of good old black vinyl and you’ll find something of worth, each song a little world of its own, that somehow all hangs together as a coherent whole.

Some of you won’t even need to get past the opening salvo title track. It’s a call-to-arms, an air raid siren, and rebel yell all in one. Over a couple of verses, you can even throw in a bit of modernly relevant climate change, class warfare, nuclear fear, and even a demystification of their own perceived importance: “…Don’t look at us – phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust”. Why kill your idols, when they’re apparently happy to do it themselves?

The song’s Morse Code SOS coda barely dies away before they lurch back to somewhere around 1955 as they savage a Vince Taylor rockabilly chestnut, Brand New Cadillac. What was that old line about seeing rock and roll’s past, present, and future? Yeah, that. Sidebar: their run at it was only ever meant as a soundcheck warmup, but Stevens had the tape running and convinced them to include it on the album proper. It’s a rehearsal take that actually appears.

Hateful is a kicking anti-drug sneer. Well, more a sneer at the cunce those taking advantage of those on the gear. Cross-reference with drummer Topper Headon’s later yo-yoing heroin use, and Strummer getting the shits with Jones’ overuse of certain combustibles: “If he’s smokes any more hash, he’ll turn into a tree”. Music first, punch cones later. Oh, you want the politics they’re often famous for? OK, Spanish Bombs. Jones tying past and present with some flamenco as Franco’s civil war has “…the echoes of ’39…” link the dispossessed Basques with Ireland’s then-contemporary troubles.

As things got rolling, Stevens offered Strummer a copy of the biography of that perfect morality tale, Hollywood actor Montgomery Clift. Once a challenger to Marlon Brando’s status and star power, Monty’s confused sexuality, drug and alcohol problems (…anyone sensing a theme here?) and a catastrophic car crash saw his decline. The brass band swing of The Right Profile – the title referring to Clift’s ‘good side’ after one side of his face was damaged and paralysed in the auto wreck -  puts it alongside R.E.M.’s tribute Monty Got A Raw Deal as songs that honour their subject. Check him out in The Misfits – the last film of Marilyn Monroe, trivia buffs – as evidence of his gloriously angsty talent. And wind up further with Working For The Clampdown, because that’s a classic Clash diatribe and Doc Martens stomp against authority.

Strummer and Jones aren’t the only ones letting their talents run free. Paul Simonon gets his first writing credit with what turns out to be one of the album’s best known tracks. Guns Of Brixton is a slowburn reggae of police oppression (…anyone else sensing a theme here?) and minorities forced into a corner. Not much imagination is needed to transplant it to last century’s Soweto or Redfern, or last week’s West Bank. And Beats International will always give thanks for that bassline’s existence.

There’s more outlaws and outcasts on Side 3. Wrong ‘Em Boyo starts as a perfectly sloppy attack on Stagger Lee – see Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads version for how messed up that can get – before Joe pulls it up, orders “Start all over again…” and old Stagger gets a breezy ska advisory to change his ways. Koka Kola is corruption “…in the gleaming corridors of the 51^st floor”, and debasing the individual well predating Gordon Gekko. Death Or Glory then declaims the whole ethic – “…it’s just another story”. And The Card Cheat could link them all, the titular character shot down pretty much without ceremony. “It means nothing”. But kinda everything.

There probably many albums which would have The Tao Of Love And Sex in the bibliography, but Lover’s Rock is handily educational to unreconstructed blokes with no idea of how to honour their woman. Four Horsemen is a band determined to debunk their own legend, or maybe just trying not to make the same mistakes as The Pistols – “They were given the foods of vanity/And bit the dust screaming ‘insanity’…” And just when you think it’s over, there’s that fine old tradition of the unlisted track. And perhaps the best one ever. Train In Vain is Mick’s soul affections revealed, and a groove that pointed to where he might go next – although BAD I and II continued in a spirit of grab-bagging a bunch of the past, and adding some new spins to it.

It is the greatest of albums, and not surprisingly The Clash – the men and the myth – never quite matched it. Sandinista followed – emboldened by this one’s artistic triumph, they simply went too far. It’s a triple album, no less. But its six sides would probably have been better being about one-and-a-half. There are a quite a few stinkers abounding whether by experiment, musical or chemical over-indulgence, or just bad judgement. Then, perversely, as the band was tearing itself to bits: Combat Rock – the single album with the hits most people would know. Somehow, that seems strangely right.

That’s the record of their biggest Australian hit – Rock The Casbah, mostly the work of a drummer already on the nod and about to be sacked from the band, again. And Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, written by Jones for his then-girlfriend, American singer Ellen Foley – trivia point: it’s actually her voice on the sprawling operas of Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell if you didn’t know. And even her own We Belong To The Night was bigger here than anything the boyfriend’s combo ever managed in their real time existence.

But all that aside, just take London Calling as a ground zero, and you’ll find something in their canon to get lost in. Do so.  

Born To Run: I bought a record when I was 14. I've often had to explain to people why it's part of what keeps me alive...

Bruce Springsteen

Born To Run

CBS (1975)

The skinny kid from New Jersey was on his last chance. Bruce Springsteen had a lot of hopes and reputations riding on his third album – including his own.

For the four or five years previously, Springsteen had been a growing phenomenon on the US east coast, largely based on epic three-hour performances and songs that were increasingly both anthemic, but with an everyman touch. The live audiences were rabid, the critics moved to frothing superlatives – including that ‘quote heard round the world’ when reviewer Jon Landau had a handful of words taken out of context: “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” No pressure there – much. Hyperbole, sure – but Springsteen’s ongoing reputation show he could survive – even thrive – under that weighty claim.

Another convinced of the kid’s talent from the start was John Hammond, the veteran music executive and talent-spotter credited with discovering (among others) Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin, and a bit later a nasal-toned Minnesota folksinger named Bob Dylan. Springsteen was largely pushed into the auditioning for the great man by the aggro style of then-manager Mike Appel, who would go from greatest booster to greatest impediment to the singer’s career within a couple of years: “He thought I was Elvis and he was the Colonel – we weren’t,” as Bruce later put it.

Despite the reputation as full-tilt rock and rock performer, Hammond’s Dylan affections and CBS’s commercial desires were determined to push him into the more laidback singer/songwriter mode like their then-moneyspinners like James Taylor. Hence, Springsteen’s debut Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. (1972), was often tumbling second-division Zimmerman wordplay, and disappointed just about everybody. Not the least the record company, which – at Hammond’s insistence - threw a sizeable promotional budget at the album.

But as a concert attraction, the artist becoming known as The Boss was just getting bigger. A second album, The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle (1973) followed, this time with next-to-no promotional support. Again, it was a bit muddled. Some songs still a bit wordy, although a couple headed toward the cinematic mini-operas that would follow, full of those colourfully shady Jersey characters he grew up with. A greater focus on the band that would take its name from the record also showed some of them were maybe not quite up to the demands of recording, and the increasingly widescreen nature of the material. Throw in some muddy production and things looked bleak. But the support of his rabid home markets, and some influential critics and disc jockey – this being an era when such people still had some sway – saw the record crack 100,000 sales, giving Columbia the confidence to give the artist one more shot. This proved to be a good move.

So, the legend kept growing. A rough mix of what was to become the third album’s title track went out to some supportive radio stations in late 1974. And suddenly it’s all there: regiments of ringing guitars, and Bruce’s urgent delivery of one version of the teenage dream – it’s demanding, desperate, and just fucking wonderful. But still too long to be an AM radio hit. The suits tried to edit it a million ways, but it just became a nonsense of noise. CBS were, understandably, beginning to tear their corporate hair out. Again.

The rest of the album was laboriously slow in coming. Springsteen’s own quest for rock and roll perfection one of the main delaying factors. Acting as producer with the singer, Appel – the dollar signs beginning to flash brightly in his eyes – wanted to get the thing out to the great unwashed as quickly as possible. New York’s Record Plant studio was becoming a pretty tense place. With the ‘rock and roll future’ quote still hanging heavy over both of them, Springsteen and Landau cried into each beers one night. Bruce quizzing him on what exactly a producer’s role should be – in order to avoid some of the failings of the first two records. Landau has produced before, notably pre-punk heroes The MC-5’s second album, Back In The USA; The J.Geils Band, and Livingstone Taylor – James’ slightly rockier brother. Landau became the album’s third producer, and necessary middleman between the artistic and commercial aspirations. In his turn Landau brought in 21-year-old whiz-kid engineer, one Jimmy Iovine – later to produce Patti Smith (handing her a handy cast-off Bruce tune called Because The Night), Tom Petty, Dire Straits and U2 among others, and going on to found Interscope Records. These latter two were very much the team that could set about capturing the noises in Bruce’s head.

So, things began moving through early 1975, but while something magic was beginning to gel, it was still a long time coming. A final musical cog was added to the slightly rejigged E Street Band. The Stax-style brass burst of Tenth Avenue Freezeout was proving a stumbling block. The gun session players engaged to do the blowing – David Sanborn, The Brecker Brothers, as well as Bruce’s own right hand, the Big Man Clarence Clemons – were left twiddling their very costly thumbs while the arrangement was being agonised over. A sharply-featured and sharply-dressed Calabrian type took charge – pulling the Breckers and Sanborn aside and singing them their individual parts – inflections and all – from memory. Appel and Landau looked on, a bit stunned. “This is Miami Steve Van Zandt,” Bruce explained, “He’s our new guitar player, better put him on the payroll.”

But still Springsteen procrastinated. Fiddling with the songs, the takes, the production – full length albums of out-takes and second-thoughts of later albums suggest this working method may not have changed much. But eventually, even the supernaturally patient Jon Landau cracked it, and snapped: “You’re not supposed to think it’s perfect! You think Chuck Berry sits around listening to Maybelline wishing he’d changed something? C’mon, it’s time to put the record out.” Finally faced with an argument he could understand, Bruce gave in.

With an almost ridiculously intensive publicity campaign gearing up around it, Born To Run finally appeared in August – and still stands as one of the most complete, most perfect albums, of all time. In only eight songs, it makes a totally cohesive whole. The album, while not a concept as such, is a day in the life of some urban nowhere with young half-lost souls trying to find some way – any way – out. It’s starts in the morning, that first line’s ‘screen-door slam’ and mournful harmonica is the opening to 40 minutes of rock and roll bliss. It’s dreams of escape: ‘Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair/the night’s busting open, these two lanes can take us anywhere…’

And from there it doesn’t let up. From there, it doesn’t let up. The aforementioned Tenth Avenue Freezeout self-mythologising as ‘…The big man joins the band’. Night, the lost love howl of Backstreets. Any one a song other artists could build a career on – some did, witness Patti Smith, and The Pointer Sisters hitting with another leftover, Fire.

And then you get to Side Two – these being the days when such constructions meant something. It opens with Born To Run itself, where the poetry meshes with the wall-of-sound sweep of noise. ‘You and me Sandy we can live this sadness/I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul…’ The naysayers might have it as melodramatic Americana, but it’s a million adolescent dreams distilled into four-and-a-half minutes. She’s The One is all barely restrained passions. Meeting Across The River – originally titled The Heist on some very early pressings for the trainspotters looking for the ultimate Bruce rarity – is as low-key as it gets: Roy Bittan’s tinkling piano, a touch of bass, and Randy Brecker’s smoky trumpet somewhere off in the distance. Bruce is the small-time crim, thinking maybe this time he’s onto the main chance, but somehow you just know it’s not going to happen for him.

And then there’s the final corner. The last piece – calling it merely a song even seems to lessen it – Jungleland, taking the whole cast from late night into the dawn of the next day, with the dreams crumbling and reality bearing down. Clocking in at 9 minutes 33, it is that complete opera out on the turnpike. The Magic Rat gets his shot at the big payoff, but ‘his own dream guns him down’. But worse, he (and everyone else) ‘Reach for their moment…but wind up wounded, not even dead’. And probably doomed to repeat it again and again.

To listen to Born To Run all the way through can be exhausting – and you gasp that Bruce and the now up near 20-piece E Street Band can on occasion crash through the whole thing in concert – but that it is one of the greatest albums ever is unquestionable. But back then, even his own dream threatened to gun him down. The hype campaign that went with its release was extraordinary – Bruce on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously, among other excesses – caused an almost equally huge backlash against him.

And then the inevitable splintering of his relationship with Mike Appel, and a three-year legal battle where the artist couldn’t even release new music to capitalise on the breakthrough success as he attempted to extricate himself from a management contract a judge later described as ‘a slavery deal’ – Appel clearing up to 50% of the income generated. Elvis and the Colonel indeed. It’s somehow so right and so wrong that contract was apparently signed on the bonnet of a Chevy Nova in a darkened carpark. It’s perhaps unsurprising he came back with the altogether bleaker Darkness On The Edge Of Town, before the commercial megahit into the mass-consciousness of Born In The USA a decade on. All that, and his current status as multi-millionaire working-class hero, and unsurpassed live attraction – somehow still playing those three-hour marathons in his 60s – came from this extraordinary record.

The man himself is a hard marker about it: “I wanted to write words like Bob Dylan, to sing like Roy Orbison, and have it sound like Phil Spector.” Maybe he didn’t achieve all that in one shot, but he’s got closer than anyone else ever has.

Jason Isbell: Live at the venue formerly known as the Grand Ole Opry.

Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit

Live From The RymanSoutheastern Records 

The times are changing, and even the genre pigeonholes are blurring. The Ryman Auditorium of the title is the refurbished Nashville church hall that was once the holy grail of old-school country, The Grand Ole Opry – before they took the name to a flashy theme park and the music went downhill.

In its first heyday, an artist like the now-lauded Jason Isbell would have found it tough getting a look in, let alone the annual dozen-night residencies he now plays there. Although still broadly under the Americana banner, Isbell’s subject matter is not the horse-operas and high plains drifting of back then - but equally doesn’t fit with the big hats and pick-up trucks anthems that seem the currency now.

So here, you get a document of a man and his increasingly superlative band doing what they do with an appreciative audience. There’s a range of subject matter and emotional ground. Ground zero is probably the bluntly candid singer-songwriter tales of his own classic redemption story: getting off the booze to make the best work of a career that started when he was drafted as a guitar prodigy by much-respected fellow southerners, The Drive-By Truckers - who later let him go when the bottle was taking too much precedence over the music.

He even got the girl. And that muse, partner, saviour, and obvious love of his life Amanda Shires is the secret weapon here. She’s not always part of the band – her own rising solo career sometimes taking precedence. But Shires sometimes fiery, sometimes reflective, fiddle playing and counterpoint vocals of real human feeling add texture to the band’s crunch. The hushed need in Cover Me Up, or philosophically mortal If We Were Vampires can make you feel like they’re the only two people in the room.

By contrast, when the 400 Unit kick in, they can be just a superbly tight rock and roll band. The guitars of Sadler Vaden and Isbell fling themselves at each other. Derry DeBorja’s keyboard flourishes range from accordion swing to the barrelhouse bar brawl of Super 8. The singer’s political conscience and pondering on southern identity also get a run on the likes of Cumberland Gap and White Man’s World. The musical muscle displayed explaining why some try to claim them as some sort of alt-country version of Springsteen and the E-Streeters. It’s a not unreasonable call.
There’s a couple of quibbles: even though there’s an energy as they stretch and jam a bit, the band’s so well-drilled it takes a whoop from the crowd or a polite Alabama-accented “Hey, thanks for coming down…” between songs to remember it’s a live item. And for whatever reason – although guessing it’s more contractual than creative – the songs are all from Isbell’s post-rehab albums: the austere and confessional Southeastern, along with the more expansive Something More Than Free and The Nashville Sound. This means you miss out on usual show highlights such as Truckers-era gems Outfit and the defiant Never Gonna Change.

Live From The Ryman will please fans as a souvenir of what they’ve probably already experienced, but will also work as a primer for the curious to start their investigation of a helluva artist, and a helluva band.

Another practice survey of Focus Tracks for a polite audience...

Let’s face it, the days of your ‘hit’ record financing a fleet of Ferraris of many colours has obviously gone. Even simply making a living from music is a lot more tenuous. But Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher have got to be one of the default models for multi-skilling artists doing good - not just for themselves, but others. Their Milk Records cottage industry collective is not just the vehicle for their own works, but giving the leg up to the likes of Loose Tooth and even New Zealand’s beautifully fragile Tiny Ruins. Part of the juggle might be keeping their own creativity ticking over, but they seem to be doing it with ease of people who just love what they do. Barnett cherry-picks another highlight from her Tell Me How You Really Feel album with Charity (Milk!), even candidly diarising her ongoing career experience with her spin on the traditional band on tour video. Even that sometimes hackneyed form manages a 21^st century freshness here – strolling and sightseeing in Toronto, rather than old-school hurling TVs into hotel swimming pools. But the song’s perhaps ironic sighed refrain of “You must be having so much fun…” suggests there’s still a work ethic to doing what she does – time and distance from your loved ones is still something to overcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtzIKH_sZRw

The musician trying to keep body and soul together sometimes has to be many things. One third of The April Family is multi-instrumentalist Michael Carpenter, who depending on what day you catch him will variously be studio owner and producer, video maker, or even donning a moptop wig to Paul (or even occasionally Ringo) in a Beatles show. These are the realities. Then there’s his power pop and country-flavoured original projects, such as this. The one thing you never doubt is his passion and sincerity for all he does – like the genuine glowing praise he offers for this band’s other elements – Casey Atkins’ intertwining guitar and Kylie Whitney’s perfectly country-tinged keening. One Trick Pony (Big Radio) has all these elements in place, and a likely invite to the next Golden Guitars presentation.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcjNPdrRR-k

And sometimes, music can be your whole life from very early on. Many people will just remember Nathan Cavaleri’s name as that frighteningly precocious kid with a guitar who used to turn up on ye olde Hey Hey It’s Saturday back in the mists of time. But fame as a 12-year-old should not be the end of the story. The getting through leukaemia thing is not a bad footnote either. But this is about Nathan the man and artist now. Demons (Independent) showcases that beside his voice breaking some time ago, he’s still a helluva guitar player – influences like JJ Cale and Ry Cooder to the fore, with an occasional outbreak of Tame Impala is one not unreasonable description.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z03cHNNI-p0


But if you’re talking about taking risks with your art, Emma Louise move to change, not just style and character, but even gender for her new album is a quite extraordinary thing. A chance discovery of an electronic vocal effect allows her to inhabit a man named Joseph. And make music with a voice not her own. Falling Apart (Liberation) becomes an almost Sam Smith-flavoured soulful ache, which she manages to bring from seemingly a whole different viewpoint and experience. It all might be just an interesting novelty unless the songcraft was as assured as she’s made it. Quite extraordinary.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCR9YJhPXZo


Or you can just go from another time. I Know Leopard bring the rolling synth noise from the ‘80s, and bring some modern self-awareness to Landmine (Ivy League). Sure, they’re seeing the irony in rather dodgy special effects, shiny makeup, glitter, capes, and even the gloriously anachronistic keytar - but they don’t forget they’re making pop music that’s more than just a pastiche or homage to the days of asymmetrical haircuts and moody stares into the camera. The trick may be to just listen without noticing the visuals – the giggling you’re doing might actually detract from the quality of the music.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZznNjyRrAA

 

Sahara Beck might have an element of role play in Here We Go Again (Independent). But she’s a colour drenched character of empowerment, and while this might be a breakup song, it’s one that comes with a bit of self-help and positive reinforcement as the disembodied choir sweeps in. Its carefully styled – posed, even – but never becomes quite as arch or self-mocking as it might have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F4-bOE7aYY

 

While some here have been working out making music their life, or their life as music there’s always bands just trying to get from one release to the next. They’re not after that fleet of Ferraris or support spot to Pink. They’re doing it for the love, and hopefully to entertain a few people beside themselves along the way. Yon Yonson have sometimes even announced their own demise when it’s all got simply too complicated or expensive to go on. But then they get another spurt of enthusiasm and/or inspiration and unexpectedly drop something like Cardboard (Independent) to the world. An insistent tinkling earworm that has a wander and a think as it unfurls. Gently existential in its way, although they probably wouldn’t have thought about it in those terms.https://soundcloud.com/yon-yonson/cardboard

 

And up in Brisbane, there’s some pop-punk being doled out in under three-minute portions to good effect. Columbus are shouty and trebly as the form requires, and Cut It Out (UNFD) wanders in, has a yell at you, and heads to the bar in the obligatory manner. Then there’s the bonus of a clip that lets them do all the homage to Pulp Fiction that’s necessary. All very purposefully noisy, as it should be.      
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku8oo-tgfd0

Single Life was always a terrible name...

One result of this webly-interconnected world is a song released in Boston, Brisbane, Birmingham, or Bilbao this morning can make its way around the world by lunchtime. Relatedly, artists struggling for a profile or scrambling for airplay in their local markets can be recognised and even championed a hemisphere away. Some of the antipodean artists below are blips on the radar here, but getting mainstream acclaim elsewhere.

Holiday Sidewinder is getting noticed here, there, and just about everywhere - whether as part of the Russell Crowe-lauded Alex Cameron travelling circus or in her own right, where her mix of part ‘60s Gainsbourg chanteuse with dollop of ‘70s disco sex bomb, and thoroughly empowered 21^st century woman becomes increasingly distilled with Leo (Personal Best Records). But you don’t just have to take my word for how good she is – ask her Mum. Loene Carmen, much respected actress, musician and artist in her own right sums the work of her offspring thus: “When you raise your daughter on high doses of Dolly Parton, Barry White and Betty Davis, then she discovers Britney Spears and goes out into the world and travels and falls in love and reads books and thinks and lives and loves, this amazing anthem is what you get. So proud.” Yep, that about covers it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74giZVQ1NAI

A couple of years on from her quite stunning Self Talk album, Olympia has stirred up the world – or at least parts of it - in less than 24 hours with her return, Star City (EMI). ARIA-nominated for that first effort, the artist occasionally still known as Olivia Bartley stepped back and has taken time to work out what’s come next. With its almost ‘80s-echoing plastic sax to begin with before taking a bunch of glittering tangents, a title taken from Sydney’s oversize pokie lounge “casino” on the harbour get a bit existential as it unfurls. Her glorious guitar noise manages to both shimmer and punch. While reference points from Sia to St Vincent might be fairly made, she’s made pop-music-as-art unlike anything else from here – or anywhere else. The album this previews now becomes a much awaited item.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83J0oywX8Y0

The UK media are enthusiastically jumping on board, resulting in a growing following that will see Tash Sultana as a festival and live favourite there as well, probably before the year is out. Her candid bluntness and effortlessly style-less style endearing her to the Brits as much as it seemed to puzzle the Americans who tried to work her out a few months back. Free Mind (Independent) is another good example of what she does: it has that casual strolling lope – a bit reggae, a bit rootsy, and more than a bit soulful. Throw in her no-filter thought processes that gives her work a distinct ease, charm and that nicely frayed edge that makes her that bit human, and that bit special.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhmgMsHB1eY

A more orthodox stepping stone sees The Adults new work, Take It On The Chin (Warner NZ/Native Tongue), cross the Tasman east-to-west with a promotional push to coincide with a tour. If unaware, this is the band guise for erstwhile Shihad frontbloke and energizer bunny impersonator Jon Toogood. But please don’t come in expecting rockist racket in the style of his better known combo, or even the slightly more introspective noise that came from the first offering under this moniker about six-or-so years back - which featured Kiwi luminaries such as Straitjacket Fits’ Shayne Carter among others. Toogood’s central reference point here is Aghani Al-Banat, a Sudanese traditional music he discovered when he married in Khartoum – exotic enough for you? There’s a rhythmic bed to it, but with a percussive element which when mixed with the layers Toogood applies makes for something genuinely different, particularly with the vocals of NZ hip-hop identity Kings added.
Is Jonno serious about all this? Well, enough to be basing his Masters degree around an investigation of the music.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiOqNBGRh4M

Snakadaktal was another of those bands anointed ‘next big thing’ status a few years back. But, in a story that’s already happened a million times to better and worse bands, and will likely happen a million more times, it never came to full fruit. Emerging from the disappointment, that band’s Phoebe Lou and Joey Clough rearrange themselves as Two People, and have been patient enough to become something different they seem truly happy with. Something To Talk About (Liberation) is layered and electronics, with an almost old trip-hop feel to it, but again remembering to be pop with it. The whole sound is of a modern model, but with enough distinction to be taken on its own terms.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhK1YbRtEk

Similarly, Adelaide’s Tom Montesi put a past of a dozen indie band that never quite made it behind him by giving himself a new name. As Los Leo, he offers up Beautiful Mess (Independent) - which is anything but the title suggests. It is plaintive, soulful music – even if he admits growing up on Coldplay and old U2 records. The international element here is this music coming together through a short collaboration with Jack Grace – the producer’s work with Ngairre and Christopher Port among others allowing him to decamp and resettle in Paris. As you do. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKKkdRekCkU

From her home in the bucolic surrounds of NSW’s far south coast, Melanie Horsnell assembles human scale pieces of songcraft of rootsy, perhaps heading toward alt-ish country, music that I remain determined to call Australicana – even if nobody else wants to take on that genre description.  Someone Like You (Inflatable Girlfriend) is typically gentle, with the oddly confident swagger she can sometimes infuse into her work, along with input from regular collaborator Steve Appel – himself sometimes known as the idiosyncratic King Curly. It’s an end-of-the-night waltz, to be enjoyed as the embers of the fire in the old 44-gallon drum fade.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsMRv1mJMEA


Dark Fair go for the rattly racket of the now oddly slightly-out-of-fashion guitar and drums duo. Off Into My Head (Poison City) is an insistent buzz that often seems like it’s about to overflow into a howl of feedback, but never quite does. Then on another level, it has some perhaps unexpected pop elements to it – which itself makes an odd sense when you see Adalita’s name among the production credits. Punkish? Sure. Approachable? Maybe. And likely to find a wider popularity if people manage to hear it. Another of those ones that may well find an audience outside their homeland.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbRArIxGVJY