2012 done and dusted

2012 was the year in which the balance of my listening habits rather veered away from Radio 6Music. Which is not to say there's been a lowering of standards there as might be said for other sections of the Beeb (see also below), just that I seem to have been casting my musical net a little more widely. On the one hand I've been soaking up a fair amount of Jazz FM and Radio 3 jazz coverage (hence numbers 8, 10 and 11 in my list below) and on the other I've been a reasonably faithful follower of Mike Harding's Wednesday evening Radio 2 slot (2, 3, 12, 15 and 16), soon to be pulled from the schedules, scandalously.

I also seem to have been to more gigs than ever. There's been a lot of jazz--several visits to Ronnie Scott's and, as ever, the annual ten-day November jazz binge that is the London Jazz Festival--and a fair amount of folk--notably a) a Sandy Denny tribute concert early in the year which opened my ears for the first time to a whole catalogue of music hitherto somehow off my radar and b) another rather pleasing August Bank Holiday at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival particularly in the company of some excellent woman singers (2 and 3).

That said, we did hear from a few of the old staples of my CD collection: Hawley, Fagen, Saint Etienne and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier striking out on her own. I've also tried not to ignore some of the newer kids on the block: Mala's--possibly adult-oriented?--Latinised dubstep, the interesting fruits of Sam Lee's song collecting work among the Romany community and the impressive new blues/soul songs, piano and--especially--VOICE of Natalie Duncan.

For me it's Richard Russell's collaboration with soul-legend Bobby Womack which pips the others to the post. As with his work with Gil Scott Heron in 2010, Russell has brought the best out of a soul artist who's had a difficult time of it recently and whose best years we might have thought were behind him.

That's what I think anyway.

THE LIST

1. Bobby Womack: The Bravest Man in the Universe
2. Karine Polwart: Traces
3. Caroline Herring: Camilla
4. Richard Hawley: Standing at the Sky’s Edge
5. Beach House: Bloom
6. Donald Fagen: Sunken Combos
7. Natalie Duncan: The Devil in Me
8. Kenny Wheeler: The Long Waiting
9. Snowgoose: Harmony Springs
10. Esperanza Spalding: Radio Music Society
11. Trish Clowes: And in the Night Time She is There
12. Thea Gilmore: Don’t Stop Singing
13. The xx: Coexist
14. Saint Etienne: Words and Music
15. Sam Lee: Ground of Its Own
16. Laetitia Sadier: Silencio
17. Lianne La Havas: Is Your Love Big Enough?
18. Quantic & Alice Russell: Look Around The Corner
19. Mala: Mala in Cuba
20. Spiro: Kaleidophonica

To hear more, fire up your Spotify machine...

• albums of the year (at least most of 'em)
• trax of the year (mainly odds'n'sods which have popped up on the radio)
• songs of the week (courtesy of This Is My Jam Inc.)

And, as ever, please argue...

song of the week has moved

See my 2012 songs of the week on my newfangled thisismyjam page.

More musings to follow here soon I don't doubt...

song of the week 40: frank sinatra - have yourself a merry little christmas

I've heard a few grim old versions of this song in the last week or so.

First up against the wall is My Morning Jacket whose half-soaked wheeze sounds like they didn't even get out of bed to record it. Chris Martin has learnt a couple of new jazzy chords which he can't really shoe-horn into the usual Coldplay oeuvre but which godammit he's going to bang out here even if they don't quite fit in. We wouldn't expect much of Kenny G but his version is perhaps not as bad as it might be. Michael Bublé over-eggs it a bit with those gushing strings but then we never did like him. And Lord save us from Christina Aguilera whose yelpy melismania is almost the polar opposite of the My Morning Jacket version but just as unlistenable.

Why not just content ourselves with this more thoughtful version from a bloke from New Jersey who could carry a tune or two and from a time (1957) when the song's overfamiliarity hadn't yet bred contempt:

(Also recommended: Judy Garland's original version from the 1944 film Meet Me in St Louis.)

Happy Christmas.

song of the week 39: hong kong in the 60s - footsteps

Here's a song from a band on my Best Albums of the Year list (full run-down coming soon, and I don't doubt that a nation waits with bated breath). Just to prove that their excellent 2011 offering My Phantoms isn't just a flash in the pan affair, this is a track from their Willow Pattern Songs EP of a couple of years ago. Very fine it is too.

song of the week 38: kate bush - symphony in blue

Here's something from a lady of a certain age who's been in the news lately:



I've been reading such good things about her new 50 Words for Snow record that I've been fair enthused to dig out some of her old stuff--which I'm not that familiar with to be honest--and see what I've been missing.

My brother used to have a copy of the Lionheart album and I reckon I haven't heard it since about 1982. I've just dug it out on Spotify though and it's better than I remember it. I'm afraid I've always found some of her piercing vocal pyrotechnics a bit too much but there are some tracks here which don't offend too much on this score (see above).

She's well known of course for her imaginative subject matter and I do like some of her flights of fancy ("Oh England My Lionheart" and "In the Warm Room" in particular). There doesn't seem to be very much dead wood in terms of lyrical content. Many a perfectly decent pop song can disappoint when you pick through the lyrics but I reckon these words could be read aloud and still tell a pretty good tale.

She tinkles a pleasing ivory or two an' all.

song of the week 37: christine hanson and dave formula - mistaken for a dream

Here's a broody slow-burner from erstwhile Magazine keyboarder Mr Dave Formula (possibly a made-up name) and cellist/composer/singer/sound designer Christine Hanson (no relation).

I reckon it's worth five minutes of your time:



More than a hint of a latter-day Joni Mitchell I would say, vocals-wise. And who doesn't like a good flugelhorn solo?

Reminds me a bit of this from a few years ago, although it's not that jazzy and there are no flugelhorns...

song of the week 36: felt - sunlight bathed the golden glow

Last night I went to the BFI to see Paul Kelly's new documentary "Lawrence of Belgravia".

The eponymous Lawrence (his surname is never used) is difficult to pin down: certainly eccentric, sometimes funny (wittingly or unwittingly), generally not particularly likeable though endearing on occasions, above all optimistically single-minded in a search for pop stardom which, to those looking on, seems doomed to failure.

Erstwhile lead singer of eighties jangly indie darlings Felt and nineties glam rockers Denim, these days Lawrence fronts the novelty synth-pop outfit Go Kart Mozart. In one of a series of interviews shown during the film, he claims that he's now "legally bonkers". Fleeting shots of methadone prescriptions and arrest warrants in his name suggest he might be right.

If he seems a bit at sea these days, that doesn't mean that some of the music he made all those years ago wasn't pretty fine:

song of the week 35: sound of rum - so low

Shake a leg there...

song of the week 34: trombone shorty - the craziest things

Lately I've been listening to Mike Chadwick's Saturday evening "Big Easy" programme on JazzFM. It's pretty good.

The "Tremé" TV series is mentioned in dispatches more than a few times but a fair amount of new music gets an airing too.

Here's some Trombone Shorty to maybe whet your appetite (seems Jools is on the case too):




...and then there's also my fledgling Spotify playlist based on music from the show.

song of the week 33: white label - todd

I've just come across "Stolen Voices", an interesting "bootleg remix album featuring rare or unreleased tracks and long-lost demos" from Norman Records.

It features originals by the likes of the Supremes, Harry Nilsson, Billy MacKenzie, David Bowie, Dennis Wilson, John Lennon... (If you're interested there are more details of the original sources here.)

My favourite track is this Todd Rundgren song recorded from a live performance in 1971. An interestingly angular melody which puts me in mind of another band I mention from time to time. The backing track is a bit X-Files, but I think it works quite well.

And can you spot the part where he forgets the lyric?


 

song of the week 32: focus - la cathédrale de strasbourg

At the weekend I was out drinking with a couple of fellow quinquagenarians.

At some point the conversation must have got round to seventies Dutch prog/jazz/rock bands. It can happen.

We all agreed that Focus were just great...

song of the week 31: cecil sharp project - meadows of dan

Here's a song I heard at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival at the weekend.

I told various friends I was going to the festival and almost all of them asked straight away: "Who's on?" Other than the ubiquitous Bellowhead, who claim to have performed at twenty-two festivals this summer, I couldn't particularly remember any names I was particularly looking forward to. Generally I don't go to festivals just because of the headliners but in the hope that, among the maybe twenty or so artists I'll be seeing in the space of a few days, there'll be the unexpected discovery of new artists who I haven't heard of before.

One such was Caroline Herring whose solo set was one of my highlights of the weekend. There's not a great deal of her own material available on the internet although the Cecil Sharp Project*, to which she contributed and who also performed at Shrewsbury, has received a fair amount of media coverage. Here's a pleasingly tuneful number from the resulting CSP album featuring Caroline Herring on lead voice and guitar:



* The Cecil Sharp Project is a suite of songs and tunes based on the life and work of the famous song collector composed and performed collaboratively by a number of folk musicians. This YouTube clip explains more.

song of the week 30: marvin gaye & tammi terrell - you're all i need to get by

It's one of those sitting-in-the-pub type questions isn't it? What's your favourite ever Motown album?

Stevie Wonder made some great records in the seventies of course but, in terms of a single album, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's Greatest Hits probably does it for me.*

Some bog standard facts:

• Tammi Terrell died tragically of a brain tumour at the age of 24. 
• Gaye was so shaken when it happened that he gave up live performance for three years and, rejecting the love song, turned to political issues for his inspiration. As it happened that worked out quite well.
• Rumour was that during the recording of the Greatest Hits album Terrell was already too ill to complete her vocal parts and that songwriter Valerie Simpson was called in to do so in her absence. Simpson has subsequently denied this though. 
• Simpson and husband Nickolas Ashford wrote most of the tracks on the album, as well as many great songs for other Motown artists. 
• They also scored a number 3 UK hit under their own names in 1984 with "Solid". 

Here's a tribute to Nickolas Ashford who died yesterday.

R.I.P.

womadness

Songs of the Last Three Weeks (numbers 27-29, not that anyone's counting...):

I Am Kloot - I Still Do
Oi Va Voi - Yesterday's Mistakes
Ana Moura - No Expectations

A couple of weeks ago I went off to the WOMAD festival. Despite its reputation as an exclusively world music affair, I actually found that in terms of the range of music on offer there's quite a lot more to it than that. For example. we also got:

• the genre-defying Penguin Cafe,
• lounge-dubsteppers(?) Submotion Orchestra: meaty bass-pedal effects to make your chest rattle and flugelhorn to send your spirits a-soaring,
• Louisiana's Feufollet, beloved of Elvis Costello, peddling an interesting cocktail of cajun (all fiddles and accordions) and indie (all guitars and winsome vocals), and
• Guy Garvey's Mercury-nominated mates I Am Kloot.

I know some people go to festivals to have a good ole party and consequently maybe judge the quality of the music on the extent to which it allow them to jolly well dance their socks off, but for me the great moments of the weekend were the quieter ones. I have to say that these three songs fair brought a lump to my throat...

Genial lead Klooter Pete Branwell admitted that the band had been sceptical about coming to WOMAD and "weren't sure they would fit in". They got a good reception though from what seemed to be a preponderance of white males of a certain age (er, like me...). This was a great pin-drop moment:



Oi Va Voi gave as energetic a performance as ever and went down a storm with the party people. I'm not sure though they've ever matched the quality of the songwriting on their first album, is it really eight years ago? I doubt that KT Tunstall (for it is she) ever regretted her move away from the band in view of the millions of albums she's shifted since, but for me this is by far the best thing she's written. Also what I'm guessing is Steve Levi's "cantorial" singing--anyone?--gets me every time:




I'm not generally a massive fan of Fado but I really enjoyed Ana Moura's performance. I'm sure world music purists would cringe at my lack of deference to nearly two centuries of Portuguese musical tradition but for me this Rolling Stones cover was the highlight of her set:




Next week something more upbeat, I promise...

song of the week 26: cornershop - biro pen

It's been a while since we heard from Cornershop. Yesterday I picked up their excellent new album for a very reasonable price from one of my favourite CD shops.

As is the way of these things, a while ago Brill Records in Exmouth Market--for it is they of whom I speak--were obliged to diversify into bagels and coffees in order to keep their business going, but they still care about music. They've still got a good selection (rock, indie, soul, folk, jazz, world music), still pick out the best new releases and display them prominently alongside reviews from recent newspapers cut out and pasted up on a noticeboard.

Their genial and usually upbeat proprietor tells me though that sadly sales of CDs are now quite few and far between. Shame.

If you're passing by why not pop in and treat yourself to some new music?



End of commercial break...

song of the week 25: crosby stills nash & young - woodstock

I've just been watching a BBC Four documentary about music in Los Angeles in the early seventies. There's something odd about the way I find some of these songs particularly evocative of the period. Odd because, although I did listen to them, a long time ago, this would have been a few years after their release. I would probably have been hitting my own "Me Decade" round about the time the Sex Pistols were making front page news.

There are maybe four albums in particular which bring on this strangeness: Joni Mitchell's Blue, Carole King's Tapestry, James Taylor's Greatest Hits and, most of all, Deja Vu by Crosby Stills Nash and Young.

To be honest these are artists I tend to airbrush out of my history in certain company. I used to own a lot of this music but much was culled from my record collection in the anti-singer-songwriter purge of, I don't know, probably 1986 or thereabouts when I'd decided to adopt some kind of post-punk/indie affectation. In latter years I've come to terms with my past predilections for massively unfashionable music.

For the benefit of younger readers, this song commemorates the landmark Woodstock music festival of 1969 and was recorded by three artists at the time, each version interesting in its own way: Joni Mitchell of course wrote it and included it on her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album. Matthews Southern Comfort (starring ex-Fairport Convention vocalist Iain Matthews) took it into the UK Top 40, their only hit in a short-lived career. This is the version which appeared on the LA supergroup's aforementioned Deja Vu album of 1970:

song of the week 24: fleet foxes - sim sala bim

Did anyone else notice the preponderance of facial hair on display at Glastonbury this year?

There was this lot:

...who pale in hirsuteness in comparison with these boys:

...who are almost a latter-day...

No, you're right. ZZ Top didn't actually show up at Glastonbury although they're still very much a going concern and if you're interested--and are prepared to go to all that trouble--you can catch them on a mammoth US tour round about now. (You'll remember of course that Frank Beard is the comparatively clean-shaven one.)

It's Fleet Foxes though who are pretty much the pick of the beardy bunch for me at the moment. I've been giving their recent Helplessness Blues album a good few spins and it seems to me every bit as good as their 2008 debut. Here's a track from their Glasto set:



Spotter's badge if you identified Elbow and Eels hiding behind the hair at the top of the page.

song of the week 23: betty wright - clean up woman

Heard this on 6Music the other day...



Pretty good huh? Really like how the two guitar parts interlock and that...

Annoyingly though, once I've listened to it, it's this song which plays in my head afterwards.

song of the week 22: michel legrand - dingo rock

More jazz this week, featuring legendary veteran French composer Michel Legrand, who I was lucky enough to catch at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this week.

Legrand is mainly known for the lush orchestrations and sweeping melodies of his film scores but, as we saw and heard, he's also an remarkably virtuosic jazz pianist and despite his seventy-nine years his dexterity at the keyboard remains undiminished.

He recorded his Legrand Jazz album with Miles Davis in 1958 and they collaborated again in 1990, a year before Davis died, on a film called Dingo. This funky big-band version of a piece from the soundtrack (which for reasons unknown never made it onto the resulting album) was a highlight of the evening:

Free music - Dingo Rock

More about Legrand's film work in my earlier post.

song of the week 21: gil scott-heron - winter in america

In the twenty-four hours since my last post this song has followed me around.

Thanks for this mainly go to two commendable GSH radio tributes on Jazz FM. One was a compelling interview with Paul Jones yesterday morning which I caught completely by chance in a cafe in New Cross. As the owner and I sat listening he told me about the time he saw GSH perform in the very pub across the road from us. That must have been a good few years ago.



There are no finer testaments to GSH's poetic genius than the lyrics to this song.