Various Artists [The Female Touch]

Really enjoyed playing this two disc set today, unlike other 'poppy' female discs, this has some real clever tracks, it's a great introduction to a number of Artists that you may have overlooked, makes you want to explore some more, i played / reviewed this disc just over 4 years ago [13th July 2010], every time i play these discs i seem to come away with a new favourite track.

Now visually this is a great presentation, love the front booklet cover, half a face, lots of out of focus, except for that eye, also the back inlay is a lesson in how to present a track listing, so easy to read, Artists in pink, tracks in black, why do other release make things harder?.

The tracks that really touched me were 5, 7, 20, 29 & 37, and surprisingly it was the last track on disc 1 that really got me going, 'Silent All These Years' by Tori Amos, i've never been a Tori Amos fan, i've tried some of her music, but i just can't get into her, this is the first time i've really listened to this song, and i love the lyrics, they're so cryptic at times, take this little gem in the middle,

Years go by

If i'm stripped of my beauty

And the orange clouds

Raining in my head

I take it she's singing about her ginger hair, and as she ages she will go grey [grey clouds?], a nice imagery, i love the intro, very Classical, i think she's lifted it from some composition, but i just can't put my finger on which one, a sort of generally discordant prelude that clashes in a nice way, when the lyrics come in, there's these beautiful treble chimes, now that's just delicious, there's an overall cleverness in little touches, tempo and volume to great effect, think i'll look out for more of her individual songs on Various Artists albums.

Here's Tori Amos singing 'Silent All These Years' on YouTube.

Ron Sexsmith [Eponymous] 

I heard such great things about Sexsmith from reviews of his first album, especially the Jackson Browne references, that i took my chances and just bought this album right off the bat, and i guess a mixed feeling at first, it was a good album, but i was expecting great, but this disc has been a slow burner, and this most recent listen has been the best yet, he's a great SongSmith, and i really need to delve into some further albums by him, but which one should be next?, i think i'll plump for Long Player Late Bloomer, this appeared in my Blog back in 2010 [31st July 2010], and i write this review while purposely not looking at that one, i don't want to 'steal' from previous thoughts.

Ron Sexsmith is Canadian, he's now recently 49, so the big 5-0 looms on the horizon, this is hsi first album, but he now has a whole spread of 13 albums, he recorded this one in 1995, the front cover portrait makes him seem like a little boy, probably because it's shot from a slight height, plus he's so much younger [31 years old], a black & white shot, really well done [photo by Daniel Lanois], tousled hair, a zip up raincoat / jacket thing, hands look like they're behind his back, grainy shot, and the purple lettering for his name, i like it, i think it's great, and in complete contrast the back inlay is very colourful, though i suspect it's a black & white that's colour tinted, again from a height, making him even more look like a little boy, the track listing is excellently done, it really stands out well, the numbers were added by me, so i know where i am, great stuff indeed.

Bruce Springsteen [The Ghost Of Tom Joad] 

I'm not a great fan of Springsteen's 'anthems' [Born In The USA etc], but his more acoustic output really gets me, my favourite album of his is 'Tunnel Of Love', he really gets under your skin, and finds the detail and essence of life in his observations, on first listen i found this just too laid back, in places Springsteen almost ends up talking with a slight guitar twang in the background, almost like a book of poems, but once you notice these very underestimated lyrical tunes, you realise what an incredible Singer / Songwriter Springsteen really is, he has that ability to transport you away to a time and place of his choosing, you truly fall into his world, some of these songs are gut-wrenching, on this hearing this album truly clicked, before i used to like a few of the songs, now i find almost all of them precious gems, songs of unemployment, crime, illegal immigrants, vagrancy, loss, revenge etc, this could well prove to eventually be my favourite Springsteen album in time.

Bruce Springsteen is American, now 63 years old, he recorded this disc in 1995, the front cover picture is crap, well maybe that's a bit severe, it certainly isn't great, but its low key-ness actually goes along with the music.

So many of these tracks were just revelatory today, i have never heard this album so good, it gets better and better on every hearing, my favourite three tracks are 5-6 & 11, and here's a synopsis of all three,
5 Sinaloa Cowboys - My absolute favourite of all, the ending is so powerful and strong, it makes you want to weep, and i catch myself every time, it ends 'there in the dirt he dug up ten thousand dollars, all that they'd saved, kissed his brother's lips and placed him in his grave', now that's so gripping, earlier their Father had warned them 'My sons, one thing you will learn, for everything the north gives, it exacts a price in return', and here his maxim comes true, the hole in the ground of buried treasure, for one of them doubled as his grave, it gives and takes in return, the imagery is fantastic, the music is just Springsteen and his acoustic guitar, a certain Mexican sounding melody, it just ambles along, Springsteen's voice cracks at times, there's a very subtle use of emphasis, try 'ah but if you slipped', it's poetic storytelling at its best.
6 The Line - A touching yet sad tale of lost love, a girl that he met, and then lost, and then spent his life trying to find her, again a gentle strumming song, there's a lovely crux near the end, where he stands between Bobby Ramirez [loyalty], and Louisa [love], and the music almost hangs in mid air at the lyrics 'I felt myself moving', as his hand rests on his gun, again a great moment where Springsteen can say in a few words what others would spend pages to say.
11 Galveston Bay - A surprise addition, i liked this a lot, very very sparse, just really a slight twang from Springsteen's guitar, just very much his raw voice, it's the nearest you'll get to Bruce just reciting a poem, and it's his ability to quote nonchalant insignificance like 'In the early darkness, Billy rose up, went into the kitchen for a drink of water', and yet to make it so profound, as if the whole song hangs on a moment of rare nothing, it's a doodling guitar album with the mutterings of a prophet.

This listening inspired me to buy Springsteen's earlier sparse album 'Nebraska', i'm sure it's going to be just as good.

Mary Chapin Carpenter [Stones In The Road] 

I so much enjoyed this disc today, Carpenter really has a way with words, and a way with delivery too, marrying words and music perfectly, she has this penchant for just knowing how to catch your heart, like a master Angler knows how to hook a fish, and she constantly gets a lump in my throat from me, in my opinion this is her best record, i've tried others, and there's yet others i need to try, but this stands head and shoulders above the rest, it's certainly easy on the ear, yet none of her songs are 'simple', they're especially sophisticated, the poetry isn't in taking esoteric meanings, rather it's in the depth of ideas and ideals she sings about, this disc resides at No13 in my all time list of favourite albums, and with nearly 1700 albums i own, now that's really high, i wrote about this disc previously early on in my Blogging [1st March 2010].

Mary Chapin Carpenter is American, and she's now 54, many would categorize her as a Country singer, but she's more of an American Folk singer, or Singer / Songwriter, i would say she's like a female Jackson Browne, she brought out this disc in 1994, the front booklet cover is very good [photo by Caroline Greyshock], an atmospheric solo shot, backlit from a window, lovely and hazy, though the top and bottom squiggly rip off lines of black for the lettering are a bit naff, yet it's a nice enough visual, the back insert makes the track listing harder to read.

It's very very hard to pick a winner, the tracks that ultra impressed me were 8-13, very much the second half of the album, the first half is more extrovert, a heart on her sleeve bunch that are more geared to chart success and sales, the second half of the album is introspective, an inner world where Carpenter opens up her secret world, and i feel such a better person for being exposed to this 'musical poetry', ultimately it's tracks 10-11 & 13 that are just gut-wrenchingly the very pinnacle of what songwriting should be all about, written nigh on to perfection, i marvel that one human being is capable of bringing out such tremendous emotions, i guess the very best track [on this listen] is the last one 'This Is Love', and i'd like to talk about it here,

13 This Is Love - 

Iris DeMent [My Life] 

This was a great disc to buy, one of those purchases where i was purposely trying to branch out into new genres, trying to get away from the usual stuff i always get, i would certainly classify this as Country first, but it also has elements of American Folk and Gospel, she has a real southern twang to her voice, she comes from Arkansas originally, and she was influenced by old time hymns in the Church she grew up in, so there's a lovely Gospel flavoured subject to things, maybe not necessarily religious in words, but in her observations and themes, for someone not exposed to DeMent, the first time listening to this album might give a strong indication of negative things, certainly death and sin, and regret and purposelessness, but i find it very positive and upbeat, that through the hard times there's fortitude to stand tall, in the title track DeMent laments, 'My life, it's tangled in wishes, and so many things that just never turned out right', it's a real theme of the album, it's certainly very realistic looking, instead of kidding ourselves that life's one happy go lucky round of good memories, this disc also appeared in my Blog in 2010 [25th May 2010].

Iris DeMent is American, she's now 51, she recorded this disc in 1994, the front cover photo [by Kelley McCall] is a bit naive, a photograph made to look like in a photo album, and a theme throughout the booklet, using old photo's of DeMent, like the one on the back.

It was tracks 4-6 that were superb, and i guess it's the middle one that hit me the most, called 'No Time To Cry', each of the three verses deals with a tragedy, whether it's her Father dying, an ambulance siren, or the bad news on the television, the 'solution' is to keep busy, life has a tendency to make you cynical, you're older and you just haven't got time to cry, a very acoustic song, her voice really shines out of the instrumentation, she plays acoustic guitar herself, the verses are great, dripping with sadness, and when the chorus comes in, there's an upbeat determination and fortitude to stubbornly endure, her voice rises into a major key, it's a great moment each time the chorus comes in, in the last verse the instrumentation quietens down, and it enhances her voice, and of course it heightens the power of the song when the instruments comes back in with force later in the verse, also i love the way DeMent treats the outro, she ad-libs 'no time to cry' three times, you can hear the way she accentuates things differently, a great way to finish a great song, one of her greatest compositions.

Here's Iris DeMent singing 'No Time To Cry' on YouTube.

Jackson Browne [Late For The Sky] 

Ah, another Jackson Browne album, that's two in one month [1st July 2012], with the album I'm Alive, these are the only two studio albums i own of his, in a sense the two pillars of his discography, they're almost 20 years apart, but musically they could be next door in time to each other, but they're written from a perspective of a 26 and 45 year old person respectively, this was the very first Jackson Browne album i bought, it wasn't long after the album was released [of course i bought it on LP vinyl], i discovered Jackson Browne when i heard 'Before The Deluge' playing on the radio, i was so impressed, and yet i feared that at the end of the song they wouldn't say who it was by, or i wouldn't catch it, i rushed out and bought the album, and the rest is history, a start of something big.

Jackson Browne is American, he's now 63, it almost seems i'm catching up with him, like i said he recorded this album when he was 26 in 1974, the front cover photograph gives the album its name [by Bob Seidermann], a bright blue cloudy sky, but a dull enough house / car that a streetlight is needed to see.

It was good to revisit this album again, and to renew my acquaintance with certain songs, the tracks i most enjoyed were 2-3, 6 & 8, i was surprised by tracks 3 & 6, 'Farther On', and 'For A Dancer', there's a sadness of regrettable days passed, but ultimately it's the last track 'Before The Deluge' that moved me, the whole thing seems powered by David Lindley's electric violin, it gives it a lamenting quality, and Jai Winding playing the organ creates a religiosity to the song also, of course the imagery i get from the song is of Noah and the flood, but it's more than that, some have commented that it's about impending nuclear war, my own feelings are it's about Ecology and the planet, and people are travelling in two extremes, one to a simpler way of life 'back to nature', and the other to raping the planet 'forging beauty into power', my take on certain passages are, 'the sand slipped through the opening', means the sands of time trickling through an hourglass ['we only have x number of days to save the planet!, time is running out!'], i love the words in the second verse,

And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow

For the glitter and the rouge

meaning there's a simple quiet beauty in the world too many people don't see, because they're fixated on the flash and noise, right at the end there's a musical outro [4:55-5:47] which lasts nearly a minute, really it's almost a jam session, and prominently features David Lindley's violin, which starts to turn into a nice bit of fiddling as the fade comes in [5:30+], it's a powerful song, and one of Jackson Browne's best sermons to boot.

Here's Before The Deluge being played on YouTube.

Beth Nielsen Chapman [Sand And Water]

This is such a profound album, it was composed during the loss of Chapman's Husband to cancer, songs of loss, and yet... deep down they're songs of gain, she writes on the back of the booklet 'every aspect of my life has deepened in meaning, that has been a gift in the midst of this loss', she certainly has a way of expressing emotion through the perfect lyric, they are full of pathos and eternity, i've tried a couple of her other albums, but i've found them weak in comparison, i first encountered her on a compilation album, and so i had to explore the disc that that song came from, another little gem in my disc library. 

Beth Nielsen Chapman is American, she is now 55, i didn't think she was that old, she recorded this album in 1997, the front booklet cover is very clever, a picture of Chapman under water, holding a bunch of roses, nicely far from the usual [photo by Howard Schatz], the reflection on the surface is great too, a pointed nose and two pairs of lips!. 

There are several songs that touched me on this listen, especially tracks 1, 4 , 6 & 10, i guess i connected with the slower more inward looking songs, track 6 ' Seven Shades Of Blue' is a real gem, it rises far above even the other very excellent songs on the album, it's an acoustic number, Chapman plays acoustic guitar, and she's real good with a fairly complex picking arrangement, no mere strumming here, the song is heightened by opening with a couple of long verses before the chorus [verse, verse, chorus... instead of the usual verse, chorus, verse, etc], i like the second half of the first verse, 

In the hollow of your shoulder

There's a tidepool of my tears

Where the waves came crashing over

And the shoreline disappears

very meaningful, using the analogy of the sea and the beach, Michael McDonald sings backing vocal in the chorus, there's also a lovely hum of background organ throughout the song, the whole thing seeps of nostalgia and almost regret, it's really beautiful.

Here's Beth Nielsen Chapman singing 'Seven Shades Of Blue' on YouTube.