SOUL SURMISE

PAUL BUCHANAN - Mid Air

The Blue Nile were a musical phenomena. Four records in twenty years; thirty seven songs! Everyone haunting, melancholic and utterly majestic. Eight years after their last album, their singer Paul Buchanan releases his first solo project. The surprises on Mid Air are that it contains fourteen tracks; more than Blue Nile’s first seven years! Second that the songs weigh in at just over two and a half minutes; minimal sketches in Blue Nile terms. What is not surprising and still very much the same is the quality and elegiac beauty. With hardly more than a sparse piano tinkle and the odd dash of additional instrumentation Buchanan has hit that early hours of the morning sound; enough to make the whole room resonate with emotion and substance but no way enough noise to wake the neighbours. You do feel that you should be in a high up Glasgow apartment looking over the Mitchell Library like that photograph on the back of Deacon Blue’s Raintown album cover, trailing the lights of taxis and wondering about where they are going, who they are carrying and what goes on in their hearts and souls. Of course we are all much older than we were when we were untangling our worldviews to Walk Across The Rooftops, Raintown, Rattlesnakes and Swimmer and Mid Air is a mature work that deals with loss (I Remember You) domestic realities (Two Children) and the world weariness of 24 hour televised news (Newsroom). This is an album for gentle reflection on the big issues in the most minimalist of ways. As an artist with no Christian Creed to profess Buchanan still stretches life so far that he needs to name check Jesus and linger ever so briefly in spaces of spirit.  That soft sturdy slow burn Buchanan voice gives us aching catharsis and joyous glimpses of grace in the same poignant and gorgeous melodious couplet. Sublime!

GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD - The Album

As a Beatle fanatic one of my favourite periods in their fifty plus years of history is that three year period immediately after they broke up. Here we see four young men dealing with a new world. Behind them the most prolific musical years and a the same time the most claustrophobic pop celebrity craziness. As 1970 dawned the bonds were broken and off went four men into a very unknown future. Ringo the drummer must have worried his career was gone but headed off to record songs his mother had taught him before finding some country tunes in Nashville. John was unravelling as The Beatles did and went off with Yoko into Primal Scream and the raw cathartic album that resulted. Paul felt he’d lost his vocation and purpose so he took off to Scotland’s countryside and made organic quirky records of domestic bliss. Of all of the fab four it was George Harrison who sniffed the freshest air. He had been living in the shadow and by Abbey Road was proving to be in the richest vein of writing form.

Harrison also had his faith and it proved a better inspiration than Ringo’s comic acting, John’s therapy and Paul’s farm. Faith gave Harrison a consolation, a reflective space to take in the events going on around him and subjects for lots of songs; and he wrote lots of songs! This record with unfortunately the same name as Harrison’s 1973 record gives a real insight into that post Beatles feeling. Here we have the songs that would make up the ambitious Spector produced All Things Must Pass in their early forms. Along with that Let It Be Me, Dylan’s Mama You’ve Been On My Mind and Women Don’t Cry For Me that wouldn’t appear until 1976. It is chilled out, unplugged, sparse but confident and free. The spirituality is in there in spades; My Sweet Lord, Awaiting On Us All and The Light That Has Lighted  The World. His spiritual farewell to the Beatles All Things Must Pass is in there too. These are guitar George’s first steps into independence and they would lead to him conquering the pop world for the next three years, way above the success of his three old mates! This record is beautiful and understated and a lovely little piece of post Beatles Beatle history.

LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD - The Film

GEORGE HARRISON and THE ART OF DYING

DUKE SPECIAL - Oh Pioneer

I have followed Peter Wilson’s (aka Duke Special) career from the very beginning, giving him one of his first radio sessions as Booley House way back in the day. I have watched the twists and turns of a determined young man seeking a way to fulfil his dreams for his art. I remember him deciding that the piano was not the way to go and drawing a guitar band around him, renamed Benzine Headset. Then along came Coldplay and Wilson’s instrument was suddenly back in vogue and loads of bands improved because they gave the musically talented member who had been an add on out in the wings a more central position in writing and performance. Wilson found his original vocation and genius and the piano became the focus. While watching him with the Ulster Orchestra recently, his piano and voice has never sounded more assured, more authoritative.

Oh Pioneer is being promoted as Duke Special’s third “commercial” release. Between it and his second “commercial” release he has produced five projects from theatre songs to a suite of songs on photographers to a short EP on Belfast’s great voice of the fifties Ruby Murray. His Dukeness seems a prolific young man who needs such projects to give his over imaginative mind room to play. In many ways Oh Pioneer is similar to the last arty project Under The Dark Cloth and the songs fitted seamlessly together in that Ulster Orchestra gig.

What that means is that there is less vaudeville music hall than his debut Songs From The Deep Forest. You’ll not find the overt drama songs like Last Night I Nearly Died or Our Love Goes Deeper Than This. Don’t get me wrong there are still those eccentric and original imaginative musical touches but it is as if Duke doesn’t need to dress his songs up so much. His time writing with Boo Hewerdine on Under The Dark Cloth can only have been a blessed time of learning his craft. Less becomes more mostly here, though Snakes In The Grass will give crazy and most loved percussionist Chip a chance to shine, when it goes live. There is a confidence that these songs are just perfect as they are. As always the content is original and always reaching for cosmic meaning and lessons of living and loving. Duke Special writes for the areas of deep soul and the dreams of an arts community get aired on Stargazers of The World Unite; the hopes of justice and a new world order by the Occupy Movement challenges us all on My Lazy Saviour; our human preciousness yet falleness is laid out in list form on Condition; and songs of love and resolve and hope of redemption and transformation are guaranteed throughout. He conjures great images and parables and writes lines that tickle your fancy, pierce your heart, cut you down to size or to just marvel at his lyrical brilliance - I so love and laughed out loud at "I am quiet, I am Phil Spector" from Condition!

Oh Pioneer might not have the same immediacy as Duke Special’s earlier work but this artist isn’t about the immediate so much as a long brilliant songwriting career.  

BRIAN HOUSTON - Shelter

I guess every time I have listened to a new Brian
Houston record I have been blown away by the man’s talent. Shelter ups my respect yet again. One great thing you can say about an album from someone releasing them for years is that it sounds nothing like anything he has released before. Having said that what Houston has done has  been to bring lashings of everything he has
done in the past and thrown them all in the pot. Then he has added new things like James Brown soul and Black Gospel backing vocals and Rolling Stones guitar riffs. None of these should surprise the fan who has followed his journey from rock to pop to worship to singer songwriter but they bring a new intensity and focus. What the pot cooks up is Houston’s most exuberant and exhilarating record
to date.

Even the Christian angle is a new one. Houston was the
boy who exorcised his demons in the Belfast bars on a Saturday night, doing Springsteen leaps across beer filled tables, before leading the congregation in worship on Sunday morning. We have watched the midnight caresses and collisions of those two genres come together in his worship albums like Jesus and Justice
or Gospel Road. The latter of those would indeed be the fore runner to Shelter but was a gentler Gospel sound. This one is rocked up to the limit with guitar playing to die for.

In the world of pigeon holes this one is hard to pitch
in contemporary terms. The Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street comes to mind but Shelter is far more focused and precise. It is as close to the Alabama Shakes as I have heard but much more up front Gospel. It is clearly coming with a Christian emphasis but is too artistically powerful in lyric and sound to be worship and not so much for congregational singing. Then he throws a wee bit of
Tom Waits through a megaphone in and it’s all off in another direction. Too dirty and rough and edgy for the American Bible Book Stores! What Houston’s mix of Saturday and Sunday worlds has always given his work is an earthiness to the theology of his lyrics. Too much modern Christian stuff sits in the sanitised
sanctified sanctuary with no doors open to the dirt and hurt and bloody stains of the streets around about it.

Houston is not afraid of declaring a very committed
belief in God as Lord and in charge but these songs are all coming from a man who has worked and toiled through the week, keeping Five Dollars on his dash board for the needy. He has wept all the way through to Sunday and needs Shelter. This is the work of a man off the street with his guitar turned to ten, who needs to wail to his Lord for some sense of perspective on all that he has seen and experienced from a week in the real world. Brilliant!

ALABAMA SHAKES - Boys & Girls

I think I’ll always remember that moment last week when Alabama Shakes struck up that guitar riff on Hold On. I love that chunky Rolling Stones’ guitar sound. My eyes came up from Facebook, they had my attention and then... when Brittany Howard opened her throat to add her raspy full on Gospel squeal I was mesmerised. I realised as I sat enthralled, completely taken in by Howard’s charismatic presence, that it has been a long time since a new band so moved me or captivated me. I love that organic sound. There are no needs for samples or loops with this near primal rock sound. The piano and organ sounds give grace notes to those bluesy riffs and Howard reminded me of Maria McKee at her most passionate and spiritually exuberant. There was a moment in the mid eighties on The Tube when McKee set the TV on fire with a revivalist redemption rant at the climax of I Found Love. Howard has that kind of intensity. She gives it deep soul, then rock howl. Hold On is like an intense Negro Spiritual undergirded with the blues. Heartbreaker starts like Aretha, Billie or Mahalia before heading into Janis Joplin country. On Your Way is out and out Gospel, Howard’s voice a little more controlled but the Kings Of Leon guitar climax reminding you that these guys aren’t all retro. They have arrived all young and fresh and quickly. What they do with this spontaneous combustion over subsequent albums will be fascinating to watch and hear.

THE CHIEFTAINS - Voice Of Ages

I have a soft spot for Irish traditional music BUT I am not a massive fan.  I love the sound of the pipes and flutes and harps and box but sometimes a couple of reels and jigs and I am a little bored. When it blends with something else is when Irish trad grabs my attention; Horslips and Moving Hearts were the bands that gave me my sense of Irishness growing up in very anti-Irish Ballymena. The Chieftains have been blending, mixing and collaborating for some time now. Their Christmas album Bells Of Dublin featured Jackson Browne, Nanci Griffith and Rickie Lee Jones among others; Long Black Veil had guest vocalists like The Rolling Stones, Sting and Mark Knopfler; Tears Of Stone featured female vocalists like Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell and Sinead O’Connor to name a few; Further Down The Old Plank Road was shared with almost every country singer in Nashville; and their last outing St. Patrico was a collaboration with Ry Cooder.

Voice of Ages was to be a 50 Year Celebration of the band and apparently started out as a possible 50 minute jam that perhaps we hear a snippet of on the eleven minute The Chieftains Reunion. Using T-Bone Burnett however was a stroke of genius. I would pretty much buy anything that Burnett produces and it so happens that as he was producing The Chieftains he was also doing a Hunger Games soundtrack. As a result a film pitched at teenagers and a Golden Anniversary of Irish trad players got the same vocalists. In all the collaborations mentioned above The Chieftains have never been so up to date. The list of current cool names is endless from Grammy winners Bon Iver and Civil Wars through The Decemberists Low Anthem, Paulo Nutini, Lisa Hannigan, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, The Secret Sisters and more. T-Bone Burnett has given The Chieftains the best 50^th Anniversary possible; contemporary relevance.

And it works wonderfully. Bon Iver’s emotional layers with Irish twist. Lisa Hannigan’s take on my home city’s river My Lagan Love is beautiful as The Civil Wars vocal on Lily Love written by John Paul White. The Decemberists rough up Bob Dylan’s When The Ship Comes In like they could tour with The Dubliners. The Low Anthem sneak a wee corner of Woodstock into County Kerry. The Carolina Chocolate Drops blend beautifully in a crisper cleaner version of The Pogues. The Secret Sisters and Paulo Nutuni are a perfect fit vocally and The Punch Brothers in sound.

All in all, this is a beautiful record and I think what Burnett has succeeded in doing is bringing a range of  artists into the project without losing the foundational place of The Chieftains or making it sound like a various artists compilation. If you buy one Irish trad album this year...

SINEAD O'CONNOR - How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?

Like Gavin Friday’s record from last year Sinead O’Connor drapes an Irish flag across her album sleeve. It is not only the only similarity. Friday is a good point of reference for Sinead. Performance and the creation of mood are important to both. Neither are orthodox believers but there is a Christian intensity to the songs they both their produce plus  a serious level of good quality. It is a long time since Ms O’Connor made an ordinary piece of work. Actually only her ninth studio album across a twenty five year career, her last four have included one of Sean-nos Irish Traditional songs, one of Rasta Raggae and one called Theology based on Scripture mainly from the Old Testament . This album is a songwriter’s album and boy are the songs crafted and honed. These songs are more organic and less faddish, The Wolf Is Getting Married and 4th & Vine must get her back on the radio.  The quirky O’Connor has much to say about her views of the outside world as well as her inner soul that she bares so often and confesses is so messed up. There is a lot of Jesus and God around too. Reason With Me in its Biblical refrain and its poignant empathy with the marginalised is breath taking. Every clergyman should listen to this song before leaving the Manse or Rectory. Its hope of God breaking in and saving them to for real. For the mission committee there is VIP a rewrite of Jesus parable of the sheep and the goats and it is very powerful, beginning with a preacher reading Proverbs and ending with a few more whispered Scriotures and a doxology/benediction! Elsewhere Take Off These Shoes pleads the blood of Jesus over someone and profanity sits uncomfortably cheek by jowl, as in the cover of James Grant’s Queen Of Denmark.  This is a songwriter at the top of her powers Without any question this is Sinead O’Connor’s best work in twenty years. Whatever her seeming madness in public this woman's work should be taken seriously.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Wrecking Ball

This is the Bruce Springsteen we have been waiting. This might be his most important record. This might be the most important record of the decade. After the very successful Seeger Sessions in 2005 and 2006 I felt that Springsteen might take hunks out of the musical and lyrical body of those Civil Rights songs and Negro Spirituals and mix the sound of his seventeen piece band into his own template and conjure something musically fascinating, socially vital and spiritually hopeful. Instead Magic tried to make The Boss twenty, even thirty, years younger than he should be acting and Working On A Dream just hadn’t enough of anything to hold our interest for any length of time. Wrecking Ball will hold your interest. Indeed it grasps your soul by the scruff and pins you to the wall until it declares the disastrous state America is in and then somehow finds the spiritual as the hope and the answer to some redemption.

The most fascinating songs in the Seeger Sessions were the spirituals. Written by slaves in the eighteenth century the authors never imagined their songs would get as far as the next field never mind still be used across centuries. They were in a hard place and yet they found light in their dark, not to blind them from the dark but to help them travail the terrain. That is what Springsteen does in these songs. He first paints a bleak picture of recession hit America. He gives voice to the blue collar strugglers and in most songs takes a lash at the Fat Cat Bankers who’ve caused it but remain unaffected. His anger reaches such heights that he even declares, “If I had a gun I’d find the bastards and shoot them on sight.” This is in the very same song, Jack Of All Trades, where he lays down the his solution, “It feels that the world’s gonna change/And we’ll start caring for each other/Like Jesus said that we might...” Love and care for neighbour play big roles here as indeed does Jesus.

It is to the Christian Catholic faith of his childhood, that Springsteen says he can never get away from, I believe probably stoked up by those negro spirituals during the Seeger Sessions where Springsteen takes us to for hope. The last three songs Rocky Ground, Land Of Hope and Dreams and We Are Alive simply declare the full on coming of the Kingdom of God. They are uplifting and robust with hopefulness. In the end we have already seen hints of this in Bruce’s work on The Rising. That title track and the prayerful My City Of Ruins would fit into the feel of this record. The entire song cycle probably touches in spirit to every hue of the New Jersey Devil’s forty year career but this time they are given all kinds of unfamiliar musical templates. The E Street Band, utterly brilliant and all as they are as individuals and a collective, can be a little limited in the sound they create and indeed I am wondering how they will translate these songs to the stage. Freed from them Bruce has brought Gospel, Patti Scialfa vocal arrangements, Irish, almost Pogues, sounds and even a Mexican/Western feel to We Are Alive.

Wrecking Ball is original of sound, socially aware and prophetically honest and hopeful. It is everything Bruce Springsteen stands for; his statement of belief. It is fresh and I hope its content’s transformation blows through.   

(over the course of the next couple of week Stocki will go through the album song by song and draw out some meaning)  

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - ROCK'S CATHOLIC BISHOP

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - THE SEEGER SESSIONS

IAIN ARCHER at the CRESCENT ARTS CENTRE CUBE, BELFAST 25.2.12

I realised as I took my seat at Iain Archer’s gig in the comfortably intimate  Crescent Arts Centre Cube that I had been watching him in concert for twenty years and a month. January 21, 1992 was the first time I watched his guitar dexterity married to those melodies and literally stood to attention, mouth open and realised I was in the presence of brilliance. Why else would the date be so indelibly marked in my mind!? Iain Archer is one of those rare musicians who has genuinely shunned the limelight to follow his artistic vision. When everything you touch can turn to catchy that is not easy. What Archer has done has been to give that huge chunk of his muse and vocation to others. Snow Patrol, Example, Tyrone Wells, Gabe Dixon and Charlie Simpson are among those who have benefitted from this songwriting generosity, though the giving of his more accessible tunes might be more of a selfish gesture to keep his own work from losing its particular power.

This was all in evidence at The Cube. This was a small venue, filled and all as it was, for a man of such standing. It wasn’t a slick professional well rehearsed stadium programme either. In fact it brought out the utter chaos of this ragamuffin of an artist. He forgot his set list, after claiming to have taken meticulous time over it! He spent a few songs with a piercing feedback sound coming out of a foot peddle. Indeed that became a side show of the gig as you could see a gifted technical mind use it is a game, before his sound man Les put him right; a loop coming from plugged in telecaster! Then he shared meandering stories of damaging a thumb as he attempted to explain the Hadron Collider; how was left adrift on RTE television when Talk Show host Pat Kenny spoke to him after his monitor had been turned off; a similarly embarrassing moment when David letterman asked him what his dobro was! Save to say he did a lot more conversation between songs than Dylan or Morrison and it was at times chaotic and dishevelled...

...but then he starts to play; nothing dishevelled there! Iain Archer is a master of his art. Every strum, riff, guitar sound matters. His work is sublime and exquisite. Every noise is utterly beautiful and only added to by the voice of Miriam Kaufman; I love what they do vocally with Songbird. Whether it is the hypnotic Canal Song, or the transcendence of Everest with its glorious Gospel ending (support act Jennifer Crook joining Miriam as choir), or the pop rock electric riff of Summer Jets, everything is a master class and utterly compelling throughout. I have said it time after time but it is hard to avoid again the tender power of Frozen Lake where Archer’s falsetto conjures a song of love where love is not a cheap romantic gesture but is the loss of self for the good of the beloved whether a life partner or society as a whole. It takes the night onto an almost sacred and meditative plain. It is an extraordinary song but like everything else tonight just tantalisingly outside pop chart accessibility. Iain Archer is one of those hidden gems that should remain so. For those of us who then find this jewel we can lavishly enjoy in the small and quiet ambience of places like The Cube. It would be tragic to destroy this fragile wonder with a stadium crowd; these sound are too important for that!

PAUL McCARTNEY - Kisses on The Bottom

Well he did ask if there was anything wrong with filling the world with silly love songs! Paul McCartney doing the American Songbook? It doesn’t sound like a winning idea, even more dubious considering that Rod Stewart has just done five volumes of just such an idea. Perhaps if Paul had done his when his old drummer Ringo recorded his versions of the older songs, just as their wee gang of four were breaking up (Sentimental Journey). It all sounds like more fodder for the Macca is soppy and irrelevant camp which is most disappointing considering his last album Memory Almost Full was his best in a very long time. You can tell that I opened the new Paul McCartney record without much expectation!  

Well... I was pleasantly surprised. More than! No... it is no Band On The Run or Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band but it a very tasty collection of old pre rock n roll songs. The plus points here are the light jazz rhythmic arrangements credited to Diana Krall, wife of another McCartney collaborator Elvis Costello, whose band McCartney uses throughout. He then adds the likes of Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton when he feels like it. That is where this record really excels. It is meticulously played; simple stunning in musicality. Worth the price for Clapton’s acoustic guitar playing on one of McCartney’s original songs, Valentine alone. Krall’s rhythms keep the whole thing really chilled out. With the double bass and pre rock drum sound it is relaxation personified.

The iTunes extras give a stunning version of Baby’s Request from Wings’ final record Back To The Egg. It reminds you that this is not a new musical genre for McCartney. When I’m 64 and Honey Pie from Beatle days fit snugly among these songs and where do we think Yesterday and Here, There and Everywhere came from too. McCartney has every right to record an albums worth of the songs that formed him in his own Liverpudlian front room with his dad at the upright piano. Only when the strings take too much room does the whole thing go a little schmaltzy.

If relax has a groove then it is the light shuffle of this record that floats across the speakers. Lovely. Soothing. Cool even.