SOUL SURMISE

PAUL WELLER - TRUE MEANINGS

There was a time round 1982 when Paul Weller was my main musical man. The punk stuff was a little contrived in places but The Jam fired my new wave imagination. I loved In The City from the get go. By the time of The Gift they had matured in lyric and sound. For me, they were a psyched up Beatles in all kinds of ways. Weller had a political and social critique that opened my late teen mind.

Not far into the Style Council I lost my Weller obsession. Though Weller’s solo career has had me dip in and out True Meanings has me rekindling my fandom. Thinking back on my love for all things Weller in my late teens I couldn’t quite believe that I had never blogged about him.

Keeping The Beatles’ comparison, True Meanings might be seen as his McCartney record. Weller has covered much Lennon - Don’t Let Me Down, And Your Bird Can Sing, Instant Karma, Come Together with the Mojo Filters and even Sexy Sadie. 

The first time I heard Gravity I thought Yesterday. With its quite tone, pop melodies and lush strings McCartney comes to mind. To be truthful though the sound is reminiscent of any acoustic song The Beatles released from 64-66.

True Meanings is a shift in musical focus after the onslaught and experimentation of Saturn Patterns and The Kind Revolution. The opening The Soul Searchers is a good sign of the rest of the piece; pastoral and spiritually reflective.

For this album Weller has extended his collaborative welcome. Dublin’s Conor O’Brien of The Villagers brought the lyrics for The Soul Searchers, as Erland Cooper of The Magnetic North and Erland & The Carnival for Bowie, Wishing Well and White Horses. A more cheerful look at the credits will reveal Rod Argent, Danny Thompson and Noel Gallagher. Northern Irish pride for the amazing job Hannah Peel does with the strings.

The collection is riven through with good songs. The Soul Searcher, Gravity, Aspects, Books, Moving On and my personal favourite May Love Travel With You.

May Love Travel With You is prayerful in a May You Never and Forever Young kind of way. It is Psalmlike;

 

“Have grace to see the virtues

Give thanks to them sometimes

And love travel with you

Forever and all time”

 

If there is theology to unpack in those lines - “grace” and “forever” then check out the “grand design” and “divine” in the these:

 

“To a time

There's no pitchers or batters

Only fine lines

All the geometry

And the grand design

While inside the wonders

Of a science so divine

What is there to change?”

 

Weller is not coming across with any creeds or professions. Yet he is always looking for something to make sense of all of this. He thanks “The Universe” in his liner notes. 

Books is an obvious preach against the hypocrisy of evil things done by those who believe they have spiritually revelational books. However, a careful listen reveals that he does not sing “There is no God” but actually, “There is no God/In these mens hearts.”

Oh The Soul Searchers is exactly what is happening in an attempt to find true meanings. The title comes from lines in aspects;

 

“To find true meanings

And patterns in things

Symbols in making

These moments exist”

 

True Meanings is an album about how something transcendent might impact the everyday here and now. The ruminations of Weller, O’Brien and Cooper makes for Weller’s best record since…  actually it threatens Sound Affects as maybe his most satisfying ever! 

SAM PHILLIPS - WORLD ON STICKS

Maybe music needed Donald Trump! Whatever you say about him, he has given us a year of the most weighty music, content wise, in a long time. Brexit might have helped a little too! World On Sticks is Sam Phillips’ contribution to the social and political commentary of the very uncertain times we are living through.

Phillips has always been a writer of some depth. Interestingly her music took on more prophetic punch after her phase as Leslie Phillips in the Christian Music world. That industry in the 80s and 90s was a little one dimensional content wise. When Phillips spread her artistic wings, was discovered by T-Bone Burnett who produced her and married her she became a songwriter of acute social observation.

Since divorced from Burnett both in a marital and production sense, World Of Sticks has the lighter production feel that made her album Fan Dance such a joy a few records back. Not that she doesn’t still reveal or eccentric Tom Waitsian nature with her percussive rhythms and instrumentation.

I have been buying Sam Phillips records for over thirty years and this might be the one I am enjoying the most. American Landfill Kings shows off her eccentricities best. An environmental apocalypse of a song asking how we got to be living on all our throwaway trash! 

 

How did we find ourselves

Living on top of the things

That we don't want any more

Screaming while we cover our ears

We can't see ahead

And we won't see behind us

 

Praying that the true-false truth

Won't find us

 

Then How Much Is Enough which I think goes to the heart of our sickness:

 

Promising the good life to hide

What’s really being sold

How much is enough?

 

Then the prayerful hopefulness of Candles and Stars:

 

If only  

With candles and stars 

And broken light from dreams like ours 

We will still find our way through 

To love. 

 

In a great year for albums Phillips has added hers!

TOM PETTY - AN AMERICAN TREASURE

My favourite Tom Petty moment, and I have blogged it before is when during his 30th Anniversary Concert with The Heartbreakers in Gainesville (available on Runnin' Down a Dream - A Film by Peter Bogdanovich 4 Disc Boxset) he covers Van Morrison’s Mystic Eyes. 

He gets to this line -“I was walking on University Avenue...” Well, to paraphrase Van the Man, I was caught one more time!!! My old college room at Queen’s University Belfast looked out onto that very avenue, just about twenty yards from the Fitzroy that he made a little less ordinary on his Astral Weeks record. I was buzzing for weeks on the transcendence of University Avenue.

Then I sought out the Them version and there was no University Avenue in their lyric. So where did Petty get Morrison’s geographical streets? Eventually having Googled ‘University Avenue’ I found one right in the heart of Petty’s own Gainesville. He was contextualising it in his place not mine. Still, about a year later I became the minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church and it, as already mentioned, is canonized so I can rest easy!

I say all of this because listening to An American Treasure I suddenly realised that Tom Petty, not Bruce Springsteen, is the American Van Morrison. An American Treasure is a 4 CD box set carefully and lovingly put together by Tom Petty’s wife Dana, daughter Adria and the Heartbreakers. 

The way they have compiled his career brings out Petty’s sense of place and the dropping of place names that Morrison did so well. It is right across the box set but the highlight for me is in the 4th disc where they have a perviously unreleased track Bus To Tampa Bay, followed by a a live version of Saving Grace, the studio version of Down South and an intimate version of Southern Accents for which apparently his mother was in the audience:

 

“There's a dream I keep having

Where my mama comes to me

And kneels down over by the window

And says a prayer for me

I got my own way of prayin'

But every one's begun

With a southern accent

Where I come from”

 

Wow!

Now, Petty lived in California for the great majority of his life and he throws out place names from there too. However, it is when he is singing about the formative years of his life in Florida that I resonate most with his work. Van Morrison mined those years too. Also, for me, Petty’s Deep South resonates with my North Antrim, not far from Morrison’s East Belfast, in all kinds of cultural ways.

This is all to say that An American Treasure is just that. This is not a hastily thrown together compilation to cash in. This box is done lovingly and artistically. 

Let me reassure the fans. It is worth every penny. Yes, you might scan these tracks and think that you have the most of them so you don’t really need to spend the money. WRONG!

There is a treasure trove of alternative versions that give a whole new vibe to songs like Don’t Fade On Me, Rebels or You’re Gonna Get It which has strings. Live versions like Here Comes My Girl, King’s Road and the aforementioned Southern Accents add loads of wonderful add nuance. 

Then there are the unreleased tracks, scattered throughout that make you wonder how could they be left off albums. Petty’s daughter Adria’s favourite track is Keeping Me Alive and my friend Oliver has been loving Keep A Little Soul. Bus To Tampa Bay is mine.

In the booklet full of notes on every song Adria writes about how her dad wanting to be a songwriter much more than a rock star. This box set with her dad’s songs broken into four decades, and staying away from the hits, is perhaps the strongest possible argument of the fact that Petty was one of the great songwriters. It is packed full of great songs and reminds us lovingly but forcefully of what we lost far too soon.

A STAR IS BORN

A Star Is Born is a molotov cocktail of emotion that explodes on landing in your heart at various moments. Tears seeped out of my eyes and sneaked down my cheek on more than one occasion.

The power comes in the songs and the truly outstanding performances in those songs, and in general, from Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. Who would have seen Cooper as such a singer and Gaga as such an actress. 

I remember the 1976 film version and never bothered watching it or listening to the soundtrack. Evergreen was a bit soft to a fifteen year old at a time when punk was about to descend. Even Kristofferson seems a long way from that Silver Tongued Devil.

How encouraging then that this 2018 remake begins with Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson Maines looking like the earthier Kristofferson rocked up and throwing guitar riffs. This is a tougher incarnation. Cooper has worked the soundtrack up with Lukas Nelson, son of Kristofferson’s mate Willie and main man in Neil Young’s recent backing band The Promise. Nelson brings some rock cred for sure. 

The songs are a vital part of the narrative. In an age where musicals are all the rage again - La La Land and The Greatest Showman - this is the kind of musical that I can deal with. The songs are not contrived. They stand alone. It is an artistic Cooper directed success. 

It is hard to believe that Cooper had never sung before. Eighteen months vocal coaching and he achieves something incredible, telling us that Lady Gaga forced him into live takes. As he strums a guitar and sings Maybe It’s Time I am thinking that he is basing the musical persona as Jason Isbell, not knowing at the time that Isbell wrote that song! 

Gaga as Ally, Maines’ girlfriend and the star being born, reinvents herself a little too. There is a scene in her room where the cover of Carole King’s Tapestry is framed on the wall. When Ally sings Always Remember Us This Way on the piano at a Maines’ gig it is King with a better voice. I fell in love with Lady Gaga at this moment. I never thought I would write that! Brilliant pieces of songwriting, emotionally delivered without some of the pop star beats and dancers that gets in the way of Gaga’s talent.

Which is actually what then happens in the movie. Pop svengali Rez enters the scene offering to make Ally the biggest star in the world. Ally is up from behind the piano, fronting dance groups with plastic pop sounds and all over the city bill boards.

The love story of A Star Is Born is one of redemption. Jackson Maines meets Ally when his ears are damaged and his star is beginning to fall. He’s got alcohol and drug problems and there is lingering trauma from a mother who died giving birth to him and a father figure that was not all wholesome. Ally becomes a near salvation.

Ally is a talent, never recognised, lacking confidence to play her own songs and insecure about the size of her nose. Jackson finds her performing in a drag bar and loves her into the star she becomes.

The music story of A Star Is Born is one of finding your voice and using it to say what you have to say. The songs in the movie do just that. They show the power of music to tell a story and move an audience. In the storyline, Maines is mentoring Ally towards such ambition when Rez seems to sidetrack her. The authenticity of life and art are at stake!

The spiritual heart of the piece is when temptation leads the story and the characters off up a crooked road. The two souls of Maines and Ally redeeming each other is fractured by the apple on the tree, the world and fame! The authenticity of art takes a hit too. More tragically one character tempts Ally away from what is most important and, when that becomes most important, Maines’ sacrifices his life for her. It’s a very twisted play on the Jesus’ Gospel but there are all kinds of threads for those with ears to hear, or eyes to see!

Like all great art A Star Is Born is a great watch as just a movie but if you are alert to the layers within it is a very satisfying piece of art indeed. 

JULES MAXWELL - SONGS FROM THE CULTURAL BACKWATER

Jules Maxwell is a quiet wonder of an artist. He’s not usually in the front preferring to play behind the likes of Iain Archer or Brian Houston, write with Foy Vance and Lisa Gerrard, tour with Dead Can Dance and worked in the theatre, being resident composer at London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for goodness sake.

This collection of songs brings all of that back story to fruition in 12 perfectly honed songs. It is an eclectic mix but overall it a record that is sparse in instrumentation but full of lovely little flourishes with brass and strings that his soundtrack work has taught him how to use economically but with impact.

Everything is understated but makes quite a statement as a result. Maxwell comes from the traditional songwriting line that traces back to Randy Newman and Jimmy Webb. Webb for the craft and odd subject matter. Newman for the humour throughout. 

I can hear an Irish version of the deep southern spirit of Louisiana 1927 in the emigration song No Place That Rains (Quite Like Home) Quite Like Home. The quirkiness of Newman is also seeping through The Boy Who Cried For The World.

Maxwell’s strength over Newman is that the humour and quirk never gets to a point where it becomes a little over bearing. He is leaning into Jimmy Webb enough to smooth Newman’s sometimes irritating edges off. Indeed, Webb would be proud of Good Ghost and the stunningly beautiful Last Train To Limerick, on which Louise Wallace voice gently spills into your heart in the uber sparseness. Oh my, it is so utterly beautiful. If Webb write this it was be the most covered song of the next five years!

Maxwell’s sabbatical from playing supporting role to a myriad of musical worlds is an outstanding success. This a deeply satisfying album. 

STOCKI'S FAV ALBUMS OF SEPTEMBER 2018

Here are the albums that I have been most listening to in September...

BLUE RODEO - THE THINGS WE LEFT BEHIND

Blue Rodeo are a Canadian band that should be known better outside their native Canada than they are. I have been buying their records since the early 90s, Lost Together being a favourite record. A week or two back I sought out a new record and discovered they had released a live record from Massey Hall, Toronto’s Royal Albert in 2014 and a studio record 1000 Arms in 2016. In retracing their steps I re-discovered The Things We Left behind, maybe one of their strongest collections, spanning tow CDs with their Neil Young Harvest sounding alt country.

 

PAUL MCCARTNEY - EGYPT STATION

Mid seventies and still releasing quality albums. My review... HERE

 

PAUL MCCARTNEY - MY PLAYLIST

Egypt Station sent me off gathering Macca extra tracks. I discovered their were Tribute record contributions I didn’t have and that he had released a song on a soundtrack Ethel and Ernest that I knew nothing about. I sought out various curios and then compiled a playlist for CDR. I rather like it. Check it out… HERE

 

COWBOY JUNKIES - ALL THAT RECKONING

The Canadians get urgent about the state of the world and love. To be reckoned with for sure. Review… HERE

 

MATTHEW PERRYMAN JONES - THE WAKING HOURS

A new Perryman Jones album. Wonderful. Matthew’s records send me into meditation. he has a poetic flair, delves the depths of humanity and his voice and melodies sneak under your ears to steal into your heart and soul.

 

BURNING CODES - LIBERATOR

Full on guitar onslaught from Bangor boy Paul Archer’s collaborative. You know that they love the Pixies and they might not mean it but the only other band that does what they do with melodies as instant as these is Ash.

 

PAUL SIMON - IN THE BLUE LIGHT

Paul Simon redoes some of his old songs that he doesn’t feel got a fair arranging or hearing at the time of release. He the adds players like Wynton Marsalis and Bill Frisell as well as yMusic. Different settings for sure and some work very well, while one of two not so much. Overall excellent. Make it a series Paul, please!

 

ROMANTICA - OUTLAWS

Belfast born, Minneapolis living Ben Kyle is just a massive favourite. The voice, the songs, the soothing tunes. My review… HERE

 

GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS - THE WAVES, THE WAKE

A recent discovery. More Canadians! My review... HERE

 

CHRIS WILSON - DOWNFALL EP

This Indiana boy gave Belfast a couple fo his best years and got a few songs out of it. His awesome voice is now being matched with quality songs. Review… HERE

COWBOY JUNKIES - ALL THAT RECKONING

The first sound of Margo Timmins’ ethereal voice… ooooh… then the gentle haunting but authoritative guitar of bother Michael slow burning underneath. Oh my All That Reckoning’s opening moments remind you of all you need to know about the wonder of Cowboy Junkies at their most crucially vital. I lost interest in their Nomad Series but All That Reckoning quickly caught all my attention. 

I often ask why a band, artist or songwriter suddenly finds an edge to their muse, one that seems to have been missing for a lengthy period. In this case the source of a genuine return to form is both personal and political. The opening lines of the uncharacteristically raucous, Junkies do Neil Young grunge, Sing Me A Song. It begins:

 

 “Sing me a song about life in America

Sing me a song of love.” 

 

The album is about both those things. Love, its yearning and heartache leads us off in the title track. It is the political ones though that most resonate with me.

 

When We Arrive lays out the gloom in the opening verse:

 

“Welcome to the age of disillusion

To the days of death and anger

Old ideas becomin' stronger

Welcome”

 

In the midst the Junkies put some hope in communal response and end the song with:

 

“To this place unsure, unstable

You must keep your actions faithful

To a search for common ground

Where all love will be found

Welcome, welcome

And lets be holdin' hands when we arrive”

 

Indeed! Next up, is a song that could be seen as a re-write of George Harrison’s Isn’t It A Pity which the Junkies included in their 2005 covers record Early Twenty First Century Blues. The The Things We Do To Each Other begins by hitting the nail on the proverbial head of our political crisis. The band are thinking Trump but I could easily see Brexit in the UK or the Local Assembly debacle here in Northern Ireland.

 

“Fear is not so far from hate

So if you get the folks to fear

It only takes one small twist

To kick it up a gear”

 

The societal melancholy then gets bleak:

 

“And you can control hate

But only for so long

And when you lose control, oh man

 

The things we do to each other

Oh, my sister”

 

Solutions come in the aforementioned Sing Me A Song. It is worth the wait; prophetically profound:

 

“Unburden your hearts, let loose your fear

Sing me a song of forgiveness

Make a fresh start, face all your fears

Sing me a song of forgiveness”

 

Added to hopefulness:

 

“Sing me a song of love

Sing me a song of joy”

 

The weightiness of the subject matter and the quality of the collection, the playing is exquisite throughout, makes this a sure contender for album of the year. 

PAUL McCARTNEY - EGYPT STATION

Harry Kane gave me the best analysis I could make of Paul McCartney’s 49th studio record (it is hard to be precise). The English soccer superstar was bring presented with the Golden Boot for being the leading scorer at the 2018 World Cup. He was honest enough to say that he should have had more goals but even with his misses he was holding the Golden Boot.

Egypt Station is not Paul McCartney’s greatest album. When you are 76 years old and have been in the biggest band who ever lived and recorded iconic records like Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band it is hard to compete. I wonder, if McCartney lives to be 90, how many of these songs will be in his live set list in 15 years time. I doubt if any. Yet, though it might not be his best, this is a very good album indeed.

McCartney’s World Tour to follow the release of Egypt Station is called Refresh, an appropriate title because this new record is brim full of freshness. There’s a McCartney-like thumbs up about the melodies and sound of the fourteen songs. Not that they are all happy little pop songs.

The lead off track after the quirky short sound snippet Open Station is a piano led confession of vulnerability. Macca is never going to give us Blue like Joni Mitchell or Plastic Ono Band like his old mate John Lennon but here we find him less than sure of himself. There are crows at the window and dogs at his door. I love that it seems to lead to his fatherly protection for his daughter - “But it’s alright/sleep tight/ I will take the strain/You’re fine, little love of mine/You will feel no pain.” Is there reflections on a divorce there?!

If that is a suggestion of a marriage broken, then many of the rest of the songs suggest the happy marriage that McCartney is now in- Come On To Me, Happy With You, Hand in Hand. Indeed he even gets suggestive about said marriage. Our pop Knight Of The Realm even gets suggestive and a little rude in a song called Fuh You. In an age where almost every songwriter uses the F bomb, McCartney gives it a thin disguise. It’s very McCartney. If it had been written with his old mucker Lennon you know what the title would have been!

The man who has as many number 1 hits as anyone confesses that on Fuh You he was contriving another hit. The rest of the record is very much an album. It flows. It rises and falls. It rocks and rolls. It is filled with quality songs that need heard for their melody, their sound, their playing and their content. Fuh You was the bid for radio play.

To get the hit McCartney wanted he used the same technique as U2 and brought in Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic. Tedder has done the business for Adele, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. As a side comment, I feel part of Tedder’s story as he has claimed that it was reading Walk On, by yours truly, that encouraged him out of the Christian ghetto into the real world! In a very roundabout way I got to influence a Beatle! That Fuh You has that innuendo and isn’t Macca’s greatest hit doesn’t take away from that and I do love the oooohs, that Tedder trademark!

My favourites on Egypt Station are Who Cares and Despite Repeated Warnings. The former speaks into my world when people bad mouth and exclude me:

 

“Who cares what the idiots say

Who cares what the idiots do

Who knows about the pain in your heart?

Who cares about you?

I do”

 

The latter song is a story song, recalling Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, but it doesn’t take much insight to hear commentary on Brexit… and Trump… between the lines. It is a song of warning but in the end the will of the people are what we hope might see us through the ever present danger.

Paul McCartney is 76. He doesn’t need the money. He doesn’t need the reviews. He doesn’t even need new songs for his, packed with classics already, live set list. He has no business being relevant or as good as he is on Egypt Station. If truth be told, in his knowing it might have sneaked into some of these songs too, there are not many Paul McCartney records left. When they keep coming as good as this, could we ask him to go back to The Beatles’ two a year schedule!

ROMANTICA - OUTLAWS

I cannot get enough of Romantica. Their last record Shadowlands was my album of 2017 ahead of U2. See what I mean! So I was delighted to hear about a new record. Even if Shadowlands was released in 2016 in the US and then the Uk in 2017. It is still quite soon for a new album but this one is a collection of outtakes and mailman Ben Kyle releases it as he hopefully comes out of a few years of debilitating Lyme disease .

The track listing tells you that this is compilation. There are two covers. A laid back country and well worthwhile cover of Leonard Cohen’s over covered Hallelujah and how The Beatles might have done Something if had been on the roof sessions of Let It Be. There is also a live version of The Dark from Kyle’s eponymous solo record, with a guest appearance from Ryan Adams. This is what I love about such collections.

The other songs can easily be divided in two. Do Go Gently a beautiful song about his Grandmother’s death, Lost In the Cosmos and Listen To Your Soul are songs that didn’t make the cut for Shadowlands. I see why. Do Go Gently might have felt a little sentimental. Listen To Your Soul might be a little too like Harder To Hear. Don’t think they are second rate though!

Love In The Winter, Dear Caroline, Hold It Together and Baby Killed Bobby are from an unreleased record called God and Love and War. These are the four strongest songs here. Love In the Winter is a depth of love song that few can do as well as Kyle and Baby Killed Bobby has that murder ballad storyline that I couldn’t help hearing Johnny Cash’s version.

The whole pile together is another huge Romantica success. Ben Kyle’s songs and the sound he sets them in with that voice he executes them with is like a balm to the soul. In the seeming lightness of how the tunes float there is a concentration of healing and his words throw poetic light across life’s most ordinary but profound moments. 

This sits snuggly beside Shadowlands. Beautiful.

GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS - THE WAVE, THE WAKE

My late discovery of Great Lake Swimmers surprises me. I was aware of them in the periphery of my vision but I just never seemed to get around to. them. Thankfully that all ended this summer when the release of their new record coincided with the few days I was reading Northern Ireland novelist David Park’s  brilliant new novel Travelling In A Strange Land. 

One of the very many things that I like about Park’s writing is his music references. In this new novel he listens to Van Morrison’s Snow In St. Anselm and the tells his son on the phone how much he likes the Great Lake Swimmers’ album he had given him.

A quick search on line and I was intrigued. Canadian? I love Canadian music. I feel that, like the Irish, the Canadians still love the song. Then I read that this new record was recorded in a Church in London, Ontario. Very Cowboy Junkies thinks I and coincidently I am loving their new record! That main man Tony Dekker had decided to make the record without his usual acoustic guitar as the foundation. I needed to hear these guys and this record.

Boy I was not disappointed. I love it. Cowboy Junkies is there in spirit of the ambient beauty for sure. I was also hearing Sufjan Stevens, Jospeh Arthur and, bless my soul, even The Jayhawks on the most pop rock gem of a song Alone But No Alone.

The sounds are beautiful. The tunes are great. The songs are memorable. Dekker is a great writer and, though there seems no particular religious creed in his intentions, there is a mystical spiritual thing going on. The water of this wave and wake is deep for sure. 

Without that acoustic guitar, you get a woodwind underpin to the opening The Talking Wind, the harp of Falling Apart, the a cappella Visions Of A Different World and that 60 electric guitar jangle of Alone But Not Alone. It is somehow eclectic in what is almost the unity of one suite.

It is all I look for in great record. Cut this record anywhere you like and it oozes artfulness, depth and pure pure quality.