Madeleine Peyroux in concert. (I thought I'd add a picture (as I didn't use up my full word allowance) just to liven up the text...feel free to delete if you don't like innovation! )

Madeleine Peyroux - Careless Love - Universal 9823583

The second album from this French-Canadian former street performer is a treat. The pitch of her voice and her phrasing has more than an echo of Billie Holliday - which is more than fine by me. She gives a jazz-blues twist to things like Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go", Cohen's "Dance Me To The End of Love" and Hank Williams' "Weary Blues" - the three best tracks to my ear. Unlike the rash of women singers re-interpreting the standards (Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, Clare Teal, Jane Monheit etc) she has original material and re-interprets some contemporary material in an intriguing way. Mellow, but with an edge.

Wyclef Jean - Welcome to Haiti Creole 101 - Koch KOC-CD-5783

George Benson said that he had the power to make either jazz albums that sold 50,000 or soul albums that sold a million; that while he’d prefer to make jazz albums, he couldn’t do it to Warner Bros. Well, Wyclef has got the result that Benson probably would have got from WB – BMG refused to issue this album, so he’s released it on Koch’s San Pasé label. As Public Enemy said, “if you don’t own the master, the Master owns you”.

BMG rejected it because it’s a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s independence and only a couple of tracks are in English – mostly it’s in French or Creole. Although Wyclef sounds very comfortable in this context, it only managed to get to number 66 on the R&B album chart, which shows how important the promotion power of the major companies is - and how resistant the American public is to anything truculently un-American. There are no plans to release this in Britain; Cardiff shops don’t even have it on their computers as imports, but you can get it from CDX Radyr, Amazon or 101CD - AM

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus - Anti B0002SROSQ

I’ve had to battle with Nick Cave’s work in the past, notable Murder Ballads; I loved the music but felt depressed and shocked by the lyrics, so much so that I abandoned the album after two hearings. Recently, I’ve come to enjoy The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part. They’re by no means a barrel of laughs, of course, but he’s moderated his bleak vision and the music is as strong as ever.

These two albums, issued together, are even better. The Dark One lets himself go a bit, gets carried along by melodies, and sounds as though he’s having fun. Nature Boy is almost poppy. However, it’s not all fun. Fable of The Brown Ape is as grim as you might expect and there’s a reference elsewhere to the Butcher Bird of his native Australia which suggests he hasn’t entirely forgotten about the blood and guts of life. Overall, though, an uplifting listen.

Hank Crawford - A Funky Thing To Do – Collectables 6597

Joel Dorn, who produced this album, doesn’t like it. It’s not as good as the three best of Hank’s sixties albums, but well up to the other seven, and a lot better than Hank’s later seventies albums. And very interesting.

It’s Pee Wee Ellis’ first recording after leaving the James Brown band; the former straw boss of the James Brown band together with the former straw boss of the Ray Charles band. The title track, composed by Pee Wee, is a fabulous groove; the basis of Salt & Pepa’s sarcastic Step (not many raps in 6/8). The most interesting track is Hank’s version of Bird’s Parker’s Mood. The original was the B side of Parker’s only R&B chart entry and the only recording in which Parker used the stone blues style that was the greatest influence on the young Hank Crawford, backing Memphis bluesmen with Ike Turner’s band. So this is precisely where Hank is coming from - AM

Hot in Dakar 4

Viviane is, I think THE rave in Senegal at present. Her songs were on radios throughout the African quarter all the time. She is Viviane N'dour, Youssou's sister-in-law, having married Ndiaga N'dour, Youssou's sound engineer. She was previously Viviane Chudid and, under that name, spent some time in Youssou's backing vocal group. Marriage appears to have meant promotion. She looks fabulous and can really deliver a song. Her band can play almost any type of music. Much of Viviane's work is Hip Hop and neo-soul. But there are also traditional numbers, including, on her latest,Tere Nelaw, a beautiful song in praise of Leopold Senghor, Senegal's first President, who had died a short time before. There is also the extremely enthusiastic Yii Gainde", another football song, and much the most exciting; you really want to yell along with the crowd. All of Viviane's K7s are probably available on CD - AM

Allan recommends cdmail as a source.

Earl Okin - Musical Genius and Sex Symbol -- Sony5152852

Something different: unless you have frequented the Kings Head Comedy Club in London you may not have encountered Earl Okin. He's in the British tradition of comedy musicians, but out of the top drawer for originality and musicality. This album is worth it simply for his "interpretations" of "I'm just a teenage dirtbag" as a lush bossa nova, a swing version of Blur and an easy listening rendition of Coldplay's Yellow. I'm not sure if they are revivals or covers, but they are very funny...

Bjork - Medulla - One Little Indian TPLP358CD

This is wonderful. It has choirs, voices as musical instruments, double basses like growling, hungry bears, and, above all, Bjork’s own ice-clear voice. There’s nothing here that would make a pop or rock song in the normal sense, just sound-scapes and rhythms mostly constructed without any musical instruments at all. One or two tracks have something approaching a melody, which is welcome, but they are all dramatic and arresting.

What’s it all about? Hard to say. Certainly some of the tracks are about relationships but many are sung in what I take to be Icelandic so I can't tell. The lyrics are printed on the sleeve notes but they’re illegible so perhaps they don’t matter. And the tracks are only identified by numbers so there‘s no help there. Being in almost complete ignorance about what Bjork’s banging on about has in no way spoilt my enjoyment.

Pucho and The Latin Soul Brothers - The Hideout - Milestone MCD9340

In contrast to Funk Fantastique, this has a really nice sleeve note: full of reminiscences from Pucho about meeting his recently deceased wife at The Hideout, a Harlem club where the band used to play in the early sixties, which was the hangout for the King of the Numbers in Harlem, Spanish Raymond. (You’d have thought he could have found a better moniker than that; even my father was called Ike the Lombard and he was English).

Oh yes, the music. The music’s great, too. Pucho is now leading a much larger band than ever before, with four trumpets, two trombones, one doubling on violin, the great Ed Pazant on alto sax and the usual complement of very rhythm. Lewis Hahn’s violin solos put me in mind of Africando and I found Hahn has played on the last two Africando records, as well as the last two of Pucho - AM

Misc. - Crunch time - Sender send042cd

According to People That Know, this is an example of tech-house. I think I'd be inclined to call it 'a surly mob of square-waves fighting in a sack' and dismiss it as just more of that technological music that they churn out by the lorryload in big factories along the Ruhr valley. However, one of the SIDStations is unexpectedly possessed by the spirit of Grand Funk Railroad and it all goes horribly right. There are echoes of fine old New York electro-funk and Man-Machine era Kraftwerk nailed to huge basslines that rumble along in the style of tanks the size of small villages while happy 'blork' noises that were last seen on old Joey Beltram records burble cheerfully in the background. The overall impression is that of a crowd of small robots gleefully jumping up and down on a pile of rusty corrugated iron.

Hot in Dakar 3

Assane Ndiaye spent many years singing backup to
Thione Seck. He has a voice which someone in Banjul
described to me, with perfect accuracy, as "divine".
If you think Thione has a good voice, Assane kills him
stone dead. His latest albums were Bagnal, a studio
album, and Takussanou Ndakarou, another TV concert
double K7. Assane sings in a slightly more traditional
manner than Thione, and his subject matter is more
religious than political. There is at least one CD out
in France, of his second album, Yone Wi, which is
very good indeed, and has a couple of bonus tracks
from the live album on it - AM

Allan recommends cdmail as a source.

John Lennon - Acoustic - Parlophone 8744282

I have very mixed feelings about this album. It's great to hear Lennon again singing some of his best and most acerbic material accompanied just by acoustic guitar. But it's a motley collection put together presumably to match the popularity of the "unplugged" format. The sound quality varies hugely and some were clearly never intended for release. However, "Working Class Hero", "Watching the Wheels" and even the live version of "Imagine" are worth it. "Woman is the nigger of the world" took a little explaining to the kids when it came on in the car, but their political sensibilities are developing fast.

K D Lang -- Hymns of the 49th Parallel - Nonesuch NNS798472

I've never been a fan of K D's before but bought this album, a tribute to all things Canadian, because I love good cover versions.(I also like Canada). Covers are a divisive issue. Bad ones are awful and the perpetrators should be shot for lack of taste and judgement. But good ones reveal new depths to familiar songs and allow you to rediscover what was great about them. Here, K D Lang reinterprets Canadian songwriters like Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jane Siberry. It works spectacularly well, only once or twice descending into the mush which has made me reject KDL in the past. This album forces me to acknowledge that she does have a great voice as well.

P J Harvey - Uh Huh Her - ILPB 143/986 639-6 (LP)

This made me think “so that’s where music is going.” Like many of her albums, there’s enough that’s familiar in the music to get your bearings but then you realise there’s something subtle going on with P J’s voice, the arrangements, the sound and you’re wandering down a completely unfamiliar path. And a good thing too, I say.

There are shades of the relatively mellow predecessor Stories...., like the single from the album, Shame, but there’s also some six-cylinder ranting and a couple of gentle tracks to end. The rough stuff really stood out on the first few plays but now it all seems to fit together. Apparently, she listened to lot of Russian folk music before the recording, on which she plays just about everything herself. Where next?

Charles Earland - Funk Fantastique - Prestige PRCD11030

This CD really pisses me off. First, I have, of course, no complaints about the music, which is some of the most sensational Earland ever recorded. However, second, it has the most awful sleeve note I’ve ever read. It’s not simply that it’s written in an excitingly pseudo-hip style; it’s also that the writer doesn’t know very much about Charles Earland’s music.

Third, this is a compilation of bits of three different sessions. The first chunk is from the session that produced Soul Story. So it’s obvious that LP isn’t going to appear on CD. The second chunk was recorded as part of the Intensity LP, with Lee Morgan. This could have been issued when Intensity, together with the two tracks from Charles III that came from the Intensity session, came out on CD a couple of years ago. And finally, the CD contains other tracks from Charles III; so that LP has now come out on CD, albeit spread between two CDs. Bah! - AM

Lambchop - Awcmon/Noyoucmon - Merge B00019G428

Two albums here, the result of a spell spent honing his song writing skills by band leader Kurt Wagner. His singing voice is in the same league as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen and the first album has many of the musings about life over a languid piano backing that he produced for Is A Woman. On the second, the songs are more developed musically and less laid-back.

On both albums, though, are some really cheesy instrumental tracks, which I suppose provide light relief but what serious musician bothers about light relief when he’s got something to say? Perhaps we should be grateful. Take out the instrumentals and you’d be left with one good album, albeit something of a “grower” as Lambchop never hits you between the eyes. Definitely haunting and not in a good way.

Hot in Dakar 2

Alioune Mbaye Nder has been around for a bit. He
started off singing lead with Lemzo Diamono in the
early 1990s, then formed his own band. He is
definitely the male singer of choice for young ladies
now. His work is almost wholly political, though he
did record a love song a few years ago. His latest
albums were Lu Tax, a studio effort and very good
indeed, if not as dynamic as Super Thiof, his
previous album, and a double K7 set, Takussaan a
Dakar, a great live album - AM.

Allan recommends cdmail as a source.

Al Casey - Buck Jumpin' - OJCCD675

I bought this LP in 1969. It was cracked right through when I bought it; held together by the label. But it was very rare. Over the years it has become less and less playable, and I’ve played it less and less. This is totally unnecessary, since it’s been on CD since 1991. So I just bought it.

There are two Al Caseys. The other one is a Rock & Roll guitarist. The REAL Al Casey played guitar with Fats Waller from 1934 to 1943, then with a wide variety of people from Armstrong to Sarah Vaughan. By 1958, he was in King Curtis’ band. He recorded until 1994! This album, made in 1960, is by the King Curtis band, without King Curtis, but with Rudy Powell, another Waller alumnus, on alto and clarinet. Herman Foster is on piano. Much of the material is Waller-oriented and swings as well as one would expect of these musicians with their background in swing and R&B. The highlight of the album is Casey’s Blues, which is one of the greatest preaching blues I’ve ever heard by a jazz group. Casey takes a gut-bucket solo, followed by Powell, who preaches the dead up from the grave, and Foster who takes one of his normal explosive solos - AM

Rival Blogs

Yes, we do have competition out there you know. One of my favourites is this one from a guy called Simon Waldman who calls himself "50 quid bloke" - apparently CD shops are now kept in business by middle aged men who are happy to spend £50 a visit on a clutch of CDs. Anyway, I like his take on things. Try this: http://www.50quid.org/2004/11/czars_filling_t.html

Or you can try this site which is dedicated to the much missed and lamented John Peel. The bands featured here and their record companies have donated these songs, featured by John in his radio shows, for playing for free on the web (tho not as it says for download).... we can still enjoy his eclecticism...

http://www.radio.plus.com/

Hot in Dakar 1 - Music From Senegal

Fatou Laobe is a new singer. She sings traditional
music and has one of the most leather-throated voices
I've ever heard. She would fit right into a 1940s
Gospel quartet. This makes her completely different
from Wolof singers, whose voices are flat (ie hardly
any vibrato or melisma). Fatou is Puular. She has made
three albums, the second of which, Hommage a Tidiane
Anne, is very traditional praise singing with
traditional instrumentation. The other two, Fatou
Laobe and Labat, have an electric band which goes
like mad and both albums are total dynamite
throughout - AM

Allan recommends cdmail as a source. More from Senegal shortly.

The Necks - Drive By - ReR NECKS3

Something from the Antipodes. The Necks are a Sydney trio using drum, bass and keyboards and a selection of found sounds. On this album, they lay down a rhythm, put a melody over the top, play around with it, introduce some noises they made earlier, and then, more than one hour later, they stop. It’s rather like hearing Keith Jarrett in a deep, but contented, rut.

Perhaps not the album you play when you want to listen to something intently but one that you find yourself drawn to when it’s playing in the background as the textures and the atmosphere change. What is it? Jazz? Downtempo? Ambient? Who knows? Not, I’m reliably informed, a good one for playing to the kids in the car - “is the first track nearly over yet?” - and so on.

Lhasa - The Living Road (Toutoutard 0122-2-6)

Smoky, soulful gallic songs in French, Spanish and English from this French-Canadian singer whose family, apparently, are circus performers. Passionate and heartfelt, knowing and alienated. If Eric Rohmer were still making films about the modern multi-cultural generation this would be on the soundtrack. I realise that may not be much of a recommendation for you, but it works for me.

(By the way, I assume if any of us try any of the recommendations on here we'll add our views in the comments section?)

Ojos de Brujo -- Bari (KWCD 016)

Take a little modern flamenco, add a dash of rumba, a sprinkle of hip hop, a spoonful of funk, stir in some over dubs and the scent of the street and you have a spicy paella of an album. Modern, spanish, and eager to embrace. Favourite track - Accion Reaccion Repercusion, which I feel sure they must have performed on the Ramblas on a warm summers evening to an appreciative crowd fuelled by Rioja. Cheaper than an Easyjet flight, this delivers a real taste of the best of Barcelona.

Los de Abajo - Cybertropic Chilango Power - Luaka Bop 72438-11135-2-3

Enough of the wistful, the woebegone, and the electro-noodlers. Thought we should have something from someone angry. Los de Abajo are a Mexican group and their name translates as “Those from Below” which is the title of a classic of that country’s revolutionary literature. The group support the Zapatista movement which fights for equality and legal rights for the Mexico’s indigenous people.

That’s the politics. The music is based on Mexican folk rhythms blended with just about every modern style of music you care to mention, with the rap-like lyrics rasped out with an energy and sincerity you don’t often find in that genre. I don’t usually like these concoctions of world and other styles because they sound strained and self-serving but this really works for me. The tracks are interspersed with wild-track recorded on the streets of Mexico City, the sounds of street vendors, traffic, and circus performers, all of which adds up to a lively, atmospheric and heart-felt album.

Rufus Wainwright - Poses - Dreamworks 4502372

I found Rufus via his Bizet Pearl Fishers duet with David Byrne on D.B.'s Grown Backwards CD. Was Rufus, son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate
McGarrigle, struggling a bit with the French? I thought so, and liked him for that. Also his voice seems to have three timbres going at once, which means you can effectively accompany him, whether you're feeling Lee Marvin, Leo Sayer or Kathleen Ferrier.

On Poses he appears to squander his rich,heartbreaking voice on his poppy songs, enunciating lazily enough to have your mother tutting. But the tunes and elegant lyrical drawling will get you in the end- I hope you too may soon be caught trilling "Don't sew beelines to anybody's hide - save your poison for a lover who is on your side" as your lift doors open.

Poses is my dirty secret for vacuuming, knitting socks and bathing. Still recommended if you do none of these - AC

YMO - High-tech/no crime - Internal Records - TRULP1 (TRUCD1)

This is potentially at somewhat of a tangent to the intentions here, but... Some time last week a participant on the Severed Heads mail-list (Severed Heads? Pioneering Australian avant-garde/electronic band. I shall rave about them at another juncture) alleged that the Yellow Magic Orchestra were the true innovators and Kraftwerk merely a 'joke that got out of hand'. This was a, um, remarkable position, and since I vaguely recalled buying a YMO record in 1992, I thought I'd dig it out and have a listen.

Given that it's a collection of remixes (808 State, Altern-8 and the Shamen date it completely, I fear) I'm not sure how much of the original flavour makes its way through the murk of four-on-the-floor - or cartoon breakbeats in the case of Altern-8, but there's interesting stuff there that I intend to follow up. I firmly dispute blokey's claim in re. Kraftwerk, though. The stand-out track has to be the Orbital remix of Behind the mask. Now, you can cheerfully call me a clueless neophyte, but I had no idea the Clapton item was a cover. This version jumps on his like a happy smiley clockwork robot that just happens to be the size of a medium-large dole office. It also seems to have no concept of 'too loud', which through the strange and splendid mechanisms of righteous techno, is also true of Orbital's storming remix of Kinetic found on the CND-sponsored (sponsoring?) 'Give peace a dance III' compilation. The original is good (to be found on Fluxtrax 02), but Orbital give it something extra which still makes me grin like an idiot thirteen years after first hearing it.

Rambling as I am about remixes, I feel I should also mention the 'Overclocked remix' website - dedicated to reworking the in-game music from old hardware. As a for-instance, the remix of Fear factory from Donkey Kong Country on the SNES (Yes, I am fully aware that this sounds utterly ludicrous) is a cracking wedge of anthemic euro-trance. Not usually the sort of thing I care for, but it's done remarkably well.


Various - Give peace a dance vol 3, psychotic reactions - CND Communications - DISARM 5LP
Various - Fluxtrax 02 - EXP - EXPCD003
Overclocked remix

David Byrne - Grown Backwards - Nonesuch 7559-79826-2

This album has the same light, lilting feel of Look Into The Eyeball but he's developed the sound with string arrangements. In other hands, these might have slowed the songs down and made them seem ponderous but he's wisely limited the number of instruments and the sound is fresh and jaunty and sits well with his voice. However, the inclusion of two arias, one with Rufus Wainwright, was a big mistake. Presumably he was led into it by having a few classical musicians knocking around after they finished recording the other songs, but neither he nor Rufus have got the voice for opera. I'm afraid I skip those two tracks. Also on this album is a remix - with strings, of course - of his dance track Lazy, issued a while ago with X-press2/Muzikium. He gets away with that.

Review websites

After a cracking start we seem to have hit the wall rather early (anyone would think we had lives to lead). So here are some sites where you might find inspiration.

www.jazzreview.com
Does what it says on the tin

www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews
I can exclusively reveal that the BBC is setting out to make Music one of the things it is most renowned for ....

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/
Focused on new music...

www.spiderbytes.com/ambientrance
For ambient, electronic and experimental...
(Tho it seems to stop a year ago)

And of course...
www.rollingstone.com
Great archive and search....

The Mountain Goats - We Shall All Be Healed - CAD 2401

John Darnielle is The Mountain Goats and he reminds me of post-protest Bob Dylan. His songs are mostly acoustic, more rock than folk, and his lyrics are almost as opaque, though you always feel you can grasp just enough of what is going on and then fall back on his sense of poetry and enjoy the imagery. Some of the songs on this album are straight forward and affecting. Your Belgian Things is about the possessions of a former lover being removed from his flat (I think) and is beautifully observed. He does inhabit some grim territory - like an intensive care ward on Mole - but you sense that the album title isn’t ironic and he may even mean it. For Darnielle at his most visceral, try No Children on his previous album, Tallahassee, also recommended.

More Websites

CD Baby A record retailer based in Seattle. The firm specialises in two things: records made on their own labels by bands/musicians, so they have stuff you literally can't get anywhere else; and the most over-the-top and amusing line in acknowledgements of orders and other business communications.

I've only dealt with them once, so far, and got an album called ESPM: The Reunion (ESPM being Earland,Sparks, Person and Muhammad). I'm saving up an order for the Christmas album made by the fabulous Plas Johnson, the most widely heard jazz musician of all time -AM


KCRW This is a radio station run out of Santa Monica College, California, which broadcasts music and news. You'll find both a simulcast and a music stream on the site. The music stream re-runs all their music programmes and they're varied and informed, covering everything except classical. I think the best programme is Morning Becomes Eclectic which has stunning range of new music and a succession of guests that any UK station would give its back teeth for. If you're in the UK, you can listen to it live at supper-time -RL

There Will be a Light - Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama - Virgin 893309

"When The Blind Boys of Alabama open their mouths to sing, what comes out is older than salvation, older than redemption. It is the sound of oppression and struggle. It is the sound of revelation and liberation. It is a sound as old as time. The Blind Boys of Alabama are the pyramids of gospel music; the birthplace of sacred soul. " So says Ben Harper, blues-soul singer and guitarist who recorded this album with them in eight days. The "boys" - all in their late seventies and all blind - sing harmony to die for. (In fact, they know they may. In an earlier recording of The Last Time, they add "This may be the last time - we ever sing together...") Ben spices them up with electric guitar and perfectly balanced production. I prefer them raw, but any album of theirs is worth a listen - while you can.

Various - Rephlexions. An album of braindance - Rephlex CAT1000CD

This is, oddly enough, a compilation of odd electronic music from the Rephlex label. Some of it falls squarely into the camp of interesting but unproductive laptop-powered noodle, other bits are sort of Trip-down-the-stairs-and-Hop-about-swearing, and still other parts could be the soundtrack of an award-winning animation from Czechoslovakia. However, I am warming a great deal to the works of Cylob, since he seems to be able to take a pile of noise and throw away all the bits that are a bit too obviously music, which leaves a tottering stack of unidentifiable brass components that collapse in on themselves and emit pleasing 'grark' noises. DMX Krew meanwhile, are Electro-funk time travellers from a slightly cleaner 80s. Utterly splendid and not even slightly out of place on the more synthpoppy/EBM dancefloor. 'Flex' by JP Buckle just blats along for two-and-a-bit-minutes of rocking drum loop and earthmoving bass that reminds me worryingly of Ted Chippington. It's just a damn fine thing and I can't stop listening to it. I'd recommend buying this CD on the strength of that track alone.

Ray Charles - Genius Loves Company - Concord - CCD 22482

I bought this in New York in a moment of weakness after hearing his version of "Fever" sung with Nathalie Cole. It's a posthumous release and one of those albums where there are guest artists on every track. I was first aware of the "guest artist" phenomenon with John Lee Hooker's The Healer - still a fantastic album not least for Carlos Santana's contribution. But since then everyone - and especially Jools Holland -- is at it. The nadir for me was Tom Jones and Cerys from Catalonia murdering "Baby It's Cold Outside". However, I digress. Ray's voice is clearly past its best but the man had soul until the very end which is what saves this album. Duets with Norah Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, BB King and more. One or two great performances (Fever, Crazy Love) make the rest forgiveable. If anyone wants to be picky and download track by track (from a legal source like iTunes, obviously) I'll tell you what to go for and which ones to avoid....

Natalie Merchant - Tigerlily - Elektra 7559-61745-2

Natalie Merchant was, of course, the very distinctive vocalist with 10,000 Maniacs and this is what I thought was her latest solo album. However it turns out it was recorded in 1995 and only released in 2002....Regardless of such anomalies it's a beguiling, beautifully produced acoustic album. She sings of all the usual stuff (love, loss, bereavement, fame, jealousy, earthquakes - you know, your life and mine) but her voice is unique and wonderful. I bought this on impulse in my local CD store in Cobham Surrey (Threshold Records, established by a Moody Blue) which has a really eclectic selection coupled with a very expensive sound system. SO I nearly always buy whatever they happen to be playing as it sounds so great. This one, unlike many others, also sounds great at home. Favourite track - "Where I go" with the refrain "Well I will go to the River from time to time, wander over these crazy days in my mind, watch the river flow". And after the year I've had, I know what she means.
Richard L, my critical faculties will improve with practise - but I'm not sure my eyesight will always be able to pick out the disc number on the spine. I hope you will forgive me.

Cowboy Junkies - One Soul Now - COOKCD296

Far less soporific than previous offerings, with nice driving bass lines and percussion, and some rocky guitar work and choruses. I'm glad to say they retain that dream-like quality on many of the songs and Stars of Our Stars and No Long Journey Home could even make radio singles.

One review I read complained that although they'd clearly developed their sound, they still sounded like the Cowboy Junkies. I rather thought that was the point of every band, to sound like themselves, rather than someone else?

One warning: When Margo Timmins sings "irony, oh, irony" on Simon Keeper, I'm convinced she's saying "Arnie, oh, Arnie" which has rather spoilt it for me. But mustn't carp. Mine came with a free EP of covers of songs by Neil Young, Springsteen, The Cure et al. That's good too - RL

Useful Websites

I've either sent these to, or been sent these, by other members and they're all worth a dabble:

Alien8 Recordings Want to know what God Speed You Black Emperor do in their spare time? You'll find out here and there's a lot more weird and wonderful stuff besides.

Epitonic Good biogs and free, legal downloads of a whole range of music, all usefully cross-referenced.

Hydrogendukebox This is where to go for your House, Downtempo, Garage and Drum n Bass.

A Largehearted Boy, A Girl and His Radio A staggeringly comprehensive music blog with links to downloads, reviews, interviews. Mentions books as well. Must be a full-time job.

Last Plane to Jakarta The site of John Darnielle aka The Mountain Goats. Makes about as much sense as his song titles. Particularly liked his list of things you could compare Interpol to, apart from Joy Division, which I took to be his adverse reaction to the state of music criticism.

Luaka Bop David Byrne's eclectic record label. Lots of streamed music, mostly modern World.

Calabash Music Strictly World music, both traditional and fusion. Loads of paid-for downloads of both individual tracks and albums. One free download a day -RL

Houston Person - To Etta With Love - Highnote 7127

Etta Jones was one of the greatest Soul Jazz singers.
Houston Person is one of the greatest Soul Jazz tenor
players. They worked together for over thirty years,
until she died in 2001.

That's a lot of history. After a gig, you knew you'd
been sung to; played for; smiled at. That's how this
album feels. It's not sad; it's a celebration of the
good times Houston and Etta shared on the bandstand.
Printing the songs' words on the sleeve underlines
their importance; in this case doubly so, because of
the songs' association with Etta. This is a very good
album, almost one of Houston's best half-dozen.

I'm pleased to say that the idea of printing the
words, which Houston has adopted on the last two of
his albums in which he played mainly songs, came from
a letter I wrote to him, pointing out that most people
don't know the words, because the songs aren't on the
radio much any more - AM