The Incredible String Band (Elektra)

Mono pressing. Clive Palmer has a great reputation, maybe because he left the Incredible String Band after this debut album, before they found more commercial success, which cements him along with Syd Barrett, Howard Devoto, Judy Dyble and others who got out while the going was good. Listening to this lovely sounding (mono!) pressing, I realise that he wasn't a phenomenally large presence anyway. This debut is more like a "songwriter's guild" type of band, without all three members playing on every track, and a few being solo pieces. There's a very unfortunately titled solo Palmer track which should be enough to ruin his reputation except maybe because it's a jaunty banjo instrumental (and also a traditional tune) he gets away with it; otherwise it's only on 'Empty Pocket Blues' that we get to hear his voice. It's a nice song, though Robin Williamson's furtive tin whistling is what really makes it. Other gems are 'Dandelion Blues', which is whimsical and fleeting; 'When the Music Starts to Play' and the closing stomper 'Everything's Fine Right Now'. This type of winking contemporary folk came at the right place right time; I don't hear anything particularly 'psychedelic' here beyond the general lightness of tone and colour of the arrangements, but England was maybe more of a mushroom culture at this point, 1966. Heron and Williamson were actually both from Edinburgh as we're told in the notes on 'Smoke Shovelling Song', but this isn't a band I tend to remember when chronicling Scotland's greats. The liner notes are great -not quite lyrics but rambling written riffs on the themes of the song, which bring a nice accompaniment to the listening experience. This recording - did I mention it's in mono? - sounds clear and balanced, with the chop-chop of the strummed strings echoing for all of eternity, whether it's guitar, banjo, or mandolin. It's funny to think that Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span et. al formed in the wake of this, though I'm not sure how strong the influence was, and they were more rockin' when they started. Still, ISB managed to ultimately build a myth around themselves and it's hard to hear why in this first record. I saw a reunion show of the original trio circa 2004 and Clive Palmer seemed so goddamned old they pretty much had to wheel him out and prop him up --  though Wikipedia indicated he was only 61 at the time. I never did hear those C.O.B. records, maybe they're good?

Roy Harper - 'Flat Baroque and Berserk' (Harvest)

In more argumentative moods I will sometimes put out the opinion that Bob Dylan ain't half the songwriter that Roy Harper is. I don't know if I really believe that, or why it would matter anyway since they are both great, but clearly I'm holding on to all these Harper records (where I own exactly one of Dylan) for a reason, though that reason has more to do with their relative availabilities than a true assessment of preference. But when I was going through a phase, often connected to drinking a bit, I would make this argument - or lager-ument, if you get my drift - to try to provoke my Dylan-obsessed friends into discovering the depth and sophistication of Harper's oeuvre - especially as he was from their own country and Dylan was from mine, so therefore they would relate to delicate English nuances I would never completely pick up on. Anyway, I realise now that a better comparison is not Dylan but Neil Young, not just in the way they are split between folky/electric work and their penchant for self-indulgence (since you could apply the same to Dylan), but in how much of himself Harper seems to put out there, closer to Young than Dylan, where you are always at arm's length (even if it's sometimes Greil Marcus's arm). Flat Baroque and Berserk isn't quite a step backwards from Folkjokeopus but it feels like it slips a bit into the cracks between it's predecessor and Stormcock. It's actually less baroque than Folkjokeopus (maybe because he's broke from Shel Talmy's invoice) so there's a lot more straightforward strummin'-and-singin', you know, the singer-songwriter genre, which is not for everyone. 'Don't You Grieve' and 'I Hate the White Man' open things off, the former being a catchy song from the perspective of Judas Iscariot and the latter being a confused bit of political sympathising that does not hold up so well in 2017, despite Harper's long spoken introduction. It's like he know how complicated this issue would be, and he was trying to proactively get ahead of the issue, but my problem is not really with the song itself (well-written, and occasionally lovely) but with the nearly blackface nature of the whole thing, most evident in his pronunciation of the word 'the' in the titular line. But let's move on; it could have been a lot worse and it's the thought that counts, right? Flat Baroque and Berserk has 'Another Day', one of his most beloved songs (and most well-known thanks to This Mortal Coil's beautiful rendition, which we'll get to in ten years or so). The arrangement benefits it greatly, lifting the 'I loved you a long time ago' lyrics out of the mix to feel like a natural gust of wind, carrying it into the ether - his voice is so soft and the strings are also restrained, making this the most baroque cut on the record but a pretty restrained one. And this is one of those tracks where the sheer beauty just overwhelms everything else.  This is among the more Apollonian cuts and fits in with the album's general theme of loss and memory (though that really emerges on side two, after side one closes with 'Goodbye', an elegy to someone who was shot). Most of side two excels; 'Davey', is a brief minor-key, wistful number about his brother; the drifting flying carpet ride of 'East of the Sun'; the perfect, infallible 'Francesca'. 'Song of the Ages' is a perfect balance between guitar, harp and voice and is also beautiful to the point of being nearly paralysing.'Tom Tiddler's Ground' echoes 'How Does it Feel', as the two longer compositions on each side, but 'Tiddler' is the superior cut for sure. This, like most of the album, is only Harper's voice and guitar, except for a delicately meandering keyboard line, which only really comes to the forefront during the chorus. As details go, it's magical, and right when it's about to wear out its welcome, the record segues into 'Francesca'. It's only the balls-out rock of 'Hell's Angels' to close which feels unnatural; Harper's taste in sequencing is sometimes questionable (see Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion, when we get there). The record comes clad in a gatefold which is rather silly (given the cover photo) but features typed out lyrics inside, to everything except for 'Feeling All the Saturday' (which is actually a lovely ditty despite mentioning a toddler squeezing shit out of his diaper).

Roy Harper - 'Sophisticated Beggar' (Big Ben)

For the fist time (I think) in Dislocated Underbite's eight+ year history, I happened to buy an LP that was exactly the next one to be listened to alphabetical. So this is both the next LP in the gauntlet and also its newest addition. Sophisticated Beggar is Roy Harper's first album, and one of the three I was missing (out of the ones I want, not his entire discography - FYI contact me if you want to unload a cheap copy of Jugula or Ghenghis Smith). Harper wrote some cute liner notes on the back explaining how he used to dislike this record but didn't mind it so much anymore, and singled out his favourite songs. For a man who's not always left the most comfortable body of work in today's woke/PC times, 'China Girl' is a hell of a way to open his first album. It's wistful and slight and built around 'oriental' melodies, which is somehow more cringeworthy than the concept; but then again whenever I hear 'Turning Japanese' I don't mind it so what's the difference? This is way before Harper started writing epic seventeen minute songs, and also before he really started to flesh out his instrumentation - Sophisticated Beggar is remarkably unsophisticated in terms of arrangement, built around his guitar fingerpicking and voice, a classic late 60s folk record with the influence of rock and British counterculture. But the fingerpicking is fantastic - during parts of this, such as the title track, I realise how fucking great his guitar-fu was, which I tend to forget in the glow of his songwriting. 'Committed' and 'Mr. Station Master' feature a full electric rock band, recorded in a wooly, almost lo-fi way, the latter built around a languid shuffle and dominated by thick organ chords. But both songs are kinda throwaway, closer to bubblegum than the dirgey, intense lyrical dumps he'd become notable for later. The other throwaway stuff ('Big Fat Silver Aeroplane and 'China Girl') at least fit the era, and the album congeals nicely. Rather than being a Dylan copy, theres way more of a Bert Jansch influence (heard most evidently on the instrumental 'Blackpool'). 'Forever', 'Legend' and 'October the 12th' stand out as songs that would linger into Harper's subsequent live career; the latter could be a more colourful analogy to Nick Drake's work, except Harper's voice has the undeniably cheekyness that works well with his more extravagant lyrics. 'Forever' is fucking gorgeous, with his singing earnestly mellow ('drawing into an eternal horizon of time' blends with the hypnotic guitar pattern and is one of my favourite Roy Harper songs in his whole catalogue). With Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith he really takes a step forwards towards the frustratingly idiosyncratic and mostly brilliant artist he would be over the next decade and eight or so albums. Hang on, cause we're in for a lot of Roy Harper in the next few days.

Fresh Maggots - 'Hatched' (Sunbeam)

A few years back, amid the resurgence of interest in British folk-rock, came a bunch of reissues  of obscurities and 'lost gems'. Some, such as this, got such a gorgeous and deluxe treatment that it's almost ridiculous, far exceeding any interest in the band when they were actualy around. This Sunbeam reissues takes the lone self-titled Fresh Maggots LP and adds a bunch of additional material, becoming a pretty definitive record of a band that no one remembers anyway. These guys were a duo who were touted a lot in the press as the next big thing (at least in what the liner notes include), if the next big thing was going to be a folk duo that tends more towards fast strummy pop than the type of saccharine Simon & Garfunkel shit that is forever popular. There's definitely that folk duo vibe, as 'Rosemary Hill' apes the 'Sound of Silence' but adds glockenspiel-  a novel touch! The sound is soft folk-pop throughout, though with sometimes-searing electric guitar leads and occasional other instruments. The electric lead over acoustic strum template works well, though I'd struggle to maintain interest all the way through if the proper LP didn't close with 'Frustration', probably their best track. The lyrics are unremarkable la-la-la of their milieu, and there's a genteel Britishness, yet cigarette-stained, as if hinting at something nastier underneath. The third side is only two songs, though thankfully still mastered at 33rpm so I don't have to flip the belt for such middling fare (both songs are mostly just 'la la la's, suggesting that this might be unfinished tracks instead of a single, but the liner notes don't help). The fourth side comes from a radio programme and consists of live-in-studio versions of songs from the album. And with that, it's over; a retreat back into the forgotten corners of music history, cause now this reissue is surely unavailable again until the next cycle. Fresh Maggots isn't a great choice for a band name but I don't think their failure to hit it big is due to this; more likely it's because their sound, while certainly pleasant, lacked any sort of memorable edge or character. At the best moments, the electric guitar lines and the acoustic strum become trance-like, but then they usually start singing again.  They can't even lay claim to being the biggest band ever from Nuneaton (a place I only ever knew from always having to change trains there) because of Eyeless in Gaza, or Elastica's drummer.

Fotheringay (A&M)

My copy of this is so beat-to-shit that it's buried in surface noise, and skips a good it bit too. I actually fear for the safety of my stylus and thus rarely listen to it. Also, despite being a pretty solid record, I never get any craving to hear it. This picks up where you'd expect it to - taking the Fairport sound but bringing in a stronger Dylan/Band influence, most obvious in the cover of 'Too Much of Nothing but also on 'Winter Winds', a less languid but otherwise derivative take on the 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' vibe. Co-lead vocalist (and Denny's husband) Trevor Lucas sounds pretty good against Denny; the timbre of his voice isn't a million kilometres away from Richard Thompson's, though, so this feels precisely like the second act it is. Additionally, naming your band after one of your iconic songs from your last band can't help but cast a cloud over whatever you do next. Through all the static I can hear how nicely this is produced; a good drum sound, lots of reverb on the guitar lines, and the voices soaring above it all. I think they only ever made this one record; Denny went solo with the excellent The North Star Grassman and the Ravens and I don't know whatever happened to Lucas. It's all what one might expect from a Fairport Convention spinoff, and that's perfectly OK. Denny's perfect touch is why this is remarkable; the Lucas-led songs barely stand out. There's some nice electric guitar leads, but it's the wispy, rolling Fairport sound that I like the most; Denny's 'The Pond and the Stream' being a great example of this. The cover art is pretty bonkers when you stop to actually look at it; on my beaten, faded copy it feels strangely, I dunno, authoritative.

Fairport Convention - 'The History Of' (Island)

I love those 'rock band family trees' and this gatefold LP uses it as the artwork, which is fun as you can really trace the lineups and changes of the sound as you listen through this compilation, which spans up through '71. Most of the first LP of this feels like a retread, especially as I just listened to What We Did on Our Holidays and Liege and Lief for this project; the Unhalfbricking songs are a nice inclusion (ah, it's such a pleasure to have 'A Sailor's Life' on vinyl!) though they included zero from the self-titled Judy Dyble-vocalised album. I can't say much more than I already did except I didn't mind listening to 'Matty Groves' again, and this first LP is a pretty solid collection that should be foundational for many people. 'Grazy Man Michael' and the medley replace 'Tam Lin' for some reason - I guess the medley is important to show their further descent into traditional material, especially to audiences in 1972 who might be purchasing Babbacombe Lee expecting Thompson's malignant picking to be there. The second LP I confess I rarely listen to, though it contains Thompson's mighty 'Sloth' and the single-only 'Now be Thankful'. 'Sloth' really is a masterpiece, alternating between world-weary resignation in the verses and the fire-storming churning of something more kinetic, only to sit back and look at the 'war' which has begun, just the roll of the drum, etc. etc. This is probably the best Fairport song. I'm so biased towards the official, rock-ist view of Fairport Convention, which is that after Richard Thompson left, I cash out (just like I care not a fuck for post-Wyatt Soft Machine, post-Barrett Floyd (mostly), etc.). I guess that's cause I've never taken the initiative to really give that stuff a chance, happy to take the collective doctrine as gospel.  The last side of the record is hard to sink into; 'John Lee' is all right, there's a real storytelling sense, and the performances are more than adequate, but I don't know; it's just not for me.

Fairport Convention - 'Liege & Lief' (Island)

Most would consider this their best album, and it's hard to argue with the "Don't fuck with me" stomp of 'Matty Groves' or 'Tam Lin'. My personal favourite is Unhalfbricking, not just for its awesome title but also for it's brilliant Dylan covers and the epic 'A Sailor's Life'. Alas, I've never found an affordable vinyl copy so we have to skip on to this fourth album, which as I already said, is pretty hard to fuck with. While Unhalfbricking might have better songs, this has the strongest performances. According to the Internet, this was released in December 1969, making three full albums in one calendar year, and I'd say their three finest, certainly of the Thompson era (which is really all I know). This is truly Fairport showing their growth as a "band"; the grungy stomp of 'Matty Groves' is evidence of a solid rock ensemble that has developed over a few albums, the kind that Carducci would write about as a tight technical unit. There's nothing fey or wimpy about the folk influence; instead it shows a remarkable dedication to the presence of each musician, the rhythmic motion pulling each piece in a definite direction and letting Denny's voice soar. The repetitive palm-muting on 'The Deserter' achieves a similar transcendence. Fast-forward to this blog years in the future, when we get to solo Thompson albums and I'm sure I'll still be raving about how 'Calvary Cross' is as heavy as the best Black Sabbath material then. The years may pass, but my diatribes never change. Anyway, the traditional, Swarbrick-driven material like side two's medley maintains the same hard-rock edge, and if there was any singer here besides Denny, she'd probably be left in the dust. This is six people playing rock music, not five plus a singer, and the way she coasts over the crests of 'Tam Lin''s waves is masterful, allowing the in-between verse sections to meander with guitar explorations but holding everything central. This could make a believer out of anyone who thinks they don't like folk-influenced stuff, and over the years this continues to sound fresh and alive, not like a clichéd dinosaur.

Fairport Convention (A&M)

If you came here expecting a review of the first Fairport Convention album, their lone release with Judy Dyble as vocalist, you're going to be disappointed. This is actually the second Fairport record, correctly known as What We Did on Our Holidays but released in the US as a self-titled record, just like They used to do so often to be intentionally confusing (or, I'm sure there was a better reason, but, eh). This is another record that is, at this point, "iconic" but we'll try to actually hear it this time through. 'Fotheringay' is the opening cut, along with 'Meet on the Ledge' the two eternal classics from this album (which will appear on any Fairport/Thompson greatest hits comp that has the rights to them). The traditionals are the high points - remember, unlike most of their ilk, Fairport actually started more "rock" and migrated towards "folk". 'She Moves Through the Fair' is one of those things that would truly define the movement, and the then-contemporary covers (Joni Mitchell's 'Eastern Rain' and Dylan's 'I'll Keep It With Mine') situate it in a wrapping that is strangely paisley with a British tweed mix (which would probably look godawful were it a real fabric and not a badly-designed music-writing metaphor). 'Book Song' is an original that feels akin to 'Percy's Song', with an inspired Thompson blues-influenced solo that has just a wonderful, earthy tone. The blues progression of 'Mr. Lacey' is a bit tired, and Simon Nicol's 'End of a Holiday' ends things with a melancholy I find less than convincing. But I'm just nitpicking; the way the dark moods of '"The Lord Is In This Place... How Dreadful Is This Place"' explodes into the pure pop of Thompson's 'No Man's Land' is more or less magic, even if the "folk" and "rock" are split across two tracks. It's so easy to look back at this as an experiment in synthesis and lose sight of the emotion and feeling of what it meant for young British rockers to be rediscovering this material. It's the feeling that made this a cornerstone of a movement, or rather an empire.

Destroyer - 'City of Daughters' (Tinker/Cave Canem)

I don't have the privilege of seeing the Soundscan figures, but I'd guess that latest Destroyer album at the time of this writing, Kaputt, had to be his biggest selling. Maybe I should actually say biggest 'hit' because popularity probably has little connection these days to actually 'moving units' or whatever they used to say. I feel like everywhere I go nowadays, I encounter some kid playing it through laptop speakers. Good for Bejar, cause he's been churning out great music for a long time and I'm happy for him to find an audience, even if I'm personally yet to click with Kaputt. City of Daughters is from the other end of his career - it's not his first album but his first really good one. This is almost as stripped-down as his debut, based mostly around acoustic guitar and voice, though with some Emax synthesiser interludes and a nice backing band here and there. The Emax interludes aren't just filler - 'Emax II' is a lovely bit of electroacoustic residue.  It's tough for me to write about Destroyer as I find him to be the Canadian indie-rock reincarnation of Wallace Stevens - difficult as all-fuck to 'explain' but more than easy to be moved by. The musical cadences are the bonus that Mr. Bejar has over Mr. Stevens, so there's added non-meaning through emphasis and catchiness. For example, 'I Want This Cyclops' is a wonderful jaunty ride, but it's something about two sisters on a plane and an actual saskwatch with one eye, and the fuck if I can figure it out. But that's modernism at it's best - I can put my own meaning into things, and I've done that a lot. Maybe I just like singing along about the 'new heretical dawn'. Did I mention I love Destroyer? I've been immersed in his work since Streethawk: A Seduction, which we'll get to soon enough on the CD blog, and I've always seen City of Daughters, Thief, and Streehawk as a trilogy even though there's not much to link them besides a similar sound in the backing bands (though the lineups aren't consistent). This is a less ambitious Destroyer - before the big production of This Night, the midi experiments of Your Blues, the temporary 'return to form' of Rubies and of course Kaputt's 80's disco coke gloss. But again, what makes these records so different? The lyrics are always great, so it really comes down to my own personal tastes - I like the simplicity of songs like 'School, And the Girls Who Go There' more - they're somewhere in-between coffeeshop troubadour and indie pick-up band. Jennifer's halter top is a consecrated altar, after all. Like Queen, he actually saved the title track for his next album. This also has 'No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against the State of Our Love, Baby)' which should have been a smash hit anthem in an alternate universe (how many times do I type those words in these pages?). It's a confident record, a real portrait of a Canadian 1996 at least as I imagine it, and the start of something great.

Dando Shaft - 'An Evening With...' (Decca)

Hey, I fucked up!  I thought this was the second or third Dando Shaft release, since it isn't self-titled (and is so much better)!  But actually, we're looking at their debut, before Polly Bolton joined the band, and when Martin Jenkins is really much more of a leader.  So really, this should have come before the last post, but such inaccuracies are a true joy in the Internet anyway.  There's singing on every track except for the lovely 'Drops of Brandy', and the band relies much more on cellos and violins to make a chamber-music feel.  The songs are longer, with four per side, and the highlight, 'September Wine', creeps in slowly over some hand bells before unfolding into a murky ballad that could be mid-90s slowcore in places.  There isn't a breakdown of exact credits but the band is probably mostly the same lineup as the next one, yet way less bouncy and fast.  Taking time to stretch out really helps Dando Shaft, in my opinion, even if it puts them closer to the 'folk' side of folk-rock.  'In the Country' gets into a gentle strum that walks slowly across the vinyl, with flute filling out the hippie quotient and lyrics about appreciating nature -- could it get any better?  'Cat Song' has a slightly music hall lean, with charmingly pedestrian lyrics as well.  There's so much to like about this record - it's remarkable in it's unremarkableness; psychedelic in it's pure niceness, and there's a hint of menace to the chord progressions on 'Rain' and 'Cold Wind'.  The former is a weird death song, I think, and 'End of the Game' has a similar sense of resignation (or else it's just about the weekend).  Whomever sings on most of side 1 really has a Tim Buckley feel, but I still feel like there are so many Bert Janchisms in the guitar riffing.  Maybe I just like this record cause it's on nicer vinyl - Decca's pressing is lovely, and the very thickly arranged songs (which Jenkins is responsible for) always breathe, cause the dynamic range is just right. 

Dando Shaft (RCA/Neon)

The shaggy longhairs clustered together on the back sleeve of this record would make you think we're about to listen to some roaring psych or Krautrock; beards, vacant stares, and a blurryness to the photo all suggest many Dionysian nights.  But Dionysian Knights is more like it; Dando Shaft most resemble a frantic Pentangle clone, mostly due to the jazzy inflections in the Roger Bullen's bass playing.  There's no drum kit, but congas on most tracks, and quickly plucked strings are the essence of their sound.  It's hard to see who the leader of Dando Shaft is, as everyone is so multi-instrumental, and vocals are shared by everyone.  The most common motif is the shredding mandolin of Martin Jenkins over the two guitar attack of Dave Cooper and Kev Dempsey; parts of Dando Shaft are actually actually punishing in the speed of the licks, such as 'Railway'.  When Polly Bolton sings it enhances their place in that whole milieu, though she's no Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior or Jackie McShea.  Percussion as I mentioned before is mostly congas, and songs like 'Pass it On' get a slightly irritating "Kum-Bay-Yah" jamgrass feel that is definitely a product of its time.  But then 'Waves Upon the Ether' is masterful, with different vocal lines pulling melodies in different directions, much as the title would indicate.  There's almost a bit too much 'kitchen sink syndrome' going on here, as the group seems to lack a unified voice.  But perhaps this type of democracy is what they were going for.  Cooper's 'Prayer' ends the record, a half-minute of non-denominational solo yearning that is actually a nice cap to things.  Unfortunately this is on the horrible "dynaflex" vinyl that RCA was so fond of in the early 70s, and the sound quality is resultantly thin.  I know this has gotten the 180g reissue treatment in recent years, but I can't quite justify that expenditure cause Dando Shaft is far closer to "good" than "great".

Shirley and Dolly Collins - For As Many As Will (Topic)

Dolly goes synth! Well, just a little bit. Though made with a small band, most of the cuts on the gramattically-confusing For As Many As Will are pretty stripped down, often with just Dolly on the flute-organ and some minimal cornett or recorder from the other guys (a band which again includes Barry Dransfield on fiddle, though he only appears on a few tracks (though he sings a bit, too)). Side one ends with a long medley of seven different songs (hailing apparently from 1728) and the flute-organ is the constant that holds down the segues. It's most evident how the addition of just a simple recorder can transform a vibe from cooky country-faire into total Defender of the Crown style. While side one starts with the beautiful 'Lancashire Lass', it ends with the medley, which starts to get a bit dense even with rests between it's four sections. The final piece of it is the instrumental 'Lumps of Pudding' (which sounds like the name of some bad prog-rock instrumental) and it's like a raw Third Ear Band tune, cutting through any sentimentality that might linger from the previous medley with sharp euphonium and shawm playing quite wonderfully with Dolly's synth. Her synth patches, of course, aren't exactly Dick Hyman -- they fit quite seamlessly with their sound. Side two beings with the flowing piano ballad 'Gilderoy', which has some rare double-tracked vocals by Shirley. Though over 100 years old now, it manages to stir something in me and that's without even really paying attention to the lyrics, which are surely tragic. Before you can get too used to it, it lurches into the courtly stomp of 'Rockley Firs', and then another circuitous instrumental jam called 'Sweet Jenny Jones', propelled throughout by euphonium farts. The instrumentalism continues through a German Xmas carol before getting back into a righteous Shirley delivery, 'The Moon Shines Bright'. Another medley takes us out, this one about the harvest, with the standout being the fiddle + gittern accompanied 'The Mistress's Health', where Dransfield knows exactly when to saw and when to let it lie. So another solid album closes - and the door closes Shirley Collins in these annals. After A Favourite Garland's somewhat confusing or incomplete liner notes, For As Many As Will overcompensates by listing every musician's instruments multiple times - at the top and bottom of the track listing, and then broken down on each track. Don't let it be said that you don't know who's playing gittern on this record!

Leonard Cohen - 'Recent Songs' (Columbia)

I suspect that Recent Songs is not one of the best-selling Leonard Cohen records, which is somewhat of a shame because it's a solid work with some songs you haven't heard a million times (because I, for one, will strangle myself if I hear 'Suzanne' again, as great as it might have been once to me). Part of Recent Songs' sleeper status is just timing - by the late 70s, the zeitgeist of ten years past was no longer present infuse these songs with the profundity that keeps us coming back to songs like 'Who By Fire' forty years later. Instead we get a somewhat older, more restrained Cohen focused perhaps a bit more on songcraft than before. Some songs are directed to specific people, such as 'The Traitor', while the more familiar grandiose poems ('Ballad of the Absent Mare') might be outtakes from a previous record. It's a longer record, with some stretched out jammy bits and a definitive placement into the 70s folk-rock mileau. Maybe it's just me, but on 'The Gypsy's Wife' I feel the bassline has just a bit of boogie-funk to flavour it, and it wouldn't be out of place on a Fleetwood Mac record of the same time. Likewise, there's a lot of electric piano to flesh things out. This musicality, sadly with all musicians uncredited on my copy (except for background vocalist Jennifer Warnes), is a nice addition, when sounding 1970s. There's also some elements that are more retro in approach, though the violin solos are lively and exciting; any guitar noodling stays focused. This LP came after the Cohen-disavowed, aborted Phil Spector album Death of a Ladies' Man and in some ways the music feels like a reaction to that gross, plastic sheen -- occasionally with uneven results. I find the retro parlour feel of 'Came So Far For Beauty' to bit a bit too slow for me, and the French-language cover tune, 'Un Canadien Errant', is just too close to Edith Piaf for me. But the "back to his roots" Cohen, at one time the Cohen I wanted, lacks the bitterness and desperation that makes Death of a Ladies' Man so amazing (even if it took me a good 15 years to come to that conclusion). When I do end up with a vinyl copy of that one, I will probably pull out Recent Songs even less frequently (and I already barely play this one).

Art Ensemble of Chicago - 'Chi-Congo' (Paula)

This is sadly the final Art Ensemble of Chicago record we'll be exploring, and I placed it here because some online discography placed it after Fanfare for the Warriors, though I now see this has a copyright date of 1973 and Fanfare is '74, so I most likely screwed up! Dusty Groove calls this 'a lost chapter' and maybe that's a good one; they're right in that it's closer to the open-form style of the Paris years, though Don Moye (misspelled here as Moxe, kinda like that weird medicinal soda they love in Maine) rocks the fuck out, and the opening track resembles the drum circle mode of Bap-Tizum (though significantly more tentative and, I daresay, amateurish). Roscoe Mitchell's pieces comprise 75% of this and 'Enlorfe' is a real winner, split over both LP sides and featuring some nervous-ass Jarman soprano while Favors and Moye accelerate to an outer dimension. Mitchell moves to the steel drums over some repetetive hole digging by the rhythm section and makes things into a buzzing perpipatetic run-on sentence. At the end it slows down to a thick drone, almost remniscent of 'Tnoona' but then flurrying back to life at the end. I'm a bit sad to leave the Art Ensemble of Chicago (though excited for a change in the Underbite). The crazy thing is that after 24 LP sides and 4 more on CD, we haven't even covered their whole career - just a middle part of it. Their pre-Paris, earliest recordings, which were released on a super hard to find box set, are a thing of wonder though I have only experienced them in the non-physical form. (The blog where I review my mp3 collection in alphabetical order will not be started until, I dunno, 2013 or so). And for some reason I don't have any of their later records for ECM, even though they're pretty easy to find and a few of them (Full Force in particular) rank among their best-ever work. But there's a real difference between 28 sides of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and 28 sides of, say, The Fall, or Kiss or something. Not that I don't like The Fall or Kiss - I do, in the case of the Fall quite a lot - but the inherent diversity of avant-garde jazz means there's going to be a lot more surprises among 28 sides of the Art Ensemble. Now this might be a bit of a fetishisation of the genre, like an attempt to fight my 'rockist' urges and associate a sophistication to this 'other' music - and I'm aware of it! I mean, I've read Carducci and I certainly agree with him on a lot of points (though not all the stuff about gay people, I mean that's just out-of-line) and I really do often wonder if I fall into that particularly as I (like most of ya kids, unless your Dad is John Corbett or something) grew up with rock first and came to 'other' musics in my late adolescence. Because the development of The Fall across 54 LP sides might be an even greater thing to experience, as the variations will be more subtle. Cause it's hard for me to even really say what I've learned from the AEoC Gauntlet I just finished. Despite the compositional basis to these records, it's hard for me to say what distinguishes a Joseph Jarman jam from, say, a Roscoe Mitchell one. Whereas any fool can listen to a Sebadoh record once and know the difference between Lou Barlow and Eric Gaffney's songs, right? Of course there's a lot more freedom/improvisation present in the works of Jarman, Mitchell etc and that makes things a bit more difficult. But maybe that's also what makes it feel so much more dynamic overall. Am I just stating the obvious and sounding idiotic again? It's hard to say because my head actually kinda hurts from all of this AACM theorizin'. When I got into this band it was like being touched by the Hand of God, but then again I used to feel that Touch quite often in those days, when everything was being blown wide open again and again, like an artificial ski slope eternally rolling downhill. But I would have died to see them live, particularly as their theatrical costumes, paint, and antics were allegedly an antidote for the dullness of much other contemporary jazz, visually. At the time the band was pretty much defunct - Bowie died just about that time and Joseph Jarman had retired, running a karate dojo just down the street from my friend's place in Brooklyn. Now I believe they're active again, with some new members, and I'd certainly go if it was local or cheap but it's pretty clear I missed my chance. But how many groups today are there, blending theatre, tradition, and radically groundbreaking assaults on theatre and tradition, that I am also missing the chance to experiencein their prime? I think not that many, but then again, what do I know?