ECLECTIC WARRIOR APRIL 2012
Silver Morning Branches – VOICE OF THE SEVEN WOODS (I saw this guitarist, real name Rick Tomlinson, supporting Davy Graham around 2006. Graham was probably showing his age a little and so it’s fair to say that this support act, playing solo acoustic on the night, gave the audience the closest taste of the kind of Acid-Folk wizardry they’d come to hear; it’s a shame Voice Of The Seven Woods turned out to be a single album project, although Rick has continued to wave his wand in other musical explorations) / Black Doe (Radio Edit) – MARY EPWORTH (Talk about finding the very thing you’re looking for on your doorstep! Weird and wonderful Psychedelic folk magic from a North Essex chanteuse with songs inspired by, amongst other things, Hatfield Forest! I’m writing this the morning after witnessing Mary Epworth & The Jubilee Band sweep all before them at a gig in Bishops Stortford and it’s not very becoming of me to start gushing too much so I’d better stop typing but I do just want to say first...they do a far more extensive, dramatic version of this track live and if you’ve got even the most passing ear for anything Psych, Acid-Folk or Garage you have got to catch this band in 2012, they’re a happening thing for sure!) / Love Interruption – JACK WHITE (At no point in the past 15 years has Jack White been anything less than vital, he continues here on his first solo outing) / Zumm Zumm – DJANGO DJANGO (If only more current pop music had this much fun bouncing out of its grooves) / Kling I Klang – PAUL WELLER (Like on so many other tunes from his latest album, there’s a healthy dose of the “what’s he on about?” to this lyric, my guess it’s a kind of hellish snapshot of the mindset of a soldier firing on the adrenaline of a violent war situation. Then you catch a lyric that mentions the ‘Saracens Head’ and it could be about the after affects of a heavy night at an Essex boozer. I doubt it though, once again Weller’s juiced up and sounding inspired. 2008-to-now has been arguable his greatest ever period) / Lazy Projector – ANDREW BIRD (A devastatingly beautiful moment of wistful reflection, a highlight from Andrew Bird’s brilliant latest album ‘Break It Yourself’) / Terremoto – EL GRAN CHUFLE (Trance like surf guitar meets swinging Morricone lines from...well London, Paris and everywhere, let’s call them an international combo. Their Myspace page says that they transport you “on a Lisergic Sicodelic Dance experience with fun and sensual kinesis”. Well if you don’t want to listen after that description stop pretending you like music!) / Sit Right Down – TOOTS & THE MAYTALS (When Toots Hibbert appeared on the Ronnie Wood Show he told a great story about how ‘Pressure Drop’ was written as a kind of threat-in-song to shady record company types who weren’t paying him the money he was owed. “The pressure’s gonna drop on you”. He also played Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and sat there grooving and gurning with Ronnie just digging the music; this is what all music TV should be like) / I Take What I Want – THE ARTWOODS (Hard, soulful, pile-driving R&B from one of the most under-rated of 60s bands. Ronnie Wood was not a member of The Artwoods incidentally as is so often thought, although his older brother was and they took their name from him, Mr. Art Wood) / Down Down – THE SILENCE (Found on a Mod compilation, it would be more at home on a Freakbeat or Nuggets set but either way it’s ace) / A Piece Of Leather – DONNIE ELBERT (This is the funky little track the Ronnie Wood thought has a girl singing, one of those infectious little 60s numbers that after a couple of listens beggars belief it’s remained relatively obscure) / Tell Me What You See In Me (Alternate Take) – SANDY DENNY & THE STRAWBS (Sandy Denny seems to be getting a decent amount of appraisal and attention at the moment which has to be a good thing. There’s a tour coming up in May with members of Fotheringay and cool people like Joan As Policewoman playing her music which should be worth checking out. For me the love affair with her sound has lasted 15 years or more and I, regrettable, rarely hear anything that I’m not extremely familiar with. This however, is a genuine hidden gem in her catalogue. The ‘Sandy & The Strawbs’ album is an often over-looked moment in her legacy, perhaps collectors are put off by the over-familiarity of the early 70s budget label issue of the album which inevitable does give it the air of a lesser essential work. However, it isn’t. This track actually comes from the CD re-issue and is one of several must-hear bonus tracks; in this case a version of the song with fantastic swathes of gentle, folky psychedelia) / La Grande – LAURA GIBSON (Opening track on the fantastic new album ‘LA Grand’) / Belmont Jackass – LORD MELODY (There are no hidden meanings to the lyrics of this twee little slice of Calypso but then again...at times it sounds like a personal attack on the wife of Mighty Sparrow?) / Demons – LULU AND THE LAMPSHADES (They got my attention with the exceptional ‘Cups’ video that did the rounds on YouTube last year; this helping of ghostly lo-fidelity tunefulness shows however, that there’s a good deal more to love here than mere gimmicks) / Through The Night – REN HARVIEU (In a similar vein, this is a singer with a classy line in yearning 60s flavoured pop tunes who has a long awaited debut album coming up this year; it has been on hold while Ren has recovered from a bad accident that left her with two broken vertebrae) / Bold Soul Sister – IKE & TINA TURNER (As the playlist takes a soulful turn, check out the Tina Turner ad-libbing on one of Ike Turner’s funkiest licks; I like the idea that she was just told to sing about “things and stuff” and so did just that! What, though, was she thinking with “sock it to me biscuit”!) / Bitch I Love You – BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS (I’d like to dedicate this one to my wife) / You’ve Got It – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (It’s too easily ignored what a great Soul Revue style of performance Bruce can pull off when he’s in the mood. On this great tune from latest album ‘Wrecking Ball’, it’s clear that he’s still got it as well) / You’re The Kind Of Girl – LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS (Cool bit of new old school from the old school) / Tell Me A Tale – MICHAEL KIWANUKA (Cool bit of new old school from the new school) / I’m Going Home – PRINCE CONLEY (That this is Memphis Soul on the Stax label by a popular Blues singer from back in the day is pretty much all that needs to be said really) / Tosta Mista – HOODED FANG (It’s not only Essex that’s getting delightfully fuzzy in 2012 it seems; from the new second album by the Canadian collective) / Wild Goose – M.WARD (Sometimes it seems that all the best new stuff sounds a little like old stuff at the same time. They don’t always sound quite as ancient as M. Ward’s tracks though; his best tunes shine like they’re tapped from a long forgotten golden font at the dawn of creation) / Fine Horseman – ANNE BRIGGS (Sandy Denny remains my favourite female vocalist but, if Anne Briggs had just recorded a bit more music than the handful of sessions we know about, she could well have been her closest challenger) / Lonely Woman – THE MODERN JAZZ QUARTET (An Ornette Coleman tune, played by one of the most musically dexterous combos Jazz has ever seen; the mixture of innovation and proficiency makes for a classic) / Down To Earth – ZOE RAHMAN (Opening tune from my favourite Jazz album of the year so far) / P.S. You Rock My World - EELS (1998’s study on a slow death brought on by cancer is brilliant yet harrowing in places. I feel the Eels masterstroke though was ending the album on such an uplifting note; emotive doesn’t even begin to describe it) / The Yellow Princess – JOHN FAHEY (Picking up the expressive, far-out acoustic vibe that Voice Of The Seven Woods kicked off this playlist with; this time from one of the masters leading us neatly into more unexpected Psych territory) / The Earnest Of Being George – BEE GEES (That the Bee Gees are famous for their Disco era stuff is almost as wrong as it would be if Paul McCartney were best remembered for ‘Mull Of Kintyre’. Their 60s and early 70s period is routinely masterful) / Guru-vin – DON SEBESKY (As a Jazz arranger for labels like Verve, A&M and CTI in the 60s and 70s, Don Sebesky frequently showed a flair for the eclectic with his genre merging creations as demonstrated impeccably with the far-out vibes on this one) / Everything’s Blue – FAT MATTRESS (Noel Redding left the Jimi Hendrix Experience to form Fat Mattress and explore the West Coast flavoured sound he couldn’t get near in Hendrix band. Their debut album was a classy effort, not anything like as heavy as people might have expected and this track is one of the few penned by Redding on his own) / Port Of Morrow – THE SHINS (Wrongly accused of too much production polish and gloss on their latest album I think, this title track from said record does enough in itself to rubbish all those theories) / Ooh Yeh Yeh – GRAHAM COXON (Typically, Coxon saves the most immediate track off his latest album to last, it’s as if he doesn’t want you to notice how good he can be) / It Be’s That Way Sometimes – NINA SIMONE (The late 60s RCA run of albums was Nina’s best period, here we have the opening track from the ‘Silk And Soul’ record which was actually written by her brother Sam Waymon) / Unfortunately Anna – JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE (From the new album ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now’) / The Heart Of Saturday Night – TOM WAITS (In my appreciation of the later Tom Waits art-project years, I sometimes forget to enjoy the finer moments of his earlier Jazz’n’Jive incarnation) / Can’t Be Long Now - CARAVAN (Last month I featured a late period Soft Machine track, this time round it’s the other great act to form out of the ashes of Canterbury’s mid-sixties cult band The Wilde Flowers. Caravan rarely get the credit they deserve as pioneers in the Prog-Rock movement yet they were effectively playing with that genre before it was even recognised as such. Other than the lavish Psychedelic progressions and passages in their sound, the one other key element that pulled them free of the studious instrument-gazing pack was a subtle humour and playfulness in their work. This track comes from the brilliantly titled second album ‘If I Could Do It All Over Again I’d Do It All Over You’ and being by far the longest track on the album they obviously had to be knowingly contrary with the song title too. Basically though, it’s a great late 60s period piece and a gorgeous way to bid farewell to this months’ playlist and look forward to some cricket that isn’t rained off. As I write this, the sun has just started to shine for what feels like the first time all month. So we bid farewell to, as people have frequently called it this past week, “the wettest drought on record”.)
Eclectic Warrior April 2012
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