JANUARY 2012 PLAYLIST

In which the Essex Boy puts on his alter ego as the Eclectic Warrior...because this is how I like it...great music is just that whether it was recorded at the start of the last week or the dawn of the 20th century; from a 2 minute pop blast or a 20 minute orchestral excursion; a funky soul stomper proves the groove as does a raw blues pot boiler; wild excitement can be found from bop-head jazzers to primal garage rockers; brilliant songwriting can be found in old-age and new world folk and yessirr...most of all...when I'm listening to a track I don't necessarily want to hear exactly the same type of tune next up, I like a surprise but reserve the right to just occasionally yearn for the most utterly predictable tune to follow...the immediate thrill can sit side by side with lengthier, challenging pieces because I have an ear and an attention span and finally...I love to hear things I haven't heard before but this does not mean that I can't enjoy a few totally familiar big hit songs thrown into the mix as well...that's how I enjoy my music, maybe some of you can live with it that way too...

In the January 2012 Elclectic Warrior playlist we have:
Flying Saucer - LITTLE WALTER, Tell Mama - ETTA JAMES (arguably the late great Etta's best 45 on Chess), Please Love Me - B.B. KING, All I Got, SAUNDRA MALLETT, Au Font Du Lac - FEUFOLLET, Baby Don't You Know - KITTY DAISY & LEWIS, Throwin My Money Away - ROSCO GORDON (listen carefully to the offbeat left hand playing on Roscos piano, did this man invent Reggae?), Kool On - THE ROOTS, Closing Time - PIETA BROWN, Fare Thee Well Miss Carousel - TOWNES VAN ZANDT, Chickasaw County Child - BOBBIE GENTRY, Virgo Clowns - VAN MORRISON (for a man with a curmudgeonly reputation, no one does joyfulness quite like Van, hear him here singing of laughter filling the room without a trace of irony, wonderful stuff from a strangely overlooked album), Que Pasa (Trio Version) - HORACE SILVER, Spy (The Simonsound Remix) - LAURA J MARTIN, London Town - THE PRETTY THINGS, You Was Me - JONNY (a brilliant Scot-Welsh union from Gorkys Zygotic Mynci and Teenage Fanclub main men that maybe should have made an appearance in my top 20 albums of 2011), Little Girl Little Boy - ODYSSEY, Excerpt From A Teenage Opera - KEITH WEST, Dirty Harry - GORILLAZ (a brace of hit tunes with sing-a-long chorus parts that really work), Committed - ROY HARPER, The House Carpenter - CLARENCE ASHLEY (as found on the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music), Rosary - MARISSA NADLER, The Snows - PENTANGLE (the legacy of Bert Jansch continues to linger and the thing about listening to lots of Pentangle is, their own varied tastes will push you back to artists like our next track...), Better Git It In Your Soul - CHARLES MINGUS, Old Stack O Lee Blues - SIDNEY BECHET (you'll be surprised to find how many of those early Jazz standards were nailed the best, with simple effortless clarity, by the wonderful Sidney Bechet), I'm Still Here - TOM WAITS (I've a feeling that 2012 might be a big Tom Waits year for me, I was drawn back to the beauty of this track after hearing David Gilmour talking about it on Desert Island Discs), Schubert: String Quartet No.12 in C minor D.703 'Quartettsatz' Allegro assai - HAGEN QUARTETT

http://open.spotify.com/user/definitelysound/playlist/1By8XiBZGoY4I5EoGnRHG6

2011 MUSIC TV PLAYLIST

I'm a little late off the blocks with this one I know but it's a fine hour and a half of music TV (well at least it is if you have any time for the Essex Boy Review albums of the year feature!) It includes my favourite live TV music moment of the year; the McCoy Tyner over-run on a live edition of Later with Jools Holland. It's not just the fact that McCoy obliviously grooved on past his allotted time, prompting some unmissable on screen flapping by the ever awkward host Jools. It also struck a blow for music lovers because the same edition of the show featured the gormless spray-can attitude of Liam Gallagher's Beady Eye; but there's nothing more rock'n'roll in my book than a performer getting so far into his music that he seems to completely forget he's on TV. If, on the other hand, McCoy did it on purpose to save the viewers from more Elbow, well that's pretty cool as well. Was this the moment Jazz wrestled back the reigns of credible cool from Rock for the first time since the late 60s?

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.1 - RAPHAEL SAADIQ, Stone Rollin'

Because there is no finer thing than Psychedelic Soul and this album is that very thing par  excellence. Raphael Saadiq's album is a hip-shakin' treat, provin' the groove to take you higher and keep you there but there's more. This is a record dressed in a coat of many colours. There are shades of R&B both old and new, harmonica arriving direct from the Delta Blues and pastoral melotron flutes floating down from the dippy-hippy Laurel Canyon. There's echoes of Motown and the flowing funky moves of James Brown. And the song 'Day Dreams' is from a different place entirely, somewhere between jaunty '50s vocal pop and vaudeville. Above all though this is a great Soul album from a prolifically talented songwriter, performer and multiple-instrumentalist; possibly the best we've seen since Prince. He's made the best album of 2011 so don't wait around any longer, get listening.

Free music - Stone Rollin'

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.2 - JOAN AS POLICEWOMAN, The Deep Field

We've heard a lot about a singer called Rumer this year and the thing that's often remarked about her is the similarity in her voice to Karen Carpenter. Well about five years ago I too was introduced to an incredible female voice that, to my ears, could also summon echoes of that great 70s easy listening songbird. Joan Wasser though has a little bit extra, that spark of genius that seems lacking in Rumer whose smoothness and easiness attains knuckle gnawing levels. Joan though has rough edges, a soulfulness and depth in her musical range that means she'll never have completely laid bare her full potential. Not just that, she's cool too. When home in the US she drives around in a cop car (hence the name) watching passing cars hastily observe the speed limits.

On her first two albums there's been an overwhelming melancholy to her work, inviting comparisons to her old boyfriend Jeff Buckley and the king of bittersweet, Elliott Smith. With 'The Deep Field' however it's quite a different story as Joan makes a mockery of the cliche that an artist experiencing some personal contentment will not produce great work. This album really could have been titled 'Joan As Policewoman Sings About Love' so blatantly does she rev up the sexy mood. 'Human Condition' even has a deep Barry White style backing vocalist seducing the listener, all played out totally straight, no tongue in cheek. I'd say that her cleverest stroke across the album is the way she describes these positive developments in her life with a sense of doubt; as if she doesn't quite trust the feeling to last but she's got to discipline herself into enjoying these moments while they're still good. Let's not ignore though the brilliance of the funky groove found on 'The Magic' or the fun that exudes in the old school R&B visited on 'Chemmie'. The album ends on an orgasmic high, the slow building 'I Was Everyone' rising a-la Otis Redding on 'Try A Little Tenderness' as Joan sings of the power in finding your voice and bringing the world your message. If some of this sounds a little corny then cast aside those doubts, 'The Deep Field' is one of the most satisfying and joyously life celebrating albums ever released and a pivotal moment in the work of Joan Wasser.

Free music - The Deep Field

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.3 - THE WATERBOYS, An Appointment With Mr. Yeats

I wonder if Mike Scott of the Waterboys sees a little of himself in this famous line from the W.B. Yeats poem 'The Second Coming'; "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity". Scott has perpetually warn his 'difficult to work with' badge on his sleeve, never one to knowingly pander to, co-operate with or compromise to the slick machinations of the music industry. A monumental singer-songwriter who has left a trail of Bob Dylan or Neil Young levels of single mindedness in his determination to not be one of the good guys controlled like a corporate puppet. For 30 years now he has taken the unpredictable career decision at every turn. That is until now, there's something wholly inevitable about this album. For starters the progress has been charted for a few years now with updates and reports on The Waterboys website. That's not all however, right back in 1988 on the bands 'Fisherman's Blues' album a Yeats poem, 'The Stolen Child', was set to music helping to produce a heavy duty ending to a classic record. In 1993 too Yeats' words appeared on a stand-out album track 'Love And Death'. So the masters work is clearly no new obsession for Mike Scott. For this then, a whole song cycle built around the work of Yeats he's, possibly for the last time if past form is anything to go by, pulled out an archetypal Waterboys sounding album. In much the same way as Dylan went for his most commercial sound ever on 'Slow Train Coming' in order to get the new Christian message over un-impeded, it's as if Mike Scott wants to ensure that this project stands as one of the most important works in his catalogue. All those musical signatures instantly recognisable as Waterboys are here; the Steve Wickham fiddles, the energetic Celtic-Soul informed Folk-Rock, that rootsy electric keyboard sound and Scott riding these waves and reaching for the stars. When the album came out in the Autumn Mike did the interview rounds telling people his band were bucking the trend of acts playing entire records from their back catalogue in concert by taking a whole new album on the road. What he really tried to do was mask the fact that he'd put more promotional push behind this record than ever before. This record, it seems, is pretty important to Mike Scott and that alone warrants paying it some attention. His ability to marry these poems to an aural setting is remarkable, there's absolutely no question mark as to whether turning them into songs is a good idea. You try reading 'September 1913' without the music after hearing the song version and it can't be done; the tune is playing in your head because it's now a vital missing element and the words can no longer pan out in any other way. So just as he enters a fourth decade in music making (the point when Dylan commenced a brilliant creative renaissance incidentally) Mike Scott has created one of his greatest works. Follow the links below for a listen:

Free music - An Appointment with Mr Yeats

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.4 - TOM WAITS, Bad As Me

I make no apologies for the appearances of legendary artists in the end of year lists. I certainly have no bias against newer stuff but I do feel that there can be a lot of over emphasis on it in other lists. Music isn't exclusively fresh and exciting just because it has been made by a previously unknown face. Indeed there are many artists working today making the strongest case ever for age and experience, artistic growth and the benefits thereof. I can assure you that if The xx release an album of songs next year as strong as Tom Waits has here I will be on it. That said, they'd have to go some for 'Bad As Me' is a record that's awe inspiringly good. He's composed a bunch of songs with partner/collaborator Kathleen Brennan that are amongst the greatest of his career. Yes, you may have heard they're more concise than on recent records but in no way should that imply throwaway. Quite the opposite, the discipline in maintaining brevity and immediacy has kept the standard of writing impossibly high. There isn't one song here that won't have some kind of life beyond this album. This is material ripe for interpretation by others or at least for extensive use in future films and soundtracks. The Waits unique vocal signature is pretty faultless as well, whether vamping up the Nick Cave dramatics on 'Raised Right Men' or consuming the spirits of Howlin' Wolf and Captain Beefheart. In fact 'Satisfied' is both a devastating echo of 'Wang Dang Doodle' and a nod of affection to the Rolling Stones with it's "Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, I will have satisfaction". Keith appears himself occasionally, best of all with a weary backing vocal on the gorgeous 'Last Leaf'. This is already an essential Tom Waits album, which with frequent bursts of Rockabilly, R&B and primal Blues could work as a perfect entry point for anyone not yet touched by the mans genius. Final track 'New Years Eve' even includes a couple of heartfelt, almost heart breaking, choruses of 'Auld Lang Syne'; an emotional and quite lovely ending to a wonderful record. Have a listen to title track 'Bad As Me' below:

http://open.spotify.com/album/7EhpK2nODFm0LJy750vFQR

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.5 - ALELA DIANE, Alela Diane And Wild Divine

One of the finest Folk-Rock albums in recent years actually suffered a bit of under-appreciation in 2011, or at least was damned by faint praise. Latching onto the fact that Alela left behind the stripped back, purely acoustic sounds of her first two albums and brought in a backing band, many rather dismissively called this an attempt at a pop album. The narrow minded opinion of "I like the early work of Alela Diane" could be heard spoken by some who really should know better. But then, wasn't it always this way with the folk crowd? That anti Dylan going electric mentality sometimes still rises to the surface you know. In an entirely unrelated incident, I attended a Michelle Shocked gig in Cambridge a few years ago when one disgruntled audience member got the singers attention and forcefully requested that she ask her band to stop playing along with her. And this was after Michelle had opened the evening by playing a solo acoustic set! Anyway, wade through all the waffle that can fly around when an artist makes a, to my ears inevitable, shift in direction and the only thing to conclude with 'Alela Diane & Wild Divine' is that it is a quite beautiful record. The accompaniment brings a sweet honey-like fluidity to the song suite, at times Country and others Acid-Folk but always an aural delight. Yes the air of the Laurel Canyon that I loved so much on the Jonathan Wilson album floats around, so maybe there's an element of personal preference here; but I'll back my own tastes on this one. Alela's voice is hypnotic, sweet and pure; no vibrato, just a sharp and soulful instrument of aching loveliness. The songs too are keepers, the kind that stay with you for a while. Take a couple of listens to 'Elijah' or 'Suzanne' and I guarantee those chorus lines will be with you for days. So please take note of this one, some artists do lose identity and direction or just simply run out of ideas once they stray from the pure essence of whatever element brought them to attention in the first place. Alela Diane on the other hand is clearly not of that ilk; her 2011 'electric' album showing her potential to make some of the best singer-songwriter music we'll find in the coming years.

Free music - Alela Diane & Wild Divine