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Trollheart 04-27-2011 02:18 PM

The Playlist of Life --- Trollheart's resurrected Journal
 
Yes, I was here before, spouting on about everything under the sun with a musical bent, but that was years ago and my Journal has, sadly, somewhat like my life, turned to dust, so here I am again, with version 2.0.

The first album that really "grabbed" me was Genesis's double-live "Seconds out", from which I gleaned my first taste of this band, as I had heard nothing prior to that, other than a scratchy cassette copy of "Foxtrot", and not much of that.

From this album I also learned the rather canny (to me) lesson that if you wanted to check out a band or artist and knew little about them, a live album was a pretty good way to decide whether or not you might be into them. It worked with Supertramp, Bob Seger, Dire Straits and more. It was, at a time when we had no real Internet to speak of, and certainly You Tube was still gestating in whatsisname's brain, as indeed was itunes in the mind of its creator, a good way to decide whether or not you liked an artist before shelling out what at the time would have been a lot of money on his, her or their repertoire. Needless to say, after listening to "Seconds out" I made it my business to buy the whole Genesis back catalogue (yes, even "Genesis to Revelation"!), though money was scarce back then so it took me some time.

So, in deference to the effect that album had on me, and its role in basically pushing me towards other bands of the ilk of Genesis, I'd like to present here a review of that double-live offering. Yes, I'm sure you have all listened to it inside out and know all there is to know about it, but you'll find that what I intend to do here anyway is just review albums that are not in any way new (though some may be), but which mean a lot to me, or which just had a particular effect on me. Also, my tastes are a lttle eclectic (though compared to the likes of Jackhammer they're positively humdrum!), so you can expect to see anything reviewed here from rock to metal to pop to classical and even instrumental, soundtracks maybe, the likes of Vangelis or Gandalf, even Country for godssake! Basically, if I like it, I won't be pigeonholing it, but it will be a candidate for review. Comments and suggestions are of course welcome.

So, without further ado, and about three years since my last entries, here we go with the first offering in my new journal. Hope you like it!

Seconds Out --- Genesis --- 1978 (Live) (Charisma)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...econds_Out.jpg
I love the darkness of the sleeve for this album! It's very broody, full of stagelights and dry ice, the band shadowy figures in the foreground, almost dwarfed by the huge stage. Definitely gives you the sense that something big and dramatic is going on here, and so it proves, as the cheering dies down and is replaced by the opening strains of "Squonk" blasting across the stage. It's an interesting start: I didn't know it at the time of course, but it's the opener to 1976 classic "A Trick of the Tail", and it pounds its way across the stage, Phil Collins in fine form as he belts out lines like "In season, out of season / What's the difference when you don't know the reason?" and "All the while, in perfect time/ Your tears are falling on the ground / But if you don't stand up you don't stand a chance".



The cheering has barely died down after the powerful ending (on "Trick" the song fades out, which I was somewhat disappointed to hear when I got around to listening to the album, some time later) before the mood changes as the much more subtle, slower and almost classical in feel "Carpet crawlers" comes drifting in like a babbling brook, carried on the twin melodies of Steve Hackett's twelve-string and Tony Banks's electric piano, creating a lush backdrop against which Collins lays an understated, almost mumbling vocal to create one of the standouts from the band's first real concept album of the time, "The Lamb lies down on Broadway".


Of course it's all edited after the gig, but the juxtapositioning of the next track, also from "Trick" --- unsurprising, as they were touring to promote both that album and "Wind and wuthering", which came out in the same year, 1976 --- seems just right, as the jaunty "Robbery, Assault and Battery" toe-taps its way across the stage. I must admit, this has never been one of my favourite Genesis songs, being what I would call a frivilous track, where I preferred my Genesis laced with heavy doses of pomp, imagery and drama, but it's a crowd-pleaser, and you can clearly hear them all clapping along as Collins leads them in the verses. Slowing down then for the closer to side one (yes, records --- not CDs! --- had TWO sides, and a double album would of course have four. You had to flip it over to continue: no "shuffle" or "repeat play" in MY day!), taken from the other aforementioned album, "Wind and wuthering", "Afterglow" is a perfect set closer and just the sort of song to wind down to, I imagine, after you've bopped all over the place to "Robbery"! Always one of my favourite Genesis songs, the extended ending really did it for me, and again I was annoyed later to find out that it fades out much more quickly on the studio album.

And so, the cheering fades out and the needle lifts (whaddya mean, get on with it, Grandad??!!!) and so ends side one. Flip it over and the first thing to burst through is the power chords from "Firth of Fifth", sans, as I was to later find out, this time to my joy, the exquisite piano intro. A powerful track in its own right though, and with not that much in the way of lyrics. Most of the track is instrumental, going through some time signature changes as it progresses, and ending in a rousing finale, before fading out on Banks's tinking ivories, to again rapturous applause.


The album was recorded on the Paris leg of the tour (which is interesting for me, as the next live album I got was Supertramp's "Paris" --- guess where that was recorded?) and featured, apart from the main band lineup some stalwart session and support personnel, who would follow Genesis and even later their solo careers into the next few decades. People like Daryl Stuermer on guitar, Chester Thompson on drums and even the great Bill Bruford! Sadly, by now Peter Gabriel, driving force behind the band's early success, had left to pursue a solo career, and indeed this album would also mark the last performances of Steve Hackett with Genesis; he would also go on to forge a moderate solo career.

The next track up is a reworking of one of their hit singles, from "Selling England by the Pound", which many consider Genesis's best album (though not me). "I know what I like (in your wardrobe)" is accompanied by much audience participation and has the truly weirdest lyric I had ever heard, with lines like "When the sun beats down and I lie on my bench/ I can always hear them talk / Me? I'm just a lawnmower/ You can tell me by the way I walk." It also veers off in the middle into what is basically the ending of "Stagnation", from their very early "Trespass" album, then powers up manically for a thundering finish, before the opening strains of the title track to “The Lanb” drift through the air. I have to say, having heard that for the first time, it really made me want to hear the whole album --- no bad thing, as this of course turned out to be one amazing record! The end of “The Lamb” then segues perfectly into “The Musical Box”, or at least the closing section. This track appears on “Nursery cryme” in its entireity, and really has to be heard to be properly appreciated. But the closing section played here was an excellent ending to the first record, and rises from a quiet, understated opening to a thundering conclusion, elciting roars of approval from the lucky crowd.

And so ends side two, and record one.
But if I had thought, up to then, that I had experienced Genesis live, I was about to be corrected, and in no uncertain fashion! The ENTIRE third side of the album is taken up by one song, which runs for almost 24 minutes, and is the seminal Genesis classic epic, “Supper's ready”. Starting quietly and with disarming pastoral sounds, the song soon changes and over the course of the track runs thorugh more time signature changes and concepts in one song than many a band manage over an entire album! I just sat, transfixed, as the song unfolded before me like someone reading “Lord of the Rings” for the first time, and it just didn't seem to end! I had heard snippets of the original, sung by Peter Gabriel, and somehow it hadn't really got to me, but this version, sung by Collins, really opened my eyes to the song. To this day, I prefer the version off “Seconds Out” to the one off “Foxtrot”.

Footnote: YouTube footage of "Seconds Out" is hard to come by, so my apologies but the version of "Supper's ready" posted below is from 1973, with Peter Gabriel singing, but it will at least give you an idea what the song is like, if you haven't heard it...


And so to side four, and the last quarter of the concert. Opening with “The Cinema Show” from “Selling England by the Pound”, the song is given new life here, as on the original it faded out but here is extended and finishes powerfully, leaving two tracks from “Trick” to bring the album to a close, cleverly bookending “Trick of the tail” with the opening AND closing tracks, the sultry, powerful “Dance on a volcano” (featuring the obligatory drum solo) and winding up with the appropriately titled instrumental, “Los Endos”, which very cleverly loops around to the melody of “Squonk”, which kicked off the live album, giving what I now call the “Wall” effect, where you almost feel like you're going back around for another go right through the album, as in Pink Floyd's classic.

For anyone wanting to get into Genesis for the first time, “Seconds Out” is a great introduction to their early to mid period, from 1970 to 1976, and covers albums like “Trespass”, “Wind and Wuthering”, “Foxtrot”, “A Trick of the Tail”, as well as “The Lamb lies down on Broadway”, “Nursery Cryme” and “Selling England by the Pound.” Arguably this was their greatest period, before Steve Hackett left and the band became more or less a three-piece. Their next release was in 1978, the decidely more commercial (and aptly titled) “And then there were three”, and to be honest, though this was a good album they never really regained the true progressive rock roots that they showed on the aforementioned albums. “Seconds Out” is both a time-capsule of Genesis at their best, and in many ways, the end of an era.

TRACKLISTING
1. Squonk
2. The carpet crawl
3. Robbery, assault and battery
4. Afterglow
5. Firth of Fifth
6. I know what I like (in your wardrobe)
7. The Lamb lies down on Broadway
8. The Musical Box (closing section)
9. Supper's ready
10. The Cinema Show
11. Dance on a volcano
12. Los Endos


Suggested further listening: "Trick of the tail", "Nursery cryme", "Foxtrot" "Wind and wuthering" by Genesis, plus the rest of their catalogue (!) "Three sides live" is another good live album of theirs.

jackhammer 04-27-2011 04:59 PM

Welcome back!

Trollheart 04-27-2011 05:22 PM

Thanx man! Good to be back! Expect to hear a lot more from me in the coming days... :band:

One thing: is there any reason why the YouTube tags won't work for me? Drp in your YT link, highlight/select and wrap the YT tags around it, should work, no? Anything I'm doing wrong, or has it all changed since I was last here?

Thx for any help!

TH

INDEX

ALBUM REVIEWS

The Adventures - The Sea of Love
a-ha - Analogue
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe - Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
Aslan - Feel No Shame
Axxis - Paradise in Flames
Balance of Power - Perfect Balance
Blackfoot - Marauder
Bon Jovi - These Days/Have a Nice Day
Bon Jovi - The Circle
Boston - Third Stage
Chris de Burgh - Crusader
The Cars - Door to Door
Nick Cave - No More Shall We Part
Diamond Head - Borrowed Time
The Divine Comedy - Casanova
Eagles - Long Road Out of Eden
Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
ELO - Out of the Blue
Agnetha Faltskog - I Stand Alone
Fish - Raingods with Zippos
Fleetwood Mac - Behind the Mask
Peter Gabriel - Us
Rory Gallagher - Photo-Finish
Genesis - Seconds Out
Glass Tiger - Diamond Sun
Nanci Griffith - Late Night Grande Hotel
Josh Groban - Closer
Heart - Brigade
Faith Hill - Cry
Hooters - One Way Home
Gary Hughes - Once and Future King, Parts 1 and 2
Iron Maiden - Brave New World
It Bites - Once Around the World
Jadis - Fanatic
Billy Joel - The Stranger
Journey - Arrival
Lana Lane - Lady MacBeth
Marillion - Happiness is the Road
Millenium - Hourglass
The Moody Blues - Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Mostly Autumn - Storms Over Still Water
Narnia - Long Live the King
Night Ranger - Dawn Patrol
Pandora's Box - Original Sin
Alan Parsons - On Air
Pendragon - Believe
Pink Floyd - The Division Bell
Gerry Rafferty - Night Owl
Rainbow - Rising
Chris Rea - Water Sign
Savatage - The Wake of Magellan
Bob Seger - Like a Rock
Shadow Gallery - Tyranny/Room V
Silent Edge - The Eyes of the Shadow
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
Ten - Babylon
The Ten Tenors - Here's to the Heroes
The The - Mind Bomb
Thin Lizzy - Thunder and Lightning
Threshold - Subsurface
Tiamat - Judas Christ
Twelfth Night - Fact and Fiction
Tygers of Pan-Tang - Wild Cat
Judie Tzuke - The Cat is Out
Vangelis - Oceanic
Tom Waits - Small Change
Jeff Wayne - Musical Version of "The War of the Worlds"
Robbie Williams - Escapology

FEATURES

The Secret Life of the Album Cover: Script For a Jester's Tear by Marillion
The Secret Life of the Album Cover: Still Got the Blues by Gary Moore
Taking Centre Stage: Steve Earle
Trollheart's Handy Guide to Twentieth Century Music Technology

Paedantic Basterd 04-27-2011 05:37 PM

All that needs to be wrapped in the tags for the video to work is the string of characters at the end of the URL after v=

Trollheart 04-29-2011 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pedestrian (Post 1043968)
All that needs to be wrapped in the tags for the video to work is the string of characters at the end of the URL after v=

Thanx for that: works fine now. Much obliged! :thumb:

Trollheart 05-02-2011 09:58 AM

The Great Album Cover Quiz
 
Posted this in the main Rock/Metal forum yesterday, but for some reason it's not there today?
So trying again through my journal.

Can you recognise famous (and not-so-famous) album covers when the titles and artiste have been removed? Try my quiz and see!

THE GREAT ALBUM COVER ART QUIZ!

Post here, in the main forum or email for any hints or with any questions/comments you have,

Enjoy!

TH

Trollheart 05-03-2011 09:36 AM

The upside of judging a book (or record) by its cover: discovering a fearless heart.
 
http://30daysout.files.wordpress.com...6/cover-21.jpg
Copperhead Road --- Steve Earle --- 1988 (MCA)
Sometimes you just take a chance. I've occasionally bought books whose cover just drew me in, so much so that I never bothered flipping them over to read the synopsis. Sometimes that's worked, sometimes not. There haven't been too many occasions though where I bought an album without knowing anything at all about the artiste, but that was exactly what happened the day I walked into Tower Records in Dublin and set my eyes on the sleeve of Steve Earle's “Copperhead Road” album.

Steve who, you say? Never heard of him! Me neither. Not then anyway. I had absolutely zero idea who he was, what sort of music he played, even if he was a he, and not some sort of euphemism for a band name! But that sleeve! You just couldn't help but be drawn to it. Hell, for all I knew, the guy (if he was a guy!) could have played grunge or disco or even classical, but the message on the album cover did not bespeak that. A snarling, grinning skull-and-crossbones stared out of what looked like a patch on a US Special Forces jacket, with Steve's name emblazoned above in yellow on red, and the album name in a sort of scroll undeneath, done in that sort of “Old Western” type. I flipped it over and looked at the back, One MEAN mofo looked out at me: a rough, tough sonofabitch with arms like tree-trunks covered in tattoos, long wild hair, wearing sunglasses and looking like he chewed beer-bottles for breakfast, standing in the midst of what was either an explosion or a dusty Texas road. Hell, you had to know this guy was tough, and his music would be raw, powerful and in-your-face.

I had to have the album!

And so I nervously slipped the disc out of its sleeve and onto the turntable, and the first sounds I heard were what sounded like bagpipes to me, but on checking now I think maybe violin? Anyway, not the thunderous reassurance I had expected or hoped for, Mister Earle! What are you DOING to me?

But then the first few bars went by, and the violin cut off, to be pounded into submission by stomping drums, and a banjo, bass, and then that growl which I learned to love and respect, the kind of voice you can only get from twenty or thirty years' hard drinkin' and smokin'. The kind of gravelly, raspy but attention-getting rasp that can only be found in the bottom of many bottles of Jack Daniels, chain-smokin' your way to Hell astride a Harley and laughin' in the face of the Devil hisself! The voice of Steve Earle, snarling “My name's John Lee Pettimore/Same as my daddy and his daddy before”.

Disco this was not!


Even at that though, the title track (for such it was) lopes along at a relatively sedate pace, sort of like an army marching, but you just sort of know that it's building to something, and when Steve growls “You could smell the whiskey burnin' down Copperhead Road!” the song just takes off, with the drums hammering out and laying down covering fire while Steve charges into battle with his band, and the song powers to its breathelss conclusion. As Cartman would say, sweet!

The song is, as I would find out later, like most of Steve's songs, quite politically-charged. I'm not entirely sure where Steve's political loyalties lie, if anywhere, but I have learned that he vehemently opposes the death penalty, and is very much against war in general, particularly the current “war for profit” of the Bush administration, and one would have to say, the following Obama one too, so far. “Copperhead Road” tells the story of a Vietnam vet who comes back from the war and sets up a drug-still where his grandfather used to make moonshine: “I take the seeds from Columbia and Mexico/ I just plant 'em in the holler down Copperhead Road.” Indeed, the song ends with a warning to the DEA, as Steve snarls “I learned a thing or two from Charlie, don't ya know/ You better stay away from Copperhead Road!” I'd heed his advice!

No sooner have you got your breath back than he's off again, this time again fooling with a honky-tonk piano line that then quickly morphs into heavy gee-tar and thumping drums, as “Snake oil” assails the ears, the tale of those conmen of old (and not so old) who would sell the unsuspecting --- and the downright stupid! --- a cure for anything they needed, as long as they had the cash. “Snake oil” gets into the political vibe too, with Steve quipping “Ain't your president good to you? / Knocked 'em dead in Libya. Grenada too/ Now he's taking his show a little further down the line/ Between me and him, people/ You're gonna get along just fine!” The honky-tonk piano keeps a great jangling beat right through the song, and it ends on a flourish on the piano, with Steve remarking in approval at the end “I knew there was a first-taker on this album somewhere!”


The heavy vibe keeps going for “Back to the wall”, a tough-talking, no-nonsense tale of being on your uppers: “Keep yourself to yourself/ Keep your bedroll dry / Boy you never can tell/ What the shadows hide/ Keep one eye on the ground/ Pick up whatever your find/ Cos you got no place to fall/ When your back's to the wall.” It's angry stuff, and you can tell Steve knows what he's talking about here. He ain't just singing about it, he's lived it. He's had his back to the wall, he knows what it's like.

I'm not even now certain of Steve's stance on gun law. He has been known to introduce “The Devils' Right Hand” with the following warning: “This ain't a song about gun control. It's already too late in America for that!” It's a great little tune, sort of a country/bluegrass feel to it, about how a kid thinks having a gun is so cool, but his mother tells him “The pistol is the Devils' right hand.” Not heeding this warning, the kid buys one when he is old enough and pays the inevitable consequence. “They asked me how I pleaded/ Not guilty I said/ Not guilty I said, ya got the wrong man/ Nothin' touched the trigger but the Devils' right hand!” Whether this is autobiographical or not I don't know --- Steve has had trouble with arms dealing in the past, so maybe, or maybe it's just his attempt to de-glamourise the idea of owning a gun. Either way, it's an impressive effort from a Texan!

The anger, somewhat diluted for the previous track, returns with a vengeance for the next track, “Johnny come lately”, which features, believe it or not, the Pogues, and is almost a jig or reel (never could tell the difference), but with what has now become Steve's signature heavy rhythm. The song recounts the difference between the way the homecoming heroes from World War II were treated as opposed to those returning from the 'Nam. “I'm standin' on a corner in San Diego/ Coupla Purple Hearts so I move a little slow/ Nobody here, maybe nobody knows/ Bout a place called Vietnam.”

When “Copperhead Road” was first released we hadn't too many CDs, and I bought it on vinyl, so I think I'm justified in saying that brings to a close side one of the album, and reviews of it mostly agreed that it is, like many a football match, a game of two halves. Side one is powerful, gritty, gutsy and daring, whereas, in general, side two contains more formulaic love songs, but still good stuff.Threre's nothing wrong with a Steve Earle ballad: many appear on his other albums --- but there are far better than what's on offer here. For examples, try “Poison lovers” or the excellent “Christmas in Washington” from 1997's “El Corazon”, “I don't wanna lose you yet” or the superlative “Over yonder” from 2000's “Transcendental blues”, or even back to his second release, 1987's “Exit 0”, for “It's all up to you”. By comparison, the likes of “Even when I'm blue”, which kicks off the second side of the album, is ordinary fare. It's good, it's reasonably heavy, but after the power of the previous five tracks it tends to less than satisfy, sort of like watching a great movie to the point where you can't wait to see how it ends, and it ends badly.

“You belong to me” gets a little rockier, carried on a sold rhythm section, but it's a little sparse: even the theme is somewhat hackneyed. “Waiting on you” is better: I just like the tune, I like the keyboard/organ outro, it just sounds better to me. It's also one of the only tracks on the album not written exclusively by Steve: on this one he collaborates with Richard Bennet, longtime contributor to Neil Diamond, wouldya believe, and lead guitarist on the famous hit by the Bellamy Brothers, “Let your love flow”. On the penultimate track, the fairly sub-standard “Once you love”, Steve teams up with Larry Crane, about whom I admit I know very little, other than he's a sound engineer and once ran his own studio.

The album comes to a close on a track most reviewers called “cheesy” (well, the polite ones did!) and “Christmassy”, but while it does have a very commercial feel about it, and sounds like it was actually written for the Yuletide Season, I like “Nothing but a child”. It's very acoustic and understated, and to me, more a song of hope and forgiveness that closes an album that opened with such venom and anger, and I believe says a lot about the artiste, and the journey he has undertaken to arrive where he is now. I think the closing lines of the song (and therefore the album) say it best:

“Nothing but a child/ Can wash those tears away/ And guide a weary world/ Into the light of day/ And nothing but a child/ Can help erase those miles/ So once again we all / Can be children for a while.”

Or maybe you prefer “You better stay away from Copperhead Road”? Either way, if you know nothing of Steve Earle, you could do a lot worse than check out this offering from a true country/rock soul poet, a Man For Our Times, or, to quote him from a later album, “Just a regular guy.”

Tracklisting
1. Copperhead Road
2. Snake oil
3. Back to the wall
4. The Devil's right hand
5. Johnny come lately
6. Even when I'm blue
7. You belong to me
8. Waiting on you
9. Once you love
10. Nothing but a child



Suggested further listening: "The hard way", "El corazon", "Transcendental blues", "I feel alright"

Trollheart 05-03-2011 05:34 PM

Happiness is the road --- Marillion --- 2008 (Racket Records)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...zL._SS500_.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61pe-fXbe-L.jpg
Before I get to the review of this album, I have to award Marillion the prize for the most innovative development in music marketing so far. You probably know the story, but for anyone who doesn't here's how it goes:
When Marillion released their new album "Happiness is the road", they put it up for free download on a certain site, and linked those files to upload them on all the major P2P networks (Limewire, Kazaa, Filepipe etc). Anyone who wants to can download each track off the full album with NO DRM or restrictions, with two conditions: 1, that they do NOT upload the files to a filesharing network and 2, that they have to watch a small video, made by the band, in which they explain their vision and look for the downloader's email address. This is not to spam them, or report them, but to add to their database and I guess mailing list, in the hope that the downloader will buy some other merchandise, other albums, come to a gig, or whatever, but give back something in return. For those who WANT to upload the files, Marillion have even provided DRM-restricted WMA files, so everyone can follow their own conscience.
It's a bold move, and a very positive one. I downloaded the tracks, and will be getting the album, whether it's good or bad, because I feel that if the band trusted me, then I should repay that trust, and hopefully this could be the shape of things to come.

So, on to the album itself. What's it like? Well, those who know me, or know of me will know that I'm a huge fan of Marillion, having been into them from the first album and have never heard a bad album from them. I've only seen them twice (Fugazi tour in the Hammersmith Odeon in '84 and Misplaced Childhood at home in Dublin in 1985), but they were brilliant each time. I have all their albums, and up until the release of last year's "Somewhere else" I had always loved their output, bought the albums without hesitation or fear, knowing, just knowing that they would be worth it. Admittedly, "Marbles" was a slow-burner, and I took some time to get into it, but now I love it. Not so with "Somewhere else" which, despite repeated listens has failed to grow on me. I had hoped this would not start a trend, that Marillion were not becoming a band I could no longer listen to and love, that this was not the beginning of the end.

So, is it?

Well, the jury's still out on that. I must admit, from the opening of the first track, "Dreamy Street", I was impressed. Lovely tinkling piano, understated vocals, slow and relaxing, a good intro to the album. But then, it only lasts a minute or so and the track is over. So my worry then was, 20 tracks but are they all, or are most, going to be short 1 or 2-minute affairs, so that the album is not actually as long as I had thought it would be? "Marbles" had 4 short intermezzos, as it were, all called Marbles, ie Marble I, II, III and IV, but there was also a 17-minute track on the album called "Ocean cloud", so that made up for the smaller tracks. I didn't see any "epic" tracks on "Happiness is the road", so yes, I was worried.



The thing about HITR is that it's a double album, split into two parts (those who are old enough will understand when I say that this would have been two sides on an album), the first called "Essence", the second "The hard shoulder". Now, it's not really important, but I sort of don't understand the thinking behind that. I can understand the second part, as it's named after part of a road (Happiness is the road, see?) but "Essence"? If they'd called part 1 something like "Fast Lane" or "Layby" then I think I might have understood it better. However, names aside, that's how the album is split, and it seems to me that, by coincidence or design, the "slower" songs are on part 1 and the more rockier tunes (though the album seldom DOES get rocky) are on part 2. Again, I would have thought the reverse would work better: rock out on part 1 then slow it down on part 2...

All that notwithstanding, there are some lovely tracks on this album. On "Essence" there is "Wrapped up in time", "Essence" itself and the quietly beautiful instrumental (a first for Marillion? I certainly can't recall another) "Liquidity", but it's in the title track that the album really shines. "Happiness is the road" starts off as a slow, balladish song but then sort of stops halfway and morphs into a bluesy, mid-paced rocker, replete with optimism and the teachings of a band who have been together (most of them) for over a quarter of a century. The central theme of this title track, and the theme running through the whole album, is that happiness is not at the end of the road, happiness IS the road, and that once you've found happiness you no longer need to travel. Basically, I think, what they're saying is that you don't need to travel to find happiness, because it's around you every day. Cheering words, and a welcome sentiment in these dark days of wars without end, credit crunches and global uncertainty.

Steve Hogarth's voice ("H", as he prefers to be known, and no, NOT the guy from Steps!) is on top form, crooning, pleading, cajoling and dispensing wisdom like a golden-tongued sensei, exorting us to, in the immortal words of Bill and Ted, be excellent to each other. Steve Rothery can still make a guitar do ANYTHING he wants it do, and wring the most incredible emotion out of solos and even just simple plucking motions on his six-stringed companion. Mark Kelly can blast arpeggios like a lunatic Rick Wakeman or tease out the most sensitive ivory teardrops with consummate ease, and as ever, Pete Trewavas' bass keeps a deep counterpoint and balance to every song, and often has much to say itself. I find it hard generally to enthuse or even have much to say about drummers --- and I hope no-one takes offence at that, as none is certainly intended: there are good ones and bad ones, but perhaps my musical ear is not sufficiently sensitive enough to pick out one from the other. To me, a drummer drums, and though he or she is an absolutely integral part of any band --- imagine “In the air tonight” without percussion, for instance --- it's hard to be critical, either constructively or negatively about them. So all I can say is that Ian Mosley does a fine job behind the skins, and hope that's not seen as dismissive, as it's not in any way meant to be.

In short, Marillion are a tight-knit group, a well-oiled machine and a band who are still at the top of their game, 26 years on, and 22 years after losing what could have been their biggest asset as Fish left to fly solo. They've output consistently brilliant albums, and I do think that in the end, for me at least, "Somewhere else" will either become an unfortunate blip on an otherwise flawless repertoire, or will end up taking its place, belatedly, on my record shelf somewhere between "Script", "Brave" and "Marillion.com". It's probably just a matter of time.

Anyway, on to the second half, or "side" of the album, "The hard shoulder". As mentioned before, this seems to be where the rockier and uptempo tracks live, and so is more louder and generally faster than its sister side. This is not to say it has NO slow tracks --- "Older than me" and “Throw me out” are very acceptable ballads, and in that regard would not be out of place on “side one”. But it's more tracks like "Whatever is wrong with you" (released as a downloadable YouTube before the album came out, and which by all accounts had thousands of viewings very quickly), "Especially true" and “thunder fly” that make up the majority of “The Hard Shoulder”, and they do keep up the old Marillion traditions, but the standout tracks so far for me are "Asylum Sateliite 1" and the closer "Real tears for sale". To my ears, so far, this side complements the other side quite well.

My fear is, and this may not be the case, that Marillion are turning more and more not into just a pop band, but almost a lounge band. There are very few tracks on this album that I could honestly see myself rocking out to, or even dancing to, and it all seems to me a little laid back, perhaps too much so. Okay, in fairness, Marillion were never a band you'd put on at the disco (can you imagine trying to dance to “Script” or “Emerald lies”?), but where they really gelled was as a serious progressive rock band, and to my ears they have definitey begun to stray from this model. Certainly, "Happiness is the road" seems to bear little resemblance to opuses like "Marillion.com", "Brave" or "Afraid of sunlight", and you would definitely be hard pressed to believe this was the band who produced "Script for a jester's tear", "Fugazi" and "Misplaced childhood".

That said, the change in direction could very well open up new avenues for the band, gain them new fans, but I hope not at the expense of old and faithful ones (very old, in my case!), who just may not "get" this new Marillion.

Whatever happens, you have to give them kudos for if nothing else trying to change the way bands and the music industry do business, how they treat their fans and how they protect their intellectual property without locking it behind huge DRM gates. I just hope that, in their zeal to push back the frontiers of music marketing, they haven't forgotten the simple and important truth that, money and advertising campaigns and record labels aside, in the end, it should be all about the music.



So, in the end, the question is, is happiness the road? Or are they on a road to nowhere? Have a listen and perhaps you can decide for yourself.

TRACKLISTING
Volume I: Essence

1. Dreamy Street
2. This train is my life
3. Essence
4. Wrapped up in time
5. Liquidity (instrumental)
6. Nothing fills the hole
7. Woke up
8. Trap the spark
9. A state of mind
10. Happiness is the road
11. Half-full jam (hidden/bonus track)

Volume II: The Hard Shoulder
1. Thunder fly
2. The man from planet Marzipan
3. Asylum Satellite #1
4. Older than me
5. Throw me out
6. Half the world
7. Whatever is wrong with you
8. Especially true
9. Real tears for sale



Suggested further listening: (Fish era) "Script for a jester's tear", "Fugazi", "Misplaced childhood" (Hogarth era) "Marillion.com, "Marbles", "Afraid of sunlight", "This strange engine", "Radiation"

Trollheart 05-06-2011 09:56 AM

Night owl --- Gerry Rafferty --- 1979 (United Artists)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...28album%29.jpg
Note: this review was originally written for my first journal back in 2008, and was therefore of course penned prior to the tragic death of Gerry Rafferty. It goes without saying that the man will be sorely missed, and that his music will live on. I'd like to think that perhaps in some small way this review would contribute to the continuation of that legend.

I’ve loved Gerry Rafferty’s music since hearing him on “Baker Street”, way, way back in my youth, and I think this is perhaps one of his best albums. There are hit singles on it, but that’s really incidental: the great music is that which is not heard everyday on the radio, and though everyone can say they know “Baker Street”, or know of it, how many can say the same of “Wise as a serpent” or “The royal mile”?

Gerry has a great way of painting scenes with music: listen to the title track and you’ll see what I mean, as he sings about nightclubs and bars, strangers and friends, sunsets and sunrises, with the haunting music floating over and through the soundscape like some sort of friendly ghost. The opener, “Days gone down”, is one of several pieces that recall Gerry’s youth; reminiscences and memories, some good, some bad, all viewed through the eyes of maturity. It’s driven by a nice saxophone line throughout, and is really bright and breezy, as is most of Gerry’s music --- “You’ve still got that light in your eyes / And our day is coming by and by / I’m travellin’ this long road / Here with you / Still got a long way to go”.

Both “Night owl” and “Get it right next time” were hits for Gerry, and they’re great songs: the latter espouses a really optimistic attitude towards life, which is refreshing if somewhat simplistic if taken at face value, but it’s the tracks that never made it as singles that really shine on this album. “Family tree” is another great chance to look back on a man’s history and life, and a bow to the ties that bind, while “The tourist” is a wry look at Gerry himself, jetting from place to place, gig to gig, where he considers himself a gawping onlooker in most cities he goes to, shaking his head and admitting “Come a long long way from Baker Street!”

“Why won’t you talk to me” reflects a situation familiar to most if not all of us guys, when we’re in the doghouse but can’t figure out why --- “It feels like a bad dream / It feels like a game / I swear this is one time / That I’m not to blame!” Oh yeah --- been there, done that!

All in all, this is never an album that’s gonna set the world on fire, but it’s one I love to trot out occasionally and give a spin --- reminds me of why I love Gerry’s music so much!

Here’s the title track: have you ever felt like this?

TRACKLISTING
1. Days gone down
2 Night owl
3. The way that you do it
4. Why won’t you talk to me
5. Get it right next time
6.Take the money and run
7. Family tree
8. Already gone
9. The tourist
10. It’s gonna be a long night


Suggested further listening: "City to city", "Snakes and ladders", "Sleepwalking", "North and south"

Trollheart 05-06-2011 10:02 AM

Brave new world --- Iron Maiden --- 2000 (EMI)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._New_World.jpg
Maiden were the first metal band I ever got into, and they remain my favourite by a long way, even today. This is one of their very best releases, certainly in recent times, with 9 killer tracks, and one somewhat limp one, the only cut which lets the overall excellence of the album down, in my opinion.

For me, Maiden began to flag when Bruce D1ckinson left, and the albums following on from his departure were some of the weakest in their catalogue --- “The X Factor” and “Virtual XI” remain albums I can never get into --- but all is well now, the Man is back!

Kicking off with classic Maiden riffs, you know you’re back on familiar ground when “The wicker man” blasts out at you, and how good it is to hear that raw, powerful, air-raid-siren voice again! The songs on BNW are longer than classic Maiden, betraying a leaning towards what might perhaps be more properly described as prog-metal, the themes a little deeper than some of the older songs, the songs a bit more elaborately structured, more epic. But let us not forget that Maiden already ventured into this area on 1984’s “Powerslave” when they recorded the 14-minute masterpiece “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, so it’s not exactly a new direction for them.

The songs are still heavy --- ballads usually have no place on an Iron Maiden album! --- and ripe with imagery and metaphor: the thinking man or woman’s heavy metal? Songs like “Dream of mirrors”, with its many different parts, as well as “Blood brothers” (a metal waltz?), and the menacing, steel-edged “The Nomad” stake this album’s claim, and it’s just a pity “The Mercenary” lets it down so badly: Maiden have done this song before, called both “The fugitive” and “The assassin” (yes, they’re not quite the same song, but I find them disturbingly familiar), and I really don’t think it needs a third outing. Beside songs like the abovenamed, and the excellent “Out of the silent planet”, it just sounds mundane and uninteresting.

But that one track aside, this is one killer album, and if you’re a Maiden fan, you will definitely not be disappointed: if you’re not, there’s a brave new world for you to discover, just waiting behind the album sleeve!

This track is “Blood brothers”, recorded live and sung by a Bruce with short hair!!!!

TRACKLISTING

The wicker man
Ghost of the navigator
Brave new world
Blood brothers
The Mercenary
Dream of mirrors
The fallen angel
The Nomad
Out of the silent planet
The thin line between love and hate



Suggested further listening: "The number of the Beast", "Piece of mind", "Powerslave", "Fear of the dark", "Seventh son of a seventh son" and "No prayer for the dying"

Trollheart 05-10-2011 01:59 PM

A Rock Opera in Four Acts by Shadow Gallery
 
I recently got into this band; had never heard of them before but now have all their albums, and happily looking forward to any new material. They're a progressive metal outfit from Pennsylvania, who have been going since the late 80s, believe it or not, but who have only released six albums, though each one is a gem. Quality, right, not quantity? I particularly wanted to review my favourite of their output, “Room V”, but as this is a concept actually spread across TWO albums, I feel it's necessary and prudent to review also the first album in that concept. And it's a great album too!

Tyranny ---- Shadow Gallery --- 1998 (Magna Carta Records)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...albumcover.jpg
“Tyranny” begins the first of four Acts, spread over this and the next album, two Acts each. The opener, “Stiletto in the sand”, is a powerful, fast-paced instrumental driven by racing guitars and thundering drums, as well as frentetic keys. It's short, less than two minutes, and as such can be seen as a sort of “overture” to the rock opera, as such, to come. It tails off into arpeggio keyboards at the end and leads directly into “War for sale”, where the tempo picks up again and the powerful voice of the late Mike Baker declaims the story of a man whose works for the US Government, designing weapons to be used in various worldwide conflicts and who is now having an attack of conscience. “War for sale” powers along on the same sort of melody that introduced the album, but with the guitars of Gary Wehrkamp and Brendt Allman breaking out and making their own pointed comment, while Joe Nevolo's drumming keeps a frantic, thumping, militaristic beat, while Mike bellows “How long till we realise the truth?/ The bottom line of defence and world security/The bankers and the ministry of arms/Just cut the deal and the war is on!”

The tempo slows then, though the next track is certianly no ballad, as “Out of nowhere” the protagonist is fired when he brings his concerns to his bosses. Shutting himself away, he finds solace on the internet. This track is a heavy, brooding monster, reflecting the mindset of the hero as he realises what he has done, and wonders how it will turn out. “Is this a test of my faith?/What's to become of my life?/I used to see it so clear/ But now I've lived to see it/Pass away before my eyes.” Thing speed up again then, for “Mystery”, which once again retains the theme from the intro, and is replete with squealing keyboards. The story continues as the hero talks to people online, becoming friendly with a particular woman, who seems to share his view of the world. Desperate both to impress her, and to back up his convictions, he hatches a plan to hack into the computers of his erstwhile employer. The vocal harmonies on this song are next to perfect, Mike's somewhat falsetto voice counterpointed by Gary's rather deeper tones.

Next comes what is not only my favourite track on the album, but one of my all-time favourite Shadow Gallery songs. A true ballad, but without the love lyric, “Hope for us” is more a lament, beginning as almost an acoustic track as Chris Ingles's fingers gently caress the keys, painting a bleak picture of forlorn hopelessness, as our hero realises that the Corporation he once worked for have their hand in everything, and control just about all aspects of the world. As Joe's pounding kit punches out a fatalistic heartbeat to underline the gentle piano and later keyboards, the hero wonders if there is somewhere that their reach does not extend to? “I wonder is there hope for us? /A place where we can all be free? /I wonder is there life inside a soul that dies?/ I wonder is there hope for us/ To lift me up/ I don't know when I'll see the sun again/ I'd like to feel alive just one more time.”

“Victims”, the next offering, hits the gas again and the band thunders off into overdrive as the hero, coming to the aid of someone being mugged, is himself assaulted and awakes in a cheap downtown medical centre. Again, Mike's pure vocal soars above the somewhat staccato melody. Act I comes to a close on a bitter note, with the short lament of “Broken”, as the hero stares helplessly into his computer screen and wonders what he can do to change the world he has helped to build?

Act II opens with the pulsating “I believe”, with guest star James LaBrie (Dream Theater) on lead vocals, taking the part of the hero's father, remembering whose words the hero's determination to change the world, to make a difference, hardens into proper resolve. This leads into “Roads of thunder”, where the protagonist decides that he needs to speak to the person he has been communicating with on the net : really speak to her, on the phone. She is hesitant, and so, utilising their shared hatred of the Corporation and its power over the world, he creates a computer virus which brings down the world's banks. The song is broken into three movements, the first, “Empowerment”, covers the conversation online and the hero's attempts to create the virus. The second movement --- aptly titled “Virus” --- is an instrumental, meant to convey his creation of the virus, while the closing movement, “Powerless”, covers his desperate attempts to communicate with his friend on the phone, and at the end of the song his phone rings.

Picking up the phone he hears the voice of the woman who has until now only been his friend and ally online, and the first real ballad of the album gets underway in “Spoken words.” With guest vocals by Laura Jaeger (about whom I can find little or no information, after an exhaustive five-minute search!), the song is a beautifully-crafted piano acoustic ballad based around the conversation between the two, who now realise that due to the hero's creation and deployment of the virus and her complicity in same, they may now have attracted the attention of the government, and the Corporation, and may be in danger. The starkly sad violin of Paul Chou lends further pathos to this sad ballad, as the pair realise their act of rebellion may very well turn out to be one of treason. Despite that though, the two have obviously fallen deeply in love, and plan to meet up somewhere they can hide together. As the song comes to an end, a female computerised voice announces “You have an online visitor in your chatroom”...

This turns out to be their worst fear, as the visitor is a government agent, who advises the hero he has been monitored and wiretapped, and that agents are now on their way to apprehend him. Unable to believe his worst nightmares have come true, the hero listens in shocked dismay as the agent of the New World Order gleefully tells him that the Corporation have indeed infiltrated and taken over the government, and control everything, from the media to the armed forces. The song is carried along on a menacing, marching melody, with guest vocalist D.C Cooper (Royal Hunt) performing a star turn as the agent of the NWO. As panic sweeps through him, the hero runs, and this turns into the instrumental “Chased”, which, something in the vein of Pink Floyd's “On the run” from “Dark side of the Moon” gives the very clear impression of a man fleeing.

Finally, having escaped from the agents of the NWO, the hero is safe, but alone, living in North Dakota. The penultimate track, “Ghost of a chance”, is essentially a reworking of “Alaska”, from previous album “Carved in stone”, and is a wish that the hero could return there and be happy. It's a ballad in a way, a lament too, and possibly a statement of purpose. The album closes as Act II ends with the mournful ballad “Christmas Day”, as the hero wishes for the Christmasses of his youth, before he had to hide from the government. It's a lovely delicate piano intro, helped out by flute from Carl Cadden-James, which continues through the song as the track is carried along on the piano melody line, with the flutes providing accompaniment throughout the tune. Again, great vocal harmonies pin down a bittersweet closer to the album: “If you're chasing a dream to nowhere/ It's enchantment that leads the way/ Just believe in yourself and go there/ The gift of hope on Christmas Day.” Gary's squealing guitar solos add muscle to the song, and a cry for what once was, but the closer ends as it began, gently lilting piano taking “Christmas Day” to a sad fade-out.

TRACKLISTING
1. Stiletto in the sand
2. War for sale
3. Out of nowhere
4. Mystery
5. Hope for us?
6. Victims
7. Broken
8. I believe
9. Roads of thunder
10. Spoken words
11. New World Order
12. Chased
13. Ghost of a chance
14. Christmas Day

The story continues, and concludes, in “Room V”, reviewed next.

Room V --- Shadow Gallery --- 2005 (InsideOut Records)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...albumcover.jpg
Fittingly (as we'll see later), the sequel to 1998's “Tyranny” was not released until seven years after the curtain came down on Act II, and “Room V” begins Act III, taking the story up where “Tyranny”'s “Christmas Day” left off, with the hero eking out an existence in North Dakota, pining for the woman and the life he left behind, hiding from the government and the feared New World Order. The album opens with a frenetic, frantic instrumental, entitled “Manhunt” which, like “Chased” from the closing act of the previous album, denotes that he is once again on the run. The NWO have found his hiding place and he must once again flee. The tune leads into the first of three beautiful ballads on the album, this where the hero meets up again with his lover, again voiced by Laura Jaeger, and relaxes in her warmth and comfort, while yet aware that the forces of darkness are gathering outside, searching for them both. “Comfort me” features some truly sublime guitar work from Gary Wehrkamp, with crashing drums underlining the danger inherent beyond this brief romantic lull in the chase.

The hero's lover starts working on a cure for smallpox, and succeeds beyond her wildest dreams. “The Andromeda strain” is a fast-paced track but not as breakneck as “Manhunt”, with again glorious vocal harmonies throughout. It's a heavy track, with plenty of guitar and pounding drumwork. You can hear the resurgent anger and determination in Mike Baker's voice as the hero realises the time for hiding is over and there is work to do. The woman uses her own DNA in creating the cure, but when they publish it the serum is stolen and the two must again go on the run, evidenced by a rather urgent instrumental passage about halfway through the song. As they flee again, the hero finds time to propose to his lover, in the heart-stirring and inspirational “Vow”, the second of the ballads on the album, and the last in Act III. It's a truly beautiful composition, replete with the hope for the future endenic to any nuptials: “Let's pack away all our memories of home/ Never look back/ Certainly never return/ Begin anew, you and I and snow and wind and ice/ Will you surrender all your all to me?” The song is carried along on the twin vehicles of lush guitars and rolling keyboards, and fades with a hopeful, powerful guitar solo.

The remainder of Act III is taken up by three short tracks, each of which moves the story along rapidly. In “Birth of a daughter” the couple are, obviously, blessed by the birth of their first and only child. This is reflected in the low-key, almost reverent keyboards and quietly picked guitar along which the song rides until about halfway in, when it suddenly picks up and gets fast-paced and a little frantic, perhaps symbolising the woman's labour? It kind of echoes the opening track in its intensity and urgency, and the melody is quite similar too. At the end of the track tragedy strikes as the woman dies in childbirth, leading into the second instrumental, “Death of a mother”, which takes its cue from the ending of “Birth of a daughter”, but getting much more frenetic particularly on the keyboards and piano as presumably the hero goes a little mad as his lover dies. This, and the preceding instrumental, are short, hardly each much over two minutes, and as this one winds down to a despairing conclusion the final piece of music in Act III kicks in. “Lamentia” is just over one minute long, echoing the melody from “Comfort me”, as the hero begs his lover not to die and leave him.

Act IV then opens with the appropriately titled instumental “Seven years.” The theme is very similar to “Christmas Day” from the end of “Tyranny” and also to “Alaska” from “Carved in stone”. The piece is another instrumental, detailing the growing up of the hero's daughter, to where she is now seven years old. The track is imbued with a sort of childish innocence, and is longer than the previous instrumental tracks. It's quite hopeful and upbeat after the lamenting tone of the last few tracks, almost like a new beginning for the hero. Some great guitar work in here again.

But suddenly the tone changes again, with the sudden breaking of a window and a child shouting “Daddy! Daddy!”, as the daughter is kidnapped by the nefarious New World Order. It's not even a track, as such, more a collection of sounds and ambiences, and lasts just over a minute, but gets the idea across very well. This then leads into the last of the ballads on the album, one of my all-time favourites, as the hero searches for his daughter, wondering where she could be, and “Torn” takes centre stage. Mike does a great job in the role of a desperate, grieving father trying to ascertain where his daughter has been taken as he sings “Broken windows, broken dreams/ Nothing but a vale of tears/ Oh my God my little lady/ Where have they taken you?/ I never heard you scream.”This is a real lament, and it pulls at your heart strings without doubt.

Setting out to look for his daughter, the hero is appoached by a soldier serving with the US Special Forces, who tells him that his daughter was kidnapped because the serum his wife created hasn't worked, and the NWO need his daughter's blood to create a serum. “The Archer of Ben Salem” is a steaming locomotive of a track, powering along as it carries the story with it. We also learn that the hero's wife was killed by Mossad, who are working with the NWO, and wanted to steal blood from her, the same blood that is now in his daughter's veins. This is the first outing on vocals for Carl Cadden-James, the bass player, as he takes the role of the Archer, explaining the situation to the hero, and setting him his mission. This track contains a lot of prog-rock standard melodies, and in some places could be a heavier Genesis, yet Shadow Gallery always retain their own identity, particularly when Gary Wehrkamp picks up his guitar!

Although I said there are three ballads on the album, in ways “Encrypted” could be considered a fourth. It's slow, with lots of jangling guitar and some lovely keyboard riffs, but heavy too, in a way the other slower tracks aren't. Having been told that the NWO plan to unleash the smallpox serum as a plague, and sell the vaccine only to those who can afford it, the hero is drafted into a large resistance movement. Here is where fantasy and reality rather cleverly come together on the album, as the hero is tasked with helping to create a vaccine for the serum and works on it, using the codewords “Tyranny” and “Room V”, and in the following track will set up his own band (Shadow Gallery of course) to spread the word and organise the resistance.

“You'd better worry, better listen and take heed/There's a storm on the horizon/ Clouds are black and deadly mean./ Be on the watch so when the victims start to fall/ You can harvest out a demon When the plague begins we'll fight to win/ Apply genetic sequence away.”

Forming his band, Mike Baker, also the hero, goes about spreading the word, using Shadow Gallery's albums to disseminate the code and induce people to join up and fight the forces of darkness. Basically, it's a straight-ahead rock jam that takes the title track, and fades out into the powerful closer, the bombastic “Rain”, where nothing is solved, all is left open-ended. The hero's daughter's whereabouts are still unknown, the N.W.O have not yet been defeated, and the world is still in danger. The hero's life has been turned upside down. Over two albums and seven years he has lost his job, fallen in love, gone on the run, married, fathered a daughter, lost her, joined a resistance movement, and now he is more or less alone, as the rain comes crashing down upon him. He seems to pray for death, though it's left very much to the listener to decide how the story ends. As Mike himself is now sadly deceased, it seems unlikely the band will ever finish the story, if indeed it needs finishing, and as a matter of fact their followup album, released last year, concentrates on totally different themes, and is not, as fans might have expected/hoped, the concluding acts to this seven-year drama.

Perhaps Shadow Gallery meant initially to write an ending, but with Mike's death they may just have decided it had to end there. Or maybe that was the end. I don't know. But over two albums they gave us some truly exceptional music to enjoy, and in the end, I guess that's really all that matters.

TRACKLISTING
1. Manhunt
2. Comfort me
3. The Andromeda Strain
4. Vow
5. Birth of a daughter
6. Death of a mother
7. Lamentia
8. Seven years
9. Dark
10. Torn
11. The Archer of Ben Salem
12. Encrypted
13. Room V
14. Rain

Note: The plotline for the two albums was culled from entries on Wikipedia, and I would like to thank the creators of these synopses for their work, as it certainly helped me understand better for myself, and so be able to explain to others, the vision Shadow Gallery had for these two albums.

Additional note: If you buy this album (and you should!), try to get the “Special Edition”, as it contains a second disc with almost 25 minutes of Pink Floyd medley....




Suggested further listening: "Carved in stone", "Legacy" and "Digital ghosts"

Trollheart 05-12-2011 01:23 PM

Analogue --- a-ha --- 2005 (Universal)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Analogue.jpg
When most people think of a-ha, they inevitably hear “Take on me” in their heads, but there's a lot more to this band than that one hit single, or the others they had around the late eighties. Although there's no way they could ever be called a rock band, a-ha for me transcend the usual formula of pop bands: their material is their own, they're not controlled by any mega-star producer, and they explore interesting themes in their songs. Okay, they're not going to set any rocker's world alight, but I consider myself primarily a rocker (albeit an old one!) and I really love this band.

As far as music is concerned, mostly Norway seems to be associated with death/doom/black metal bands, all Viking and brooding stares, gutteral growls and screeching guitars. Against this backdrop came a-ha, bursting onto the charts in 1985 and looking like escapees from a conventional of male models. They could have been just another flash in the pan, with the mega-success of “Take on me” and follow ups “The sun always shines on TV”, “Cry wolf” and “Manhattan skyline”, but when all the chart hits are done and the trendy kids have forgotten them and moved on to the next flavour of the month, a-ha have stood fast and weathered the test of time, producing nine fine albums over a career spanning almost 25 years, and though they are now no more, having disbanded in 2010, their music lives on.

“Analogue” is their eighth studio album, and in my opinion, one of their best. It contains both fast-paced boppy poppers as well as thoughtful tracks and of course ballads. Of the former, “Don't do me any favours” rattles along on the flowing keyboards of “Mags” --- Magne Furuholmen --- which have created the distinct soundprint of the band since the first arpeggios of “Take on me” smashed the charts wide open, while the guitarwork of “Pal” --- Paul Waaktar-Savoy --- may not be as overwhelming as you would expect in, say, a Gary Moore or Bryan Adams album, nevertheless hold the melodies together perfectly. And of course what need be said about the clear, unmistakable voice of Morten Harkett, still sounding like a boy of eighteen even after all these years?
“Halfway through the tour”, clocking in at almost seven and a half minutes, is a monster track that becomes more or less the denoument of the album, starting off as a fast, chugging, bopper and then slowing down near the end and becoming almost an instrumental waltz as it fades out. Great stuff! Other notable tracks include the rather poignant “Birthright”, the bittersweet “A fine blue line”, which showcases Morten's soulful and sweet voice as he croons “We read each other's books/Gave each other looks/Like we couldn't trust ourselves/And we knew it/ So tell me where you've been/ And I'll show you where you're going/ You can shout, you can scream your way through it.. “

Another fine ballad follows in “Keeper of the flame”, with Mags's beautiful piano lines forming a musical canvas on which Morten paints the most delicate vocal lines, while “Over the treetops” is a song that just makes you want to dance. No bad thing, I would say! The closer is an oddity. “The summers of our youth” is a beautiful, heartbreaking ballad, a fitting ending to the album, but for only the second time in his career in a-ha, Morten hands over vocal duties to Pal, and a very fine job he does on it, too, joined in the choruses by the mainman.

“Analogue” is not going to make anyone rush out and buy the album, or become an instant a-ha fan, I would expect, but it's well worth a listen if you have dismissed one of Norway's biggest and most successful musical exports as “that band who had that hit”....

TRACKLISTING

1. Celice
2. Don't do me any favours
3. Cosy prisons
4. Analogue (All I want)
5. Birthright
6. Holy ground
7. Over the treetops
8. Halfway through the tour
9. A fine blue line
10. Keeper of the flame
11. Make it soon
12. White dwarf
13. The summers of our youth



Suggested further listening: "Scoundrel days", "Stay on these roads", "Minor earth major sky", "Lifelines"

Trollheart 05-13-2011 11:17 AM

Once and future king, part 1 --- Gary Hughes --- 2003 (Frontiers Records)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...eKingPartI.jpg
There are albums, there are concept albums and then there are musical phenomena. In the latter category you'll find and probably recognise behemoths like “Tommy” by The Who, Jeff Wayne's “War of the worlds” and of course “The Wall” by Pink Floyd. To this pantheon should also be added this perhaps lesser-known but in no way inferior double album, which you really have to hear to believe.

Based (not surprisingly, given the title) on the legend of King Arthur, “Once and future king” is the brainchild of Gary Hughes, vocalist and songsmith with Manchester melodic-rockers Ten, and was three years in the making, seeing the light of release in 2003. A true rock opera in every sense of the word, the album features performances from some of the very best talent in the world of melodic/prog rock, as Gary has assembled a cast of stars, among them Diamond Head's Sean Harris, Magnum's Bob Catley, superstar Arjen Lucassen, Lana Lane, Sabine Edelsbacher and Erik Norlander, who also helps engineer the whole thing. Each member takes the part of a player in the drama, roles listed below further on.

When I say this is a double album, that's not exactly true. Mindful of the cost to the fans of an expensive double-disc, Gary actually released part 1 and part 2 as separate discs, though in the same year, so that these are two physically separate recordings, though one follows on from the other. Think the original release of “Back to the future 2” and 3 and you'll get the idea. Together but separate. Nonetheless, although each track is self-contained and can very much be enjoyed on its own, or as part of a playlist, to get the real feel for the album you have to listen to both discs through from start to finish. It's an amazing achievement, and a fitting testament to Gary's vision for the project.

It's of course primarly a rock album, and there are loads of fast, upbeat, fist-punching rock anthems in there, with some really nice ballads too --- Gary writes some great stuff: listen to “Rainbow in the dark” or “Soliliquoy (The end of the world)” by Ten to get an idea ---but perhaps surprisingly on a rock opera, only the one instrumental, and that on part 2. And not, strictly speaking, an instrumental. But we'll get to that later....

The whole thing kicks off with as might be expected a sort of overture, piano and choral voices giving way to thundery keyboards as the mood turns dramatic and insistent, driven by the unmistakable presence of prog god Arjen Lucassen behind the keyboards. The overture swells and gets louder and louder until the opener “Excalibur” powers into life, and the album sets off at a breakneck pace, with the crowning of Arthur, as he accepts the magical sword that bears the opener track's name. First of several vocalists on the two albums, it's Damian Wilson (Threshold, Ayreon, Star One) who takes song duty on this track, narrating the crowning of Arthur, and the pace keeps up for “Dragon Island Cathedral”, with Gary himself taking over vocal duties as he takes the role of the eponymous king, while the guitars of John Halliwell and Chris Francis (Ten) battle it out in a glorious fight for supremacy, and Gary outdoes himself by providing swirling, squealing keyboards in addition to singing.

The approach taken by Hughes to the Arthurian legend is very different to some standard ones. Eschewing the tack taken by various movies, or the TV series “”Merlin”, and cutting out the more romantic/less historically accurate elements, Gary actually takes a page from Richard Carpenter's approach to the legend of another mythical British hero, Robin Hood, in his retelling of the story for Goldcrest's TV series “Robin of Sherwood”. Like that series, Gary's take on the legend of Arthur brings in more mystical and pagan elements, the old gods, and his characters are less black and white than other interpretations have painted them. Gary says he used “various sources such as the Mallory Poem and the Geoffrey of Monmouth version of the Arthurian legends which is probably the earliest. Various other documentation from various authors, things like the Bernard Cornwell novels Excalibur, Winter King, Enemy of God and various things like that which I thought were probably as close to my interpretation as I could get.
I tried to avoid the Hollywood-isms and tried to concentrate on Arthur the battle lord trying to unite the tribes which is what it was all about” (Excerpt from his interview with MelodicRock.com --- MelodicRock.com Interviews: Gary Hughes - Once And Future King.)

Guinevere makes her entrance in the next track, “At the end of day”, played by the multi-talented Lana Lane, performing a beautiful duet with Gary as Arthur. The song is, not surprisingly, a love song as each sing of their love for the other: “I saw a miracle arrive/ For an angel walked into my life/ You make the flames of a heart so cold/ Ignite, you melt my soul” While Guinivere sings “I will be everything you need/ For the timeless one brought you to me./ Safe in my arms as the torches fade/ With the light at the end of day “. The song is driven on a haunting piano melody, almost acoustic, though there is a tremendous guitar solo halfway through, though whether this is Chris Francis, John Halliwell or indeed Gary himself I don't know, as all three take guitar duties across the album, but the texture of the solo sounds to me like some of Gary's best work from Ten.

The mood stays generally balladic for the next offering, with Danny Vaughn taking centre stage as Lancelot, asking the eternal questions as “The reason why” gets underway. Vaughn puts in a fine performance as the honourable man caught up in a web of his own making as he sings “Show me the reason why we put chains on our lovers/ How can we justify this kind of control?/ Show me the reason why we enslave one another.” Things kick into high gear again then as Morgana makes her entrance, in the shape of Irene Jansen, who sings her heart out on “Shapeshifter”, a real rocker after the previous two low-key tracks.

Enter Merlin, played by Magnum's Bob Catley (a good choice!), and we see that he is far from the kindly old magician of many previous Arthurian stories. Gary has chosen here to represent the wizard as someone longing for the old days, as magic begins to lose its grip on the emerging new world as the Dark Ages start to fade out, and he wishes to bring back the old gods, believing that only they can return the world to the way it was. “If I was king for a day”, he sings, “This land would burn in the mystical flames/ Born through the fire the old gods would reign.”

“King for a day” is a sort of slow heavy waltz, not a ballad, but a slowburner certainly. The grinding, doom-laden tone is driven by Paul Hodson's keyboards and piano lines, and paints a disturbing picture of the most powerful man in Britain at the time. It's followed by the return of Danny Vaughn as he reprises his role as Lancelot in what is perhaps one of the most commercial songs on the album, and could indeed have been lifted as a single. “Avalon” is pure AOR heaven, as Lancelot begs Guinevere to stay with him, despite knowing it to be wrong.

The rest of the album stays in fairly high gear to the end then, with “Sinner” another power-rock stormer, Diamond Head's Sean Harris taking the role of Galahad as he rails at Guinevere for her betrayal of Arthur with Lancelot: “You're the queen, it's obscene/ how you lied and schemed/ You're a fake; there's a snake deep within ya/ It's a web that you weave out of vile deceit/ You've got blood on your hands /You're a sinner.” This leads into Merlin's last turn on the first part of the album as Catley denounces Guinevere for her part in the fall of Arthur. “In flames” is an anthemic, powerful thumper, with swirling keyboards and groaning guitars mirroring the shame of the Queen's betrayal, and what it means for the Monarchy. Merlin cries “Crawl out, bruised by the landslide /Fool's fate, destiny's jaws/ Ground down, used and abused by Love/ Like a silent blade/ Shout out; bleed as the dammed die/ Too late, venom and claws, /Gouged out, wounded and tongue tied /Love! Love cuts you down in flames “

Merlin demands Guinevere be burned at the stake, but Arthur intervenes, instead sending her away, as he growls through his heartbreak “This web of lies is to blame, binding the pain./You betrayed me time and time again./ Why don't you answer me?/ You left me crying in the rain, blind and afraid/ Now the broken words I have to say/ Echo but my heart has turned away./You'll never lie me again “ The role of Arthur is again taken by Gary Hughes for the closer on the album, and “Lies” does not disappoint as an ending track, as Gary pours his entire heart into the image of a man who has been cruelly and unexpectedly betrayed and who, despite his wish to forgive, is in the position that he cannot do so and retain the respect of his peers, and so is forced to exile his Queen.

TRACKLISTING
1. Excalibur
2. Dragon Island Cathedral
3. At the end of day
4. The reason why
5. Shapeshifter
6. King for a day
7. Avalon
8. Sinner
9. In flames
10. Lies

ROLES

KING ARTHUR -- Gary Hughes
QUEEN GUINEVERE --- Lana Lane
MERLIN --- Bob Catley
SIR LANCELOT ---Danny Vaughn
MORGANA --- Irene Jansen
SIR GALAHAD --- Sean Harris
NARRATOR --- Damian Wilson

And so ends the first part of this excellent opera. See below for part 2, the continuation and conclusion.

Once and future king, part 2 --- Gary Hughes ---2003 (Frontiers Records)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...KingPartII.jpg

As part 1 ended on a heartbreaking note, and with a slow, sad song, so part 2 begins with a juggernaut, echoing some of Rainbow's best work from “Rising”, “Kill the king” pounds its way out of the speakers (or headphones : whatever's your poison!) as newcomer to the project D.C Cooper from Royal Hunt takes the part of King Aelle, lusting after Arthur's crown. The track thunders along on metal hooves, kicking up dust all around as Aelle declares “I wanna kill the King of Britain dead /I wanna thrust a knife deep in his chest/ I wanna feel and see his blood run red!” No ambiguity there, then! The track is in some ways similar to the opener on part 1, “Excalibur”, even to the point of having a musical “overture” to get it going. Great guitar work in there, but the thing that really drives the track along is the pounding drums of Greg Morgan.

Time for introspection then as Arthur reminisces and Gary Hughes returns for another cruncher, “There by the grace of the Gods (go I)”, before he lapses into maudlin reproach as he croons to his now-vanished Guinevere in the first and perhaps best ballad on the album, “I still love you (I still do)” featuring another excellent guitar solo. “I'm still trying to fight the memories, it's my legacy of pain / I was broken but survived to fight another day / I will never understand your reasons: that will never change/ But wonder if the time has come to try again?” Guinevere, singing separately, answers in “Oceans of tears”, a more upbeat track in which Lana Lane accepts the Queen's culpability in her crime against Arthur, but there will be no reunion, no trying again, as she sings “I'll cry no more ocean of tears/ Don't know why I'm alive/ What my heart's beating for”

And that's the end not only of the Queen's contribution to the album, but of the King's too, as the story is taken up by other characters in the saga. “Rise from the shadows” powers out of nowhere as Morgana declares her opposition to Arthur and her wish to supplant him on the throne with her own son (and, some believe, Arthur's), Mordred. Irene Jansen reprises her role, putting in a great performance, which is to be her last on the album, and the melody itself echoes that of “Excalibur”, which opened part 1 and the entire saga, a nice touch.

Things slow down then for the final song from Bob Catley as Merlin, as he takes one side of a beautiful love duet with Nimue, played by Edenbridge's Sabine Edelsbacher, the song carried on a beautiful, luxuriant bank of keyboards and acoustic guitar. “Believe enough to fight” sees Nimue exort the wizard to find the courage and conviction to fight for Arthur against the hordes of Mordred, ranged against them, and he responds “I will return the gods to Britain/ This heart will burn/ I pledge my soul/ I will return the gods to Britain/ This tide will turn.”

And then the battle begins in earnest. As the climax of the story, and the album, approach, Doogie White (Praying Mantis/ Yngwie Malmsteen/Tank) takes the role of Mordred for “The hard way”, declaring he will defeat Arthur and take his throne. Nimue returns for “The pagan dream”, another fast rocker, and Mordred for “Demon down”, before the only instrumental on the album, “Deius”, brings a close to the battle, as Arthur is killed, but (if legend is to be believed) kills Mordred also. It's really more a chant carried on a military backbeat than a true instrumental, though it's credited as such on the album, and it takes us into the battle proper.

The finale of the album is taken up by two glorious pieces, the first sung by Galahad, played again by Sean Harris, as he laments Arthur's passing in “Without you”: “I thought I'd found the answers but I'll never understand/ The whys, the hows the wherefores/ In this godforsaken land/ You raise a man to saviour/ You bow to his command/ Then break him where he stands.” The closing lines are particularly poignant, and point to a prophecy mentioned in the closing track: “And now my eyes betray me/ Through this callous twist of fate/ Imprinted on the landscape like reflections in the lake / Across the sky at sunset/ With every dawn that breaks/ I swear I see his face....” It's a bittersweet song that in some ways deserves to be the closer, but then you get to hear the actual final track, and to be honest, there could be no other.

The finale is the title track, and is sung by Harry Hess. He's not given a credit as a player, so perhaps like Damian Wilson at the beginning of the first album he's more a narrator than a participant. The battle is long over, Arthur is dead, or taken to Avalon, depending on how much you believe the mythology, and his legend has begun to grow. In a stately homage to the Once and Future King, Hess sings “They've slain the man/ But not his heartbeat/ His spirit soars on the wind/ They claim the day/ But the fire inside remains/ For the lost once and future king.” It begins as a piano ballad, with a riff borrowed from Pink Floyd's “Echoes”, and later with the sudden introduction of a screaming guitar (one assumes Gary Hughes, but there's no way to confirm this) it morphs into a huge, powerhouse anthem celebrating the legend Arthur has left behind, the man he was, and the story he began.

As I said, I truly believe this is an underappreciated magnum opus, and would definitely recommend a listen, but again as I said, to get the full benefit from the project, you really have to listen to both albums through all the way at least once. Okay, so that's over 100 minutes of your time, but I promise you, it will be time well spent!

TRACKLISTING
1. Kill the king
2. There by the grace of the gods (go I)
3. I still love you (I still do)
4. Ocean of tears
5. Rise from the shadows
6. Believe enough to fight
7. The hard way
8. The pagan dream
9. Demon down
10. Deius
11. Without you
12. Once and future king

ROLES

KING ARTHUR --- Gary Hughes
QUEEN GUINEVERE --- Lana Lane
MERLIN --- Bob Catley
NIMUE --- Sabine Edelsbacher
KING AELLE --- D.C. Cooper
MORGANA --- Irene Jansen
MORDRED --- Doogie White
SIR GALAHAD --- Sean Harris
NARRATOR --- Harry Hess



Suggested further listening: "Babylon", "Return to Evermore", "The twilight chronicles", "The robe" and "The name of the rose" by Ten

Trollheart 05-13-2011 04:22 PM

Closer --- Josh Groban --- 2003 (Reprise/Warner)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...losercover.jpg
I first heard Josh singing “Remember when it rained” on an unnamed American internet radio station, and was so impressed that, although I couldn't remember his name, I had a very basic idea of it and searched the record shops around Dublin, asking questions until I finally found out who he was, and bought this album. When I first hit PLAY I was initially a little disappointed/taken aback,as the first track (and seven others on the album, out of 15) were sung in a foreign language. I could hazard they were (some of them) Spanish, Italian, maybe Portuguese, but the truth is I didn't then and don't now know. However I persevered; the voice was so enthralling, and so I luckily avoided making a major and ill-informed decision that would have been to my detriment.

In other words, I listened on, and even though I could not tell what he was singing about, the songs were so beautiful and the voice so captivating that I found I didn't care. I would find myself trying to sing along with efforts like “A quiera sella mon ni ere!” which means absolutely nothing, is not correct and probably nothing like what's on the track, but hey, I really liked them that much that I had to (try to) sing along!

That's the beauty of Josh Groban's music. It really doesn't matter what language the songs are sung in, and whether or not you can understand them, or know what they're about: the songs are enough on their own, and to be fair, it's a rare artist that will convince me, through the pure power of their songs and their singing, to ignore, or try to surmount, the language barrier.

Most of the songs on this, his second album, are sung in a classical/operatic style (think Andrea Bocceli or Il Divo), with powerful and effective orchestral arrangement, and the whole thing is wonderfully produced by one of the top men in the field, David Foster who, I'm reliably informed, actually discovered Josh Groban and gave him his first big break.

There are tracks sung in English too (hey, if there are 15 tracks on the album and 8 are in other languages, then there are 7 in English, right?), but the beauty of this album is that it really doesn't matter either way. “Si volvieras a mi” is just as enjoyable as “Broken vow”, and “Caruso” stands up perfectly beside “When you say you love me”, or his wonderfully understated version of the late Michael Jackson's “She's out of my life.” Music that transcends language barriers, without doubt.

They're pretty much all slow ballads ---- what many people would refer to as Easy Listening, which is probably where you'll find Josh Groban's albums stored in a music shop, or on itunes, but some of them are very powerful, like the opener, “Oceano”, once it gets going, and “Per te”, later on. Other tracks are gentler, more restrained, such as the heartbreakingly smooth vocal delivery on “Remember when it rained”, and the triumphant yet low-key cover of “You raise me up”. Although none of these songs are written by Josh (you can't have everything!) he makes each and every one his own, even “She's out of my life”, made mega-famous by Michael Jackson, although it was actually written by Tom Bahler in 1979.

“Closer” is an album I find perfect for relaxing to, even falling asleep to, though that's not to say that it's in any way boring. True, it's not an album you'd put on to work out to, or while driving down the highway with the top down, but it's an excellent, flawless album which deserves a listen. Don't be put off by the non-English songs: they're worth getting into, and you may after a short while find yourself, like me, very unsuccessfully trying to sing in another language as you try to sing along to “Caruso” or “Mi morena”....

TRACKLISTING

1. Oceano
2. My confession
3. Mi mancherai (Il Postino)
4. Si volvieras a mi
5. When you say you love me
6. Per te
7. All'improvviso amore
8. Broken vow
9. Caruso
10. Remember when it rained
11. Hymne a l'amour
12. You raise me up
13. Never let go
14. Mi morena
15. She's out of my life



Suggested further listening: "Awake", also "Here's to the heroes" by the Ten Tenors

Trollheart 05-14-2011 05:06 PM

Rainbow Rising --- Rainbow --- 1976 (Polydor)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nbowRising.jpg
Boasting what was probably the classic Rainbow lineup of the late Ronnie James Dio on vocals, Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, the late Cozy Powell on drums, Jimmy Bain on bass and Tony Carey on keys, “Rainbow Rising” (often just called “Rising”) represents this phenomenal band at the height of their creative career. Though this was only their second album, and they would go on to cut many more before splitting in 1984, reforming after a fashion and then finally disbanding for good in 1998, I personally feel that with this record they reached the zenith of their creative peak, and although other albums were good --- “Long live rock and roll” springs to mind, as well as “Down to earth” --- for me, they never quite hit the “sweet spot” on other recording as they did on “Rising”. Sure, other albums yielded hit singles, and sadly for those outside the rock world it is those songs for which Rainbow will be remembered, but for me, this album was what Rainbow were all about.

You can see it just by looking at the sleeve. The imagery there grabs you --- you know this is not going to be an album full of truckin' or love songs: the themes explored here are what some would probably call neo-classical, mystical, legends and folklore being used in the lyrics, and in some ways I guess you could argue this is the Rainbow album that comes closest to being progressive rock, though nobody would ever describe them as being a prog band. Of course, RJD (may he rest in peace) was always interested in these sort of ideas --- dragons, princesses, towers, castles, and of course, rainbows! --- and would go on to explore them deeper, both with his own band and during his short time helming Black Sabbath after Ozzy left. Blackmore, weary and disillusioned by the “funk/jazz grove” his former band, Deep Purple had been slipping into, wanted to return to his rock roots, which is why he formed Rainbow in 1975, and this album is a triumphant vindication of his vision.

The prog influences are definitely there though. The opener, “Tarot woman”, kicks off with a two-minute keyboard intro by Tony Carey before it's joined by Blackmore's chugging guitar, and Ronnie James belts out the opening lines. The song itself is a good hard rocker, galloping along at a decent pace, and no doubt made a great introduction for the band's live shows around that time. Even the title has prog rock written all over it! Great solos as always from The Man In Black, with Cozy thumping out a solid beat and reminding us why we miss him so much, now that he's gone to the Great Gig in the Sky. The song ends as it began, Carey taking us out on a long warbling keyboard riff that fades out. It's followed by a song which would become the hallmark of Dio's solo work, as “Run with the wolf” lopes out of the speakers. It's a bit more funky (ironic really, as part of the reason Blackmore quit Deep Purple was that he thought they were getting too funky and less rocky!), slower and sort of remiscent of “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves” from the previous album.

The next track is probably the weakest on the album, and you can see it having possibly been written with one eye on the singles charts, as it's the most straight-ahead rocker, almost pop in its way, recalling the likes of the Sweet as the band launch into “Starstruck”. I personally find it an anarchronism: I could see it on the debut, but here it seems out of place. Nonetheless, Ronnie's in fine voice and the band certainly have fun with the song, and I'm sure it proved popular at gigs. It's kind of more a jam than anything else, I feel. Things kick back into high gear then for “Do you close your eyes?”, a great anthem and power-rocker, with RJD in top voice and Blackmore cranking out the solos and making his guitar scream as he does so well.

As someone once said, “It's a game of two halves”, and I know I've used that reference before, but again it's appropriate here. In particular, as when I bought the album we had none of yer compact disc rubbish, and it was on vinyl, and so “Do you close your eyes?” actually completes side one of the album. Even though on today's CDs and MP3 recordings there is no longer any distinction between “sides”, and no dividing line, there is clearly a change in the whole approach of the album from here on. Side 2, as it were, is taken up by two tracks only, but they're monsters, each over eight minutes, and linked by a central theme.

“Stargazer” is the story of a wizard who believes he can build a tower to the heavens, and touch the stars, and for whatever reason, is able to recruit slave labour from the surrounding lands to carry out the work for him. One would assume it's similar to the ancient pharaohs press-ganging the local citizenry to build their pyramids and tombs. The song centres on the lament of one such slave, who wonders how long they will have to remain there, what will happen, and what it is all for? “In the heat and the rain/ With whips and chains/ Just to see him fly/ So many died/ We built a tower of stone/ Out of our flesh and bone/ To see him fly / Don't know why!”

The song is a majestic, epic slowburner in the tradition of Led Zep's “Kashmir”, and uses many Arabic and Eastern-sounding themes and sounds, so that you really begin to feel the sweat dripping off the slaves as they labour under the harsh, unforgiving sun. But their revenge is at hand: “All eyes see the figure of the wizard/ As he climbs to the top of the world/ There's no sound, as he falls/ Instead of rising! / Time's standing still/ Then there's blood on the sand.” This sort of melody would be echoed in years to come, in part at least, in Dio's second album, “The last in line”, on the track “Egypt (The chains are on)”. As the song fades out and winds down, Ronnie sings “ I see a rainbow rising/ back on the horizon,” an obvious nod to both the title and the artwork on the sleeve.

The closer, “A light in the black”, takes off the kid gloves and the band, heads down, legs no doubt firmly planted apart, thunder to the conclusion of the album, as RJD as the now-released slave heads for his home, wondering if he will ever see it again? “Won't forget his face.” he sings as the song opens, “What a lonely place/ Did they really let us go?/ All the time that's lost/ What's the final cost? / Will I really get away?” Cozy really comes into his own here, the backbone of the song as it careens along, with perhaps one of Blackmore's most powerful and evocative solos halfway through, when the man's grasp of the use of classical music is left in no doubt. In fact, his extended solo covers almost half of the entire track: it's a real showcase for his talents. Showoff? Maybe, but when you have the talent this guy has, why not?

The song comes to an explosive end, with RJD singing his lungs out, and by the end, you're left literally catching your breath. Now THAT's rock and roll!

TRACKLISTING
1. Tarot woman
2. Run with the wolf
3. Starstruck
4. Do you close your eyes?
5. Stargazer
6. A light in the black



Suggested further listening: "Long live rock and roll", also "Heaven and Hell" by Black Sabbath (featuring Ronnie James Dio) and Dio's albums "Holy diver", "The last in line" and "Killing the dragon"

Trollheart 05-15-2011 01:15 PM

Paradise in flames ---- Axxis --- 2006 (AFM Records)
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/0/0/4/100433.jpg

I've always had something of a soft spot for German metal bands --- Accept, Helloween, Bonfire, Scorpions, Vanden Plas, Primal Fear, MSG... the list goes on. There's something very sincere about what they do, as if they're really trying their best to emulate the better of the British and American metal gods, and sometimes they reach these dizzying heights, sometimes fall short. Axxis have been together for over 21 years now, and have produced 12 albums over that period, some good, some not so good, some occasionally brilliant. This is the album I would rate as their top to date (though I readily admit I have not yet heard 2007's “Doom of destiny” or their most recent, 2009's “Utopia”) --- it just hits all the right places and I really think there's hardly a bad track on it. From opener to closer it's metal heaven all the way through, and while Axxis may not be as “seriously metal” as, say, the Scorps or Blind Guardian, I really like their approach to music in general: they sort of become the German Bon Jovi for me --- whether that's good or bad I guess depends on your attitude towards New Jersey's finest...

“Paradise in flames”, their tenth studio album, opens with a short instrumental, keyboard and choral voices, very fantasy movie-like, but in my opinion it could be longer than the one-minute-plus it clocks in here. Nevertheless, it serves as an interesting intro to the album, and things immediately blast off with “Dance with the dead”, a track we used to call “a real headbanger” in my day! Duelling guitars, thundering drums and the distinctive voice of frontman Bernard Weiss rising over everything, with some truly excellent backing vocals by a lady whose name so far I have only established to be Lakonia? A great keyboard solo by Harry Oellers completes the track, which then powers into another without taking breath, as “Tales of Glory Island” gets going. Like most of the tracks on this album (and indeed, most of Axxis's material) it's not going to win any awards for innovation, or even originality, but if you enjoy good melodic metal then you'll likely have little to complain about with this album.

The same sort of theme continues in tracks like “Will God remember me?”, “Lady moon” (with snippets of a reprise of the intro) and “Talisman”, with the only real reduction in speed being for the rather lovely ballad “Don't leave me”, where Bernard truly sings his heart out, in a romantic duet with Lakonia, and “Stay by me”, which is not so much a ballad as a mid-paced rocker, but with some very balladic elements. The elusive Lakonia adds her lovely feminine vocals to “Take my hand” as well. To be honest, the only track I don't like on this album is “Passion for rock”, which comes near the end of the record, and is to my ears anyway a far too simple straightforward rock song with very little thought put into the lyric. I feel the songs here, while as I said not breaking any moulds or any new ground for heavy metal, are thoughftul and well-arranged and written, whereas “Passion” seems like a throwaway, something added in for the sake of it. Just doesn't do it for me.

The real point about this album is that it's very melody-friendly: you find yourself singing along with just about every track, and they do stay in your head long after the laser has shut down and the CD has been returned to its sleeve. The keyboard playing on the album is flawless throughout, almost classical in places, and serves to raise this above the level of much stereotypical German heavy metal. You can tell there was a lot of thought put into the album, and a lot of time spent creating it. Personally, I think it was well worth it!

TRACKLISTING
1. Paradise in flames intro
2. Dance with the dead
3. Tales of Glory Island
4. Take my hand
5. Will God remember me?
6. Talisman
7. Don't leave me
8. Lady moon
9. Ice wind
10. Stay by me
11. Gods of rain
12. Passion for rock
13. Break your soul
14. Tales of Glory Island (Extended version)



Suggested further listening: "Back to the kingdom", "Kingdom of the night", "Eyes of darkness"

Trollheart 05-15-2011 02:37 PM

Oceanic --- Vangelis --- 1996 (WEA/Atlantic)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lbum_cover.jpg

Without question one of not only my favourite Vangelis albums, but a favourite to fall asleep to, or just relax to as well. Oceanic is themed, not surprisingly, around the ocean and the sea, and such is Vangelis's talent and skill that not only do the titles reflect this, you can hear it in his music. Opening with the sound of surf rolling at the beach, this soon gives way to a cinematic introduction, all rolling drums, string sections (probably played by the man himself on several banks of synthesisers!), swelling and falling like the very sea itself captured in music. Stirring stuff, and it leads neatly into the first real track, “Siren's whispering”, featuring choral voices sounding like (as presumably they're meant to sound) mermaids, enticing the listener in until he or she is lost in the music, floundering and drowning, and quite happy about it. The music reaches for you, wraps around you and drags you under, and for just over 50 minutes you're in another world, sailing the oceans and exploring the undersea depths with Vangelis's music as your guide and companion.

The music itself is never anything less than relaxing and restful, making this perhaps Vangelis's most “new age” recording, where he eschews the stabbing keyboard chords, drum machines and the more electronic synth sound for an album which is much more organic, where you can almost imagine a full orchestra playing the symphony of the sea. An environmentally friendly musical experience, indeed!

As you might expect on such a concept album, each track flows into the next, like the sea itself, and if it isn't the actual music that melds the tracks it's the ocean sounds as they flow from track to track, the pulsating, living heartbeat of the album, the natural glue that holds it all together, the musical map that takes yoo on your journey and never misses a step. The music is never less than beautiful, and I defy anyone to remain in a stressed-out, bad mood after listening to this: it's the perfect antidote to a bad day at the office!

“Dreams of surf” slips in almost unnoticed from the previous track, a truly lovely piano carrying the tune as it gently caresses your ears and seems to waft you along on the calm seas, flutes and what sounds like a harp taking it out to wider seas, and then inward towards shore, where “Spanish Harbour”, with its rolling synth and gorgeous Spanish guitar washes over you, gentle percussion taking the track to its conclusion, where once again we put out to sea as “Islands of the Orient” picks up the pace just ever so slightly, with some lovely piano and synth runs, some bassy piano chords giving this piece just a little more bite. It's also one of the longer tracks on the album, clocking in at just over seven minutes. The drums get going here, whereas up to now they have just been keeping the beat. Here, they come to the fore a little more, underlining the track and marking its departure from that which has gone before. As it comes to an end, “Islands” momentarily sounds a somewhat more ominous tone than previous tracks, before all is suddenly and gently restored as “Fields of coral”, the longest track on the album by a few seconds, comes into play.

Carried on an echoing synth-line, the track ebbs and flows, and you definitely get the impression of diving undersea to watch the many-coloured shoals of fish dart among the coral reefs beneath the ocean. There are slight echoes of “Alpha” from “Heaven and Hell” here, just the barest remembrances. It's actually quite amazing how a track that lasts for seven minutes and forty-three seconds can flow along on basically the one theme, the one melody, and yet never get boring or samey. True genius at work. It seems Vangelis never has to work to make his music meaningful: it just seems to happen in the same way as day follows night, and the sun rises. Effortless, or so he makes it seem.

The final minute (yes, a full minute) of the track is taken up by the sounds of surf and wind, with just the tiniest of keyboard notes here and there to acconpany it to the end, then the pace lifts again slightly for “Aquatic dance”, with the return of the choral voices from “Sirens' whispering”, some lovely harp-sounding runs, steady heartbeat bass and sad violin --- one can almost imagine the lovely mermaids or sirens performing their hypnotic dance in the sea, to attract unwary sailors. The track ends on a sad fluting sound which takes us into the endgame, as “Memories of blue” begins, with its almost retrospective of what we have experienced on this journey, taken along by crystal clear piano, its notes floating on the breeze as we sail along, turning now towards home, our journey almost at an end.

As our home harbour drifts into sight, “Song of the seas” takes us there, the sounds of surf and seagulls and wind wafting us closer, Spanish guitar leading us along as the percussion clicks gently in the background like a metronome, counting out the beats as we sail towards our home once again. The album ends, as it began, with the sounds of the sea breaking against the shoreline, and our journey is over.

It's hard to review a Vangelis album to be honest. He does everything: there's no band to single out, he composes all the music and he also produces his own albums, so it's in every sense of the word a one-man-band, but what a band! The music really has to be heard to be properly appreciated: no words I've written here can ever do justice to the beautiful tapestries Vangelis weaves with his music, so if you're unsure then click on the YT offerings above. If you're having trouble sleeping, need to relax or just want an album that will make you forget, for nearly an hour, the rat race, then “Oceanic” is one you should definitely have in your collection.

TRACKLISTING
1. Bon voyage
2. Sirens' whispering
3. Dreams of surf
4. Spanish harbour
5. Islands of the Orient
6. Fields of coral
7. Aquatic dance
8. Memories of blue
9. Song of the seas



Suggested further listening: "Spiral", "Direct", "Apocalypse des animeaux", "The city"

Trollheart 05-17-2011 10:10 AM

Perfect balance --- Balance of power --- 2001 (Massacre Records)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...9/Balance4.jpg

Balance of what? Never heard of them? Not surprising, as Balance of Power, despite going now for over 14 years, are less well-known in their native UK than they are in Japan and most of Asia. With five decent albums under their belt, and making music of this calibre it really is a shame that more people don't know about them, but I'll attempt to educate you, my readers, here, through the medium of what is perhaps their best album, 2001's “Perfect balance”.

Think a (much) heavier Journey, a metal Asia or a lighter Iron Maiden, and you'll be somewhere within the framework of what this band can do. Kicking off with the stormer “Higher than the sun”, it's the frenetic keyboards of Leon Lawson and the twin guitar attack of Pete Southern and Bill Yates that pull you in, but it's when vocalist Lance King opens his mouth that you really take notice. A graduate of the Bruce Dickinson School of Power Vocal, his voice grabs you and shakes you about like a pitbull going for the throat. There are definitely similarities to the “Air-Raid Siren” in his vocal delivery, and no doubt he spent his formative years spinning Maiden albums on his stereo, and yet King manages to stamp his own style and signature on the music his band creates, so he's not just a Dickinson wannabe or copy.

The main thing about BoP is that they are without a doubt melodic. Many metal bands make the mistake of thinking you only have to be loud, or fast --- or loud AND fast! --- to be a good band, but I've always preferred to be able not only to discern what the singer in any band is singing about, but to be able to hum the tune --- try doing that to Motorhead! So in a way I guess Balance of Power are a mix of melodic metal and AOR --- perhaps AOM? Anyway, they're a joy to listen to, and really should be better known.

“Higher than the sun” is a long track --- just over seven minutes, how's that for an opener? --- and no sooner has it snapped off than we're treated to another opus, as “Shelter me”, one of the best tracks from the album, gets into gear. King's voice really comes into its own here, running from one end of the scale to the other, with the super-tight band painting a fantastic melody behind him, a song which is so catchy it really should have been in the charts. The bombast of Lionel Hicks's drumming knits with the spot-on bass work from Tony Ritchie (hah! Imagine if they switched first names?) and keeps the track well on course, as the next offering keeps up the pressure. “”Fire dance” is a “Metal-march” in the tradition of “The last in line” by Dio or “Open fire” by Journey, with a fine solo by, well, either Pete or Bill, no way to know which, and slams into “One voice”, another slice of absolutely radio-worthy commercial rock/metal, with steamhammer drumming from Hicks and stabbing guitar from the guys pulling it along. The melody on the chorus could easily be Journey, Styx or even Europe or Bon Jovi, with a great keyboard solo to boot, but like every other track on this album it's carried by the powerful and distinctive voice of Lance King.

Rather surprisingly there are no ballads at all on “Perfect balance”, not even a real slow song. In that respect I suppose nitpickers could be excused for pointing out that the album is not a “perfect balance”, as all the songs are hard rockers, but it's a small imperfection in what otherwise is an album that really lives up in all other respects to its title. The mood slows slightly for “Pleasure room”, but it's more a hard-crunching rocker in the mould of Heart's “Bad animals” or Ten's “Spellbound”, even if it does feature some fine piano by Hicks as well as the obligatory guitar solo. Things continue more or less as they began right through to the end of the album, with “Searching for the truth” powering things out and recalling bands like Glass Tiger and Night Ranger.

It's been six years now since Balance of Power's last album, and that was a live double, and eight since their last studio offering, which could perhaps indicate that they are broken up, though their website mentions live dates for 2008. Even at that, you're talking about three years ago now, so perhaps that's the end. If so, then it's a pity, but I would still advise any self-respecting rocker to check out their product, especially the above reviewed.

TRACKLISTING
1. Higher than the sun
2. Shelter me
3. Fire dance
4. One voice
5. The pleasure room
6. Killer or the cure
7. House of Cain
8. Hard life
9. Searching for the truth



Suggested further listening: "Heathen machine", "When the world falls down, "Book of secrets"

Trollheart 06-02-2011 12:10 PM

Apologies for the absence....
 
To any who may be bothered enough to read my journal, my apologies for the somewhat longer than expected delay in posting. Sometimes life gets in the way.... Normal service has now been resumed.

Again, to any who care, I will shortly be introducing two new sections to my journal. The first will be a focus on a particular band or artiste, doing the best I can to give you a flavour of what they're about, reviewing if not their full catalogue then parts of it, and of course posting some of their songs. I'll be calling this TAKING CENTRE STAGE.

The second part will be called SPINNING THE WHEEL, and will involve random albums from my collection being reviewed. Up to now I have picked my favourite albums to post here (who wouldn't?), and this practice will continue, however for each favourite album that I review I will do my best to parallel this with one chosen at random from my database. It could be a terrible album, a great album, a so-so one, or even one (and there are many in my collection like this) that I haven't even listened to yet! Hopefully it'll make things a little more interesting, both for my readers, and hey, for me too!

Hope you enjoy the changes and again sorry for being away so long. Nice to have yaz along and hopefully you'll stick with me for what will, with any luck, be a fun ride!

Trollheart 06-02-2011 12:21 PM

American badlands, acoustic highways
 

Nebraska ---- Bruce Springsteen --- 1982 (Columbia)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-_Nebraska.jpg
There are a lot of singers, a lot of good singers and some great singers, but the proof of the pudding can often be the answer to the question: how does the singer/star stand up without his/her band behind them? In other words, are they accomplished enough an artist to stand out there and do their thing solo, or do they perhaps hide behind a great guitar player, keyboard wizard or drummer? Bruce Springsteen has long been acknowledged as one of the music world's premier singer/songwriters, a consummate artist and entertainer, and in many ways a voice for his age. He had nothing to prove really, having “made it” by the early eighties with albums like “Darkness on the edge of town”, “Born to run” and of course “The river”, but when he released “Nebraska”, only two years after that chart-smashing double album, it was very much against the grain and not what people had been expecting, least of all his fans.

Recorded originally as demo tracks for the next E Street Band album, every track is acoustic, sparse and with very little in the way of production, leading to a very raw feeling on each. Springsteen eventually decided to release the demos as the next album, and “Nebraska” was born, as he recounts below:

"I was just doing songs for the next rock album, and I decided that what always took me so long in the studio was the writing. I would get in there, and I just wouldn't have the material*written, or it wasn't written well enough, and so I'd record for a month, get a couple of things, go home write some more, record for another month — it wasn't very efficient. So this time, I got a little*Teac*four-track cassette machine, and I said, I'm gonna record these songs, and if they sound good with just me doin' 'em, then I'll teach 'em to the band. I could sing and play the guitar, and then I had two tracks to do somethin' else, like overdub a guitar or add a harmony. It was just gonna be a demo. Then I had a littleEchoplex*that I mixed through, and that was it. And that was the tape that became the record. It's amazing that it got there, 'cause I was carryin' that cassette around with me in my pocket without a case for a couple of week, just draggin' it around. Finally, we realized, "Uh-oh, that's the album." Technically, it was difficult to get it on a disc. The stuff was recorded so strangely, the needle would read a lot of distortion and wouldn't track in the wax. We almost had to release it as a cassette."

(From interview with “Rolling Stone” magazine, December 1984. Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Whether it happened as he relates above, or whether it was all planned ahead of time to be this way, what emerged was an album which has polarised opinion among his fans. Some loved it, seeing it as the “real” Springsteen, stripped of --- well, everything! --- and the man going back to basics. Others thought it was a bleak, depressing record, and after the highs of 1980's “The River”, it was a real come-down. Personally, I love it, and though it's not an album you listen to if you want to be cheered up (!), it stands as a classic in the man's considerable repertoire.

Kicking off with the title track, you get a good idea of what you're in for here. Low, mournful harmonica, sparse acoustic guitar, no percussion whatever, and Springsteen's powerful yet quiet voice, like a prophet crying in the wildeness. Similar to Steve Earle's “Billy Austin”, “Nebraska” tells the tale, in the first person, of a “Bonnie and Clyde” couple who are so bored with their humdrum lives that they decide to go on a killing spree in a car: “From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska/ With a sawed-off four-ten on my lap/ Through the badlands of Wyoming/ I killed everything in my path.” Apparently this song is based on tbe real-life killer Charles Starkweather. There's no explanation at the end, no reason why the couple did what they did, when they're caught and sentenced to death: “They declared me unfit to live/ Said into the great void my soul'd be hurled/ They wanna know why I did what I did/ Sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.”

These are not songs of love, nor redemption, nor good-time songs. They're not songs of hope, but mostly of depair, as the characters realise they can never break out of their situation, like “Johnny 99” later in the album, or the unnamed driver in “State Trooper”. There's no escape for these people, and the sense of brooding frustration that coats every track, every line, bleeds through the album like liquid desperation. It's America, far from the land of the free, or the home of the brave, that Springsteen sings about here. It's honest, ordinary, unremarkable for the most part people, going about their dull lives and doing their best to survive, doing what they have to do to make it through to the next day.

“Atlantic City” is a “Jungleland” for the 80s, a more uptempo track but still in essence a tale of people trapped by their circumstamces and their station in life: “I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end/ So last night I met this guy/ And I'm gonna do a little favour for him.” The aforementioned “Johnny 99” is almost funny in its way, as the poor guy gets 99 years for an attempted bank robbery, but the message is clear as Johnny makes his plea: “Your honour, I do believe I'd be better off dead/ And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head/ Won't you sit back in that chair/ Think it over just one more time/ Let 'em shave off my hair/ And put me on that execution line?”

After the bleak introduction of “Nebraska” things do rock out a little more with tracks like the above, “Atlantic City” and later on “Open all night”, but mostly they're dark, desolate ballads which always tell a story. The paucity of instrumentation and lack of a band pushes you to concentrate on the content of the songs, to listen to the stories, like the tough decision faced by the cop in “Highway Patrolman” as he tries to balance doing his job with looking after his troublesome brother, Frankie. “I catch him when he's fallin'/ Like any brother would/ Man turns his back on his family/ Well he just ain't no good.”

One of the best tracks, in my opinion, on the album, comes up next, the toe-tappingly catchy “State Trooper”, with nothing but Springsteen's voice and his strumming guitar to carry the song, his voice echoing into the darkness like the cry of the damned on a highway to oblivion. The guitar work gets quite loud and insistent here, the closest to electric on the album, apart from the later “Open all night”, which truly rocks out. Before that, there's a stark contrast between Springsteen's current status of rock god with the kid sung about in “Used cars”, as he declares “Mister the day the lottery I win/ I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again.”

Then we're up to the standout track, as already pointed towards earlier. By far the fastest and rockiest, and even most upbeat of the songs on “Nebraska”, “Open all night” is a fifties-style rocker that just radiates exuberance, joy in the face of bleak despair, for a while. A real “cars and girls” song, the kind of thing Springsteen made his name on, it's a real “Two fingers to the world”, and a short oasis of hope in a sea of despair. In some ways, it really doesn't belong on the album, which is so dark, and yet, through every night must shoot some shaft of light, be it the first glimmers of the dawn, the stars blinking in the sky high above, or just the moon peeking out from a cloud for just a moment, before it is once again swallowed by the night, and the world plunged back into darkness. "Open all night" is that shaft of light on "Nebraska".

If you approach “Nebraska” expecting another “Born in the USA” or even “Tunnel of love”, you'll be disappointed, but if you want to hear WHY Springsteen was once rated as the best songer/songwriter since Dylan, this is the album you want to listen to. Just leave the razor blades out of reach, okay?

TRACKLISTING

1. Nebraska
2. Atlantic City
3. Mansion on the hill
4. Johnny 99
5. Highway patrolman
6. State trooper
7. Used cars
8. Open all night
9. My father's house
10. Reason to believe



Suggested further listening: "Born to run", "Darkness on the edge of town", "The river", "Tunnel of love", "Born in the USA"

Trollheart 06-02-2011 05:54 PM

The wake of Magellan --- Savatage --- 1997 (Atlantic)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_magellan.jpg
Savatage started life as a standard metal band, but after vocalist Jon Oliva saw “The Phantom of the Opera” he decided to change the band's direction towards a more progressive feel, and albums like “Gutter ballet” and “Streets: A Rock Opera” reflect this. Recorded in 1997, “The wake of Magellan” turned out to be their penultimate album, as a few years previous they had formed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which has proved so popular and successful that they are now concentrating on that project, and no new Savatage albums have been released since 2001's “Poets and madmen”.

A concept album, TWoM is based on two real-life events, and basically follows the journey of a Spanish sailor who has decided to end his life by sailing out to sea and sinking his ship. On the way though he encounters a man adrift in the ocean, this being apparently a reference to the three castaways thrown overboard by the captain of the Maersk Dubai in 1996. Doing his utmost to save the man and take him back to shore, the sailor is left with a new appreciation for life. The album also loosely includes the tragic story of Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, who battled to expose the criminal drug lords in Irish society and was killed by them as a consequence, but whose work opened the floodgates for these people to be brought to justice and properly tackled by the authorities.

Opening with a piano instrumental, “The ocean”, the power soon kicks in as the band launch into “Welcome”, virtually a second intro in its own right, with its almost “Pinball Wizard”-esque intro, guitars crashing like breakers on the shore as the song takes wing. It's a short song, just over two minutes, and thunders into “Turns to me”, which starts slowly but builds into a monster of a track, six minutes long and the first “epic” on the album. The vocal power of Zachary Stevens, who would leave the band after this album, are given full vent on this song, and the keyboards of Jon Oliva squeal and keep pace while the pounding drums of Jeff Plate paint a background against which the song gallops along. The central theme of the album surfaces in “Turns to me”, and will return in other tracks, subtly altered, giving the true “concept album” feel. The track goes through changes itself, moving from power rocker to introspective passages, through guitar solos and back into power mode as it thunders towards its conclusion. The solo by Chris Caffrey/ Al Pitrelli on axe duties takes the song to its end, as it fades and “Morning sun” begins.

This too is a song shaped by changes, as it begins easily, with acoustic guitar and a calm vocal suddenly grabbed by the throat as Plate's drums hammer out the beat and the guitars rev up and Stevens growls “I can't wait for the morning sun/ As I stand with the sea/ And the ocean she understands/ Just the man I could be.” This is another long song, just short of six minutes, with again another great guitar solo halfway through, and something of an axe duel between the two guitarists; indeed it ends on a guitar solo, kicking into “Another way”, recalling Metallica at their best, as Jon Oliva takes over lead vocals, on perhaps one of the heaviest tracks on the album, heavy in a Led Zep/Dio way: crunching, grinding, Oliva growling the vocals in sharp contrast to the more melodic voice of Stevens. Definite echoes of Jimmy Page's “Come with me” in part of the melody.

Things continue heavy, and turn sort of Thin Lizzy-ish (circa “Thunder and lightning”) for “Blackjack Guillotine”, before Oliva again takes over on vocals for one of the standout tracks, “Paragons of innocence”, which begins with a “Tubular Bells” intro on the piano, which keeps up behind the grinding guitars and thumping drums, with Oliva singing “Paragons of innocence/ Questioning of your intent/ Never quite sure what you meant/ From the other side / Moments on the carousel/ Must admit we ride it well/ And the horses never tell/ That no-one leaves alive.” Apparently the new Pendragon album features (gasp!) a rap, but here Savatage do it so much better, and almost 15 years earlier as Oliva rattles off without taking a breath: “There always comes a time/ When you do what you want to do/ You know you shouldn't do it/ But you do it anyway/ And when he had that time/ When he knew what he wanted to/Hequickly placed his order/ Though he never thought he'd pay/ But the lines turned to lies/ And the lies turned to tangles/ And you're pale as a cadaver/ Though you think it doesn't show/ So you live with the lies/ And the friends that it gathers /But somewhere in your heart you know you/ Got to let it /Got to let it go.”

The instrumental “Underture” recalls the central theme of the album begun on “Welcome” and “Turns to me”, with at times Queen-esque guitar, while the last instrumental passage, “The Storm”, is quite amazing in its versatility, but it's the title track that steals pride of place on the album, another six-minute monster, tracing the evolution of the theme of the album, essentially covering the whole journey of the central character in one track, as Stevens cries “I believe what the prophets said/ That the oceans hold their dead/ But at night when the waves are near/ They whisper and I hear.”

The longest track on the album is also the last. Clocking in at a massive eight minutes and five seconds, it brings everything back full circle as the sailor, having rescued the drowning stowaway, leaves his ship and walks along the shoreline, contemplating life and no longer thinking of suicide. He recalls his journey: “The wind touched the sail/ And the ship moved the ocean/ The wind from the storm set the course she would take/ From a journey to nowhere towards a soul on the ocean/ From the wake of Magellan/ To Magellan's wake.” --- to his sudden realisation that he wants to live: MUST live, in order to save this man, and his desperate plea to God --- “Could you keep our lives together/ Safely back onto the shore/ Could you grant this last ilusion/ Only this and nothing more?” --- till he is safely back on land with his rescued friend --- and so to the closing lines of the song, and the album, and the resolution of the story.

“Standing once more by a boat on the river/ He pushes it off while he stays on the land/ And seeing the hourglass now so much clearer/ Which someone had refilled by hand/ And somewhere that boat's now adrift on the ocean/ The mast at full sail and there's no-one on board/ The hourglass no longer sits by the ocean/ Only his footprints all alone on the shore/ And soon they're no more.”

It's a rare and difficult thing for an established heavy metal band to make the transition to progressive metal, or rock, though some claim the quintessential metal band, Iron Maiden, are doing just that. However, here I believe Savatage got it just right. The album is still heavy, with great melodies, vocal harmonies and screeching guitar solos, yet deep, thoughtful lyrics and contemplative piano work which all goes together to make this a truly excellent effort, and well worth listening to. At some point, I'll review an album by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, to compare the two as it were incarnations of the band, but for now, this stands as a testament to their expertise.

TRACKLISTING

1. The ocean
2. Welcome
3. Turns to me
4. Morning sun
5. Another way
6. Blackjack guillotine
7. Paragons of innocence
8. Complaint in the system (Veronica Guerin)
9. Underture
10. The wake of Magellan
11. Anymore
12. The storm
13. The hourglass

NSW 06-02-2011 09:32 PM

Very awesome write up Trollheart. The only Savatage album I have is "Dead Winter Dead", which honestly didn't really grab my attention. But your excitement over "The Wake of Magellan" and the vids you posted got me hoping this one will be a bit more enthralling. The idea that the entire album tells a shorty is pretty interesting too. Downloaded and will be listened to very soon!

I love Trans-Siberian Orchestra, so I look forward to your future review of one of their albums.

Trollheart 06-03-2011 11:42 AM

Hey nsw, thanks a buncheroonie for commenting! Very much appreciated. I can see from the views that people are at least reading what I write, but it's nice when people comment (you hear that, all you people out in Music Banter Land? Comment! Come on! Let me know what you think!), the moreso of course when it's positive.

I have all of Savatage's albums but to date have only listened to the Wake of Magellan: the rest are on the list (like about a thousand million other albums yet to be listened to --- curse this intenet! :)), but I would definitely recommend listening to TWoM if you like good rock and prog rock. Great album.

By the way, LOVE your avatar! Poor Jason! :D

Thanks and don't be a stranger... :wave:

Trollheart 06-03-2011 01:35 PM


Mind bomb --- The The --- 1989 (Epic)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...b_CD_cover.jpg

If there's one man who knows his politics, and isn't afraid to show it in his music, it's Matt Johnson. The driving force behind uncatagorisable band The The, Johnson scored a massive (and largely unexpected, one would assume) hit with his previous album, the million-selling “Infected”, which spawned four chart singles and made being into The The “cool”. This fad was soon dropped of course, as fads always are, and the glitterati moved on, to pursue the Next Big Thing. But Johnson's work stands as a testament not only to the man's vision and prowess as a songwriter and musician, but to his dogged refusal to shy away from the more controversial subjects in his music. In short, if Johnson felt strongly about something, he wrote and sang about it, and to hell with airplay,

“Mind bomb” was The The's third official album (Johnson had released a debut in 1981 called “Blue burning soul”, but it is generally not regarded as an offical The The album), and after the garish and even nightmarish artwork on previous opus “Infected”, the sleeve of this album was blank, a white canvas with the title in red underneath a simple black and white photograph of Matt's head, he looking every inch the nasty skinhead, a contemptuous smirk on his lips, proving once and for all that you cannot judge a book by its cover.

In many ways, “Mind bomb” carries on the themes explored on “Infected” --- alienation, despair, desperation and contempt, along with a healthy dose of savage sarcasm and satirical wit --- but in a different vein to the rather dancy previous album. The opener, “Good morning beautiful”, starts with what sounds to be an Islamic chant --- you know the sort, the ones they call from the minarets for prayers (apologies to any practicing muslims if it isn't, but I don't know too much about Islam. Enlighten me through these pages if you wish), before a solitary piano takes up the rather mournful tune, joined shortly afterwards by a saxophone, and Johnson's voice, dripping with anger and barely-restrained violence, snarls “I know that God lives in everybody's soul/ And the only devil in your world/ Lives in the human heart.” Okay, “Love me do” it's not gonna be!

The song is slow-paced, like a fuse slowly burning down, and you know that when it reaches the end there's going to be one hell of an explosion! As the track progresses, drumbeat keeping steady rhythm like the drum on a slave ship, Matt's voice gets more and more angry, as if he's losing patience with someone who just will not see, can't understand what he's talking about, what he's trying to tell them. “Who is it?” he asks, “that can turn your blood into spirit/ And your spirit into blood?/ Who is it who can reach down from above/ And set your souls ablaze with love?/ Or fill you with the insanity of violence/ And its brother, lust?” The basic melody remains the same through the entire song, which is no mean feat, considering it's over seven minutes long! Eventually he gives up, snarling in contempt “Oh children, you still got a lot to ****ing learn/ The only path to Heaven is via Hell!” The song ends on a very ominous bass piano note, and my own personal belief is that Matt is playing God, literally, in this song: he is looking down on the world from Heaven (or, according to Homer Simpson, his palace on the moon!) and wondering when mankind will grow up and realise its potential: or will it just destroy itself? Powerful stuff, and a great opener to the album.

Matt shows his playful side next, with the frankly hilariously dark intro to “Armageddon days are here (again)”, recalling the Sweet from the intro to “Ballroom Blitz”, as he asks “Are you ready Jesus? Buddha? Mohammed? Well alright fellas, let's go!” Even the drumbeat recalls the Sweet's classic, as Johnson launches into a tale of the state the world is in, an ominous hum behind him like the Welsh Male Voice Choir is coming up from the rear. “Armageddon” carries some fantastic lines, including incredible foresight in lyrics like “Islam is rising, the Christians mobilising/ The world is on its elbows and knees” --- and remember, this is 1989, 12 years before nine-eleven! Johnson digs at Thatcher too, recalling the Falklands War with “You watch the ships sail out of the harbour/ And the bodies come floating back.”

But the best line in the song is about halfway through, when he snaps “If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today/ He'd be gunned down cold by the CIA .../ But God didn't build himself that throne/ God doesn't live in Israel or Rome/ God doesn't belong to the Yankee Dollar/ God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezz'bollah/ God doesn't even go to church!” The tempo of the track is about mid-paced, a toe-tapper apart from the lyrical material, with strings section adding to the eastern flavour of the song, and taking it to its frenetic conclusion.

And with a backdrop of rolling thunder, and an evangelical voice shouting “As long as God gives us everything we want, we love Him!” we're into one of the sharpest of the tracks on the album, “The violence of truth”, with organ and harmonica (organ and mouth-organ?) introducing a tough, again mid-paced track focussing on the evils in the world. The unmistakable guitar of ex-Smiths Johnny Marr take the track into its second minute before Johnson opens his mouth, and asks “While the ******s of this world are starving/ With their mouths wide open/ What is it that turns the coins we throw at them/ Into worthless little tokens?” The album is a good rocker, and if you ignore the lyrics, you can dance to it, if you want to, but it's as a political statement that “Mind bomb” really comes into its own. Hey, if this guy ran for election, I'd vote for him! Course, I'm Irish, but it's the thought that counts!

I'm no big Sinead O'Connor fan, but she puts in a star turn in this duet with Matt on “Kingdom of rain”, the ultimate anti-love song. Carried on a wave of guitar and piano, with a throbbing bass keeping time with an almost mocking organ, this is the song which possibly prompted Jon Bon Jovi to write “This ain't a love song”. If you've ever had a bad break-up (and who hasn't?) this is the song for you. More a revenge/told-you-so song than a ballad, lines like “You were the girl I wanted to cry with/ You were the girl I wanted to die with/ You were the boy who turned into a man/ Broke my heart and let go of my hand” show the sentiments behind this song. This is love in all its nasty glory, when the hearts and flowers have faded, when the kisses are no longer warm, when the sparkle in the eyes has dimmed, when, in effect, the honeymoon is over. Sinead sings “I just wanted someone to caress/ This damsel in distress,” while Matt moans “But as silent as the car lights/ Move across the room/ As cold as our bodies/ Silhouetted by the moon/ And I would lie awake and wonder/ Is it just me?/ Or is this the way that love is supposed to be?” But the end result is unavoidable: “Our bed is empty, the fire is out/ And all the love we've got to give/ Has all squirted out.” Do NOT listen to with your new girl or boyfriend, you have been warned!

The next track up could be sung by the Beautiful South, it's just that boppy and poppy, and was in fact a hit single from the album, but don't be fooled. Look deeper, listen to the lyric, and you'll see it's just “Heartland” from “Infected” dressed up. It's another song about poverty, destitution and an uncaring government. “The Beat(en) Generation” is absolutely the most danceable and catchy tune on the album, but even here Johnson does not take a break from his urgent preaching about the state of the world. I had a workmate once who, when this was in the charts, would go around humming the tagline, but knew nothing further of the lyric, much less what the song was about. A danger always in catching the attention of the record-buying public, who can tend to ignore the deeper message in a song in favour of its beat, but then, Matt has to eat, so we'll have to let him have that one!

Sadly, the remaining three tracks do not live up to the incredible standard set by the five that went before, and I find them somewhat unremarkable, especially the closer, “Beyond love”, which really is something of an attempt I think to reduce the dark, desperate, almost suicidal tone of the album, and which for me does not work. Ah well, it's a rare album that has no flaws, eh?

There's no doubting that the musicians on this album are accomplished (who would deny it of Johnny Marr?), but there are no mad guitar solos, no long keyboard intros, and in fact in many ways the music is only there of necessity, to form a backdrop to the lyrics, the ideas and the thoughts of the album's creator. It would not be a stretch to say this could in fact be spoken as poetry, which is not to take away from the music or the players, but the heart of “Mind bomb” IS the lyrics, and if you were to somehow strip out the vocals and listen to it karaoke-style, you would probably think it's an okay album, but it's not the juggernaut that I write of here without the deep and meaningful, and intensely personal lyrics that Johnson uses, like Doctor Frankenstein using electricty, to bring his project to life. It really is an album that has to be listened to, and not just in an offhand way, You'll get so much more from it it you immerse yourself in it totally, and yes, as the title suggests, if you sit back and allow it to, this album will blow your mind!

TRACKLISTING

1. Good morning beautiful
2. Armageddon days are here (again)
3. The violence of truth
4. Kingdom of rain
5. The beat(en) generation
6. August and September
7. Gravitate to me
8. Beyond love



Suggested further listening: "Soul mining", "Infected", "Dusk"

Trollheart 06-04-2011 01:13 PM

Raingods with zippos --- Fish --- 2003 (Roadrunner)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...h_raingods.jpg
I truly believe Fish will never equal, let alone transcend, his debut solo album, 1990's “Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors”, perhaps not only because it's a cracker of an album, but also because it was his decision to leave Marillion that alienated many of his former fans, and they perhaps wanted to see him fall flat on his face, which he totally failed to do. But if there's a second-greatest (so far) Fish album, it's this one. It also features Steven Wilson on guitar --- how cool is that?

The album is essentially divided into two parts, the first being made up of 6 original songs and one cover version, with part two being devoted to a single composition, broken into six parts, and clocking in at a Grendel-busting (in-joke for Marillion fans there!) twenty-four minutes. It's this latter that truly defines the album. Without the epic, “Raingods with zippos” would be a good album, but not overly brilliant, and although there are excellent songs making up the “first half” of the album, it really only comes into its own, and becomes a true masterpiece of progressive rock, with the addition of “Plague of ghosts”. But more of that later.

The album kicks off extremely gently, with a lilting piano intro to “Tumbledown”, the opening track, lulling the listener into perhaps a false sense of security as they settle down for what is expected to be a nice ballad to introduce the album. However, soon this belief is shattered, and the track kicks into gear, with thumping drums, churning guitars and stabbing keyboards. It bops along at a decent pace for most of the time, only slowing again as it comes to an end, leaving as it came, on a gentle piano outro. Although there is no actual title track, the phrase is revisited a few times on the album, and here for the first time as Fish sings [i]“Raingods with zippos/ A tin man's bleeding heart/ An end with no beginning/ It's just a race without a start.”[/] Don't ask me what the song is about: Fish writes great lyrics, but half the time I haven't got a clue what he's on about!

“Mission statement” keeps the pace going, bopping along at a nice lick. It's okay but nothing special, sort of reminds me of Lizzy's “Leave this town”, and it's followed by a truly beautiful ballad. The bittersweet story of a love affair coming to an end, “Incomplete” features a duet between Fish and a lady called Elizabeth Antwi, about whom I know nothing, but she has a very luxuriant voice which complements Fish's well, as he sings “We got a hundred and forty stations on satellite/Beaming them down to our home/ But I'm watching you” and Elizabeth replies “I got a half a billion bills to pay/ You never hear a word I say.” It's the classic tale of a breakdown in communication in a marriage or affair, and harks back to Fish's early days with Marillion, where he penned on “Punch and Judy” the lines “What ever happened to pillow fights?/ What ever happened to jeans so tight, Friday night?/ What ever happened to Lovers' Lane?/ What ever happened to passion games?/ Sunday walks in the pouring rain?” In the same way here, each of the protagonists are trying to figure out where it has all gone wrong.

[i]“If we could only bring those days back”[/], sings Fish wistfully, “When there were never wounds to heal/ When everything was perfect/ And the dreams we had were real.” It's a familiar story, and the song is carried on acoustic guitar, with heartfelt mandolin played by Bruce Watson (Big Country) and the stunning string arrangements of Davey Crichton laying a heartbreaking backdrop to this tale of love gone bad. It's followed by “Tilted cross”, almost a ballad in its own right, but this is a song about memories and markers we leave along the road of our lives. It's a gentle, again almost acoustic song with some great harmonies from Nicola and Tony King (are they related? I don't know) as Fish sings “I left my love in a grave and I marked it/ With a cross that stands so straight and true/ It's not alone in the shade of the valley/ They're what remains of the ones we once knew.” The song keeps the same basic melody throughout, and the tempo doesn't lift above the leisurely; it's a relaxing song, half-ballad I guess.

I've always been a firm believer that if a songwriter is accomplished enough he or she should have no truck with cover versions. Okay, maybe live, or on a greatest hits package, but come on! I buy Fish albums for Fish songs, not covers! So it will come as no surprise that I will be glossing over the inclusion of the Alex Haley standard “Faith healer” here. It's not to say it's a bad version, but I just feel it unfairly takes the place of another original composition that could have been included on the album.

The “first part” of the album then comes to a gentle end with “Rites of passage”, another ballad, with some great lines --- Fish is one of the masters of sharp satire and sarcasm, so lines like “Living with you is like being parked/ On double yellow lines/ Waiting to be towed away/ I'll pay the fine/ And I'll be back” fit in really well to this gentle but acid ballad. He sings “You knew that it was wrong/ And you think that saying sorry/ Is gonna make it seem all right,” A truly mournful violin carries the chorus side of the song, joined halfway through by sad keyboards that manage to convey the slow breaking of a heart. The song fades out on an absolutely gorgeous piano outro, lasting almost two and a half minutes out of the over seven-minute track. It also serves as something of an intro to what is to come.

Sprawling over a massive 24 minutes and 26 seconds, Fish's magnum opus, “Plague of ghosts”, has to be heard to be believed. Starting with “Old haunts”, swirling keys and synths set the scene as Fish wails “I found a home in the darkness”. This is the introduction to the song proper, and as such only lasts just over three minutes before the percussion kicks in to take us to part II, “Digging deep”, a funky, down-in-the-dirt rocker, with Steven Wilson's guitar taking charge and the vocal split between singing and a spoken, almost poetic declamation by Fish, with lines like “We watched an insect stray to the edge of its world/ A lily pad stretched over a green mirror/ In which the ghost carp swirl/ Like clouds before the storm/ This is the season of the rains/ This is incoming.”

The whole structure of PoG gives me the idea of a man who has become fed up with his life, and gone into the jungle to try and find himself. Immersing himself in the wildlife there, he finds it much easier to stay there: things are simpler, and he realises he really doesn't want to go back. This is definitely a follow-on from the conversation and break-up in “Rites of passage”, so much so that that song could almost be included in the whole “Plague of ghosts”, though it is cited as a separate song. Hey, I guess “Incomplete” could be part of that story, too. And “Tilted cross”, come to think of it...

Part III is called “Chocolate frogs” (don't ask!) and is split into two parts, the first a narrative, Attenborough-like, of the wildlife, while the synths and keyboards keep a muted hum, almost like they're waiting, waiting for something. Then Fish sings what sounds like an old Scottish nursery rhyme: “A heid (sic) full of chocolate frogs/ A pocketful of rush/ A skinful of shrapnel/ And a skinful of bush/ An eyeful of the future/ And a bellyful of the past/ Beautiful the present/ When you know it cannae (sic) last”.

This then powers into the denouement of the piece, part IV, “Waving at stars”, where the man thinks hard about the choices he has made, and wonders if perhaps this is not the way to go? Piano takes the tune directly into its core, its identity if you will, part V, “Raingods dancing”. The theme turns somewhat ominous for a moment, before the piano tinkles out and Fish muses “Empty playgrounds, empty bars/ I can't remember how it was before the flood/ When all I really had to do was recognise/ The love that's trapped inside.” He seems to be contemplating suicide, as the music swirls around him like mad dervishes, urging him on, and he doesn't know where to. “Raingods with zippos” he sings sadly, “A tin man rusts away/ And slowly falls apart/ Raingods with zippos/ And all he leaves behind/ A bleeding, broken heart.”

Finally, Part VI concludes the opus, as “Wake up call (Make it happen)” brings hope into the man's life, as he wakes (has he dreamed all of this?) beside his sleeping wife, and decides/hopes to give their relationship another try. The piano is brighter, happier, and the ensemble band carry the song to its hopeful conclusion as Fish sings”I can make it happen if I want to/ Make it happen if I try/ Forgive, forget. Forever/ Never means as much as it does today.” He does however realise there are no easy answers, as he asks his sleeping wife “When I wake up/ Will you be there?/ It can never be the same/ If we can take our lives slowly/ Step be step, we can be dancing in the rain.”

So in the end it's a journey, from anger and remorse and heartache, through self-doubt, self-absorption and indulgence to realisation and in the end catharsis and rebirth. Or not. Maybe it's just a hell of a good album. Either way, I'd be very surprised if anyone who listened to this recording did not enjoy it. Definitely one of the fishy one's finest.
TRACKLISTING

1. Tumbledown
2. Mission statement
3. Incomplete
4. Tilted cross
5. Faith healer
6. Rites of passage
7. PLAGUE OF GHOSTS (I) Old haunts (ii) Digging deep (iii) Chocolate frogs (iv)Waving at stars (v) Raingods dancing (vi) Wake up call (Make it happen)


Suggested further listening: "Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors", "Internal exile", "Sunsets on empire", "Field of crows"

Trollheart 06-05-2011 10:35 AM

Still to come, later in the programme...
 
As mentioned already, I will be introducing some new elements into my journal, of which “Spinning the Wheel” and "Taking Centre Stage" will be two, but I will also be starting “Random Track of the Day”, in which I pick a track at random from my collection and tell you about it and upload it --- could be good, could be great, could be bad, could be something I haven't even listened to yet! Also I'll be taking some of my favourite tracks and mixing them together so that they all flow one into the other, and uploading that to the site, while also explaining what's in it and how the tracks merge together. That will be called Ten from Trollheart, as I'll be mixing (you guessed it!) ten tracks in each file.

As ever, comment and discussion is invited. If you like/hate any of these new sections, do please let me know. More sections and features will be added as they come to me in feverish drug-induced dreams, providing the King of the Potato People lets me....

starrynight 06-05-2011 05:06 PM

I've heard the classic Springsteen albums but I like the 1975-85 live set more, somehow it comes alive more when live.

Trollheart 06-11-2011 06:54 PM

Oh there's no doubt Springsteen is at his best when live. I too have the boxset and though I don't get to listen to it very often (it's on vinyl and my record player took a header off my shelf last year, never replaced it!) it is a joy to experience.

The whole "live vs studio" thing will actually be covered by me in some depth in an upcoming entry, watch out for it....

Trollheart 06-12-2011 06:41 PM

A note to whoever....
 
Anyone who has read my previous reviews will note, from here on in, a marked difference in those that come after. As I am not really qualified to properly critique musical performances, and as I have never been totally comfortable passing judgement upon someone for doing something I can't, my reviews will from now on concentrate more on the lyrics, themes and concepts of the albums, trying to get inside the writers' heads and explain what the albums are about, or at least, what they seem to me to be about.

I will of course still refer to the playing --- you couldn't review an album without some sort of reference to the instruments and how they're used --- but to a much lesser extent. After all, if you want to hear what the album is like, you can click the Youtube selections, or indeed, download the album for yourself. I should also point out that although in some cases I will review an album track-by-track, if I feel it merits such treatment, there will be albums which I will deal with differently, perhaps only picking out a few sample tracks, perhaps reviewing most tracks but not all, perhaps only omitting one or two tracks. This doesn't necessarily mean that I consider them bad tracks, though it can be more or less taken as read that if they're passed over, it's due to other tracks being more worthy of review. In general, instrumentals will not be reviewed in any real depth, though of course on a purely instrumental album that rule would not apply.

Basically, I'll be reviewing as much or as little of the album as I feel is needed, but that's purely based on my own opinion, and should not be taken as representative of anything else. Hopefully the reviews will be better for this new format, if not do as usual please let me know.

Trollheart 06-12-2011 06:52 PM

Keeping the Faith or just Crushed? --- an examination of the later work of Bon Jovi
 
I'd like to depart from the usual format of reviewing one album at a time, and in this entry I want to look at three* of the later Bon Jovi releases, to perhaps counter the somewhat widely-held belief that the boys from New Jersey are no longer a force to be reckoned with, which I hotly dispute. Sure, the glory days of “Slippery when wet” and “New Jersey” are long gone, but the band are older (like all of us), wiser (can't claim that in MY case!) and know their audience has grown older with them, and I would hypothesise are changing to meet the requirements and tastes of those who used to rock out to “You give love a bad name” and don their stetsons for “Wanted”, or who jumped up and down at the gigs when “Born to be my baby” was played, and swayed to “I'll be there for you.”

(* Note: due to the length of this entry exceeding apparently the maximum allowed for one post, I have to split it into two, so the review for "The Circle" will be in a separate entry, posted next)

Bon Jovi are, I'm sure, reaching new fans with their music, both old and new, but it is the ones who bought “Slippery” in their millions that put them where they are, and these I would imagine the boys are still writing, and changing for. Change is generally good, as long as it's productive change, and to be honest I have yet to come across a bad Bon Jovi album. So here I present three offerings from their “later period”, as my contention that Jon and the boys still rock with the best of them.

Trollheart 06-12-2011 06:56 PM

These days ---- Bon Jovi --- 1995 (Mercury)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ront_Cover.jpg

Without question one of, if not THE darkest Bon Jovi albums, “These days” was something of a surprise. Up to now we had had the likes of “Slippery when wet”, “New Jersey” and “Keep the faith”, and even if the latter had the odd “serious” song (“Dry county”, “Fear” and the title track), not to mention the extremely weird “If I was your mother”, we had up to this been used to Bon Jovi songs being, for want of a better word, happy. Songs like “Let it rock”, “Wild in the streets”, “Born to be my baby”, “99 in the shade”, “Blame it on the love of rock and roll” and so on, all carried with them a message of hope and fun --- good-time songs. Sure there were the ballads (what would a Bon Jovi album be without ballads?), but you expect them to be sad. But the other songs on the albums up to now had, in general, been what would be described as “up” songs. “These days” was the first time Bon Jovi not only wrote “down” songs, but a whole album full of them!

It begins in storming form, with the rocker “Hey God”, but even before the track starts you hear Jon say “We ready?” to which someone --- Richie I think --- replies “Just about!” and Jon sighs and says “Let's go.” It's not a joyous “Two-three-four!” or even an “All right fellas, let's do this thing!” It's more a fatalistic, shrugging comment more linked with doing something you really would rather not be doing, and whether that was a genuine reflection of how he, and the band, felt when cutting this album is unclear. However, it does point towards a very dour, dark attitude towards the subject matter, and that is borne out in what follows, for over an hour of music.

“Hey God” is a powerful, fast song, but it's in the lyric where we really see what it's all about, where the song is heading, what it's trying to say, and we can see too the direction the album is going to go. It's a plea to a god, perhaps not believed in, to right the wrongs of the world. “Hey God!” snarls Jon, “Tell me what the hell is goin' on? / It seems like all the good ****'s gone/ It keeps on getting hatder hangin' on/ Hey hey hey hey God/ There's nights you know I wanna scream/ These days you're even harder to believe/ I know how busy you must be/ But hey hey hey hey God/ Do you ever think about me?” The song goes on to detail evils of the world, with Richie's guitar whining like a devil from the pits of Hell, Jon growling out the lyric with all the venom and anger of someone who's lost someone dear. “Born into the ghetto, 1991/ Just a happy child playin'/ 'neath the summer sun/ Vacant lot's his playground/ By 12 he got a gun/ The odds are bet against him/ Junior don't make 21.”

It's a powerful start to the album, and continues in “Something for the pain”, where Jon mourns “I opened up my heart/ But all I did was bleed.” Things slow down then for the first ballad from the album, perhaps the first anti-ballad, “This ain't a love song.” It's played softly and quietly as you would expect a ballad to be, but the lyric is anything but a love song, in which Jon declares that “Only fools are know-it-alls”. It's a long way from “Never say goodbye” or even “I'l be there for you”. It's followed by the title track, which starts off balladic, with a gentle piano and guitar intro, but soon becomes clear as a searing indictment of society, more or less continuing the theme explored in “Hey God”. In some ways, I guess this album could be considered almost a concept album, given that the same basic themes resonate through all the songs, be they fast or slow --- alienation, injustice, the casual and accepted cruelty of the world and the nagging despair that it will never get any better. The opening lines declare Jon's perceived position in the world, just trying to keep his head down and get through life. “I was walking around/ Just a face in the crowd/ Tryin' to keep myself out of the rain.” It's a painful song to listen to lyrically, though the deceptively balladic opening does really work. It rocks along at a decent pace when it gets going, but the dark themes are there for all to see: “Even innocence has caught the midnight train”. No words of better days to come here!

It's clear from the title track that this is Bon Jovi “all grown up”. This is a mature album, with mature themes, and an adult's possibly fatalistic but certainly realistic view of the world. They may have been “Wild in the streets” in 1986, but ten years on and those streets are dark and lonely now, and less paved with gold than broken bottles, discarded burger cartons and cigarette packets. Realisation has set in as Jon sings “There ain't nobody left to take the blame.” He also realises that he is no different from anyone else trying to make it in this tough world ---- “Everybody's got their cross to bear these days” --- and in the end, it's only ourselves we can rely on, and in truth, only ourselves we have to blame for letting things get to the point they have: “There ain't nobody left but us these days.”

This leads up to the next ballad, or perhaps we should say anti-ballad, “Lie to me”, with its savagely ironic hook “If you don't love me/ lie to me/ Cos baby you're the one thing I believe.” Both ballads were big hits for Bon Jovi when released as singles, (though not in the US, for some reason: maybe people there didn't appreciate the gritty realism in the songs, preferring instead vacuous dance songs?) but those who no doubt danced, lurched and smooched to them probably let the actual meaning in the lyrics pass over their heads, as they are in no way love songs. The tempo jumps then, for a rather frenetic “Damned”, exploring the dilemma of being in love with one person who you can't have --- damned if you do, damned if you don't. “His ring is on your finger/ But my heart is in your hands.”
And that brings us to the darkest track on the album, bar none.

“As my guitar lies bleeding in my arms” is as full of despair as the title suggests, and if you weren't sure, the opening lines will leave you in no doubt: “Misery likes company/ I like the way that sounds.” Richie's axe moans, screams, cries and sounds like it's dying in his hands, while Jon declares “I can't write a love song/ The way I feel today/ I can't sing no song of hope/ I got nothing to say.” The song features some exquisite work by Mrs Sambora's favourite child, including a great solo, but even that can't lift the song out of the mire of despair and self-pity with which the lyric weighs it down.

In some ways, “As my guitar...” is the nadir of the album, being its darkest track, and the songs sort of (sort of) “cheer up” a little from there on in. It's almost like the darkest, deepest point of the tunnel has been reached, and now light can be seen glimmering, albeit faintly, in the distance. Indeed, the lyric of “As my guitar...” contains a real hint of a suicide attempt, or the intention at least, when he sings “I'd like to jump/ But I'm afraid to hit the ground.” Having come through, for the most part, the deep dark depression that led to here, the ensuing tracks contain more than a little hope, even if well disguised. They're not happy songs by any means, but they're just a little less dark. “(It's hard) letting you go” and “Hearts breaking even”, while still not love songs, are essentially songs of acceptance.

“It's hard...” starts off well, with David Bryan's almost church-organ intro, with Tico Torres's drums sounding like slow heartbeats, very echoey and muted. Some favourite Bon Jovi standards in the lyric here, like “The sky it shines a different kind of blue/ And the neighbour's dog/ He don't bark like he used to.” At times during the song, the music stops almost completely while Jon delivers the vocal, then comes back in a moment later, creating a very impressive musical canvas for the song.
It's “Hearts breaking even” though which recalls most the sort of ballads Bon Jovi are known for. It's like JBJ has realised that his love affair is over, and is now ready to recognise this, and perhaps move on. The track starts off with an almost upbeat drum/guitar intro and Jon's voice is somewhat lighter as he sings “Did I throw away the best part of my life?/ I cut you off/ Cut myself with the same damn knife.” He also uses his old favourite rhyming triplet: “I cried, I lied, Hell I almost died.” It's the song where he comes out of his stupor of self-pity and says “Go on, get on with your life/ And I'll get on with mine.” There's a realisation that there has been fault on both sides, and despite what he has told himself up to now, he is not the (only) wounded party. It's time to man up, and accept that he's made his own mess. It takes two to tango.

And so he goes searching for “Something to believe in”. It's a bleak, stripped-down track, a dramatic plea for there to be something there to hold onto. “So now I'll dust myelf off/ So now I'll suck my gut in,” he sings, and sounds like he believes it. “If I don't believe in Jesus/ How can I believe in hope?/ If I don't believe in Heaven/ How can I believe in love?” Recalling the dark bleakness of “These days”, he declares “In a world that gives you nothing/ We need something to believe in.”So from the railing at God in the opening track, JBJ has now turned back to him, and holds on, needing an anchor to keep him grounded against all the evils of the world.

In “If that's what it takes” there's the final gasps of hopeless desperation, as Jon swears to do whatever has to be done to retain his love. It's a more uptempo, almost triumphant track, as Jon goes to try to win his girl back, acknowledging the failures of the past, and the things he has done wrong, and ready to put them to one side in order to get one more chance at love.

It would seem his efforts are rewarded, as the next track is “Diamond ring”, and we can assume that Jon has got his girl and married her. The final track though puts this in doubt, but given that it is credited as an additional track, we can take solace perhaps from the belief that it is not meant, strictly speaking, to be part of the story, certainly not the end.
The true ending would appear to have been meant to be “All I need is everything”, Bon Jovi's “Sign o' the times”, another continuation of “Hey God” and “These days”, almost, in fact, bringing the story full circle.

. “Bitter wine” is tacked on at the end, and if it fits into the story at all, perhaps we can take it that this sour ballad, which details the break-up of a relationship, is either supposed to take place long after the wedding, perhaps years in the future (the lyric does mention “We met some years ago/ When we were still quite young”), but then, given the dark and often depressing nature of the album, perhaps this is how the affair ends, doomed, dead and drowned in bitter wine. It's an almost acoustic composition, quite country and western in its makeup.

I believe “These days” deserves to be applauded as a truly realistic look at the world in which we live, in a way most rock bands would not, especially one of Bon Jovi's stature and reputation, known mostly as a “soft-rock” “happy” band who seldom tackle real issues. It's a mature album, for mature listeners, and if you give it the time it deserves, I think you really will carry away a solid message from it.

What that message is, is up to you.

TRACKLISTING

1. Hey God
2. Something for the pain
3. This ain't a love song
4. These days
5. Lie to me
6. Damned
7. As my guitar lies bleeding in my arms
8. (It's hard) Letting you go
9. Hearts breaking even
10. Something to believe in
11. If that's what it takes
12. Diamond ring
13. All I want is everything
14. Bitter wine


Have a nice day ---- Bon Jovi --- 2005 (Island)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Jovi_album.jpg

This is an album typifying Bon Jovi at the top of their game. It had been three years since their last opus, the rather excellent “Bounce”, and five since 2000's “Crush”, and both albums had succeeded in somewhat erasing the dark bleak memory of “These days”. This was the “happy” Bon Jovi we all knew and loved, and though (as detailed above) I loved “These days”, and definitely agree it was something they should have done, I'm not sure two more albums of look-how-bad-the-world-is would have cut it with the fans. Primarily, like most people, I listen to music to be entertained, to enjoy and to perhaps escape the real world for a short time. This is what Bon Jovi do best, and here they are on top form.

The sleeve is a simple “happy face” drawn in black ink on red, but with downturned eyebrows, which gives the smiling face more of a nasty grin aspect, almost certainly a play on the title. The album opens with the title track, and it's straight down to business, with a song rather reminiscent of “It's my life” from “Crush”, a real anthem, a let-me-live-my-life song, in which Bon Jovi manage to make the phrase “have a nice day” mean something, er, rather else.... ”When the world gets in my face/ I say 'Have a nice day'!” There are no deep messages in this track, it's the old rebel song that every teenager from the earliest days has sung: just leave me alone to do what I like!

You can hear from the beginning that this is not a band simply going through the motions, putting out an album because their contract demands it. These guys enjoy what they do, they believe in it, and they wouldn't want to be doing anything else. The pure enjoyment continues in “I want to be loved”, another life-affirming track. I'm gonna live/ I ain't gonna die/ Don't want the world to pass me by.” Oh yeah! And the good feeling goes on in “Welcome to wherever you are”, a song of being happy with what you've got, and almost a ballad, starting off with acoustic guitar before thumping into a mid-paced rocker --- “”If you feel alone and lost/ And need a friend/ Remember every new beginning/ Is some beginning's end” --- you just can't help but be uplifted by the lyric. The joy comes to bursting point for “Who says you can't go home?”, where Jon triumphantly declares “There's only one place that call me/ One of their own/ Just a hometown boy/ Born a rollin' stone.” It's a much faster, rockier track than the preceding, but no less powerful. Sort of Springsteen-sounding, now that I listen to it. Great song. Does contain the rather odd lyric ”I hijacked a rainbow/ And crashed into a pile of gold” --- thought that might have recalled the events of 9/11 too much? Guess they slipped that one by...

Just in case someone DID pick up on that though, they're quick to slot in one of those “America/Freedom reigns” songs, but it is a good one. “Bells of freedom” hits all the right places, but it is rather embarrassingly flag-waving. Before that though comes what I believe is the best track on the album, “Last man standing”. It's the really clever tale of the only band left who actually play their instruments, and the guitar hero who leads them. Set against the background of a fairground sideshow (”Enter at your own risk/ It might change the way you think”), the audience are regaled with the story of the man who has ”No dancers, ...no diamonds/ No this boy don't lip-synch!” A powerful and sly stab at those, shall we say, less REAL bands (who mentioned X-Factor? You can't sue ME: I didn't say it!), the barker tells the rapt audience “The songs were more than music/ They were pictures from the soul/ So keep your pseudo-punk, hip-hop, pop-rock junk/And your digital downloads !” Class!

I wouldn't be such a toadie as to claim that every track on this album is excellent: there are some reasonably low-par ones, but in my opinion more good than bad, and some truly brilliant. Another great one is “Last cigarette”, another fast rocker where JBJ compares love to the last cigarette --- “I will savour it/ Wrap it round my fingertips/ Gotta taste it on my lips/ Right or wrong.” Some really clever lyrical ideas on this album, for sure. My second favourite (and it's a close run thing!) is “Novocaine”, a slow rocker telling the story of what happens after or during a breakup. It includes a great tip of the hat to one of their biggest hit singles from the past: ”There's a different kind of meaning now/ To living on a prayer/ Some don't seem to notice/ And the rest don't seem to care.”

Surprisingly for a Bon Jovi album, there's no outstanding ballad here, no real love song. There are slow tracks (“Bells of freedom” and “I am”) but the closest the album comes to a proper ballad really is “Wildflower”, which personally doesn't work for me. Perhaps it's a brave move, given that the last two albums each had three or four --- even “These days” had four clear ballads on it --- but it seems to work, and helps to make this album stand out from the previous Bon Jovi releases. Of course, at times it seems a little overstretched, with more than one sub-standard track where perhaps a really punchy ballad along the lines of “All about lovin' you” or “Lie to me” might have fit better, but though this would not ever go down in history as the best --- or even one of the best --- Bon Jovi albums, it can hold its head high, waving the standard for the boys from Jersey. Hey man – have a nice day, y'hear?

TRACKLISTING

1. Have a nice day
2. I want to be loved
3. Welcome to wherever you are
4. Who says you can't go home
5. Last man standing
6. Bells of freedom
7. Wildflower
8. Last cigarette
9. I am
10. Complicated
11. Novocaine
12. Story of my life
13. Dirty little secret
14. Unbreakable

Trollheart 06-12-2011 07:01 PM

The Circle --- Bon Jovi --- 2009 (Island)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...The_Circle.jpg

After what some considered a disappointing album in 2007's “Lost horizon”, due to its perceived leanings towards the country side of rock, Bon Jovi's eleventh studio album was awaited with not only anticipation, but also a measure of trepidation by the fans. The fear that the band were moving away from the rock sound of old, that had characterised albums like “Slippery when wet”, “Keep the faith” and “Crush”, and on which they had built their reputation and their fanbase, was quite real. So when “The Circle” hit the record shelves in late 2009, it fell into a lot of nervous hands.

Fears were quickly proven groundless though, as the album opens with a hard rocker, a real anthem in the shape of “We weren't born to follow”, perhaps an admission by the band that they had tried something different, to shake things up, but an assurance also that they were back to what they do best. The song rocks along at a good pace, and does indeed seem a statement of intent: ”This one goes out to the sinner and the cynical/ This ain't about no apology.” The power doesn't let up as the band storm into “When we were beautiful”, a nostalgic look back to the past, when everything seemed so simple ”Before the world got small/ Before we knew it all.”. There's some great guitar work in the song, although for the most part Richie keeps his guitar relatively understated, keeping a watching brief.

It's rare that I choose the best track so early in an album, but when I heard “Work for the workingman” I knew they would have to try very hard indeed to top this. A true blue-collar paean in the mould of Springsteen and Earle, this tells the tale of an ordinary man who has lost his job, and how he feels about it. Pride, worth, self-respect all figure heavily in this extremely politically-charged song, as Jon asks ”Won't somebody help me/ Someone justify/ Why these strong hands/ Are on the unemployment line?” There are few, if any bands, who can proudly claim that the lyrics for one of their songs hang in the Oval Office, but so impressed was President Obama with the theme of the song, and so much did it resonate with his own beliefs and aims that he apparently had the lyrics framed and hung in his office in the White House. This is a song everyone can relate to, whether you're working, laid off, or just fearful of that happening. A true song for the ordinary man, indeed.

Again, like already-reviewed “Have a nice day”, this album has no true standout ballad. There are slow songs --- “Live before you die”, “Happy now” --- but no actual love song. Perhaps this is something of a new direction Bon Jovi are moving in? However, unlike the abovementioned album, “The Circle” does not seem to suffer from the lack of a hard ballad, with just about every song on this a good one. Songs like “Brokenpromiseland” and “Fast cars” continue the theme of the dispossessed trying to survive in an uncaring world that seems to have abandoned them to their fate, and unlike 1995's “These days”, this time Bon Jovi intend to do something to change the way things are. Perhaps it's foolish optimism, perhaps blind faith, but nevertheless it's good to see such an attitude.

“Bullet” revisits the themes explored on “All I want is everything” and “Hey God” from “These days”, as Jon asks ”What is the distance/ Between a bullet and a gun?/ God are you listening?/ Or have you just given up?” Unlike the two mentioned above though, it's a slower rocker, drenched in desperation and anger, with a sharp guitar solo adding to the fire of the song. “Thorn in my side” is NOT a cover of the old Eurythmics song, but Bon Jovi's own original composition, although it does in ways explore the same subject matter as Annie Lennox did in her song. It gets things fast-rockin' again, before the mood slows down for what amounts to the first of two ballads on the album.

“Live before you die” is, however, not a love song, but rather a message to grab life with both hands, seize the day in somewhat the same vein as “I want to be loved” from “Have a nice day”, as Jon sings ”When you're young you always think/ The sun is gonna shine/ There'll come a day you'll have to say/ Hello to goodbye” The song is carried on a nice piano melody, with some great ensemble playing, Jon in perfect voice. This would have made a great single, though it seems it wasn't released unfortunately. Another thing about this album is a return to the shorter, snappier songs of “Crush” and albums prior to that, after the somewhat longer ones on “Have a nice day” --- there's nothing over much more than five minutes long here, the longest being “When we were beautiful”, clocking in at 5:18.

“Brokenpromiseland” echoes the sentiments expressed in “Dry county” from “Keep the faith”, as Jon warns ”No-one's gettin' out of here alive”, while “Love's the only rule” revisits something of the melody of “Work for the workingman”, with a hook almost reminiscent of the Cars at their best, and a very uplifting beat and indeed theme --- ”Think about it/ Wouldn't that be cool?/ If love was the only rule?” You'll get no argument here! The idea behind “Fast cars” sounds to me similar to the title track from JBJ's solo album, “Destination anywhere” --- there's definite hope there, and the exuberance of youth, perhaps misplaced as Bon Jovi could no longer be called young! Hey, young at heart, let's say...

The album closes on two killer tracks, the first being “Happy now”, a sort of mid-paced ballad with a solid guitar hook, and a lyric pulled straight from a mid-life crisis:- Let me believe/ I'm buildin' a dream/ Can I be happy now?/ Can I let my breath out?” and later takes a page from “Who says you can't go home” as Jon sings I ain't throwin' stones/ Got sins in my bones/ Ain't everybody just tryin'/ To find their way home?”. Once more he warns “You better live now/ Cos no-one's gonna get out alive”, and this song leads to the closer, which in many ways is a continuation of the theme on this one, the second part, or the resolution if you will.

Another mid-paced ballad, “Learn to love” is a song that tells us we have to accept that what we have is as good as it's gonna get, and we should be at peace with that. As the song goes on, it gets somewhat faster, and a little more urgent. It's not a bad sentiment to close on: ”Leave it all on the table/ If you lose or you win/ You gotta learn to love/ The world you're livin' in.” That'll do for me.

TRACKLISTING

1. We weren't born to follow
2. When we were beautiful
3. Work for the workingman
4. Superman tonight
5. Bullet
6. Thorn in my side
7. Live before you die
8. Brokenpromiseland
9. Love's the only rule
10. Fast cars
11. Happy now
12. Learn to love



I set out, in the introduction to this three-album review, to show that far from being a spent force, Bon Jovi were, and are, still one of the most consistent rock bands out there, producing great albums year after year. To be perfectly honest, perhaps I'm not the best person to make that judgement, as I have seen no drop in quality over the years with the output of this band. From the first time I heard them I've loved the boys from Jersey and as time has gone on I have bought every album, and never seen any major change or deterioration in any of them. I dont know: I just don't see it when critics talk about the band “going through the motions”. For me, every album they've produced has been treated with the same care and respect, dedication and love for their craft and for their fans, and I have never been disappointed with any of their albums. However, I wanted to make a case for the continued longevity and excellence of Bon Jovi through the later years, and whether I've succeeded in that endeavour or not I don't know, but if you have any comments on the albums, on Bon Jovi in general, or indeed on any of the subjects on which I have so far written, let me know by posting.

For my part, I think that although “The Circle” is a much different animal to “Slippery when wet”, I love both albums and I understand that if a band is to evolve they need to move with the times and change as required. As I said at the opening of this piece, the fans who grew up on “You give love a bad name” and “Livin' on a prayer” have also matured, and perhaps they want more thoughtful, insightful songs, songs that make them think, that make them question the world in which they're living. Music speaks to us, entertains us yes, but it should also be a force for change and a means to an end, and if it makes us think of the right things then that can't be bad. One of the reasons I dislike what I loosely term as “dance” music is because in general I don't see any clear messages in it: to me, rock tells it like it is. May not always be pretty, may not always be what you want to hear, but if there's one thing you have to say about rock, it is that it's honest, and hopefully always will be.

So I'll look forward to the next Bon Jovi outing, and in the words of their fifth album, I for one will always “Keep the faith.”

Suggested further listening: "Keep the faith", "New Jersey", "Slippery when wet", "Crush", "Bounce"

Trollheart 06-13-2011 03:50 PM

Lady Macbeth --- Lana Lane --- 2005 (Think Thank)
http://www.thetank.com/graphics/lllm_cvr4w.jpg
Lana Lane is the wife of prog-rock supremo Erik Norlander, and he both produces and plays on her albums, as he does here. “Lady Macbeth” is her seventh studio album, and is loosely based around the concept of the Shakespeare saga, told from the point of view of the infamous Lady Macbeth. I have to say that although this was the first time I had ever heard of Lana Lane, let alone heard her music, the album absolutely blew me away. Sadly, her other material has not impressed me much at all, but this album stands out on its own.

Kicking off with essentially the title track, although it's actually called “The dream that never ends”, the album starts with a deceptively slow and gentle intro, until it kicks into high gear and gets going, metamorphing into a prog rock monster, thundering along with Lana's clear, distinctive voice introducing us to the lead character --- ”Lady Macbeth/Marked by death.” As mentioned, Erik Norlander plays on the album, taking keyboard duty, and he does a fine job as ever. The following track is a little slower, a little lighter, perhaps trying to paint Lady Macbeth in a more sympathetic light than she is normally seen. “Someone to believe” is a decent song, but it's really overshadowed by “Our time now”, the first of three excellent ballads on the album, with great guitar solos and a lovely piano line, echoes of Pink Floyd in the vocal harmonies.

Everything slips back into high gear then for “Summon the Devil”, a powerful, sharp rocker, containing the Shakespeare chant for the three witches: ”Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble/ Fire burn and cauldron bubble/ By the pricking of my thumbs/ Something wicked this way comes!” Great grinding guitars give this track a real bite, and they carry the track with a Whitesnake-like riff, circa “Love hunter”. A nice little acoustic guitar then slows everything down as “No tomorrow” begins, with a nice kind of Rush vibe to it, but it soon bares its fangs and proves to be no ballad, though the song alternates between slow and gentle for the verses and harsh and faster for the chorus. Perhaps a half-ballad? The lyric betrays it though: “Your castle will burn in the sun/ My will will not be undone.” The song ends suddenly, almost unexpectedly, and leads into another slow intro which again turns out to be far from a ballad.

“Shine on golden sun” is a good track, some really nice acoustic guitar married with some tough electric, Lana's voice clear and vibrant as ever: she really has a powerful voice, recalling the likes of Heart's Ann Wilson. Other comparisons I could make would be Sabine Edelsbacher of Edenbridge, with whom she sang on Gary Hughes's “Once and future king”, reviewed here earlier. “The vision” is a five-minute-plus instrumental, showcasing the talents of the no less than three guitarists who play on the album, then we're into “Keeper of the flame”, another fast rocker in the vein of the opening track, before things slow down as the album draws to a close with two lovely ballads, the first being the bittersweet “We had the world”, on which Lana sings her heart out, and you really feel for her in her role as the tragic figure. The curtain comes down with the simple but hauntingly beautiful “Dunsinane walls”.

I have to admit, I'm not that familiar with “The Scottish Play” (Oh, that would be Macbeth, would it?) ;) so I can't really comment on how well or otherwise Lana tells the story, or how the songs reflect that, but even putting the whole concept aside --- something I wasn't even aware of when I first heard the album --- it's still a great listen, and to date, for me, the creative peak for Lana Lane.

TRACKLISTING

1. The dream that never ends
2. Someone to believe
3. Our time now
4. Summon the Devil
5. No tomorrow
6. Shine on golden sun
7. The vision
8. Keeper of the flame
9. We had the world
10. Dunsinane walls

Trollheart 06-13-2011 06:09 PM

The sea of love --- The Adventures --- 1988 (Elektra)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ea_Of_Love.jpg
A little-known Irish rock band, the second album from the Adventures is a joy to listen to. A seven-piece band from Belfast, they recorded a total of four albums, of which I have only heard this one and its follow-up, “Trading secrets with the moon”, which is also an excellent album. It's a criminal shame these guys never made it, as in ways their sound is quite reminscent of the Waterboys, and I would have thought that maybe they might have latched on to the success of the Scottish superstars, particularly around the “Fisherman's blues” era, which would have tied in with the release of this album. However it was not to be, and although they have reformed to play the odd gig here and there, with their last release being in 1993 it seems unlikely we will ever hear from them again on album.

Which makes listening to this album even more important. It's a real example of how a band can put together an almost flawless record, gain critical acclaim and yet not crack the big time. As our American cousins say, go figure.

The very first thing you hear when the laser hits the CD is a drawn-in breath, which is very real, not having been edited out of the production and therefore giving the feeling of a band who really care about and enjoy their music. The next thing you hear is the powerful voice of Terry Sharpe singing “Oh I'm drowning in the sea of love!” before drums, guitar and keys crash together to get the title track underway. Backing vocals by Eileen Gribben meld with Terry's, while her brother Pat crashes out the power chords. It's a song of holding on, with a powerful beat and a great melody. Would have been a perfect single, you would think, and it was. But it never got into even the top 40! I blame the X-Factor. Yeah, I know it wasn't around in 1988, but hell, I blame the X-Factor for the decline of modern music, so I ain't going to let a little fact like that stand in the way!

Following on from “The sea of love” is the song that ended up being their only top 20 single, the wonderful “Broken land”. Opening with a tinkly little piano line from keyboardist Jonathan Whitehead, it's not long before the rest of the band crash in, Paul Crowder's drums in particular making their presence felt in no uncertain terms as they drive the song along. ”When did the boy become a man?” sings Terry, ”And lose his right to love?/ So much confusion to this plan/ These times are not changing.” “Broken land” is more Celtic-sounding than the opener, having something like oileann pipes on it, and was in fact my introduction to the music of this band.

“You don't have to cry anymore” has another acapella introduction, like “The sea of love”, but is a heavier track, while the standout track (after the first two) is “The trip to Bountiful (When the rain comes down)”, which seems to be based on the film of the same name, concerning an old woman who travels, against her family's wishes, back to her hometown in Bountiful, Texas. I haven't seen the film, but the song is immense, chock-full of emotion and a very catchy bassline from Tony Ayre, who sadly died just before Christmas 2009. It starts off with Eileen singing like a Siren, “Come home”, before the bassline takes command of the track, joined by Crowder's drums, a slowburner that soon gets underway with the piano and Gerry “Spud” Murphy on guitar joining in. There's also a sort of reprise within the song, an instrumental passage that contains a fine piano run and takes the track to its conclusion, amidst choral vocals to the end.

There's no denying the power and majesty of this album, but like many others it kind of peaks after the abovementioned. The rest of the tracks are great, but they're not the classics-that-should-have-been that form what I guess I would term the first part of the album. Surprisingly, with the title it has, the album has no actual ballads, certainly nothing that would be recognised as such. “Broken land” is slow enough to be a ballad, but I wouldn't class it as such. Most of the other tracks are either too fast or have the wrong lyrics for a ballad. Some albums would suffer from such a deficiency, but that isn't the case with this opus. Every song is catchy, commercial, well-written and flawlessly played. Why they never made it is beyond me.Terry Sharpe's voice is clear, warm and rolls over the ears like a gentle river, “Spud” Murphy is a great guitarist, able to rip loose with a powerful solo or keep things ticking over in the way great axemen can without effort. The keyboards talents of Jonathan Whitehead are all over the album --- in many ways he characterises the sound of the band. With support from the other four member of the band, it's truly a mystery why they never broke the market, and why more people didn't get into their sound.

I guess in the end, the Adventure was not to be.

TRACKLISTING

1. Drowning in the sea of love
2. Broken land
3. You don't have to cry anymore
4. The trip to Bountiful (When the rain comes down)
5. Heaven knows which way
6. Hold me now
7. The sound of summer
8. When your heart was young
9. One step from Heaven



Suggested further listening: "Trading secrets with the moon"

Trollheart 06-14-2011 05:28 PM

Like a rock --- Bob Seger --- 1986 (Capitol)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ike_a_Rock.jpg

Bob Seger is one of that rare breed of true American songwriters, in the mould of Springsteen, Cash and Nelson, he writes songs of ordinary people in ordinary situations, and he writes with an honesty and openness that is often lacking in music. “Like a rock” is his thirteenth studio album, but far from being unlucky, I personally rate it as one of his best, if not the best he has produced. I love albums like “Stranger in town”, “Night moves” and “The distance”, but there always seems to be one or two “filler” tracks on his albums, songs that let down the overall excellence of the recording. I've always wanted Seger to record the perfect album, and I think here in 1986 he finally did. Nothing, in my opinion, he released prior to, or indeed after, “Like a rock”, has equalled, much less exceeded the greatness of this record.

Orginally to have been titled “American storm”, it's this that kicks the album off in fine fashion, a bouncy, rockin' flag-waver, paying tribute to the spirit of his country. ”It's like a full force gale/ An American storm/ You're buried far beneath a mountain of cold/ And you never get warm.” Seger's omnipresent backing band, the Silver Bullet Band, are on fine form as ever, and it's the rock'n'roll piano of Craig Frost in particular, backed by the thundering drums of Russ Kunkel that really drive the track. It's a powerful opener, and sets the mission statement of the album from the off. It's followed by the much slower and bluesy title track, reminscences of youth in a theme partially explored on the title track to 1980's “Against the wind”, but expanding on it here. Bob recalls "Standing arrow-straight.../ Chargin' from the gate.../ Carryin' the weight.” Great guitars from Dawayne Bailey, with superb slide guitar from Rick Vito. Essentially acoustic, the track goes electric for the chorus and then back for the verses. Bob's voice as ever is raspy, rough, gruff and powerful, elucidating each line perfectly and with excellent timing.

Then we're into “Miami”, things speeding up again for the tale of those who came to Florida's coast to make their fortune or start a new life. Where the previous track was mostly acoustic, this is very definitely electric, with great keyboards from Bill Payne, backing vocals by two ex-Eagles, Timothy B. Schmidt and Don Henley, as well as a full horn section. Bob relates what would have been the first look these new settlers had of Miami: "Oh it must have seeemed/ Something like a dream/ Shining through the night/ All those city lights” It's a great rocker, with powerful drumbeats driving the song along and a truly great saxaphone outro. It leads into the second ballad on the album, the bitter tale of love turned bad in “The Ring”. Again going for a mostly acoustic feel for this track, as he often does for his ballads, Seger weaves the story of a woman who marries but finds there is after all no pot of gold at the end of her rainbow. ”And sometimes in the wee hours/When the traffic dies down/ She'll hear the sound of some bird on the wing/ And she'll look out the window, look at his picture/ But not at the ring.” Rick Vito, this time joined by Fred Tackett, do a great job on the acoustic guitars, while Gary Mallaber takes drumming duties. The tinkling piano lines give the song a nice country feel.

Things get VERY electronic then for “Tightrope” --- it's almost like a totally different album now. Heavy, almost organ-like keyboards drive this track, with backing vocals by the Weather Girls, among others. This is one of only two songs on the album (apart from the closing CCR cover) not written by Seger alone. On this he collaborates with keyboard player Craig Frost, who also wrote the next track with him, “The Aftermath”, a rocker that lopes along at a great lick, keeping things in high gear as “Tightrope” comes to an abrupt end and the next track takes over almost seamlessly.

And the pace doesn't slow for the next offering, in fact if anything it gets faster! “Sometimes”, a real boogie rocker, takes things to a new level, perhaps the most frenetic song on the whole album, with some truly great piano playing as Frost channels Jerry Lee Lewis! You would think after that they'd be ready to slow down, but no, “It's you”, though a lot slower than “Sometimes”, still ticks along at a good pace, though far less manic than the previous track and nowhere near as heavy as “Tightrope”. It's close to a ballad, but the beat belies that for me. The closer IS a ballad, and as per usual with Bob Seger, it's a belter.

“Somewhere tonight” is the tale of a thousand break-ups, people leaving, people falling out of love, and the unbearable sadness of it all. As Bob sings ”There's a cold wind blowin' from the north/ And the summer birds are leavin' / As the sun slips ever further south/ The lakes will soon be freezin'. / And the ice will claim the empty shore/ Where the ones in love went walkin'/ And the hard blues skies will shiver/ As the winter clouds come stalkin'/ And unless you find someone to hold/ Unless someone starts caring/ Unless you find the warmth you need/ Unless someone starts sharing/ When the long dark nights come closin' in/ And the winter winds comes howlin'/ You don't know if you'll make it/ Without someone you can count on.” --- well, you just want to take your loved one in your arms and be happy they're there. Vito and Fred are once again a perfect pair on acoustic guitars, with Frost on lonely piano. Seger albums usually end on a great ballad, and this is among his greatest.

For me, that's where the album ended, as I bought the vinyl LP when it came out in '86, but apparently the CD version comes with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's standard “Fortunate son”. It's a great song, performed live, but for me it sort of ruins the end of the album, as I had, as I said above, always listened to “Somewhere tonight” as the closer, and for me that track ends the album as it should be ended.

Although Seger has released three more albums since “Like a rock”, with a fourth scheduled for release this year, I personally believe this is the one on which he got everything right (I discount the inclusion of “Fortunate son”, as I believe that's down to the label, not the artist, as it wasn't on the original vinyl release), and it stands as the quintessential Bob Seger album. Maybe he'll surpass it this year, but he's going to have to work damn hard to do so!

TRACKLISTING

1. American storm
2. Like a rock
3. Miami
4. The Ring
5. Tightrope
6. The aftermath
7. Sometimes
8. It's you
9. Somewhere tonight
10. Fortunate son (live) --- CD only


Suggested further listening: "Night moves", "Stranger in town", "Against the wind", "The distance"

Trollheart 06-15-2011 06:30 PM

Original sin --- Pandora's Box --- 1989 (Virgin)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lsin_cover.jpg
When I first picked up this CD, purely out of curiosity due to the cover, I caught the words “Written and produced by Jim Steinman” --- that was all I needed to know. Being a big Meat Loaf fan, I was aware (as I'm sure my readers are) that Steinman was the creative force behind the big man's phenomenal successes like “Bat out of Hell” and “Dead ringer”, and had released his own solo album prior to this, under his own name. This, however, is a project, and though Steinman writes most of the songs, plays the keyboards and produces the album, he does not take vocal duties. The project goes under the name of “Pandora's Box”, and this was their only album. Amazingly, it was a total flop, but then, I'm sure you have tons of albums in your collection that were less than successful when released --- doesn't mean they're bad albums. Maybe some people just don't know a good thing when they see it.

I would hazard that, had this been released as a Meat Loaf album, with the man singing on it, it would have been a lot more successful. Perhaps even had it been heralded as “Jim Steinman” it might have garnered more interest, but to the average record-buyer, before the inception and global dominance of itunes, this was just another mildly interesting rock record sitting on the shelf, and unless you picked it up and examined it with more than a cursory glance, you missed seeing that Steinman's name was attached to it. I really think the marketing (or lack of it) sabotaged this album's chances of breaking commercially.

All that aside, it's a fantastic record, a real gem. Combining the best of Meat Loaf (without him of course) and Jim Steinman, and recruiting people like Ellen Foley, Roy Bittan and King Crimson's Tony Levin, it's a powerful and dramatic rock opera, complete with choirs, a full orchestra and even monologues and soliloquies, not to mention some amazing songs.

It starts with a spoken intro, twenty seconds long, spoken by Ellen Foley, known from her work with Meat Loaf, then kicks right into the title track, a storming rocker with vocals by at least three girls: Ellen, Laura Theodore and Gina Taylor. The lyric puts a twist on the term “original sin”, changing it from the Adam and Eve connotation to the idea of something that hasn't been tried before: ”I've been looking for an original sin/ One with a twist and a bit of a spin/ And since I've done all the old ones/ Till they've all been done in/ Now I'm just looking/ Then I'm gone with the wind/ Endlessly searching for an original sin.” The song features a great “arena moment”, when the music stops for a moment as clapping hands keep the rhythm and all the voices chant the chorus. A great start.

Next up we hear the famous 20th Century Fox theme (you know the one, from all those films you've watched), and we're into a cover of the old Doors classic, updated to reflect a male instead of a female character. It's a very funky number, almost disco in parts, Ellen Foley again taking vocal duties as she sings ”He's the king of cool/ He's the devil who waits/ Since his mind left school/ He never hesitates.” Featuring some great piano work from Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, and a great horn section, it bops along with great verve, with a line from Wilson Pickett's “In the midnight hour” thrown in, and ending with the famous keyboard riff from “Light my fire”. Sweet!

One of the best tracks is also one of the best ballads on the album, Gina Taylor taking over for “Safe sex”, with its clever lyric ”Baby there's no such thing/ Baby it just ain't true/ And there's no such thing as safe sex/ When it comes to loving you.” It's driven on a piano and guitar melody, heavy thumping drums helping the song along, but it's Gina's powerful and tortured voice that really makes the track. There's real raw emotion in her voice as she cries ”There's always the danger of losing control/ And of breaking my heart / And exposing my soul/ There's just no protection from the look in your eyes/ Or the touch of your hand when I break down and cry.”

Much of Steinman's work has ended up recycled and reissued on later albums, often those recorded by Meat Loaf: “Surf's up” originally appeared on Steinman's first solo album and was later on “Bad attitude”, and “Lost boys and golden girls”, from the same solo album was later the closer on Meat Loaf's follow-up to “Bat out of Hell”, “Back into Hell: Bat out of Hell II”. Here, the song “Good girls go to Heaven (Bad girls go everywhere)” also resurfaced on that album, but I prefer the original, having heard it first here. It's a real rocker very much in the style you'd expect from a Meat Loaf album, which is probably why it was included in “Back into Hell”. Steinman's lyrics are always slyly sarcastic, and the title tells it all. Elaine Caswell takes over to sing this one, and does a really good impersonation of Bonnie Tyler too!

Ever heard Verdi's “Requiem” for guitar and keyboards? You will if you listen to this disc! Steinman calls it “Requiem Metal”, and it leads into a track which, although it isn't a song, is still one of the best and most innovative on the album. Steinman himself voices the monologue to “I've been dreaming up a storm lately”, with the sounds of wind behind him as he takes the role of a serial killer who believes he sees reflections of his future victims in his mirrors at home, and then has to go out and find the person and kill them if they don't measure up to the reflection. Which of course they never do. ”I've been dreaming of mirrors/ Millions of mirrors/ An endless army of mirrors/ Out of control/ Reflecting people to death.” He goes on to explain to his newest potential victim ”They create a reflection and then/ I have to go out and find the real thing/ That matches it./ And almost always, when I put the real thing in front of the mirrors/ It is not nearly as beautiful as the reflection that came first/ And at that point I have to destroy the real thing." You can hear the unhinged menace in his voice when he snarls ”They decide themselves what they want to reflect/ They won't obey me!” Sends shivers down yer spine!

The track that follows you will probably know, as it was hijacked by Celine Dion and became a big hit for her, proving my theory that had this album been properly marketed it could have done so much better. “It's all coming back to me now” is the second ballad on the album, and sold with power and emotion by Elaine Caswell. If you aren't a fan of La Dion, then you may have come across it on Meat Loaf's “Bat out of Hell III: The Monster is loose”. It leads into the instrumental “The opening of the box”, which features the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and runs into another spoken monologue, this time voiced by Ellen Foley, with absolutely incredible rhythm as she reads out “The Want Ad”, a caustic rebuff to all the people who have answered her personal ad. There is great echo reverb on the track too, giving it an extra dimension. It has a great little black humourous ending too, and then she stays on vocals for the dancy “My little red book”, written by songsmith Burt Bacharach, then we're into the final slow song, if not actually a ballad.

“It just won't quit” is sung by Elaine Caswell, in her final action on the album, and was also covered by Meat Loaf on “Bat out of Hell II”. It recalls elements from the title track, and rocks along nicely. The penultimate track is a truly exceptional piano solo by Steven Margoshes which encompasses the title track, the above and also “It's all coming back to me now” and goes under the title of “Pray Lewd” (Prelude, geddit?) before things come to an explosive end with “The future ain't what it used to be”, again also covered by Meat Loaf on “The Monster is loose”. It's a storming piece, and well worthy of being the closer to the album. Gina Taylor takes vocal duties for the last time, and a great job she does with the track. Great lyric as always: ”Say a prayer for the fallen angels/ Stem the tide of the rising water/ Toll a bell for the brokenhearted/ Burn a torch for your sons and daughters.” My only small gripe is that instead of leaving it ending on a very effective piano melody, there's a sort of reprise with a kind of gospel-choir chanting to the end. I personally think it doesn't work, and would have preferred the track, and album, to have ended on the piano outro. You'll know what I mean when you hear it, and you can make up your own minds.

“Original sin” really is the classic that never was, and it's such a pity. Few people will ever get to hear and enjoy this album, and probably a large percentage of those will hear it by accident. Perhaps reading this review will help add to that number, and if so, then I'll be happy.

TRACKLISTING

1. The Invocation
2. Original sin (The natives are restless tonight)
3. Twentieth Century Fox
4. Safe sex
5. Good girls go to Heaven (Bad girls go everywhere)
6. Requiem metal
7. I've been dreaming up a storm lately
8. It's all coming back to me now
9. The opening of the box
10. The want ad
11. My little red book
12. It just won't quit
13. Pray lewd
14. The future ain't what it used to be



Suggested further listening: "Bad for good", "Bat out of Hell" by Meatloaf, also "Bat out of Hell II" and Bat out of Hell 3", and "Bad attitude"

Trollheart 06-16-2011 01:27 PM

Casanova --- The Divine Comedy --- 1996 (Setanta)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...C_Casanova.jpg

The biggest problem with the Divine Comedy is categorising their music. It's pretty hard, well nigh impossible, due to the many different influences and styles used on the albums, and “Casanova” is no exception. Everything from barqoue classical to Britpop is there, and you would think with such a varied amount of styles and songs it would all get horribly messed-up, but the genius of the Divine Comedy is that it doesn't: somehow, it all fits and a song about a ballet dancer played by a chamber orchestra can sit comfortably beside a song about going on a bus played in a pop style.

Kicking off with “Something for the weekend”, it's a nice slice of pop, jogging along at a decent lick, with some of the most absurd lyrics you will have ever heard --- unless you've listened to other DC albums! ”Get it through your sweet head/ There's nothing in the woodshed/ Except maybe some wood.” The song actually starts off with a Kenneth Williams-like voice saying “Hello” as girls giggle in the background. This is the sort of thing you will come to expect of The Divine Comedy, which is essentially created, driven and given life by singer/songwriter/musician/all-rounder Neil Hannon. His distincitive voice is strong, cultured, upper-class-sounding, and definitely not the sort of thing you would expect to hear on a “popular music” record! The songs are generally short, snappy, and about as different to each other as is possible, with “Becoming more like Alfie” a case in point. The songs on the album are all loosely linked by a general theme of sex (hence the title), but really, no two songs are alike.

“Middle class heroes” again begins with a cultured voice speaking, this time saying “Hello, what have we here? A young lady? How may I be of service this dark and wintry night?” Turns out to be a fortune teller, who goes on to tell the girl what she can expect in her future life. ”I see oriental paperglobes hanging like decomposing cocoons/ While exotic candles overload/ The musty air with their stale perfumes.” The song is carried on a slow, almost jazzy beat, trumpets, trombones and tubas painting a sad and bitter tale of the realities of life for the “middle class heroes”.

Hannon tends to see love as it is, and his sarcastic and acerbic comments on the “happy ever after” envisaged by starry-eyed couples shines through on each of his albums. This is not to say he does not believe in love, but he does have harsh words for those who think it's all hearts and flowers. You get the impression in his songs of a lot of knockbacks, failed romances and lessons learned. It's quite refreshing, and for perhaps his most acid “lovesong” you should check out “If...” on his “A short album about love”. But back to this album, and on to the next track, “In and out in Paris and London”, a sort of grungy rock arrangement, with Hannon's mellifluous voice almost incongruous against this melody. The song is an unashamedly brazen report of romantic conquests, as is “Charge”, this time against the backdrop of a tango beat, likening the sexual act to a battle --- ”Cannon to the left, cannon to the right/ They'll go bang-bang-bang/ All night!”

“Songs of love” you may find naggingly familiar, so I'll put you out of your misery and tell you that it's the theme tune for “Father Ted”, which Neil re-arranged specially for that show. It's a great little tune in its own right, almost entirely on acoustic guitar, with some great lyrics: ”Their prey gather in herds/ Of stiff knee-length skirts/ And white ankle socks./ But while they search for a mate/ My type hibernate/ In bedrooms above/ Composing our songs of love” You'll hear the “Father Ted” theme right there in the instrumental section near the end. Then, after a fairly innocent and heartfelt ballad, it's back to satire and sniping attacks with “The frog princess”.

It starts off with a riff from the “Marseilleise”, the French national anthem, then becomes a nice little ballad, but with a hidden message, as the princess in the tale declares ”You don't really love me/ But I don't really mind/ Cos I don't love anybody/ That stuff is just a waste of time/ Your place or mine?” But the best line is reserved for near the end, when Neil sings ”I met a girl/ She was a frog princess/And yes, I do regret it now/ But how was I to know that just one kiss/ Would turn my frog into a cow?” and then, with some glee”And now I'm rid of her/ I must confess/ To thinking of what might have been/ And I can visualise my frog princess/ Beneath a shining guillotine!” complete with the sound of a guilloine blade falling down!

This really serves to illustrate Neil Hannon's peculiar talent for poking fun --- often savage fun --- at love and its foibles, and that his characters are almost always flawed, in one way or another, whether the prodigal Alfie, the stuck-up and self-absorbed frog princess, or the heartbreaker in “In and out”. More philandering occurs in “A woman of the world”, with its carefree whistling intro and jaunty melody, its 40s/50s chorus ”She's a fake/ Yeah, but she's a real fake/ On the make/ Making up for lost time/ Just you wait/ Hey give the girl a break/ And a fistful of dollar bills will see to that!”

One of the most powerful tracks on the album comes next, and Neil really has saved the best for last. “Through a long and sleepless night” is a searing, heart-pounding, almost terrifying journey through one man's psychosis (*), with an almost breathless vocal describing a descent into madness and isolation, possibly to link in with the final track. ”It's four o'clock and all's not well/ In my private circle of Hell/ I contemplate my navel hair/ And slowly slide into despair.” His acerbic humour again comes through even here as he sings ”You deserve to be horsewhipped/ But I've no horse/ That joke's so sh1t/ And whips would only make it worse/ Don't tempt the lonely and perverse!” You can hear the rage and frustration in Neil's voice as he spits out the lyric, and the music tries to keep up with him. An acoustic passage about two-thirds of the way through has him sing ”Bored with normality?/ Why not go mad?/ It's easy to do if you try.” The song picks up again then for its thundering conclusion as Neil slides into madness and perhaps close to death.

Before the closer we have a really weird track, called “Theme from Casanova”. Introduced like a radio programme that has just ended, credits are read and the instrumental plays out as “one extra item”. In of itself, that could have been a good enough closer, but eager to outdo himself, Neil hits us with a parting shot, the amazingly powerful and emotional “The dogs and the horses”, which looks at a man on his deathbed (the same man from “Through a long and sleepless night”?) and notes that as he dies, all the dogs and horses he has had, who have passed on before him, gather round to say goodbye. ”Sing a happy song”, he advises, ”For spring does not last long/ A flower blooms and then it's gone.”

It starts off very very gently, with piano and acoustic guitar, and Neil singing very quietly, but when he gets to the chorus the orchestra kicks in and the song simply soars to new heights, and becomes a real powerhouse. ”So the only thing to feel sad about is/ All the dogs and the horses you'll have to outlive/ They'll be with you when you say goodbye.” The orchestration on the track is immensely moving, and when the track finally ends on a last “Good... bye...” you really feel like you've been through the wringer.

I can go on and on about how great the Divine Comedy is, but there's no way I'll ever have the words or the skill to do them justice. You simply have to take the plunge and listen to the recordings to properly appreciate the breadth of this man's genius, and “Casanova” is not a bad jumping-off point. It was mine, and I've listened to all his output since, and not looked back once.

(*) = Of course, that's what I THINK it's about, but Hannon's lyrics are so obscure and ambiguous at times that it's virtually impossible to say for certain what he means in any of his songs.

TRACKLISTING

1. Something for the weekend
2. Becoming more like Alfie
3. Middle-class heroes
4. In and out in Paris and London
5. Charge
6. Songs of love
7. The frog princess
8. A woman of the world
9. Through a long and sleepless night
10. Theme from Casanova
11. The dogs and the horses



Suggested further listening: "Promenade", "Liberation", "A short album about love", "Fin de siecle"

starrynight 06-17-2011 11:33 AM

I know The Adventures music they were from Northern Ireland and they ended up being based in London it seems, so very much part of the new wave / new romantic scene. My favourite song by them is Feel The Raindrops from 1985.

Trollheart 06-24-2011 11:56 AM

Small change --- Tom Waits --- 1976 (Asylum)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...%281976%29.jpg
Waits is one of those rare performers who totally polarises opinion: you either love him to death, or you hate him and think he's overrated. There is no middle ground. It's a rare person who will say “I could listen to a few Waits tracks, but I don't like most of his music”. Similarly, his fans love everything he does, and again it's rare you'll hear someone who likes his music say “Oh yeah, but that album was AWFUL!” Which is weird in a way, as fans of most artistes will have their reservations about certain of their heroes' works; there will be albums they like and ones they don't often listen to, but even when Waits puts out sub-standard (for him) material, it's generally recognised as still being streets ahead of anything else.

“Small change” is mostly regarded as the zenith of his “early period”, up to the mid-to-late seventies. After this, Waits' music changed, and became (if possible) weirder and more off-the-wall. That said, this should in no way be seen as a “typical” Waits album, (if indeed such a thing exists!) as virtually every time he released something he went in a new direction, and still does. But as an introduction to the man and his works, it's not a bad place to start.

Heavily influenced by jazz and blues, and often with only one instrument (piano, sax, bass) backing his gravelly voice, it's a melancholy ride with occasional smirks, both at himself and at America, and deals rather intensively with the subject of alcoholism, a condition Waits was certainly familiar with. No two tracks are the same, but every one has something to say.

Kicking off with “Tom Traubert's blues”, a short piano and string passage introduce the song before Waits' eating-gravel-for-breakfast-voice makes its mark on the song. It's loosely based around the old Australian traditional song “Waltzing Matilda”, and tells the tale of a man staggering from place to place, a bottle in his hand, sorrow and pain in his heart. ”I'm an innocent victim/ Of a blinded alley/ And I'm tired of all these strangers here/ No-one speaks English/ And everything's broken.” It's actually a beautiful ballad, and was as you may know covered reasonably competently by Rod Stewart (where annoying Djs persisted in calling it “Waltzing Matilda”!), and like a lot of Waits songs, it hasn't really got a clear verse-chorus-verse structure, although the [/i]”Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda/ You'll go waltzting Matilda with me”[/i] sort of forms the chorus, as such.
The song, like most of Waits' work, features some amazing lyrics: ”And it's a battered old suitcase/ To a hotel someplace/ And a wound that will never heal” that really pull you into the song, and into the mindset of the main character. In many ways, “Small change” itself is a mini-opera, a drama set to music, a million stories in the naked city, and we listen as the various characters weave in and out of the songs (often with a bottle or glass in hand), telling their tales of woe, and stagger off into the dirty, garbage-strewn night.

“Step right up” is a complete departure next, carried on upright bass, minimal percussion and sax, as Waits takes the part of a street barker, hawking his wares to anyone he can pull in. ”Step right up, step right up/ Everyone's a winner/ Bargains galore!” The frankly ludicrous claims made by him for “the product” --- ”It forges your signature/ Entertains visiting relatives/ Turns a sandwich into a banquet/ Walks your dog/ Helps you quit smoking...” --- are clearly his swipe at the way these often crappy products are talked up by their sellers, culminating in the ultimate ”It finds you a job/ It IS a job!” and at the end he warns ”You got it buddy:/ The large print giveth/ And the small print taketh away!”

Then it's on to another ballad, and another character enters the play, as the “Jitterbug boy” tells of his adventures: ”Cos I've slept with the lion/ And Marilyn Monroe/ Had breakfast in the eye/ Of a hurricane.” The song, like the vast majority on this album, is mostly carried on a simple piano melody, and like most of Waits' material, it's his incredibly distinctive voice that shapes the song. It's of course very American-based in the lyric: ”Got drunk with Louis Armstrong/ What's that old song?/ I taught Micky Mantle everything he knows.” When I first heard this I had no idea who Micky Mantle was! Didn't stop my enjoyment of the song though.

Things stay slow then for a piano and string driven ballad, one of Waits' finest, “I wish I was in New Orleans”. Waits tends to often use a lot of popular (at the time) culture references and even nursery rhymes in his lyrics, as here he sings ”I can hear a band begin/ 'When the saints go marchin' in'/ By the whiskers on my chin.” He also tends to namecheck places, streets, establishments in his songs, as here: ”All along down Burgundy” and ”Then Claiborne Avenue/ Me and you”.

His ballads are occasionally satircal, and once in a while downright funny, as in the case of the next track up, the hilariously titled “The piano has been drinking (not me)”, in which he does bad piano as only a great pianist can, hitting wrong notes just at the right time, creating a dischord and dissonance that is entirely crafted and intended. Though the skewed piano playing is funny, the real laughs are in the lyric. Check the opening lines: ”The piano has been drinking/ My necktie is asleep/ And the combo went back to New York/ The jukebox has to take a leak/ The carpet needs a haircut/ And the spotlight looks like a prison break/ And the telephone's out of cigarettes/ Balcony is on the make.” Genius!

And still the mood stays slow, but returning to the real world, there is no humour, intended or otherwise, in “Invitation to the blues”. Again carried on a lone piano melody, it's the tale of broken-down people and wounded hearts: ”You wonder if she might be single/ She's alone and likes to mingle/ Gotta be patient, try to pick up a clue.” Good sax in here too, adding a real jazz-haunt vibe to the song. Like most of the songs on “Small change”, the lyric in this is primarily concerned with the damage alcohol abuse does, and the shattered wrecks it makes of people's lives. There's no glamourising of drinking here, as he said himself in an interview, “There ain't nothin' funny about a drunk [...] I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that **** out." (courtesy Wikipedia, from Smellin' Like a Brewery, Lookin' Like a Tramp by David McGee).

The next track is another maverick, with absolutely nothing but Waits' voice behind percussion, as he describes the goings-on at a strip club, in “Pasties and a g-string”, where men come to ”Get a little somethin'/ That you can't get at home.” It's quite an amzing song, never heard anything like it. It's followed by “Bad liver and a broken heart”, which uses the basic melody of “As time goes by” from Casablanca, and is again a slow song if not an actual ballad, and again concerned with alcoholism: ”Got a bad liver and a broken heart/ I drunk me a river since you tore me apart/ I don't have a drinkin' problem/ 'cept when I can't get a drink.” It's a real story of a guy who knows he's sinking fast, but since his heart is broken he doesn't really care. Another carried on a single piano melody, with some great lyrics: ”No the moon ain't romantic/ It's intimidating as hell/ And some guy's trying to sell me a watch/ So I'll meet you at the bottom of a bottle/ Of bargain scotch”. Not to mention ”Hey what's your story?/ Well I don't even care!/ Cos I got my own double-cross to bear.” Like I said before, genius...

Another stripped-down track follows, with just an upright bass and sax for company, “The one that got away” is a real finger-clicker, despite the lack of instrumentation, or even proper melody. It's a story, prose told to a semi-musical background. It's almost a slow rap. Before there ever was rap. Then we're into the title track, another of the same and carried almost entirely on tenor sax, with Waits relating the aftermath of the gunning-down of small-time criminal Small Change who ”Got rained on with his own 38”, and you can just picture him lighting up another cigarette as he leans against a lampost in the half-light, collar pulled up against the chill, as he remarks without surprise ”No-one's gone over to close his eyes.” It's just accepted as one of those things that happen here, every day, and people ignore it, go on with their lives. ”His headstone's a gumball machine/ No more chewing-gum or baseball cards/ Or overcoats or dreams.” The only mourner at his street funeral is the sax player,and hey, it's his job. Nothin' personal.

The album closes on another ballad, the tale of a guy working in a store after closing time, sweeping the floors and dreaming of seeing his girl after work. We'll all be familiar with the sentiments behind “I can't wait to get off work”, and it's another piano-driven song, perhaps finishing the album on a low-key note, but with a certain amount of hope, as the character here has at least found gainful employment, has his girl and some money in his pocket.

TRACKLISTING

1. Tom Traubert's blues (Nine sheets to the wind in Copenhagen)
2. Step right up
3. Jitterbug boy (Sharing a kerbstone with Check E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body, and the Mug and Artie)
4. I wish I was in New Orleans (In the Ninth Ward)
5. The piano has been drinking (not me) (An evening with Pete King)
6. Invitation to the blues
7. Pasties and a g-string (At the Two O'Clock Club)
8. Bad liver and a broken heart (In Lowell)
9. The one that got away
10. Small change (Got rained on with his own .38)
11. I can't wait to get off work (And see my baby on Mongomery Avenue)


Suggested further listening: "Frank's wild years", "Rain dogs" "Swordfishtrombones", "Heart attack and Vine", "Mule variations", "Foreign affair"

Trollheart 06-24-2011 06:32 PM

Introducing ... (drum roll) "Spinning the Wheel"!
 
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FIRST SPIN

Right, I've been going on for weeks now about how I'm going to introduce this section where I choose a random album and review it, be it good, bad or indifferent. So here it finally is. Over the next god-knows-how-long I'll be occasionally spinning a random number generator and linking that back to my album database, picking out the album it refers to and, no matter whether I love it, hate it, feel neutral about it or even haven't heard it yet, I'll do my level best to do a balanced review of it. I should mention right off the bat that, should I come across as cutting, mean, or even unknowledgeable about certain albums/bands/artistes I review here, I accept I may not know enough about them, but I'll be reviewing purely on what I hear, how it makes me feel, and what I personally get, or don't get, from the album. Comments, criticisms, debate and death threats are as always welcome. Well, maybe not death threats. Set me straight, it you feel strongly that I've disparaged one of your favourite albums or artistes, but understand that no slight is in any way intended.

This feature will run as and when I have time, so there could be days/weeks/months between reviews, unlike my normal reviews, which I will try to keep more regular. Also, I will be introducing new sections to my journal, which may end up pushing back “Spinning the Wheel” even further.

Remember, it's all a matter of chance, all a roll of the dice. No-one knows what will come up, least of all me.

Every good boy deserves favour ---- The Moody Blues --- 1971 (Threshold)
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Okay, so here we are at the first “spin of the wheel”, and like my usual luck, it's let me down. Oh well, so the story goes: you pays your money and you takes your chances. A random album I said, and a random album it is. And I guess in some ways it worked out, as this is by no means an album I would have chosen to have featured, given the choice. But I laid down the rules, and must live by them. Hey, this could end up being interesting: can I manage to review an album I don't care too much about as professionally as I do when reviewing my favourite albums? Let's see...

So, the Moody Blues. Well, they've always been something of an enigma to me. I know they're well known and respected. I know they have their place in the history of music, and millions of fans, lots of hit singles, and to be fair, I do like their “Very best of” album, which is why I made the point of acquiring the rest of their catalogue. To date, that seems to have been a mistake. I should have stayed with the greatest hits package, and been none the wiser. About eighty percent of what I've listened to so far has been, to me, boring, slow, and leaves me cold.

That said, let's get on with the album. Released in 1971, it's the sixth Moody Blues album, and was very well received at the time, hitting the number one spot. The title of course refers to the mnemonic taught to anyone trying to learn music, to help them remember the progression of notes on the treble-clef: E-G-B-D-F. The sleeve is very striking, with an old man offering a child the world on a string: very deep.

The opening track doesn't help to change my opinion of the Moodies. It's a very weird instrumental, with only a few words --- desolation, creation, communication --- more or less shouted rather than sung during the track, and it's apparently supposed to represent the birth of music, from the dawn of creation up until now. It doesn't work for me: I find “The Procession” annoying and a little off-putting, but it's followed by one of their songs I do know, from the VBO: “The story in your eyes”, which is a fast-rockin', upbeat number with a rather dour message: ”But I'm frightened for your children/ That the life we've been living is in vain/ And the sunshine we've been waiting for/ Will turn to rain.” There's no doubting the talent of the Moody Blues: Justin Hayward is a phenomenal singer, and a great songwriter. And guitarist. Mike Pinder lends the compositions a weird otherworldy feel with his flurries on the mellotron, his tinkling on the harpsichord and other keyboards, and Graeme Edge keeps everything ticking over behind the drumstool. It just doesn't always work for me.

“Our guessing game” arrives and departs without leaving any real impression on me. It has a sort of medieval feel to it, sort of acoustic, but to me sounds a little confused, not sure what sort of song it wants to be, and the vocal harmonies are all over the place. Hayward does not sound on song here: his voice seems to warble and tremble. “Emily's song”, written by bassist John Lodge for his newborn daughter, is Beatles-ish, pleasant if a little sugary, with an interesting little lyric: ”And in the morning of my life/ And the evening of my day/ I will try to understand/ What you say.” I hear echoes of Fleetwood Mac in it, though of course the Moodies were first, so I should really say I hear echoes of this in in particular “Book of love” from “Mirage”.

“After you came” starts off like “Question” from “A question of balance”. It's a reasonably fast-paced rocker, and at least here Hayward gets to stretch his considerable vocal abilities. There's more guitar too. As I listen to it, the melody continues to follow that of “Question”, from the previous album: perhaps they had that song on their mind when they wrote this? The next one up is another pastoral-sounding song, with a suitably “hippy-like” title. “One more time to live” is another great showcase for Justin Hayward's vocals, and indeed the soaring organ (oo-eer!) of Mike Pinder. There's repetition of the “desolation/creation/etc” refrain from the opener here, some nice acoustic guitar helping to take along a song which is pretty upbeat and hopeful in its subject matter. Nice lyric too: ”One more tree will fall; how strong the growing vine/Turn the earth to sand and still permit no crime/ How one thought will live provide the others die/ For I have riches more than these “

“Nice to be here” comes in on a flute and drum base, again very pastoral, very Haight-Asbury, Hayward's vocal much more restrained on this track, one of only two on the album exclusively written by Ray Thomas, the flautist (not surprising then that the flute plays such a central role in the song!), and this then takes us into the second Justin Hayward-penned track, “You can never go home”. It's telling that the only other track on the album written just by him was the big hit off this album, the aforementioned “Story in your eyes”, and here again he displays his singular talent for writing great songs. It's a much different song to “The story in your eyes”, but still stands out from the rest. His vocal is very understated on it, but he makes up for it with his guitar playing! Nice backing vocals too, properly arranged and orchestrated this time.

The album closes on the only track written by Mike Pinder, and indeed the longest on the disc, at nearly six and a half minutes. It's not surprisingly introduced on a piano melody and carried on keyboard and organ, and it's in fact a very good song, and a decent closer. “My song” is a mission statement: ”Love can change the world/ Love can change your life/ Do what makes you happy/ Do what you know is right / And love with all your might/ Before it's too late”. Not exactly original lines, no, but words to live by, in any time. After about two minutes in, the song virtually stops, and there's silence for a few long seconds before a VERY good and dramatic instrumental passage --- very cinematic. It's a pity the rest of the album isn't like this, as it's just at the end that I finally get into the album, through this track. But by now it's too late. It's a great way to close what is, in my opinion, a rather mediocre album, and to be honest I can't see how it went to number one in the UK when released, but then I guess the Moodies were much more popular back then. If I had just heard this and “The story in your eyes”, I would have thought this album is much better than it is, but to be honest, the bad/mediocre tracks on it outweigh the good, and in the end I don't see myself listening to this again any time soon.

Except maybe to sneak a listen to “My song” one or two more times...

TRACKLISTING

1. The procession
2. The story in your eyes
3. Our guessing game
4. Emily's song
5. After you came
6. One more time to live
7. Nice to be here
8. You can never go home
9. My song


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