MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: DUNCAN SHEIK - COVERS 80'S

We've had lots of 70's covers albums of late, so of course the 80's aren't far behind.  There's this desperate need for people to attempt to prove the decade was not so bad after all.  I'm not sold on that theory.  Some of my favourite artists made their worst music that decade (Elvis Costello, Dylan), and even worse, wore terrible clothes.  I blame trendy production styles and MTV turning everyone into a model.  If you want more prove, watch Live Aid sometime, and see what holds up. Certainly not The Thompson Twins, and definitely not Bono's boots.

Duncan Sheik goes bravely into the days of synthesizers and bad hairstyles.  While their certainly were good artists making excellent music back then, he's chosen to zero in on the British electro-pop of that time.  So it's Howard Jones, Japan, Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, Tears For Fears, The Smiths, New Order and yes, The Thompson Twins.  Sheik has stripped back these big productions to try to reveal the song underneath.  Instead of layers of keyboards, exploding drums, and waves of vocals, we get Sheik playing almost all the instruments, and helped out mostly by Rachel Yamagata on co-vocals.  Notably this means the synths are gone, replaced by such organic instruments as harmonium, glockenspiel and marimba, plus piano and acoustic guitar doing the main work.

The effect is somewhat unsettling, as these songs are so frozen in time, and in that sound.  To hear the words out of that context throws you off, and familiar melody lines at first confuse you, as you strain to remember what it's supposed to sound like.  As soon as you confirm the song, say the Furs' The Ghost In You, you can enjoy what is a pretty tune without the clutter.  However, there are several that prove to be more style than substance, as befits the whole decade.  Have you ever listened to the lyrics of New Order's Love Vigilantes?  It amazing what a good beat will cover up.  And Shout by Tears For Fears drags without the booming production.  For every song Sheik saves (Hold Me Now, What Is Love), another is unveiled as more machine than music.

FREDERICK SQUIRE - SINGS SHENANDOAH AND OTHER POPULAR HITS

Fred's been a busy boy.  After being a band guy for years (Shotgun and Jaybird, Daniel, Fred and Julie), he's released his second album in a year, following last year's March 12.  That one made it as far as the Polaris Prize long list, proving his aching, ancient style has captured significant interest.  Quickly he follows it up with another home-made haunting one.  It feature Fred with just guitar, voice, and pump organ, mic'ed close.  And while it's indie, it ain't indie rock, nope, this is as quiet as it gets, Squire writing for pre-electricity times.

Shenandoah is the famous folk song, associated with the U.S. Civil War era and the Missouri River.  It gives you an idea of what Squire is after in mood and music, with the other eight tracks being his own compositions.  Aside from a couple of non-typical chords and words, these songs could be more popular hits of that day, but instead are Squire's.  There's a suicide, a burial, a cheating lover, a violent fighter, all the stuff of those times.  Squire finds a neutral voice, that could be old, and could be new, and is quite successful at making the songs timeless.

I quite like the pump organ, which is played subtly, but has a huge effect.  First off, it makes the music feel old immediately.  It also reminds you of old hymns, so that sets the mood.  And, it gives us a different sound than just the acoustic guitar, which gets old fast.  Also, it doesn't feel like a gimmick on the album, as he's not overplaying the thing.  Hats off, Fred.

Squire says the album is about forgiveness, and nobody on the album is judged.  Instead there's a lot of sympathy for these characters, and it's a noble little album, ultimately uplifting in its antique approach.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: CATHERINE MacLELLAN - SILHOUETTE

Quietly wowing the folk and singer-songwriter world nationally, especially the new, young acoustic fans, MacLellan's dropped the big one here.  It's all come together for her, starting with a set of word-perfect songs.  You could examine every lyric here, and grab great quotes, lines to make you smile, melt, nod in agreement, or wonder.  This is an album of personal intensity, someone getting in touch with heartbreak and desire and past baggage, and you'll find one of more situations you know very, very well.  There are songs where you'll think 'that's exactly how I feel', and read your own situation into it, probably forever.  She sings of past loves coming back to haunt new ones:  "They send their regards/With every brand new start/I think of love dead and gone".

Too intense, or mellow for you?  Actually you can groove along to much of the disc, with its often upbeat acoustic sound.  MacLellan's teamed up with a perfect co-producer, Toronto vet David Baxter, who brings his strong knowledge of what these instruments can do for the songs, the moods and moments that can be added, the subtle touches and timing that make it all so sweet.  Of course, MacLellan's own voice is so well matched to her material, sad but solid, sweet at times, laconic and dreamy at other paces.  Joining her on this album is Baxter's cohort, young Toronto singer Jadea Kelly, matching MacLellan in near-sibling harmonies.

Dropped into this rock-solid collection is the touching remake of her late father's classic, Snowbird.  In concert for the past couple of years, MacLellan's been reclaiming the family business, returning the radio middle-of-the-road staple to its simplicity.  Nothing against Anne Murray of course, the song just took on a reputation over the years.  Now, in this gentle version with can focus on the lyrics Gene MacLellan crafted, and what drew everyone from Murray to Elvis to the song in the first place.  When Jim Cuddy shows up to sing the harmony on it, well, we have an event.  Somehow Catherine manages to keep it classy and without a whiff of calculation on her part.  It is what it is, a tribute to her father, and a great song, from a superb album.

ROSANNE CASH HEADLINES SAINT JOHN, NB's SALTY JAM

One of my all-time favourites is playing Saint John Thursday night, thanks to the good folks at Salty Jam. The city's long-running festival is bringing in the excellent singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, in a relatively intimate performance. It's at the Moose Light Tent, uptown on Water Street, the big kick-off event of the three-day festival. A bit more about Rosanne in a second, but first I'll do a background check on Salty Jam.

The festival came about when the old Saint John Jazz and Blues Festival felt it needed an update. As most J and B festivals have discovered along the way, fans wanted to continue the city excitement in the summer, but also wanted to see more of their favourite music invited in. After all, the same people interested in jazz and blues also had lots of folk, rock, country, roots, virtually any genre in their collections, and there was a need to expand the horizons. So Salty Jam was born, not really tied to anything except having a good time. It's been growing ever since, and drawing from outside the city. I know people were keen on getting another chance to see Matt Andersen last year for instance, and willing to make the drive.
That's what I'll be doing Thursday, as a Rosanne Cash show is a great reason to go. I've seen her before, a few years back when she was just starting out on a project called The List. Playing with a full band, she did a couple of cover versions, telling the crowd she was going to do a whole album of classic country songs her father Johnny, who had recently passed, had told her about when she was a kid. Well, that eventually became her hit album The List, 12 songs from the list of 100 Johnny had given her, classics all such as Sea Of Heartbreak, Long Black Veil and Heartaches By The Number. It became a big hit for her, and she's been much indemand since.

This time, you and I will see her in a stripped-down way, acoustic, just her and husband John Levanthal on guitar and vocals. The tent only holds about 700, so that's a nice size, it will feel friendly and close. It's funny that this mature hitmaker, who has been making records since 1979, is still referred to as Johnny's daughter and country star. She's far more of a roots-folk performer now, but that's just a label. She has had plenty of hits on the country charts of course, including a huge 11 Number Ones on the Billboard country chart. But such is the legacy of her father that her own career does get unjustly overshadowed in brief writeups. Not this one! As I say, I'm a huge fan.

Her latest album, since The List, is actually just out, a career-long retrospective which I'm sure will give us many of the songs in the live set. It's called The Essential Rosanne Cash, 36 cuts over 2 CD's with all the hits and a couple of real rareties. Cash worked on the song list herself. Disc one has those early hit country tracks from the 80's mostly, when she had such number ones as Seven Year Ache, Tennessee Flat Top Box, and Runaway Train. Disc 2, which covers 1990 on, sees a dramatic shift, as Cash started to make more introspective records, and took over the great majority of songwriting. The material was more challenging, and probably ages better than the lighter 80's fare, which also had that dated hitmaking production of the day. However, the hits are awfully good, so I tend to forget about the production after a few seconds and get back into the fun. I bet hearing them acoustic will make them all the better.

And don't forget about the rest of Salty Jam, it's three days after all. The excellent bluegrass player A.G. Olmstead is kicking off the event Thursday at 6 PM at the Brigatine Lounge, a nice start. And opening the show for Cash are local, long-standing country-bluegrass favourites Shanklin Road, and Nova Scotia roots singer Ryan Cook. Friday is one of the hot new festival acts, called The Jam Stampede, made of some allstar players from the Jam scene, plus the really hot Cape Breton group Slowcoaster, burning up the charts nationally. And on Saturday, Canadian blues legends Downchild are back, in a rare performance. Donny Walsh has been doing select shows for the group's 40th anniversary, and this is one. The man who brought us Flip, Flop and Fly, immortalized in The Blues Brothers movie, with the full band, Saturday night.

A CANADA TRIBUTE TO GORDON LIGHTFOOT

The Halifax-based music blog Herohill has become one of the most important sites in the country, a place where new bands hope to get mentioned, and where up-and-comers hope to become favourites. A nod from Herohill is more than a pat on the back for artists; inevitably it gets mentioned in any band P.R., in that section where they put the positive review quotes. It's known as a taste-maker site, able to pick the next cool group. I've even seen mainstream media using it as proof of quality; The Globe and Mail ran a piece on a band which mentioned it first broke on the Herohill blog.

One of the reasons people go there for their Canadian music news is the liveliness of the site. Run by big fans, they know what their fellow listeners want, which is something different and fun. There's always lots of actual music to hear, and great links. Now, Herohill is even coming up with its own unique and exclusive content. It started last year, when the gang realized they had an embarrassing secret to share: They loved old Hall & Oates. They inquired of some musical pals if it was also a hidden shame shared by them, and in fact it was easy to find like-minded musicians. So Herohill asked several to record their favourite H&O songs. The results ended up on the site, for free, in a special blog called Herohall & Oates.  It's still up by the way, at http://www.herohill.com/2010/12/herohall-oates.htm.  It features such artists as Rae Spoon, Gianna Lauren and The Provincial Archive doing all those 70's and 80's hits.

Fast-forward to the preparations for this year's Canada Day, and Herohill all of a sudden got all patriotic on us. Wanting to do another of these cover compilations, they sent word out to dozens of like-minded Canucksters, asking them to pay tribute this July 1st to one of our iconic songwriters. Bryan Acker of Herohill explains the choice: "Lightfoot is never mentioned - at least by the younger crowd - in the discussion of great Canadian artists, so we thought this would be a great way to put a modern spin on some timeless classics, and hopefully keep his music relevant for people that only download what the cool Brooklyn blogs pump out."

This time, they couldn't move for submissions from bands. Although a couple had to turn it down, in the end there are 36 different cuts, by such acts as The Warped 45's, Shotgun Jimmie, The Wheat Pool, Andrew Sisk, Clinton Charlton, Jerry Leger, Lorrie Matheson and more. Some are completely different arrangements and feature backing that's far from the original acoustic folk style Lightfoot uses. Others keep it pretty close to normal, but all are enjoyable, especially at the price. Bring us more, Herohill! Who's next? The Guess Who? April Wine? How about The Tragicall Hip? Anyway, check out the download-only fun at http://www.herohill.com/2011/07/herohill-vs-gordon-lightfoot-turning-back-the-pages-of-my-sweet-shattered-dreams.htm

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: MCCARTNEY, MCCARTNEY II

Another series of deluxe reissues, with bonus tracks and special packaging and different variations aimed at every level of fan, from starter to collector.  McCartney has put out his stuff with bonus tracks in the past, but these are significantly upgraded.  The campaign began last year with Band On The Run, the all-time favourite, and now we'll get the rest of the story, dribbled out every few months.

With McCartney, that's going to mean huge swings in quality and interest.  These two prove the point well.  Thematically they are linked, a decade apart.  McCartney was recorded immediately post-Beatles, alone and searching, with no band and everything to prove on his own.  Tired of the studio chaos and increasingly big productions, he used a simple system of recording directly into the tape machine, bypassing consoles and effects, producers and band mates.  While some of these tracks were just for fun and even instrumental snippets, others were leftover Beatles tracks (Junk, Teddy Boy), and some were new works with the Master of Melody still at the top of his powers (Every Night, Maybe I'm Amazed).  Even in this limited recording session, McCartney could still find just the right sound for his bass, drums, keys, and had an immaculate sense of how particular instruments would work together.  Best of all, he had, and still has, an amazing sense of timing as an arranger.  In a classic McCartney song, individual sounds, whether from the instruments or the voices happen at the perfect time.  Whether it's as simple as a cymbal fill or as complex as vocal harmonies in the chorus, they arrive at exactly the point where you go, "wow, what a great idea."  Although often dismissed as slight, McCartney is actually chock-full of gems, even the slightest instrumental holding one of these special moments.

Now McCartney II, there's a piece of crap.  As the nearly decade-long Wings period drew to a close, with the band losing members every couple of years, a frustrated McCartney returned to the system, once again trying to get past the problem of working with others.  This time, he claims it was simply for his own edification, and he was talked into releasing it as a full album.  Whoever did that needed his head examined.  What McCartney was experimenting with was new technology, specifically synths, and what he could do with the bells and burbles.  He had almost no songs, and was just fooling around with bare ideas.  For lyrics, often silliness and repeated phrases were dropped in, with even the vocals put through effects or sped up.  Plus, he wanted to be funky.  Paul, you wrote Yesterday.  It ain't funky.  As much as he wanted to be, it always came out goofy and smug too.  Unfortunately, some disc jockey had the bright idea to play the flip side of Coming Up, which featured a live version of the track.  It's one of McCartney's worst songs, but it was still a time when people wanted his music, and it was a huge hit.  The actual version found here is a robotic disco number, with what sounds like an electric kazoo and Paul and Linda's chirping vocals sped up to near-Chipmunk speed.  The effect of the live version becoming a hit meant that the album as well became something of a sales hit, but I've never met anyone in my life who actually plays this.  I'll never play it again, if I can help it.

The bonuses found on these two sets are of varied quality.  The less-expensive package is the two-CD set.  The much more expensive deluxe versions come with hard-bound booklets and a DVD.  I'd say there's nothing too special on the DVDs that you'll miss if you choose the cheaper option, but the books are nice.  The first McCartney album bonus CD includes some live versions of the tunes from the decade, plus three out-takes, none of which comes close to being a complete or essential number.  There's a good nine minute mini-documentary on the DVD which explains the time and the concept of the album, plus some more live versions, but it's all worthy of only one viewing. 

The bonus stuff on McCartney II is of the same quality as the regular songs, that is to say more of the same awful synth experiments.  Originally this album was submitted as a double album, and this is what would have constituted the rest of the songs for that.  Certainly the director's cut of this might have been historically interesting if he had chosen to release it in that format, but only to show us the original plan.  There's nothing here that would have improved the project.  The DVD includes the video for the studio version of Coming Up, which was notable for McCartney playing all the different musicians himself, dressing up as Beatle Paul on bass, the guy from Sparks on keys, etc.  But even including the Making of the Video only makes us sit through it twice.  A 25-minute interview done at the time of release again explains the ideas he had, but who cares when it sucks so bad.  The Christmas hit Wonderful Christmastime is also here, the only time these synth experiments actually resulted in a listenable song.  Buy McCartney 1, ban McCartney II.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: EDDIE VEDDER - UKULELE SONGS

First off, let me say I've never been a Pearl Jam fan.  I don't like that mumbly-grungy thing they do.  This greatly influences my review of this CD.  Oddly enough, my two favourite releases involving Eddie Vedder are this new one, and his previous solo soundtrack for Into The Wild.  That one was simple and folksy too.  I like Vedder and his baritone when there's not much for him to groan over.  Here, with the only a ukulele, it's downright melodic.

For yes, this is one album that is exactly as advertised.  Vedder plays only ukulele here, and not from lack of ability.  He does play guitar in P.J., after all.  Like a few fans, most notably George Harrison, Vedder appreciates the simplicity of the four-stringed uke.  You get basic chords, all pretty and shimmering, making it sweet and simple, rich in the melody.  When you mix that with the sonorous sounds of Vedder's deep pipes, it's a unique effect.  Also, stripping away everything but the chords makes the words so much more important, and there's some good and powerful lyrics here.  I have no idea of Vedder's marital situation these days, nor do I feel like Googling the on-line tabloids, but the song Sleeping By Myself is a pretty strong break-up song.  In the bare-bones state, there's certainly an album full of demos here that could have made a fine Pearl Jam album.  I think it's an even better solo disc.

Also included are a few cover versions, Vedder showing the fun side of the ukulele experiment.  Joining him are Glen "Oscar-winner" Hansard, for harmonies on the old Everly Brothers/Gram and Emmylou weeper Sleepless Nights, and Chan "Cat Power" Marshall on Tonight You Belong To Me.  The latter was done by Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in The Jerk, so Vedder does have a sense of fun.  He ends with the Mama Cass/Louis Armstrong number Dream A Little Dream Of Me, completing the nice vibes.  It could have been a whole album of such covers, with guest harmony singers, but that would be a novelty.  The new songs make it very strong.