MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: THE 24th STREET WAILERS - UNSHAKEABLE

Funky, low-down blues is featured on this second album from the Toronto quartet.  Featuring Halifax-born singer/drummer Lindsay Beaver, it's nasty and raw, with honking sax and distorted (on purpose) vocals, and tough and sexy lyrics.  Guitar solos are knife-sharp, and the whole thing might even be a bit sinister if it was so darn danceable.

You'd think it was the work of seasoned and toughened bar-band veterans, but these Wailers are actually fresh-faced music school products, all young but obviously getting the right seasoning fast.  They've been climbing the Toronto bar and club seen, and now touring the country in all the right spots, plus becoming festival favourites.  It's easy to hear why;  Beaver belts with authority, and the songs move great.  With Emily Burgess on lead guitar, the group also holds the distinction of being a rare thing in the blues world, two women and two men, and everybody with superior chops.  I didn't think it was possible to go to school to learn the blues, and maybe they had it down before, but the formula sure works here.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: PAUL REDDICK - WISHBONE

 A little more rocking than the last couple of roots-solid albums from Reddick, this one sees him teamed up with producer/guitarist Colin Cripps (Junkhouse/Jim Cuddy).  That means the fire burns a bit more, but still the spotlight remains on Reddick's top-flight songwriting.  The guy has only gotten better since his days fronting award-winning blues team The Sidemen, and remains one of the few who can truly come up with a full set of new and different tunes in the old genre.

Well, really Reddick doesn't even sound like most typical blues people, as you'll never find a cliche or the same old same old, unless he's quoting on purpose.  Luna Moth and Butterfly references juke joint danger and gambling den lingo ("Forty-Four and 32-20" and "Who bet Seven, who bet Nine?"), and sounds spooky and swampy, but certainly modern.  Devil's Load is revved-up rockabilly, with you-know-who hot on his trail.  I Ain't Sentimental sees Stones riffs being spat out all over, a powerhouse number that just got added to my list of great mix-tape songs.

Reddick's lived-in and husky voice is totally believable, completely him.  He's not trying to emulate classic singers, this is just him, singing about life the way he lives it.  So strong is his presence in the songs, you sometimes forget his main axe is the harp, and he's one of the best in the country.  But Reddick rarely plays it with bluster, and does comparatively few solos.  It's not a show-off instrument the way many use it.  Instead, his harp playing is part of the whole, more often used to give another shade to the picture, making a number sparkle or become spooky.  But when he does let loose, get out of the way.  Take Me Ruby is a tremendous workout.

So, Wishbone is a bit more electric and nasty than previous solo stuff, Sugarbird and Villanelle, and as much as I love the roots-and-crafts feel of those albums, it's great to hear him blow off the hinges here.  There's too many groups trying to do it who can't come close to this combination of power and talent.

HAMILTON MUSICIANS SALUTE MCCARTNEY SATURDAY

Hey, I haven't done a shout-out to my adopted musical home of Hamilton, Ontario lately.  Hi, musical pals in The Hammer!  Long-time readers will remember that I travel to this hotbed of music every November for their music awards, and I like to put the spotlight on the many fine musicians I've met and seen on my travels.  This Saturday night there's an excellent music event happening, so I'll give a pitch for it here, hopefully you folks in the area can take it in.

Christopher Clause is a Hamilton performer and recording artist who loves, I mean loves, The Beatles.  So much so that he likes to pay tribute when he can.  He's organized several tribute concerts over the years, to individual Beatles, and full albums, such as Sgt. Pepper.  The shows have actually won awards, including Event of the Year at the Hamilton Music Awards.  This week sees an important milestone marked.  Paul McCartney turns 70 on June 18th, so Clause has organized a show called, of course, Birthday, featuring several artists from the region.  It's happening at James St. Baptist Church at 8 PM, where Clause is a pastor, and stars Spider Costello, Kim and Frank Koren, Chris and Christa, Sonny del Rio, Jennifer Beehler, Dawn and Marra, VooDoo Chicken, Clause of course, and more.  All of the proceeds go towards FERMATA, a program designed to assist local artists in need.  Beatles, Macca solo, you love the music already, it's a win-win.

Clause is an interesting artist himself.  A couple of years back he released the album Round, which I've been enjoying more and more with each listen.  Every city has a guy like Clause.  They are the true, obsessed music fans, people who live and breath the glorious sounds of pop music, as made by the experts of the 60's and 70's.  Not just the songs and the playing, but how they all go together in the studio, that painstaking process.  Beatles, The Who, Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, Phil Spector, Motown, up through Big Star, XTC, R.E.M. and the like.  They love the master craftspeople, and want to pay that back with their own work.

Clause's Round is a fun house ride of all this and more.  He isn't a copy-cat, but rather someone who soaks up a bunch of influences and puts together his own fun and games.  Here's how it sounds:  The album starts with, of all things, banjo, coming across all country on Sunrise Of Your Life.  But halfway through, in bursts the rock band, and you know it's not going to be a normal experience.  The next track, Surreal But Beautiful, is an orchestral number, real strings, in the XTC pastoral vein.  Next up comes the brass-fused Under The Weather, kind of like mild version of a Sloan song, complete with a touch of sitar, and shout-outs to Dylan and Costello.  Music nerds rejoice.  Then there's a George Harrison-inspired tune, in the music and the philosophy, I Just Want To Be Loved, that also features some Byrds jangle.  The song Freedom sounds like he's getting his Santana on.  And who else is going to write a song dedicated to the perils of playing too much tambourine?  It's called Tambourine Bruise.

The key track to my ears is Spinning Round, a homage to vinyl, and the whole act of playing records, including the turntable, the cartridge, the favourite album, and of course, the beauty in the classic music.  It's a power pop song, and I think it may be the song that best represents him.  The track even samples those iconic Sam the Record Man commercials ("I said it, I did it").

Is it a perfect pop album? Oh gosh no, and it's not supposed to be.  That's part of the charm of these under-sung heroes.  They add their own quirks and charms, something that perhaps only they will fully appreciate.  The more the merrier, I say.  Find the Christopher Clause in your hometown.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: SHAWN COLVIN - ALL FALL DOWN

We haven't heard much of Colvin for a bit, but now we get a bonanza, with a new album and a recent autobiography, if you want to find out about the hard travels an artist endures on the way to a career.  While depression and addiction are hardly new topics for musicians, coming out the other end okay is rarer.  If you are a fan from back a bit, you've probably felt some of the darker times as you've listened.  Not that she's a downer, but she's someone who can examine deeper topics.

Colvin always knows how to pack an emotional punch, with her own songs or when choosing work by others.  Part of that is her voice and delivery.  She saves the belting for her very rare, and biggest numbers, and most of the time she's at about half-volume, where she can add a lot of drama and inflection.  On this collection, falling is the big image, as things around crumble, whether they are relationships or cities or society.  The title track is the lead cut, the big number on the album, a single if such a thing exists for her.  It's one of her rare uptempo ones, almost a rocker, with an infectious chorus, and a big production built surprisingly around a single hand clap.  Songwriter Rod MacDonald contributes the next one, American Jerusalem, about the collapse of morality in today's modern marketplace, New York City substituting for the temple where Jesus kicked out the money-lenders.  Later, in Fall Of Rome, the city is crumbling, the Titanic is sinking, and there's nothing anyone can do except hope there's a morning after, all this a metaphor for a relationship ending. 

Fall Of Rome features a killer harmony from Jakob Dylan, one of several strong guest spots on the disc.  Emmy Lou Harris shows up for a couple, as does Alison Krauss, and Buddy and Julie Miller both contribute.  No surprise on the latter, as Buddy expertly produced the disc, assembling a dream team, and an uncluttered sound that perfectly compliments her voice.  The redoubtable Viktor Krauss handles bass, and both Miller and whiz Bill Frisell take guitar duties.  Best sounding of all perhaps is drummer Brian Blade, the secret weapon in Daniel Lanois' sound.  Listen for the incredible rolls in Anne Of The Thousand Days.

I haven't read the book, I don't know what's happening in her private life, or how biographical she likes to be in her writing.  I usually don't want to know this stuff anyway, I like to put some distance between the song and the creator.  It feels like she wants to pass on some hope for those who have to go through the end of something, with another falling reference in Change Is On The Way:  "The sky will fall/Peace will come/I'll get over you/And I guess even the sun/Will burn itself out one day/And I feel like a change in on the way."  As I said earlier, emotional punch.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: THE HOLLIES - RADIO FUN

Well God bless the old BBC.  They weren't really that cool in the 60's, but they were first-class broadcasters, and they certainly knew how to record and present musicians.  Confusing, left-over union rules meant only so much "needle time" (playing records) was allowed, so bands had to perform in the studios.  This didn't mean live, however; the bands went into BBC studios all over Great Britain, and recorded new versions of their songs under the supervision of Beeb engineers.

There still was a lack of understanding of the cultural importance of the pop acts they were bringing in.  Even The Beatles had some performances erased after airing, a disastrous corporate decision to re-use tape to save money.  But lots did survive, and since the BBC was at that point the only legal broadcaster in the country, they had their pick of them all.

This Hollies collection is jammed with 32 cuts on a 78-minute CD, with songs spanning three lineups of the group, from 1964 to 1971.  The bulk come from the glory years, '64-'68, with Graham Nash still in the band.  Most of the hits are here, plus as was the norm for bands that performed a lot on the shows, several cover versions so they wouldn't repeat themselves.  There are even some rare moments, such as early and different lyrics to the 1968 track Wings.  The covers are early R'n'B from the U.S., the staple tunes that every Beat group was doing, including Sam Cooke's Shake, and Lawdy Miss Clawdy by Lloyd Price.  None of the covers are particularly inspiring.  Even though they did start out as a covers band, their trademark harmonies really sounded much better on pop tunes, rather than the rawer stuff that more suited the Stones and Beatles.  That choirboy high-end from Nash didn't really imply sexy either.  One interesting cover is a George Harrison number, If I Needed Someone, a Rubber Soul album track that had been given to The Hollies as a single.  Oddly, even thought they were in the middle of a string of hits, a Beatles cut failed for them, but this version is good.

Always a solid live group, the band do solid and faithful recreations of their hits and album cuts, and the vocals sound especially good.  There was a bit of multi-tracking going on, but for the most part, these are recordings of how the live band would have sounded, minus the audience of course.  It's actually quite surprising how well they mirror the originals of classics such as Jennifer Eccles, Bus Stop, I Can't Let Go and He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.  Maybe too good in fact, because if you aren't that big a fan, the studio hits will be all that's needed.  British Invasion fans will, however, find lots to celebrate, especially in the many album cuts found here.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: EMELI SANDE - OUR VERSION OF EVENTS

Okay, pop fans, can you name the British soul and R'n'B singer currently topping the U.K. charts with her new album, has already had a couple of chart-topping singles, and won the Critic's Choice Award for 2012 at the BRIT's.  Alicia Keys is writing songs with her for her next album, Coldplay got her to open up for them on their last tour, and Simon Cowell calls her his favourite songwriter of the moment.  Hell, even Susan Boyle has recorded one of her songs.

You guessed Adele, didn't you?  Geez, so behind the times.  Remember, these Brits usually take a year or so to break over here.  No, this new household name belongs to Emeli Sande, who hails from Scotland, and is winning over audiences and critics with her sound.  Relatively young at 24, for the past couple of years she's been impressing the right people by writing a bunch of tunes that have gone on the charts for soul singers and rappers, plus dropping in for guest vocals and TV shows, working the wow factor.  She certainly seems like the real package.  Co-writing each song on this debut, its mature and diverse, and sounds like somebody well into a career, instead of just starting.

She can go from the big beats and dance-soul of the #2 U.K. single Heaven, which opens this album, to the acoustic guitar-with-strings tracks Suitcase and Breaking The Law, which see her reach for raw intimacy, as a devotee of Joni Mitchell.  There are two versions of Next To Me, a huge hit earlier this year in England, the first with pounding drums making it a big dance floor number, whereas the second recasts it as a ballad, becoming a hymn to, gasp!, a faithful lover. 

I gotta be honest, it's a little too glossy, and heavily produced, influenced by all the usual pop trends of the last decade, but its miles ahead of the banality of Beyonce, for instance.  She can sing for sure, and write even better.  And guess what?  Her real first name?  Adele.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: LENNY KRAVITZ - MAMA SAID DELUXE EDITION

A well-stocked Deluxe Edition of the 1991 mega-hit for Kravitz.  This, his second album, solidified his success, after the breakthrough of Let Love Rule, and proved he was going to be a big star.  The album featured a full seven singles, including the smash hits It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and the ballad Stand By My Woman.  All the variety proved he was in capable of switching gears, from hard rock tunes with Slash on the disc, to funk and fun, plus a liberal dose of sexiness.

Of course, he wore his influences on his sleeve, but there were so many of them, it boiled down to his own style.  Certainly Prince must have raised an eyebrow, with all the frilly scarves on display, as well as the lead guitar heroics.  But Kravitz took just as much from The Beatles, Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, etc., etc.  It became a knock against him, but still he was a master at mixing it all up, plus a great singer and producer.  Really the only problem here was a couple of mediocre tracks along the way, but this was in the day when 14 cuts was the norm, musicians being required to fill up all that space on the CD.  He made more fans on radio than in the review columns though, and never was a critical favourite, although he had the numbers and profits to ignore that.

For the (ahem..) 21st Anniversary Edition (I guess they didn't have it ready for last year), there's a bundle of new stuff.  Three B-sides are included, which probably weren't widely owned, given the limited sales of CD singles then.  All are good, a couple even better than some album tracks, and I liked hearing the instrumental of Always On The Run, which gives you a better feel for his studio prowess.  Likewise the two 12" single mixes of It Ain't Over, although at eight minutes, the extended version outlives its welcome.  Disc Two starts with a bunch of demos, both at home in the studio, including a couple of unfinished numbers, but they don't add much to set, as they are undeveloped, Kravitz tunes better consumed once all the parts are added.  In other words, his songs are more about the riffs than the lyrics and melodies, but that's okay.  A better time is had with the rest of the disc, as it visits two different live concerts at the time.  He had a crack band, and obviously the guy's a dynamic performer.  He had the fans locked in by then, with lots of audience singing.

I've never been a huge Kravitzer, but I'll give him his due;  the hits hold up, it's timeless, quality rock, well-made, just not that deep.