MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: JANN ARDEN - THESE ARE THE DAYS

Jann Arden sounds like she's having fun on this album, which is welcome, because sometimes she sounds just too darn sad, and we all know what a great sense of humour she has. Lead track Everybody's Pulling On Me, with its girl group throwback sound, addresses getting away from the people bringing you down. There are several songs with similar positive advice, and there's even a page in the booklet devoted to one line: These are the days to kick ass. That's no doubt directed at herself as much as us.

Bob Rock produced and co-wrote most of the tracks with Arden, and its a solid collaboration. The songs play to her strengths, with the focus on the vocals and not too much, well, Rock, or rock. And it's no exercise is being up for up's sake either. A Long Goodbye addresses being the caregiver to her mother as she progresses with Alzheimer's, also the topic of her most recent book. It's a powerful, unflinching song, and that's what ties all this material together, the strength in the lyric. Come Down The River With Me is a full-on gospel rocker, Franklin is Southern Soul, One More Mile To Go could be a new country hit, and includes my favourite line, "I pulled over to grab a cup of coffee and use a dirty bathroom." The album is varied, runs the gamut of emotions, but never loses that strength.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: DAVID BYRNE - AMERICAN UTOPIA

Byrne's back with a big art piece, no surprise, most of his work has been just that. He's working with Eno again, who supplied the bulk of the track ideas. They are slightly funky, dance-y tunes, nothing explosive but happy and enjoyable, with that Latin influence Byrne's had this century. The focus is more on the lyrics, as this is a thought piece, and he goes out of his way in the sleeve notes to explain it as best he can. He's not being ironic with the title, he's referring to the original view of the U.S. experiment, that it could approach a utopian society.

Instead of wailing about how that failed, and the woeful situation that country and most of the rest are in, Byrne writes about what we could do to change all that. Not that he has any concrete ideas; it's more about the potential we all have. Much of this is abstract, askew, goofy, whimsical, even confusing if you're looking for a normal story arc. He looks at things differently, and wonders if we all looked at life differently, and acted differently, would it be better? He just wants to ask questions.

It's best not to think too hard, if you want to enjoy the record, and it is enjoyable, if a little jarring. "The bullet went into him, it went it's merry way," he sings in Bullet, which basically just talks about the act of being shot. You can study what he's singing, or sit back and get into the pleasing grooves. I'd go with the grooves. And of course, you have Byrne's always-fascinating voice and delivery, along with some pretty novel soundscapes, so there's lots being offered. It's like a visit to an art gallery with lots of pretty paintings of people you can almost recognize.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: CHRISTINA MARTIN - IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD

There's a wider musical palette on this latest, from one of the most consistently strong Maritime singer-songwriters. Along with producer/guitar player/husband Dale Murray, Dave Rawlings to her Gillian Welch, Martin is ranging into styles you'd never call roots. Always Reminding is bubbly '80's electronic pop, while Foreign features a Euro/Bowie techno chill. Keep Me Calm is catchy with '60's Top 10 touches and the single Lungs Are Burning is everything Stevie Nicks should still be doing with Fleetwood Mac.

That's all very welcome, as it makes the 10-track album widely varied and adventurous. The key though lies in her dramatic delivery of sharp observational lyrics, whether it's a relationship moment or someone's personal crisis. It feels like we're on the knife-edge in each song, when things could go wrong, but love manages to save the day or at least pull us back for now. This album is why the repeat button was invented.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: LARISSA TANDY - THE GRIP

Her music might be called Americana, but that's a distinct Australian accent coming through clearly. Larissa Tandy comes from a rural background in that country, and now is working a lot in Canada. She's heading out on her first tour of the Maritimes starting today (Mar. 28) with a mix of house concerts and club dates, featuring this 2017 album.

Her singer-songwriter songs are acoustic at the centre, surrounded by a rough and ready roots sound, with touches of organ, pedal steel and twangy lead guitar. The key is found in her strong lyrics, and her sharp observational style. The stuff we all struggle to figure out, she's managed to find a way to put into words. In The River, she sums up a relationship with "When it comes to you and me, I know nothing is perfect/ It has never been easy but it's always been worth it." In the opening cut Friendly Fire, she tells us "I didn't want to be a fighter but it became apparent from an early age that life had me backed into a corner." Most striking is My Mother's Boyfriend, where she goes over advice received by two parents, one close friend, and the titular guy who says "Make your luck, I hope he meant it lying dead under that truck." In short, lots of advice, life's still a mess, but press on.

That's the kind of voice I want to hear, and it's not the accent (cool as it is), it's the clarity of her writing, and bursts of wisdom in each song. Catch Tandy at the Rogue Cafe in Saint John, N.B. on Thursday the 29th, Grimross in Fredericton on Friday, an in-store at Back Alley Music in Charlottetown Saturday afternoon, a show at The Dunk in Breadalbane, P.E.I. Saturday evening, and the Carleton in Halifax Tuesday, April 3.

MUDDY WATERS - CAN'T BE SATISFIED: THE VERY BEST OF

It occurs to me that there is probably a whole generation of music fans that only know Muddy Waters from his appearance in the The Last Waltz movie. Not that it wasn't good, it's just that he was near the end of his life at that point, and comes across more as the genial, revered grandfather figure, rather than the dangerous performer and massive innovator that he truly was. This set would be a fine place for anyone to go to pick up on that.

First off, they'd need to know these weren't cliches when Muddy sang them, he was putting them down for the first time. They were either new then, or gathered from old acoustic blues numbers, and being assembled for these new versions, you know, the blues tradition, either his own tracks or the ones he popularized by Willie Dixon. And when they hear Muddy do You Need Love, they'll recognize where Led Zeppelin got their songs. The sexy stuff, not the lyrics about hobbits and shit.

You can't go too wrong with a Muddy Waters collection, and this two-disc set does it just about perfectly. Unveiled chronologically, it traces Waters from acoustic to fully electric, and marks the explosion of Chess blues that he led in the '50's. While there aren't any of his sides previous to Chess, the initial cuts here, such as I Can't Be Satisfied, show him still in the acoustic field with just slide and bass, in the Delta blues style of mentors such as Son House. But soon he teamed up with the other greats of Chess, and exploded that particularly threatening, big city blues at which he was the master, more sophisticated than Howlin' Wolf, his great rival.

The second disc here follows Waters through the second half of his career, as his fame grew thanks to all those white boys from England bowing at his feet. Although it's usually the earlier material that draws the most praise, there were plenty of albums and tracks from the mid-'60's to the mid-'70's worthy of repeating play. Plus, there's the still-divisive Electric Mud album to discuss, Chess's attempt to modernize the master after the success of the Stones, Cream, etc. It keeps getting better with age, separated from the controversy over the premise at the time. Quite simply though, here's two hours of the real thing, and a kind of wish I was young again just so I could hear it all over for the first time.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: CHARLES WRIGHT & the WATTS 103rd STREET RHYTHM BAND - THE BEST OF

These funk pioneers came together as session players in the late '60's L.A. hotbed, among other jobs serving as backing band for Bill Cosby's foray in soul as part of his stage act. The talented group proved to have a great, danceable groove going on, able to fill floors with improvised jams and killer hooks. Soon they were editing actual hit singles out of those live shows, starting with 1969's Do Your Thing. Wright was the producer, singer on the funky stuff, and band leader, so his name went to the top of the billing. For the smoother fare, drummer James Gadson handled the vocals, best heard on the hit Love Land from 1970 that deserves to be better remembered.

It was the next song that became their best-known cut, Express Yourself, another adaption of the Do Your Thing theme, the band's signature. If it doesn't leap to mind, you'd recognize bits from the dozens of tracks that have sampled the break beats over the years, and all the group's material from those years includes ridiculously infectious rhythms. Although they just had three years of core existence, this best-of easily fills up an hour without flagging. Most surprisingly, there are two recent cuts from Wright from an upcoming album that are seriously strong, including the return of that ultimate groove in Remember That Thing.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: LED ZEPPELIN - HOW THE WEST WAS WON

It seems like this just came out, but it was actually 15 years ago, so it missed the rebirth of vinyl, which is the main reason it's being reissued now. It sounded great in the first place, after much detailed work by Page himself, and now gets some retweaking. This is where the detailed restoration has gone, and it's now the focus album for concert stuff of Zeppelin, rather than the inferior, bloated The Song Remains The Same soundtrack.

Page calls this the height of Zeppelin live, and certainly they are firing on all cylinders here. They are also by this time (1972) huge, conquering the new arena circuit in the U.S., and showing how monster shows should be done, for then and for the future. I tried to put myself in that audience, and can easily imagine how blown away people must have been. Disc one (or albums one and two) in particular is a tremendous listen still, songs that come at you with power and majesty. Particular effective is the opening trio of Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker and Black Dog. Stairway To Heaven is perhaps a might underwhelming, but it always was live, one song where it's impossible to meet expectations. But Going To California is a delight, its different textures a good contrast from the heaviness, and you'll notice Plant refer to "Joni" in an adlib, letting all know that Joni Mitchell was the inspiration.

I find discs two and three (or on vinyl, albums three and four) lose the momentum, thanks to the expansions of Dazed And Confused (25:25), Moby Dick (19:20) and Whole Lotta Love (20:59), which were probably more effective in person. And as for the infamous drum solo in Moby Dick, well, those things stand out like bell bottoms and afros do from the '70's these days. And the band really didn't have a good encore figured out on that whole tour. Certainly Rock and Roll and The Ocean worked, but ended on Bring It On Home seems like a let down. Disc one is the one to replay, as an example of when giants roamed the Earth.