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Lonesome Travails

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Fans of a certain kind of orphaned Americana are likely to fall on Post To Wire like apostles on The Grail. By which I mean anyone who's been touched where it hurts by American Music Club, The Replacements, Uncle Tuoelo, Ryan Adams, Dave Alvin or Gram Parsons will soon be entirely enthralled with th...

Fans of a certain kind of orphaned Americana are likely to fall on Post To Wire like apostles on The Grail. By which I mean anyone who’s been touched where it hurts by American Music Club, The Replacements, Uncle Tuoelo, Ryan Adams, Dave Alvin or Gram Parsons will soon be entirely enthralled with this dark and mesmerising masterpiece. Who are Richmond Fontaine? I was just about to ask the same question.

Turns out they’ve been going, to my great surprise, for nigh on a decade, and Post To Wire is their fifth album. They were formed in 1994 when songwriter Willy Vlautin quit his native Reno, where not a lot that was good happened to him, and moved from Nevada to Portland, Oregon, where things started to look up after hemet Dave Harding, a local bass player who shared Willy’s enthusiasm for H

Roger McGuinn – Peace On You

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The only constant fixture in the Byrds' line-up, McGuinn was thus able to satisfy a myriad of musical cravings, which is perhaps why his solo career never produced the kind of intensely personal masterpiece that his ex-bandmates Gene Clark and David Crosby did with No Other and If I Could Only Remember My Name respectively. Nevertheless, his eponymous 1973 debut is intermittently brilliant, not least "My New Woman", a smeared-harmony offcut from that year's ill-fated Byrds reunion (Chris Hillman, Crosby and Clark guest) and the perfectly-feathered "Bag Full Of Money". Elsewhere, Dylan and Bruce Johnston help ring the changes from folk and gospel to space-rock and surf. However, the disappointing 1974 follow-up, Peace On You, suggests a distracted muse.

The only constant fixture in the Byrds’ line-up, McGuinn was thus able to satisfy a myriad of musical cravings, which is perhaps why his solo career never produced the kind of intensely personal masterpiece that his ex-bandmates Gene Clark and David Crosby did with No Other and If I Could Only Remember My Name respectively. Nevertheless, his eponymous 1973 debut is intermittently brilliant, not least “My New Woman”, a smeared-harmony offcut from that year’s ill-fated Byrds reunion (Chris Hillman, Crosby and Clark guest) and the perfectly-feathered “Bag Full Of Money”. Elsewhere, Dylan and Bruce Johnston help ring the changes from folk and gospel to space-rock and surf. However, the disappointing 1974 follow-up, Peace On You, suggests a distracted muse.

Dave Cousins – Two Weeks Last Summer

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In that well of disregard cemented over by critical consensus soon after punk resides the reputation of The Strawbs, a hearty folk-rock act whose albums are now practically forgotten. Up front, the reedy, earnest and distinctive voice a little like Cat Stevens belonged to Dave Cousins. His solo set was a Strawbs album in all but billing?but crucially without the band's pop conscience, rhythm section Hudson and Ford?recorded in a busy year when the unsteady band also released breakthrough album Grave New World and then split acrimoniously. Its ambitious mix of hymnal ballads, portentous suites and solid rockers is overshadowed by the title track, a floaty folk-psych gem. Otherwise, probably best left to Strawbs aficionados.

In that well of disregard cemented over by critical consensus soon after punk resides the reputation of The Strawbs, a hearty folk-rock act whose albums are now practically forgotten. Up front, the reedy, earnest and distinctive voice a little like Cat Stevens belonged to Dave Cousins. His solo set was a Strawbs album in all but billing?but crucially without the band’s pop conscience, rhythm section Hudson and Ford?recorded in a busy year when the unsteady band also released breakthrough album Grave New World and then split acrimoniously. Its ambitious mix of hymnal ballads, portentous suites and solid rockers is overshadowed by the title track, a floaty folk-psych gem. Otherwise, probably best left to Strawbs aficionados.

Tindersticks – Working For The Man: The Island Years

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Elegantly wasted, lugubrious, rain and red wine-sodden-there remains something magically dreary about the Tindersticks' early records. While their dogged exhaustion of a tiny musical remit has made for some fairly average albums in recent years, Working For The Man proves that the sextet's initial attempts to formulate an East Midlands noir are still beguiling. Essentially an extension of 1998's flimsy Donkeys compilation, the first disc features what we'll optimistically call the band's hits, with the tantalisingly incomprehensible ghost story "Marbles" as distrait as ever. The second CD, just as predictably, rounds up plenty of long unavailable singles and B-sides, with low-budget murk and creak maturing better than orchestral largesse. It's hardly surprising these songs have aged so well, given that they were designed to be ravaged and ancient in the first place. Interesting, too, that Stuart Staples' faded croon sounds more droll than depressive in retrospect:if only he and his band had quietly retired at the turn of the century and left this impressive musical heritage undiluted.

Elegantly wasted, lugubrious, rain and red wine-sodden-there remains something magically dreary about the Tindersticks’ early records. While their dogged exhaustion of a tiny musical remit has made for some fairly average albums in recent years, Working For The Man proves that the sextet’s initial attempts to formulate an East Midlands noir are still beguiling. Essentially an extension of 1998’s flimsy Donkeys compilation, the first disc features what we’ll optimistically call the band’s hits, with the tantalisingly incomprehensible ghost story “Marbles” as distrait as ever. The second CD, just as predictably, rounds up plenty of long unavailable singles and B-sides, with low-budget murk and creak maturing better than orchestral largesse. It’s hardly surprising these songs have aged so well, given that they were designed to be ravaged and ancient in the first place.

Interesting, too, that Stuart Staples’ faded croon sounds more droll than depressive in retrospect:if only he and his band had quietly retired at the turn of the century and left this impressive musical heritage undiluted.

Anna Domino

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A further welcome reissue from the LTM label, who have unearthed an improbable number of gems from the crannies of '80s obscurity. Anna Domino was too much of an outsider and rootless internationalist by nature to win popular favour. Although she worked as a maker of furniture, this is not furniture music, despite its smart contours. There are too many cracks running beneath the varnish, evidence of a troubled, foraging soul "searching for the straight line", as she declares with deceptively detached hauteur, but perpetually straying from it. Domino's tainted torch songs are not for placing discreetly in the background but well worth the trouble of engaging with.

A further welcome reissue from the LTM label, who have unearthed an improbable number of gems from the crannies of ’80s obscurity. Anna Domino was too much of an outsider and rootless internationalist by nature to win popular favour. Although she worked as a maker of furniture, this is not furniture music, despite its smart contours. There are too many cracks running beneath the varnish, evidence of a troubled, foraging soul “searching for the straight line”, as she declares with deceptively detached hauteur, but perpetually straying from it. Domino’s tainted torch songs are not for placing discreetly in the background but well worth the trouble of engaging with.

Various Artists – All You Need Is Lisboa

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It's a neat concept, seeing how a particular culture regurgitated Los Beatles. Portugal emerges as a tryer: chap singing through his forehead on "I'll Follow The Sun", "When I'm 64" played on a wasp, a total botch made of "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" (which is bollocks anyway, to be fair) and a surprisingly loose grasp of rhythm all round. But, occasionally, Portugal triumphs: an atmospheric "Blackbird", a surfing "I'll Get You" and a delightful fado reading of "Hey Jude" taken at a canter on the pretty Portuguese guitarra. Collectors will also want to hear the two versions of "Penina" (a song Paul McCartney tossed off on the Algarve and sold locally), but maybe not often. Inessential stuff, but fun.

It’s a neat concept, seeing how a particular culture regurgitated Los Beatles. Portugal emerges as a tryer: chap singing through his forehead on “I’ll Follow The Sun”, “When I’m 64” played on a wasp, a total botch made of “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” (which is bollocks anyway, to be fair) and a surprisingly loose grasp of rhythm all round. But, occasionally, Portugal triumphs: an atmospheric “Blackbird”, a surfing “I’ll Get You” and a delightful fado reading of “Hey Jude” taken at a canter on the pretty Portuguese guitarra. Collectors will also want to hear the two versions of “Penina” (a song Paul McCartney tossed off on the Algarve and sold locally), but maybe not often. Inessential stuff, but fun.

Merle Haggard – Just Between The Two Of Us (With Bonnie Owens)

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Hag's rep was still rising when he cut second album... Two Of Us with new wife (and the ex-Mrs Buck Owens) in 1966. Largely restrained to counterpoint harmony alongside Bonnie's weaker honky-tonk purr, Merle gets suitably country-tough on superior 1970 live-in-Philly effort Fightin' Side Of Me, rush-released to cash in on the unapologetic jingoism of recent smash "Okie From Muskogee" (also included here). Paying homage to Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash and Jimmie Rodgers, he's never better than on the latter's extraordinary "TB Blues".

Hag’s rep was still rising when he cut second album… Two Of Us with new wife (and the ex-Mrs Buck Owens) in 1966. Largely restrained to counterpoint harmony alongside Bonnie’s weaker honky-tonk purr, Merle gets suitably country-tough on superior 1970 live-in-Philly effort Fightin’ Side Of Me, rush-released to cash in on the unapologetic jingoism of recent smash “Okie From Muskogee” (also included here). Paying homage to Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash and Jimmie Rodgers, he’s never better than on the latter’s extraordinary “TB Blues”.

Paul Simon – The Paul Simon Songbook

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What an earnest and downbeat fellow the young Paul Simon was. When he wasn't overstating the weather (the drizzle of the rain, the wind that is both "chilly" and "cold"), he was bemoaning the passage of time (he was 24) and almost glorying in a misunderstood isolation, a precious elevation of his own masochistic locked-upness. And wasn't he good at it? Songs like "I Am A Rock" and "Sounds Of Silence" remain simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent. When he murmurs in that weary, calmly melancholy way of his, he sounds like nothing less than the proverbial prophet quietly writing on the subway walls. But when he raises his voice to match the righteous hyperbole of his text-which he does here and there on this album, usually on the word "free"?the spell is broken, and he just sounds like a short guy trying to be a tall guy. And he knew it; his heart just isn't in some of this stuff he was peddling around the folk clubs of England in 1964/65. As he sings in the conspicuously self-knowing "Kathy's Song", "I don't know why I spend my time/Writing songs I can't believe/With words that tear and strain to rhyme." The anti-racism of "A Church Is Burning" and the anti-war "He Was My Brother" are the worst offenders of that sort of song. Good-hearted, naturally, but strident and uneasy, peripheral to Simon's art which, at its best, is a delicate flower of wisdom. Luckily, even as he bashes through his callow poet-and-a-one-man-band set, there's plenty of that already in place. "Leaves That Are Green" contains a simple, heart-stopping summation of universal transience ("hello" sung four times, then "goodbye" four times). "April Come She Will" sustains its conceit (passing spring and summer months as fickle lovers) with modest brilliance. "The Side Of A Hill" (unrecorded elsewhere, though its theme would reappear as "Scarborough Fair"'s counter-melody) is an anti-war song rather more worthy of this most serenely astute writer. Simon has kept this album under Kubrick-like wraps for years, as if embarrassed. No need. A most peculiar young man for sure, but a fascinating one.

What an earnest and downbeat fellow the young Paul Simon was. When he wasn’t overstating the weather (the drizzle of the rain, the wind that is both “chilly” and “cold”), he was bemoaning the passage of time (he was 24) and almost glorying in a misunderstood isolation, a precious elevation of his own masochistic locked-upness.

And wasn’t he good at it? Songs like “I Am A Rock” and “Sounds Of Silence” remain simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent. When he murmurs in that weary, calmly melancholy way of his, he sounds like nothing less than the proverbial prophet quietly writing on the subway walls. But when he raises his voice to match the righteous hyperbole of his text-which he does here and there on this album, usually on the word “free”?the spell is broken, and he just sounds like a short guy trying to be a tall guy.

And he knew it; his heart just isn’t in some of this stuff he was peddling around the folk clubs of England in 1964/65. As he sings in the conspicuously self-knowing “Kathy’s Song”, “I don’t know why I spend my time/Writing songs I can’t believe/With words that tear and strain to rhyme.” The anti-racism of “A Church Is Burning” and the anti-war “He Was My Brother” are the worst offenders of that sort of song. Good-hearted, naturally, but strident and uneasy, peripheral to Simon’s art which, at its best, is a delicate flower of wisdom.

Luckily, even as he bashes through his callow poet-and-a-one-man-band set, there’s plenty of that already in place. “Leaves That Are Green” contains a simple, heart-stopping summation of universal transience (“hello” sung four times, then “goodbye” four times). “April Come She Will” sustains its conceit (passing spring and summer months as fickle lovers) with modest brilliance. “The Side Of A Hill” (unrecorded elsewhere, though its theme would reappear as “Scarborough Fair”‘s counter-melody) is an anti-war song rather more worthy of this most serenely astute writer.

Simon has kept this album under Kubrick-like wraps for years, as if embarrassed. No need. A most peculiar young man for sure, but a fascinating one.

Ssh! Art In Progress

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What are they, all these ghosts that keep materialising? That's the real legacy of the CD revolution; with everything now available for reissue, our attention is inevitably drawn to music which at the time of its original release was probably only heard by a few people and appreciated by fewer, but which now reappears to offer contemporary music a possible way forward. Last year it was Linda Perhacs' phenomenal Parallelograms, and now Hush by the briefly-existing Sydney-based group Extradition. It is as if they have returned to recall the concept of radical quietness in music back from exile. Extradition were more or less the Australian equivalent of Pentangle; a mixture of musicians from different fields?from the folk scene, guitarist/songwriter Colin Campbell and singer Shayna Karlin, and from the rock/modern jazz crucible, percussionist Robert Lloyd and keyboardist Richard Lockwood?and Hush was their only album. An album so resolute in its quietude that it sounds all the more startling in 2004. How did they sound? Perhaps something like the Incredible String Band in the way that songs like "A Water Song" seem to stop and restart at will, its folky verses punctuated by long percussive interludes but with a devout seriousness replacing the ISB's quirkiness. Indeed, the album's centrepiece, the nine-minute-plus "Dear One", is a hymn to the Indian guru Meher Baba; and how gracefully and profoundly does this song take its time to develop, alternating its vocals between Karlin and Lockwood, and underpinned by a slowly undulating harmonium figure which certainly pre-empts what Eno was to get up to later that decade. Even the extended percussion piece "Original Whim", an attempt to depict the first attempts by cavemen to make music, works in this context. The songs are heartbreaking in their seeming simplicity?the Harpers Bizarre chorus reacting against the high-pitched drone in "A Moonsong", the way in which the gorgeous "A Woman Song" transforms naturally into a raga. Even the record's one moment of near-violence?the apocalyptic "Ice", sung by Graham Lowndes (sounding very much like Roger Waters), which rages to a climax before suddenly being cut off?is balanced by the delicate deification of the concluding "Song For Sunrise". In his sleevenote, writer David Pepperell sadly recalls the hostile reaction which Extradition met from an audience of ignorant students in Melbourne back in 1970. In a 2004 which sees music still dominated by whoever can shout loudest, we can only hope that this extraordinary record may now find kinder and more receptive ears.

What are they, all these ghosts that keep materialising? That’s the real legacy of the CD revolution; with everything now available for reissue, our attention is inevitably drawn to music which at the time of its original release was probably only heard by a few people and appreciated by fewer, but which now reappears to offer contemporary music a possible way forward.

Last year it was Linda Perhacs’ phenomenal Parallelograms, and now Hush by the briefly-existing Sydney-based group Extradition. It is as if they have returned to recall the concept of radical quietness in music back from exile.

Extradition were more or less the Australian equivalent of Pentangle; a mixture of musicians from different fields?from the folk scene, guitarist/songwriter Colin Campbell and singer Shayna Karlin, and from the rock/modern jazz crucible, percussionist Robert Lloyd and keyboardist Richard Lockwood?and Hush was their only album. An album so resolute in its quietude that it sounds all the more startling in 2004. How did they sound? Perhaps something like the Incredible String Band in the way that songs like “A Water Song” seem to stop and restart at will, its folky verses punctuated by long percussive interludes but with a devout seriousness replacing the ISB’s quirkiness. Indeed, the album’s centrepiece, the nine-minute-plus “Dear One”, is a hymn to the Indian guru Meher Baba; and how gracefully and profoundly does this song take its time to develop, alternating its vocals between Karlin and Lockwood, and underpinned by a slowly undulating harmonium figure which certainly pre-empts what Eno was to get up to later that decade. Even the extended percussion piece “Original Whim”, an attempt to depict the first attempts by cavemen to make music, works in this context.

The songs are heartbreaking in their seeming simplicity?the Harpers Bizarre chorus reacting against the high-pitched drone in “A Moonsong”, the way in which the gorgeous “A Woman Song” transforms naturally into a raga.

Even the record’s one moment of near-violence?the apocalyptic “Ice”, sung by Graham Lowndes (sounding very much like Roger Waters), which rages to a climax before suddenly being cut off?is balanced by the delicate deification of the concluding “Song For Sunrise”.

In his sleevenote, writer David Pepperell sadly recalls the hostile reaction which Extradition met from an audience of ignorant students in Melbourne back in 1970. In a 2004 which sees music still dominated by whoever can shout loudest, we can only hope that this extraordinary record may now find kinder and more receptive ears.

Johnny Cash – The Living End

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This belated sequel to 2002's triple-album retrospective Love God Murder features 18 songs that might easily have fitted under one or another of that set's individual headings. Not, perhaps, "Murder"?the only death here is that of the Native American hero of Peter LaFarge's "Ballad Of Ira Hayes", a ...

This belated sequel to 2002’s triple-album retrospective Love God Murder features 18 songs that might easily have fitted under one or another of that set’s individual headings. Not, perhaps, “Murder”?the only death here is that of the Native American hero of Peter LaFarge’s “Ballad Of Ira Hayes”, a war hero allowed to fall into alcoholism and ignominy after he’d helped raise that iconic flag at Iwo Jima?but certainly “Love” and “God”. Such, I suppose, was “Life” for Johnny Cash: a shifting seascape of emotional turmoil in which love and faith provided vital anchorages in which to shelter from the self-destructive urges that tormented him.

Religion is a constant factor here, not just in the overt gospel of “Lead Me Gently Home” and “I Talk To Jesus Every Day” (“no secretary ever tells me He’s been called away”), but also seeping into other, apparently secular songs, like a background watercolour wash. The effect is most pronounced in sentimental celebrations of rural life such as “Country Trash”?which ends with the supposedly comforting prospect of heaven?and the nostalgic “Suppertime”, in which Johnny’s recollection of his mom calling him in at meal-time is crowned with a spoken interlude of jaw-dropping crassness. “But you know, time has woven for me a realisation of a truth that’s even more thrilling,” muses Cash. “That someday we’ll all be called together around the great supper table up there for the greatest suppertime of them all, with our Lord”.

How, you wonder, did he manage to perform this without sniggering? But then, it was 1958, when such profuse expressions of piety were the norm in country circles, and the song’s down-homey, demotic manner?suppertime with God!?vividly illustrates the singer’s grasp of his audience’s working-class attitudes. Those attitudes are themselves celebrated in “These Are My People” and given satisfyingly surly voice in Jim Chesnut’s “Oney”, in which a workman relishes his impending retirement day as an opportunity to even things up with his eponymous foreman: “I’ll be remembered as a working man/That put his point across/With a right hand full of knuckles/’Cause today I show old Oney who’s the boss.”

Less pleasing, from a foreigner’s point of view, is the glutinous patriotism of “Ragged Old Flag”, in which Americans’ perverse regard for a symbolic scrap of fabric is acclaimed in a tendentious setting of military snare and wistful harmonica, building to a grotesque finale of lachrymose strings and heavenly choir. The track dates from 1974, when Cash’s faltering career perhaps led him to pursue a more conservative audience than his own life and career merited.

It’s a far cry indeed from his quasi-liberal 1971 manifesto “Man In Black”, in which the singer explains why he wears black “for the poor and beaten down/For the prisoner who has long paid for his crime”, and for similar unfortunates such as the illiterate and the irreligious. Such vacillations of nobility might strike us as self-defeating, maybe even desperate; but Johnny Cash was always, to use his prot

Tom Rapp – Familiar Songs

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In the late '60s and early '70s, Tom Rapp's band, Pearls Before Swine, perfected a kind of literate, ethereal psych-folk that was as frail as it was entrancing. Elements of that sorcery can be detected on Rapp's solo debut from 1972. Familiar Songs, though, is more notable as a souvenir of muddled record company politicking, being haphazard re-recordings of Pearls Before Swine songs released by Rapp's old label (Reprise) after he had departed for a new one (Blue Thumb). The music's fine enough, if a little sturdier and more countryish than before. The problems come with Rapp, who experiments unsteadily with tone and phrasing. "I hope I was really stoned when I did that," he writes in the rueful new sleevenotes, with some justification. Newcomers, as a result, are better directed to Water's Pearls Before Swine box set, Jewels Were The Stars, and the lovely, unadulterated originals.

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Tom Rapp’s band, Pearls Before Swine, perfected a kind of literate, ethereal psych-folk that was as frail as it was entrancing. Elements of that sorcery can be detected on Rapp’s solo debut from 1972. Familiar Songs, though, is more notable as a souvenir of muddled record company politicking, being haphazard re-recordings of Pearls Before Swine songs released by Rapp’s old label (Reprise) after he had departed for a new one (Blue Thumb). The music’s fine enough, if a little sturdier and more countryish than before. The problems come with Rapp, who experiments unsteadily with tone and phrasing. “I hope I was really stoned when I did that,” he writes in the rueful new sleevenotes, with some justification. Newcomers, as a result, are better directed to Water’s Pearls Before Swine box set, Jewels Were The Stars, and the lovely, unadulterated originals.

Various Artists – Brel Next

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The monumental songwriting prowess of Jacques Brel has traditionally been far too clever for the non-French-speaking masses to care. Even in English. According to the sophisticated French-speaking masses, the translations are a travesty. Not always so. In the devoted, talented hands of Elvis lyricist Mort Shuman, adaptor of the bulk of the songs on this compilation, they pack a heavyweight lyrical punch rarely experienced in the comparatively feeble 'rock' lexicon. Though Terry Jacks' "Seasons In The Sun" was hands-down the best pop record of the spring of '74, it could have been better still had its translator, the ludicrous Mc-Poet Rod McKuen, had any inkling of the true dark intent of Brel's original, "Le Moribond". But then maybe "We had joy, we had fun" was the only line a snogger needed on Blackpool Pier 30 years ago. Interpretive moths transfixed by Brel's fiery inferno have included the sublime and the ridiculous. Scott Walker, represented here twice, sang Brel so knowingly that he might have been his beautiful blonde emotional doppelganger, while Nina Simone's loony-bin escapee routine on "The Desperate Ones" is pure farce. David Bowie expertly transforms the tough drunken sailor narrator of "Amsterdam" into a sensitive, amphetamine-skinny cabin boy, while on "Next" Alex Harvey's tipsy vicar is too loud. Triumphantly, an impudent newcomer takes first prize. Emiliana Torrini's fragile vocal, inside her brilliant, defiantly modern samples-and-beats arrangement of "If You Go Away", definitively demonstrates that Brel's legacy is truly timeless. A solid introduction; here, even the ridiculous entertains.

The monumental songwriting prowess of Jacques Brel has traditionally been far too clever for the non-French-speaking masses to care. Even in English. According to the sophisticated French-speaking masses, the translations are a travesty. Not always so. In the devoted, talented hands of Elvis lyricist Mort Shuman, adaptor of the bulk of the songs on this compilation, they pack a heavyweight lyrical punch rarely experienced in the comparatively feeble ‘rock’ lexicon. Though Terry Jacks’ “Seasons In The Sun” was hands-down the best pop record of the spring of ’74, it could have been better still had its translator, the ludicrous Mc-Poet Rod McKuen, had any inkling of the true dark intent of Brel’s original, “Le Moribond”. But then maybe “We had joy, we had fun” was the only line a snogger needed on Blackpool Pier 30 years ago.

Interpretive moths transfixed by Brel’s fiery inferno have included the sublime and the ridiculous. Scott Walker, represented here twice, sang Brel so knowingly that he might have been his beautiful blonde emotional doppelganger, while Nina Simone’s loony-bin escapee routine on “The Desperate Ones” is pure farce. David Bowie expertly transforms the tough drunken sailor narrator of “Amsterdam” into a sensitive, amphetamine-skinny cabin boy, while on “Next” Alex Harvey’s tipsy vicar is too loud.

Triumphantly, an impudent newcomer takes first prize. Emiliana Torrini’s fragile vocal, inside her brilliant, defiantly modern samples-and-beats arrangement of “If You Go Away”, definitively demonstrates that Brel’s legacy is truly timeless. A solid introduction; here, even the ridiculous entertains.

A Farewell To Arms

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Polarising opinion like no other Pink Floyd release, The Final Cut arrived in 1983 as the relationship between Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour broke down irreparably amid a welter of accusations and recriminations. This was Waters' last Floyd album. It's also, conspicuously, a Waters solo LP, dutifully performed by the band and a clutch of session musicians And so aside from some typically vivid guitar solos from Gilmour on "Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home" and "The Final Cut", plus a vast array of sound effects from ticking clocks to the seagulls at Southampton dock, there is little connection to the old Floyd, the sweeping melodies and colourful soundscapes that entranced fans throughout the '70s. Returning to his preoccupation with the military and spreading it across the album, Waters is uncompromisingly, grimly realistic as he rages at the causes and effects of war. It's not easy listening, particularly with the addition of "When The Tigers Broke Free": choral, funereal, harrowingly child-like, it relates the true story of his father's death in WWII. The music is equally stark, often harsh. Waters is so close to your ear, you can hear him cross his "t" s. And despite the dramatic contrasts of "Your Possible Pasts" and "The Gunner's Dream", the orchestral arrangements, the odd Eastern flavour, the gospel singers and the thumping singalongability of "Not Now John", the soundtrack is generally as cheery as its subject matter. By the time the world ends in a nuclear flash with "Two Suns In The Sunset", one listener has decided Pink Floyd have turned into a bunch of miserable bastards while another has realised that Waters is offering a piece of himself; something very personal that is also universal and still, surprisingly, valid if for Thatcher and Reagan you read Blair and Bush.

Polarising opinion like no other Pink Floyd release, The Final Cut arrived in 1983 as the relationship between Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour broke down irreparably amid a welter of accusations and recriminations.

This was Waters’ last Floyd album. It’s also, conspicuously, a Waters solo LP, dutifully performed by the band and a clutch of session musicians And so aside from some typically vivid guitar solos from Gilmour on “Your Possible Pasts”, “The Fletcher Memorial Home” and “The Final Cut”, plus a vast array of sound effects from ticking clocks to the seagulls at Southampton dock, there is little connection to the old Floyd, the sweeping melodies and colourful soundscapes that entranced fans throughout the ’70s. Returning to his preoccupation with the military and spreading it across the album, Waters is uncompromisingly, grimly realistic as he rages at the causes and effects of war. It’s not easy listening, particularly with the addition of “When The Tigers Broke Free”: choral, funereal, harrowingly child-like, it relates the true story of his father’s death in WWII. The music is equally stark, often harsh. Waters is so close to your ear, you can hear him cross his “t” s. And despite the dramatic contrasts of “Your Possible Pasts” and “The Gunner’s Dream”, the orchestral arrangements, the odd Eastern flavour, the gospel singers and the thumping singalongability of “Not Now John”, the soundtrack is generally as cheery as its subject matter.

By the time the world ends in a nuclear flash with “Two Suns In The Sunset”, one listener has decided Pink Floyd have turned into a bunch of miserable bastards while another has realised that Waters is offering a piece of himself; something very personal that is also universal and still, surprisingly, valid if for Thatcher and Reagan you read Blair and Bush.

Lonnie Liston Smith

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Lonnie Liston Smith was originally a sideman with the great jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, for whom he wrote the wonderfully limpid "Astral Travelling". As a solo artist or with his band The Cosmic Echoes, he was, as these reissues demonstrate, a boundlessly sanguine purveyor of jazz funk whose e...

Lonnie Liston Smith was originally a sideman with the great jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, for whom he wrote the wonderfully limpid “Astral Travelling”. As a solo artist or with his band The Cosmic Echoes, he was, as these reissues demonstrate, a boundlessly sanguine purveyor of jazz funk whose endless exhortations for peace and unity, delivered over fast-moving electric keyboards, made him an uplifting and accessible antidote to the more darkly angular likes of Miles Davis or Sun Ra, who operated in similar sonic space.

Sadly, Smith has become tainted by association with the whole Gilles Peterson/Acid Jazz axis, too-easy fodder for annoying turntablists in trendy Shoreditch or those in search of an aesthetically lazy chill-out.

Doubtless Smith has been grateful for the attention this has afforded him, and to some extent his ambrosial fusion has made him too easy prey for clich

Tompaulin – Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt

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Gathering singles and "bits and pieces" to date (they're recording a new album with ex-Mary Chain chaps), this cracking collection from the fey provocateurs named after the Meldrew-esque poet is riddled with moments of gentle genius. While their funny, wry words list the perils of being a Soft Lad oop north, the music lulls you into a false burr of tenderness before kicking you in the guts. They're everything the hideous Belle & Sebastian purport to be, only with the grace and grit to know how to place telling Velvets chords just so. "Slender" and "It's A Girl's World" are lovely, but it's the savage surprise riffs of "My Life As A Car Crash" and the sublime "Give Me A Riot In The Summertime" which convince you they're muscle as well as brain. All this and "My Perfect Girlfriend", the entire lyrical content of which is "d ebbie, debbie harry". A revelation.

Gathering singles and “bits and pieces” to date (they’re recording a new album with ex-Mary Chain chaps), this cracking collection from the fey provocateurs named after the Meldrew-esque poet is riddled with moments of gentle genius. While their funny, wry words list the perils of being a Soft Lad oop north, the music lulls you into a false burr of tenderness before kicking you in the guts. They’re everything the hideous Belle & Sebastian purport to be, only with the grace and grit to know how to place telling Velvets chords just so. “Slender” and “It’s A Girl’s World” are lovely, but it’s the savage surprise riffs of “My Life As A Car Crash” and the sublime “Give Me A Riot In The Summertime” which convince you they’re muscle as well as brain. All this and “My Perfect Girlfriend”, the entire lyrical content of which is “d ebbie, debbie harry”. A revelation.

Various Artists – Folk Roots: A Classic Anthology Of Song

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Folk Roots mixes the obvious with the obscure and serves as an effective introduction to English, Scottish and Irish folk music at the moment it was reaching out from the incipient clubs to embrace underground and pop audiences. Despite sneaking Donovan's "Universal Soldier" under the counter alongside one or two other folk-derived hits, like Ralph McTell's cloying "Streets Of London", this selection invariably hits the mark. There are five tracks from Transatlantic's best known folk ambassadors, Bert Jansch and John Renbourne, and choice cuts from lesser lights it championed, genuinely groundbreaking acts like Sweeney's Men, The Young Tradition, Dransfield and?a real boon?Mike & Lal Waterson's otherwise deleted "Bright Phoebus".

Folk Roots mixes the obvious with the obscure and serves as an effective introduction to English, Scottish and Irish folk music at the moment it was reaching out from the incipient clubs to embrace underground and pop audiences. Despite sneaking Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” under the counter alongside one or two other folk-derived hits, like Ralph McTell’s cloying “Streets Of London”, this selection invariably hits the mark. There are five tracks from Transatlantic’s best known folk ambassadors, Bert Jansch and John Renbourne, and choice cuts from lesser lights it championed, genuinely groundbreaking acts like Sweeney’s Men, The Young Tradition, Dransfield and?a real boon?Mike & Lal Waterson’s otherwise deleted “Bright Phoebus”.

The Doors – Boot Yer Butt!

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Starting with the earliest known live recordings of The Doors at the Avalon in 1967 and ending with LA Woman songs from their penultimate show at Dallas State Fair in 1970, the casually named Boot Yer Butt! is the last word in Doors archiving. Generally avoiding the obvious, guitarist Robbie Krieger's selections mine the blues hinterland of the band ("I'm A Man", "Little Red Rooster") and includes the MOR "The Soft Parade" plus brass, as well as all the big classics. High-quality sound and packaging aside, these discs offer a fascinating chronicle of a '60s band en route from clubs and high school halls to the Madison Square Garden and beyond. A fine distillation of an epic that only lasted for four years.

Starting with the earliest known live recordings of The Doors at the Avalon in 1967 and ending with LA Woman songs from their penultimate show at Dallas State Fair in 1970, the casually named Boot Yer Butt! is the last word in Doors archiving. Generally avoiding the obvious, guitarist Robbie Krieger’s selections mine the blues hinterland of the band (“I’m A Man”, “Little Red Rooster”) and includes the MOR “The Soft Parade” plus brass, as well as all the big classics. High-quality sound and packaging aside, these discs offer a fascinating chronicle of a ’60s band en route from clubs and high school halls to the Madison Square Garden and beyond. A fine distillation of an epic that only lasted for four years.

Justin Hayward & John Lodge

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In a world where postmodern apologies can be made for almost any corner of human creativity, posterity continues to resist Hayward and the Moodies. Aspiring to pensive mystical splendour, their polite prog?featuring Hayward's sensitive-whimper vocals sitting on overcooked orch-rock arrangements bolstering conspicuously underprepared songs?always contained the occasional decent tune and diverting conceit. However, though broadly similar in tone, they lacked the redeeming, dazzling musical flash of Yes, the wit of Genesis or the compositional chops of either, and have never enjoyed those groups' affectionate reappraisal. Main songwriter Hayward's '70s solo work is cut from the same wearying cloth but, amid the bluster, there are nuggets of inspiration for those who care to look. "Blue Guitar" on Blue Jays remains curiously haunting and "Country Girl" and "One Lonely Room" on Songwriter (by far the best of the three reissues) have a seductive, ELO-esque pop momentum. Sonically gorgeous, the superb remastering brings what were state-of-the-art productions in their day to vivid life, though the music remains an uncomfortable mix of the vast and vapid.

In a world where postmodern apologies can be made for almost any corner of human creativity, posterity continues to resist Hayward and the Moodies. Aspiring to pensive mystical splendour, their polite prog?featuring Hayward’s sensitive-whimper vocals sitting on overcooked orch-rock arrangements bolstering conspicuously underprepared songs?always contained the occasional decent tune and diverting conceit. However, though broadly similar in tone, they lacked the redeeming, dazzling musical flash of Yes, the wit of Genesis or the compositional chops of either, and have never enjoyed those groups’ affectionate reappraisal. Main songwriter Hayward’s ’70s solo work is cut from the same wearying cloth but, amid the bluster, there are nuggets of inspiration for those who care to look. “Blue Guitar” on Blue Jays remains curiously haunting and “Country Girl” and “One Lonely Room” on Songwriter (by far the best of the three reissues) have a seductive, ELO-esque pop momentum. Sonically gorgeous, the superb remastering brings what were state-of-the-art productions in their day to vivid life, though the music remains an uncomfortable mix of the vast and vapid.

Saving Grace

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It's easy to forget that, before the current alt.country boom opened doors for a new generation of female singer-songwriters, the position of women in country music was largely confined to decorative interpretation of the cliched hokum cranked out by Nashville's songwriting production line. Songwriting, it seemed, was man's work, so while the likes of Lyle Lovett and Randy Travis got to record their own material, few women were afforded similar latitude. Carpenter was the performer who broke that particular mould. For several years, she was virtually the only female country singer who wrote her own songs?the result, perhaps, of her origins in the soft-left folk music scene of the American north-east rather than the conservative southern attitudes that dominated mainstream country music. Her literate, liberal-minded songs were greedily snapped up by women such as Joan Baez, who were otherwise starved of material with such an emotionally articulate female viewpoint. But the best interpreter of her songs has always been Carpenter herself, signalling with subtle nuances of inflection their varieties of depth and humour. The largest part of this compilation comes from 1992's Come On, Come On, the album that broke her to a mainstream audience through Grammy-winning country hits like (Lucinda Williams') "Passionate Kisses", the wry "I Feel Lucky" and especially the anthemic instant classic "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", about an ignored wife pining for affection. Her signature piece, however, is probably the title track of 1994's Stones In The Road, one of several songs here dealing perceptively with the passage from youth to maturity. It's a theme she returned to in "The Long Way Home" from her most recent album, 2001's Time*Sex*Love, a more jaundiced look back at the careerist era "when everybody had to go, had to be, had to get somewhere" but in the process forgot where they came from, and why they were going anywhere in the first place. Not so Carpenter herself, whose work profits from a more considered, ruminative process. As she observes here, in a line that could serve as her own motto, it's "accidents and inspiration [that] lead you to your destination".

It’s easy to forget that, before the current alt.country boom opened doors for a new generation of female singer-songwriters, the position of women in country music was largely confined to decorative interpretation of the cliched hokum cranked out by Nashville’s songwriting production line. Songwriting, it seemed, was man’s work, so while the likes of Lyle Lovett and Randy Travis got to record their own material, few women were afforded similar latitude.

Carpenter was the performer who broke that particular mould. For several years, she was virtually the only female country singer who wrote her own songs?the result, perhaps, of her origins in the soft-left folk music scene of the American north-east rather than the conservative southern attitudes that dominated mainstream country music. Her literate, liberal-minded songs were greedily snapped up by women such as Joan Baez, who were otherwise starved of material with such an emotionally articulate female viewpoint. But the best interpreter of her songs has always been Carpenter herself, signalling with subtle nuances of inflection their varieties of depth and humour.

The largest part of this compilation comes from 1992’s Come On, Come On, the album that broke her to a mainstream audience through Grammy-winning country hits like (Lucinda Williams’) “Passionate Kisses”, the wry “I Feel Lucky” and especially the anthemic instant classic “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”, about an ignored wife pining for affection. Her signature piece, however, is probably the title track of 1994’s Stones In The Road, one of several songs here dealing perceptively with the passage from youth to maturity. It’s a theme she returned to in “The Long Way Home” from her most recent album, 2001’s Time*Sex*Love, a more jaundiced look back at the careerist era “when everybody had to go, had to be, had to get somewhere” but in the process forgot where they came from, and why they were going anywhere in the first place. Not so Carpenter herself, whose work profits from a more considered, ruminative process. As she observes here, in a line that could serve as her own motto, it’s “accidents and inspiration [that] lead you to your destination”.

Ian Matthews – Valley Hi

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Matthews signed to Elektra as part of Plainsong. When their second album was rejected, he was offered a solo deal and placed with Monkee-turned-country-mogul Mike Nesmith to produce songs by Richard Thompson, Jackson Browne and other notables. A pleasant country-rock collection resulted, but Matthews' voice seems underwhelmed by and unsuited to the sound. Things improve on the self-produced follow-up, with good self-penned songs amid gems by Danny Whitten, Gene Clark, Steely Dan and Honeybus where those precise, refrigerated harmonies get a chance to display some beauty?gentle, low-temperature beauty with a '70s sheen, but beauty nonetheless.

Matthews signed to Elektra as part of Plainsong. When their second album was rejected, he was offered a solo deal and placed with Monkee-turned-country-mogul Mike Nesmith to produce songs by Richard Thompson, Jackson Browne and other notables. A pleasant country-rock collection resulted, but Matthews’ voice seems underwhelmed by and unsuited to the sound. Things improve on the self-produced follow-up, with good self-penned songs amid gems by Danny Whitten, Gene Clark, Steely Dan and Honeybus where those precise, refrigerated harmonies get a chance to display some beauty?gentle, low-temperature beauty with a ’70s sheen, but beauty nonetheless.

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