Friday, April 25, 2025

Elton John and Bradi Carlile Who Believes In Angels? 2025,

I originally intended to post this along with the previous Irma Thomas and Galactic record as a comparison between two legacy artists both working in tandem with younger artists, but I decided the Irma Thomas deserved it's own feature. More people are going to hear/buy this one, and that's a real shame. In the last 25 years Elton has made five really solid studio records that restored his work to his seventies high standards. This isn't the sixth.

Not that it's all bad. In fact some of it is pretty darn good and some of it is, well, less exciting. If you're a Brandi Carlile fan it will be more exciting than it is to Elton John fans, because it mostly sounds like a Brandi Carlile recording of John/Taupin songs. Carlile performs the acoustic You Without Me essentially solo, while John finishes the record with the fine ballad When This Old World Is Done With Me solo at the piano, and is featured prominently on Little Richard's Bible. The rest of the record is duets sorta. On a few songs Elton and Brandi sing separate verses and then duet the choruses, but on most they duet the entire song. And there's the rub. When they sing together, Elton's voice is swamped in the mix by Brandi's big brassy voice. That's probably on producer Andrew Watt, but it makes Elton a background vocalist for most of the record.

The record opens with homages to Laura Nyro and Little Richard. The Rose of Laura Nyro opens with a too long overblown intro reminiscent of of Funeral For A Friend while Little Richard's Bible is another version of Crocodile Rock that's not bad, and Elton gets to sing it without Carlile drowning him out. The title track twists the piano figure from Amoreena to decent effect, but it's another duet with too much Carlile in the mix. And that's really the story of the whole rest of the record. 

There's a bunch of good songs. The production by Watt is a bit too overblown-big-pop-production on some songs, but it's mostly OK, and the band is talented. Elton's recent records have managed an organic sound that this record eschews for modern glossy pop. I can almost see why the critics have been gushing over it. Almost, but not really.

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Galactic and Irma Thomas Audience With The Queen 2025

New Orleans funksters Galactic have written an entire record (there's one cover song) for the amazing, still great Irma Thomas. At 84, Thomas can still sing like she sang 40 years ago, if not better. Of course if you heard her at the Jazz and Heritage Fest or on After the Rain 2006, Simply Grand 2008, or Love Is The Foundation 2020, you already knew that. Here, her classic soul/blues/gospel style is updated both stylistically and lyrically, and she storms into 2025 backed by the members of Galactic that both revere her and refuse to take a single step back from their funky march forward.

There's new/old school soul Piece In My Heart, Be Your Lady, and People, all of them sounding a tad like the best of Sharon Jones and the Daptones. Funk oozes out of Where I Belong, Love's Gonna Find A Way, and the social message of the great first single, Lady Liberty. Over You is bluesy, and How Glad I Am and Puppet On Your String have gospel overtones. Gang backup vocals, full choir on a few, and frequently super horn charts spruce up the sound. There's hot guitar and keyboards, and the always fabulous drumming of Staton Moore. The arrangements are darn near perfect every time.

And Irma Thomas sings everything to the ground. She had her first hit in 1959, and she's as great as ever right now. She inhabits, indeed embodies, every lyric in a way only a few singers can. She is magnificent.

I thought After The Rain was her late career pinnacle. Then came Love Is The Foundation, and that raised the bar again. This time a rare, beautiful legacy artist charges into the present and gives us something so wonderful it's just hard to even believe. But here it is. Anyone Who Knows What Soul Is (Will Understand).

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Van Morrison Live At Orangefield 2024, New Arrangements and Duets 2024

I'm having a real problem keeping up with Van Morrison. Every decade since the 70s, he has released 9 or 10 (that's not guessing, it's accurate) new records. Now in the 2020s, only five years in, he's released 8 records already, and another is due in June 2025. The guy is 79 years old, and clearly won't slow down. I have managed to write about each of them in my Van Morrison series, which you can read here. 

Van Morrison has made several rock solid live records. Live at Austin City Limits Festival 2006 was good, and his live reimagining of Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009 was a blast. It's Too Late to Stop Now 1974 is just one of the best live records ever, and A Night In San Francisco 1994 was a brilliant reworking of his sleepy 80s catalog into funky R&B, and great.

So now comes Live At Orangefield 2024, documenting his live performance at his old secondary school just before it closed in 2014. It is a good selection of songs, and Van certainly seems motivated to perform in the place he gave his first live performance ever as a young school lad in a skiffle group. He can still sing today, so he certainly could do so in 2014. The band is the solid group he'd been touring with for a while, and Dave Keary shines on guitar throughout as do Paul Moran on keys and Alistair White and Chris White on horns. 

There's no surprises, but it is enjoyable almost throughout. Cleaning Windows, Moondance, Precious Time, Real Real Gone, Rough God Goes Riding, they all sound very good. The record ends by fading out during In The Garden as the "no guru, no method, no teacher" chorus is still going on. Why? Maybe he was about to walk off and let the band finish, well then lets hear that. It's not that big of a deal, but it's irritating. They could have left out the spoken word On Hyndford Street, which the crowd loves because he name checks locations throughout Belfast, but for the rest of us, it's the least interesting thing here. So it's a good one but not great one. More on that later.
Also in 2024, we get New Arrangements and Duets, an oddball mix of nine older songs rearranged and six duets, all of which were recorded between 2014 and 2019. About half of it is quite good, some is good enough, and two songs are particularly wrong. So it's a good one but not great one. More on that later.

The highlights: Kurt Elling duetting on Ain't Gonna Moan No More (scatting plus a great trumpet solo), a swinging version of Only A Dream, The Beauty of Days Gone By done up hot and jazzy with more great solos on sax and organ, a funky version of So Complicated that isn't much of a rearrangement from the original, and two fine duets with Willie Nelson(!) on What's Wrong With This Picture? and the lovely Steal My Heart Away, where Willie also contributes with his idiosyncratic guitar playing. 

The only real disappointments are a big band version of I'll Be Your Lover Too, which bulldozes the gentle original, and a duet with Joss Stone on Someone Like You that makes you want to hear Stone do the song without Van crowding her mostly out. The remaining unmentioned songs are all just fine, and some of the new arrangements are improvements, or at least interesting variations, on the originals. 

If you're a fan, both of these are well worth your time. I suppose thinking he's going to come up with one that matches his work in the seventies is a bit like thinking the Rolling Stones will give us another Sticky Fingers.

As for the "it's a good one but not a great one" line, I'll give a fellow blogger the last word. Wardo, an excellent music reviewer who blogs at Everybody's Dummy, left a comment on my most recent Van Morrison entry. He wrote "He keeps making competent, "not-bad" albums...  I will be very surprised if he gives us a modern masterpiece."

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Jesse Winchester 1944-2014

This is a guest post by Steve Walmsley

I was already a huge fan of Jesse Winchester when in 1977 my then pregnant wife, Kathryn, and I went to see him in concert at Bogarts, a small venue in Cincinnati. Winchester was a draft evader that had gone to Canada in 1967. He was allowed to return to the US after Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft evaders in 1976. Kathryn was resplendent in a long white muslin dress with our first child inside her protruding belly. I was never prouder to be out with her.  We arrived late and it appeared every seat at every table was occupied. Undeterred, we ventured down front to discover that a small table with three chairs right in front of the middle of the stage was empty. We couldn’t believe our luck. It was one of those meant to be moments. It was like having the band in your living room. With the intimacy of the closeness to the band, it remains to this day one of my all-time favorite concert performances. 

I first became aware of Jesse Winchester when, after the breakup in 1970 of the Lemon Pipers (for whom I played bass), I moved to Wilmington Vermont with a three piece group I had formed with my best friend from high school. The band failed and I moved in with a group of hippies, one of whom became my beautiful wife. We will soon be celebrating 53 years together.  

It was there that I was turned on to Jesse’s Winchester’s self-titled classic 1970 eponymous first album. It was produced by Robbie Robertson and recorded by Todd Rundgren. It contains The Brand New Tennessee Waltz, the first song he ever wrote, Yankee Lady (a favorite), and the haunting Quiet About It. It’s the place to begin if you’re not familiar with Winchester.

His 1972 release, Third Down, 110 To Go, is my favorite of all his albums. It displays the beautiful lyrics, simple arrangements and minimal instrumentation that are typical of all his recordings. It is near perfect in it’s deceptive simplicity. Just listen to it. Bob Dylan once said, “You can’t talk about the best songwriters and not include [Jesse Winchester] ”.

The 1974 release, Learn To Love It, has the catchy and endearing Third Rate Romance written by Russell Smith, later of the Amazing Rhythm Aces. The heartfelt Mississippi You’re On My Mind shows the fondness Winchester had for his southern roots. 

In 1976 he released Let The Rough Side Drag. The title song is a lyrical expression of his philosophy of life. I find all his songs both poignant and uplifting. The album ends with a reprisal of his first song, The Brand New Tennessee Waltz. It was eventually covered, as were many of his compositions, by Joan Baez, Ralph Stanley, the Everly Brothers and Patti Paige, who had recorded the original Tennessee Waltz 50 years earlier.

Nothing But A Breeze 1978 contains Twigs and Seeds, a humorous plea for ganja legalization, and a nifty little tune titled Rhumba Man. The album features a who’s who supporting cast of Ricky Scaggs, James Burton, Emmylou Harris, Ann Murray and Nicolette Larson.

1981’s Talk Memphis showed his special affinity for Memphis, as his family moved there from Mississippi when he was six. He was influenced by the sounds of rhythm and blues and rockabilly via radio stations like WDIA and WHBQ where Dewey Phillips was playing the mixture of black and white artists that came to characterize Sun and Stax Records. The title song Talk Memphis is an homage to this early influence. This album also contains his only US Top 40 single, Say What. 

In 2007 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

In 2009 he released his tenth studio album, the well-received Love Filling Station

In 2012 a tribute record to Jesse, Quiet About It, was released that featured Jimmy Buffett, Elvis Costello, James Taylor, Lye Lovett, Roseanne Cash, Allen Toussaint and Lucinda Williams.

Jesse Winchester passed away in 2014. His final album titled A Reasonable Amount Of Trouble was released later that year with liner notes by his friend Jimmy Buffett, who recorded six of Winchester’s songs over the years. The record was nominated for two Grammys. Rolling Stone called it “one of the most moving, triumphant albums of Winchester’s 45 year career “ and “a gentle collection of playful songs about love, memory and gratitude”. The same could be said for most of the songs he ever wrote.