Music from every direction

Music keeps arriving from every direction. I try and keep up, usually with only limited success. It often feels like trying to catch a train that is already leaving the station. Let me offer an example...

One of many people I follow, so as to keep an eye on new music, is a South African ‘musicologist' named Richard Heslop. He has a wider knowledge of music, new and old, than perhaps anyone else I know of. Recently, he sent out a post titled ‘20 Terrific Albums From 2016 That You May Not Have Heard'. Well, I did actually know two of the artists (though one was famous English folk singer Sandy Denny); I hadn't heard of a single album on the list. I have since obtained 11 of them and listened to five. One I don't like, one is odd but probably astounding, the others are brilliant. So, in the next little while expect reviews of some obscure but wonderful stuff. In the meantime, I've been enjoying some rather more mainstream stuff. And also another local offering. Here we go...

No let-up for Lenny

Ex-mayoral candidate Graeme Purches and other Leonard Cohen fans must be delighted and surprised at the arrival of yet another Cohen album (and the promise of more to come). Laughing Lenny has always recorded at, let's say, a measured pace, producing albums with about the frequency of the late Stanley Kubrick unveiling films, five between 1980 and 2010. Now with ‘You Want It Darker', he follows ‘Old Ideas' and ‘Popular Problems' with his third album in four years. And it's a distinct holistic piece of work, obviously – signalled by a late reprise of the song ‘Treaty' – intended as a whole, a rich meditation on religion and relationships in later life shot through with characteristic dry humour and all set to a mixture of sleek understated beats and lush sympathetic string arrangements. There are moments that hark back to earlier Cohen, an echo of ‘Anthem' in ‘Treaty's' musical changes and elsewhere a nod to ‘Dance Me To The End of Love' in the lilting female harmonies. Cohen surely breaks a record for the number of ambiguous songs that appear addressed to either God, a lover, or his audience, but conspicuously neglect to kneel in front of any naked women, a not infrequently occurrence on previous albums. Instead here he laments that he 'doesn't need a lover” because 'the wretched beast is tame”. There are many intimations of mortality – that last quote was from a song called ‘Leaving the Table' but while interpreting the songs as farewell statements it's worth remembering that, according to interviews, Cohen has been trying to finish ‘Treaty' for more than 20 years. Listening to its magnificent honed-down deceptive simplicity it was worth the wait.

Jack takes a look back

This came out a couple of months back and I missed it: Jack White: ‘Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016'. Jack White has been moving in so many directions since the demise of The White Stripes that it's been hard to keep up. There's his work with The Raconteurs, his production for a bunch of people, his weird retro record label that continues to produce the most eccentric vinyl releases on the planet, and his solo albums; the latest revelling in two distinctly different backing bands, an experiment he has repeated on the road. But now he pauses to look back, assembling tracks right from The White Stripes' first album through to his latest. They are sort of acoustic. Well, the early ones. The later ones I guess include acoustic instruments and are generally so much fun that you can forgive stretched definitions. There are a few remixes and a couple of rarities but essentially this is a straight compilation that highlights Jack White's grasp of pop song-writing and prodigious imagination. It's a good listen.

Anthony gets serious

Local singer-songwriter Anthony Coulter has launched his latest single and music video ‘Sands of Time'. You can check it out at youtu.be/vJxYOQ58Iy8 Reassuringly, despite a darker more serious edge to the video, the song – featuring his band Sonic Surfer and singer Liz Tamblyn – still revels in Anthony's twin musical influences, musical theatre and seventies sounds, with a melodramatic arrangement and many retro touches to make one smile.

watusi@thesun.co.nz

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