Reviews by kuvien

How do make only one album and then 40 years later make a second, and the second one sound like you’re just picking up naturally where you left off? Amazing. A gentle, playful flute and a soft tenor sax make this for me.

Music that gallops into prog, growing into its saddle naturally. Riding against a fine, driving mist-like rain of delicate violin interludes with angelic child choruses. Music moving at sudden acute angles. Flutes and saxophones sparring like circling birds.

This is my response to the title track:

I've heard this song before, but the Brazilian professor at work gave me new ears for it. She told me each line ends with a word that's stressed on the middle syllable, thus making the final word fall off suddenly in intonation... symbolizing the sudden fall of the fictional construction worker to his death. Brilliant! The Brazilian government at the time censored any criticism, so artists had to be clever in their protest. This is one such instance, a critique of unchecked capitalistic urban development.

I love my workplace!

Side A: Where beauty and sadness intersect, where memory presses the hand of tragedy, where pain and pleasure mingle until the two are indistinguishable, and tears are the wine of blessedness. I guess it’s funny how pacific the depths of the Atlantic can be. Side B: Poignant that a homeless man sings about Jesus never failing him. I guess it makes sense, since Our Blessed Lord was homeless, too. The music Bryars sets this weakly- yet beautifully-sung phrase to is like teeth back in the old geezer’s gums, like flesh back on his withered bones.

Gayer than Queen.

Whether it's in the avant stripped-down more experimental moments of the music or in the full, melodious vocals, there is a sighing harmony that weaves its way throughout the album, like a lonely boat creaking in its moorings or a single bird perched on a bare branch, the tender buds expectant of spring.

Something interesting I didn’t know about this album until I looked up information about it online is that the tracks are ordered in increasing number of beats per bar, so the first two songs are 3/4, and then the beats go from 4/4 to 5/4, 6/4, 7/4 etc. on the subsequent tracks. One of those cool little curiosities, and relevant since the band is continuing to experiment and play around with uncommon time signatures, something they had started doing two years previous on Time Out.

I'm not English enough to fully understand the North-South divide, but this Manchester Sunday-morning living-room collective of 11 musicians went out of its way to cobble together folk tunes about the industrial north, set them to their own sprawling, sometimes punkish, arrangements, and maintain an all-acoustic aesthetic that employs drone but doesn't overdo it. (There really is nothing worse than a 90-minute album that does nothing but drone.) Socially and politically, this music is very much in the vein of Dick Gaughan, but musically its more like Lankum and Shovel Dance Collective. This is exactly the kind of folk I adore: starts out loose and rusty but grows tighter as it plays on, and you begin to realize that its rust is its shine.

Still feels soothing despite the harder percussive interludes...or maybe because so. Anyway, I love “Take the A Train”.

The first of four great albums this band did before Brown died in an automobile accident. I'm a casual fan of hard bop and greatly enjoy what's going on here.

Brown and Roach popped up on my radar in a casual chat about jazz. We were listing off our favorite artists/performers, and after I was done, someone said, “Impressive list, but you missed Brown and Roach”. Since I respected the opinion of the person who said that, I looked them up, and yeah, I missed them. I’m glad to be expanding my feeble jazz knowledge and not just falling into a fusion hole. I also have hardly anything from the 50s in my collection, and what’s there is mostly jazz now. By the way, this may look like a live set, but it ain’t. Sonny Rollins really elevates things with his tenor sax. There’s so much wonderful back and forth with the alternating soloing!

This album made me ovulate, and I'm a man.

If you're an aggressively-inarticulate person who needs someone to feel for you what it means to be thrown away by your lover, let James Brown sing/chant "Goodbye, My Love" to you. Hypnotic heartbreak at its most devastating. But the grooves and confidence of this legendary soul singer balance it all out, inviting you to dance as well as cry. He gives it to you but then pulls back, because it's too much for you. Admit it. It is, isn't it?

When the flutes started in right at the beginning, I knew it was a film soundtrack. It just seems so weird a sound to be on a JB album, but you know what? It works. Flutes are great at painting a cinematic picture. A lot of instrumentals here, but they work, too. JB singing all over a soundtrack would be distracting anyway. Funky basslines and groovy brass carry this recording home.

This album is so much a product of its time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s got a wide-eyed naivete that’s charming and actually rather refreshing. Although I don’t agree with his premises or conclusions, I admire his sincerity. The experimental, psychedelic vocals on this album remind me somewhat of Tim Buckley, but it’s more like a guy who sees the rabbit hole Buckley jumped down but hasn’t entered it yet. This is a heavy-handed concept album about Hawaiian-born Johnny who leaves his beloved home, soul searching his way all the way to New Orleans, where his religious experimentation leads him from the city into the forest to find the “truth”. There he becomes one with the forest, with everything, as the album progresses along a theme of unity and ego loss across slowly unfolding psychedelic folk songs. Is it the lost gem the dark corners of the internet make it out to be? Perhaps not. But it’s curious.

Well, it's right there in the title.

Brosseau's voice enchants me. It's so sincere, clear, and beautiful, but something about it is a little bit...dorky. Not sure. The way he sings his Ss? The music of this album is quite stripped down yet deceptively simple. Acoustic guitar, sparse harmonica, plucked piano, quiet storytelling, and music-painting of rustic, romantic scenes. And those colors? Baby-blue and wheat-gold. His rendition of "In My Time of Dyin'" is so unlike anything I'd expected it to be, and it's wonderful. The close harmony with the female vocalist is just perfect.

This guy is great, so charming and friendly. He communicates through simple folk songs and tells some interesting stories of his life. I can understand why Brosseau's albums aren't more well known, though. He isn't going to have a widespread appeal because his strength as an artist is in his subtlety, his breathy vibrato, and his simple style. He also sings one of the most profound things I ever heard, and it wasn't until after I had listened to this album many times that I finally heard him sing: "Love can do no wrong; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law." On a rainy everyday bus ride to work, I sat stunned.

More charming, stripped-down Brosseau. More introspection couched in plainspoken, rustic poetry. More walks down memory lane. More heartbreak, but also more hope.

All the rustic, cozy narrative beauty that comes to fruition on is in its staging ground here. And that staging ground? Yep, you guessed it: the Los Angeles city bus system. Songs of observation. Confessional, charming acoustic-driven tunes of longing, home, and memory.