Album Of The Week
Patti Smith: "Peace And Noise" (Arista)
The original punk poetess still has the spit and fire, but she no longer has the zeitgeist in her angry grasp. Last year's album, Gone Again, was a bit of a comeback for Smith after eight years of musical inactivity, but her time had already long gone, somewhere around the recording of the proto-hippy People Have The Power. It's good to see that Smith hasn't lost the rebellious edge - even though it has been slightly blunted by the absence of any real cause which could keep it sharp - and this new album will remind fans just how forcefully Smith could sometimes deliver her vitriol, and just how righteous her rage could be. If only she had something to rally against, Peace And Noise would be a powerful album.
Patti Smith commands a reverence of Dylanesque proportions, so it's inevitable that this new record will be greeted like sacred scrolls in some quarters. However, the 10 songs here add up to little more than a grab-bag of Smith-isms, mixing the folksy fatalism of Death Singing with the rock'n'roll suffragette style of Dead Cities. Waiting Underground and Whirl Away are strong, supple rock'n'roll tunes, bolted down by the drums of J.D. Daugherty, the bass of Tony Shanahan, and the guitars of Lenny Kaye and Oliver Ray. Memento Mori, on the other hand, is a meandering, over-extended improvisation, lacking in sparkle what it makes up for in spunk. Michael Stipe makes an appearance on the final track, Last Call, doing backing vocals in return for Smith's guest slot on last year's R.E.M. single, The Letter. However, Stipe's voice sounds so languid and gravelly, he might as well be the janitor singing on his cigarette break.
Rock/Pop
Various Artists: "A Life Less Ordinary OST" (Polygram)
Another hip movie, another hip soundtrack - is cinema the new rock'n'roll? This soundtrack features some of the coolest names in pop (don't they all?), including Beck, Luscious Jackson, Sneaker Pimps, The Cardigans and The Prodigy, top notch musical tarmac for this romantic road movie starring Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz. The title track, specially written and performed by Northern Irish band Ash, has just zoomed into the Top Ten singles charts, pushing Irish rock's Hollywood connection up a notch or two. Alongside the cred indie stuff, the R.E.M. remix (Leave) and the trendy techno tunes are the requisite oldies like Elvis Presley's Always On My Mind and Bobby Darin's Beyond The Sea, the latter providing Ewan and Cameron with an onscreen opportunity to strut their stuff in a choreographed karaoke.
By Kevin Courtney
Joan Baez: "Gone From Danger" (Grapevine)
Sometimes tiny, telling success stories in Irish pop go uncelebrated; as in the fact that Joan Baez has recorded two songs by Sinead Lohan on this, her latest album. These songs sit well on the lips of Baez, an artist whose primary problem has always been her inability to compose material as good as the songs she chooses to cover. Lohan's Who Do You Think I Am gains extra layers of meaning and magic as sung by the fifty-something Baez, as do tracks such as February and If I Wrote You, both of which were composed by Dar Williams. And isn't it inspiring to see that Baez still seeks out new, younger writers - and that that legendary voice still rings out like a beacon of truth in a world filled with sham and shameless musical posturing.
By Joe Jackson
Various Artists: "I Went Down OST" (Oceandeep Soundtracks)
A hip new Irish movie, a wannabee hip soundtrack which falls just short of its target. I Went Down is set in the world of small-time Irish gangsters, and the soundtrack goes for a vaguely Pulp Fiction style, opening with some colourful dialogue from Brendan Gleeson as Bunny, then going into some swinging blues guitar courtesy of Buddy Guy. Tracks by King Curtis and Junior Wells have the confident ring of authenticity, but the orchestral score by Dario Marianelli is a hit and miss affair, sometimes sounding evocative and atmospheric, but often sounding as vacuous as Celtic mist. Four Irish artists are also featured: Dublin bands Lir and Revelino, Kerry songsmith Christie Hennessy, and London-Irish lounge-masters The High Llamas.
By Kevin Courtney
Jazz
Warren Vache/Brian Lemon: "An Affair To Remember" (Zephyr)
Cornettist Vache is one of the great melodists of jazz, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of tunes and changes, and the technique and ear to get himself out of any harmonic cul de sac. Likewise pianist Lemon. Add the tunes of multiple Oscar-winner Harry Warren, and the result is a beautiful CD drenched in melody, written and improvised. Nor is it full of effete good taste vanishing up its own orifice; this is vibrantly swinging jazz in the hands of two master craftsmen. It includes the glorious There Will Never Be Another You, typically, inserts the merest hint of It Had To Be You as he opens his solo), I Only Have Eyes For You, You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me and a little known gem, I Remember You From Somewhere in this lovely tribute to one of America's great popular composers.
By Ray Comiskey
Gene DiNovi/Spike Robinson: "At The Stables" (HEP)
The veteran bop pianist DiNovi - he recorded with Lester Young and played with Parker and Gillespie - is an excellent player who can fit comfortably into a variety of jazz styles. Here he's paired with another of the music's gifts to melody, tenor Spike Robinson. Recorded last year at John Dankworth and Cleo Laine's theatre in Wavenden - hence the title - it sites them suavely in a good rhythm section completed by Leon Clayton (bass) and Bobby Worth (drums), with DiNovi featured on three solo piano pieces and one duo with Robinson, as well as their 10 quartet performances. Given the talent, the music is just what you would expect; no surprises, just accomplished players having a fine time with standards. Some choices are unusual - Indian Love Call, Only Make Believe, for example - but Robinson, DiNovi and friends make them work.
By Ray Comiskey
Ken Peplowski: "A Good Reed" (Concord)
Ken Peplowski seems to be in the midst of some kind of still-unfinished stylistic change. On this competent album he plays mostly tenor, an instrument on which he is much less persuasive than on clarinet; given, too, that the quartet/quintet tracks featuring his fuzzy, small-toned tenor are neat, clean and well advised, this is unduly polite mainstream jazz. The concerto for clarinet and big band has more fire and some lovely writing, but also a share of personal cliches from Peplowski. The unevenness continues with an eminently forgettable palais-type stroll through I've Never Been In Love Before and a transcription of Royal Garden Blues which bursts with vitality and invention, inspiring the best playing on the CD.
By Ray Comiskey
Classical/Opera
"Heroes" (EMI)
What a cracker of an idea for a CD series - take the best of your back-catalogue tenors in the best of their repertoire, repackage them elegantly and invite listeners to compare, contrast and - oh, just bask in beautiful singing from a bygone age (though not all that bygone, the tenors in question being Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Franco Corelli, Nicolai Gedda and Alfredo Kraus). I sampled the last two, and what a treat it was: Kraus's incomparable stylishness and purity of tone in lyric and bel canto set pieces, Gedda's wicked humour, disconcerting gentleness and sheer versatility in everything from Rossini to Lehar - and in every mainstream European language. Good value, too, if your mind works that way, with over 70 minutes of music on each CD.
By Arminta Wallace
John Adams: Shaker Loops; Phrygian Gates; Chamber Symphony. Hermann Kretzschmar (piano), Ensemble Modern/Sian Edwards (RCA)
The minimalist composer John Adams, says the sleeve note, can claim his orchestral works as the most widely performed by any living American composer. Frankfurt's Ensemble Modern concentrates on smaller pieces, Phrygian Gates (1977) for piano solo, Shaker Loops (1978) for string septet and the Chamber Symphony (1992) for 15 players. All are key works in the composer's output. The first two established his minimalist voice with a wide audience. The Chamber Symphony, with its witty, melangist, dissonant-cabaret style, saw him widening his tonal palette considerably. It's the best piece I've heard from him. Sian Edwards directs strong performances, though the recording of Shaker Loops is implausibly close, with the single double bass sounding positively thunderous.
By Michael Dervan
Ben Johnston: Suite and Sonata for Microtonal Piano; Saint Joan. Phillip Bush (piano) (Koch International Classics)
Three distinct phases in the output of the American experimental composer Ben Johnston is now in his early seventies. Three distinct phases in his output are represented here. The earliest and most conventional, the neo-classic St Joan (1955), was salvaged from work on a ballet that was never performed. The serially-conceived Sonata (1964) involves re-tuning the piano in a way that provides acoustically pure thirds and fifths while all but eliminating pure octaves. By the time of the Suite (1977) Johnston had turned away from the earlier complexities. Paradoxically, though, for a piece in a tuning system devised to produce pure fifths, it's the other consequent dissonant intervals which strike the ear most forcefully. Challenging, fascinating stuff.
By Michael Dervan
Single of the week
Black Grape: "Get Higher" (Radioactive)
Shaun Ryder is back with his Grape gang, and this is the first cutting from the band's long-awaited second album, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. This tune is a bit more laid-back than Black Grape's usual rabble-rousing fare, mixing a bit of Primal Scream cut'n'paste with a U2-style falsetto chorus; also in the mix is the sampled voice of a certain American president.
By Kevin Courtney
