Rab Noakes & Brooks Williams. Should We Tell Him – Songs By Don Everly

Posted on by

It’s poignant that Rab Noakes’ last album release is a tribute to one half of The Everlys, the brother Don. Noakes made no secret of his love for The Everlys. They were the first concert he attended when he moved to Glasgow from his native Fife back in 1963 and when asked to pick a favourite vinyl disc to play and discuss when at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival a few years ago, he chose one of their albums to enthuse about.

Having long harboured an ambition to record some of Don Everly’s compositions, considering him to be severely underrated as a songwriter, Noakes found a fellow disciple in the shape of American Brooks Williams, a long time fan of Noakes. The pair met when Williams invited Noakes to play on his Glasgow recorded album Lucky Star and happened to mention his love of The Everlys, the spark which ignited this album. It took them a couple of years and a pandemic to eventually get together and do it but do it they did and it’s a glorious listen.

Taking their cues from a mimeographed Don Everly songbook which Noakes had picked up in Nashville back in the 1980s, the pair eschew the hits with most of the songs here originally released as b- sides or album cuts. With the focus primarily on Don’s songwriting there’s not much evidence of the brothers’ trademark sound, their celebrated sibling harmonies. Noakes and Williams do harmonise on several of the songs here but the impetus is on reinterpreting the songs, Noakes famously disliked the concept of just covering a song. It’s a measure of the album’s success that if you had no idea of its provenance, you’d be delighted to hear such a triumphant collection of songs.

With an A list of a backing band (Hilary Brooks (piano and accordion), Kevin McGuire (bass), Conor Smith (electric guitar and pedal steel) and Signy Jakobsdottir (drums)) Noakes and Williams turn in perfect deliveries ranging in style from country rock to rockabilly and all out teenage romance. They open with a bang on the keening pedal steel led It Only Costs A Dime, a sumptuous dip into classic country rock with Noakes sounding quite superb in his lonesome yearnings. Sigh, Cry, Almost Die follows with its slap double bass and walking rhythm harking back to heartbroken teen idols crying their hearts out back in the ‘50s. Should We Tell Him then delves into the early Everly sound as Noakes and Williams join in on the harmonies while the band update it a bit with slippery pedal steel interludes and some tremendous acoustic guitar playing. Williams takes over lead vocals on the sweet country lament of Hello Amy, another song which features the excellent pedal steel playing of Smith who excels throughout especially on the woozy waltz time of I’ll Never Get Over You.

An electrifying performance of Since You Broke My Heart finds Noakes and Williams vying to be considered as honorary members of The Travelling Wilburys on what is a tremendous thrash, a feat they repeat on I’m Not Angry with the band delivering a grand frat-rock rhythm. I Wonder If I Care As Much winds things down with a carousel like arrangement and with Noakes and Williams harmonising perfectly and the album closes on an appropriate note with the valedictory lament which is It’s Over, ironic really as it’s the last song we’ll hear from the much missed Rab Noakes.

Website

Steve Grozier Back Lane EP

Posted on by

 

It’s been a while since we heard from Glasgow’s Steve Grozier, an artist and songwriter who Blabber’n’Smoke, along with several other websites and publications have lauded for his reflective songs which, as he says are “about the darker aspects of life.” He returns to the fray with this four song EP, surprisingly, a collection of previously released songs but recorded in a stripped back fashion live in Glasgow’s La Chunky Studios with Johnny Smillie at the recording helm.

If you’ve seen Grozier live then you might know what to expect here. His guitar is almost caressed, tenderly picked and played, as his lonesome voice delivers the oh so lonesome lyrics. There are three songs gathered from his album All That’s Been Lost along with a revisit to his E.P. Take My Leave. Stripped of their previous robes (which included Neil Young & Crazy Horse like country grunge and sweet water pedal steel rock) these songs find Grozier in a much more confident solo stance than he was when we last encountered him on stage pre pandemic. He must have been practicing.

Power In The Light, according to Grozier his most popular song on Spotify, ditches the sweeping strings and muscular guitar solos from the album version and arrives here in, strangely enough, a more redemptive fashion. Whereas the original had an inherent sense of helplessness woven within it with Grozier’s voice like a cry from the wilderness across frozen wastes, here it’s much warmer, his voice less prophetic and more hopeful.  Charlie’s Old Mustang/Graveyard, originally a dusty alt-country outing, here, stripped back to its basics, allows this poignant tale of a graveyard visit its full measure.

Twenty Third Street was the very attractive opening song on All That’s Been Lost, delivered in a sweet country rock style with lashings of pedal steel and twangy telecaster. Grozier totally dials it down here taking the song at a much slower place and giving it a fine wintry New York feel as if he’s following in the slushy boot heels of Dylan on the album cover of Freewheelin’ while the mention of losing his mind in the Chelsea hotel inevitable invokes memories of the late and much lamented L. Cohen. It’s the most successful makeover here and is beautifully delivered. The E.P. closes with Take My Leave, a song originally released back in 2016 in an already stripped back acoustic fashion. It might only be seven years in between but this new version does seem to portray a singer who is less strident and more comfortable in his own skin.

While a new set of songs from Grozier is much awaited, this slight return is much appreciated and, with a set of live dates lined up, hopefully will alert folk to a local artist who has much to offer.

Website

Annie Keating Hard Frost

Posted on by

Blabber’n’Smoke has long been a fan of Annie Keating’s passionate songs which sashay from blue collar rock to country soul with ease. Hard Frost was released a few months ago but with Keating embarking on an extensive UK tour this weekend it’s well time for us to lend an ear.

She opens the album with a twanged guitar introduction on Lies And Dynamite, a classic Keating number. It’s slow and moody with Keating’s voice sounding at times like Patti Smith on a song replete with vivid images of America which she imbues with a sinister touch. She maintains this tough, road tested soul survivor persona on Sunshine Parade which has sinewy guitar battling it out with synthesised strings on a smouldering song while Lovesick Blues is a gut bucket bluesy number with Keating wallowing in her post relationship mess. This is one of the songs from the album which Keating previewed on her most recent UK appearances and, live, she and her UK band ripped the song to shreds, rivalling The Blasters in their ferocity.

Aside from her street savvy songs, Keating has always revealed a more tender side on her albums and none more so than on Belly Of The Beast where she sounds quite vulnerable and almost childlike at times. Again she’s singing of lost love and its emotional hangover – “Heartbreak like a bullet” she sings – but after an almost Dylan like litany of metaphors she comes out as a survivor. A survivor, she reminds us on Wrong Guy’s Girl, who is also a travelling and romantic troubadour. Here, over a wonderfully bruised backing (think of the ragged Dylan songs on the Rolling Thunder tour), Keating delivers a sly travelogue which mentions places she has played which she has fallen in love with while also recounting amorous mishaps which occurred in some of them including the wonderful line “I’ve been chased out of Corfu for kissing the wrong guy’s girl.”

There’s much to admire here. Keepsakes And Heartbreaks is a delightfully frothy folky number which finds her, post divorce, pondering on what to do with her wedding ring while Feels Like Home has a sense of wintry comfort which echoes of Joni Mitchell in its bones. She closes the album with her rendition of The Police’s So Lonely, drastically altered to suit Keating’s style but this listener would have preferred to have heard another Keating song. It’s the only fly in this wonderful ointment.

Website

Tour dates:

1/9 – Ashcroft Arts Centre – Fareham, UK
2/9 – Little Rabbit Barn – Essex, UK
3/9 – Bob Harris “Picnic” House show & the Tap that night – Oxford, UK
5/9 – House Concert – Liverpool, UK (email info@anniekeating for info)
6/9 – The Atkinson – Southport, UK
7/9 – Glad Cafe – Glasgow, Scotland
8/9 – Biggar Corn Exchange – Biggar, Scotland
9/9 – Filey Americana – Filey, UK
10/9 – The Live Rooms – Saltaire, UK
12/9 – Kitchen Garden Café – Birmingham, UK
13/9 –What’s Cookin (Double bill w/Steady Habits) – London area, UK
14/9 – Chapel Arts Center (Sean duo opening) – Bath, UK
15/9 –September Songs Festival
16/9 – Eastwell Village Hall – Eastwell, UK
17/9 – The John Peel Centre –Stowmarket, UK

Laurie Styvers. Gemini Girl: The Complete Hush Recordings. High Moon Records

Posted on by

Gemini Girl is another handsome reissue package from High Moon Records which goes some way to rehabilitate, indeed revive, the late Laurie Styvers, a Texan who gravitated to London in the swinging sixties and who released two largely forgotten albums on the Chrysalis label in the early seventies. Although well reviewed at the time and awarded the accolade of “single of the week” by the then trendy Radio One with Beat The Reaper, the lead song of her first album, Styvers faded into obscurity, returning to the States and living what appears to have been a fairly satisfying life, untroubled by her failure to leave her mark in the music industry.

Very much in the Carole King/Dory Previn/Judee Sill/Laura Nyro camp of singer songwriters, Styvers was somewhat unique in that she recorded her two albums (Spilt Milk and The Colorado Kid) in England. An earlier brief spell in folk rock band Justine had brought her to the attention of Hush Productions, owned by Shel Talmy and Hugh Murphy and it was these tin pan alley guys who helmed both of the albums. To their credit they gave full rein to Styvers’ beguiling songs and hired some of the cream of UK session men to record the songs but the albums lacked the allure of the stellar names who popped up on any number of LA Canyon releases.

This collection consists of the two albums along with a generous helping of unreleased songs and alternate takes. It opens with Beat the Reaper, the first song on Spilt Milk which does invoke the carefree and innocent ways of her Laurel Canyon contemporaries before Styvers launches into the emotional depths of Imagine That The Lights Have Gone Out, a song slightly drowned by its sweeping strings and horns but packing a powerful punch. Styvers belies her youth (she was only 20 when she recorded this) with a set of songs which are emotionally intelligent, mature and socially aware. The title song, Gemini Girl, is an acute dissection of her own fairly priveledged status while the glorious Five Leaves Left (not related to Nick Drake) finds her juggling hippy days out on Hampstead Heath with the daily routine of getting the shopping in. She returns to this on Eat Your Cornflakes, a sweet pedal steel flavoured song which comes across as her version of the secret diary of a frustrated housewife.

In between recording these albums Styvers returned to America and spent time playing with a bunch of Colorado musicians in a loose limbed combo called Little Brown’s Electric Band. She also heard Carole King’s Tapestry and both were to inform the making of The Colorado Kid. That album opens with You Are My Inspiration, inspired surely by King’s album although there is more than a smidgeon of Laura Nyro to be heard also. Tapestry also looms large on the plaintive piano ballad Take Me In Your Arms Again and the yearning Take Good Care. Nyro comes to mind again on the very impressive There’s Still Time (Follow Your Heart) where Styvers is accompanied on vocals by the perfect trio of Dyan Birch, Frank Collins and Paddy McHugh (a trio who sang with Arrival and soon went on to form Kokomo). It’s topped however by the dramatic delivery of You Be The Tide, I’ll Be The Bay, a song which predates Kate Bush by several years. It’s simply gorgeous.

Beautifully packaged and with an extensive and informative booklet, Gemini Girl casts a spotlight on an artist who deserves to be much better known. Fans of Judee Sill, Laura Nyro and Carol King will surely love this.

Website

The Primevals. The Dividing Line. Triple Wide Records.

Posted on by

40 years on from their formation, Glasgow’s The Primevals remain committed to their original sins – a love of garage rock and the scuzzy underbelly of psychedelia along with hints of free jazz and kraut rock- on their latest release The Dividing Line. It’s the seventh album they’ve released since their relaunch in 2011 and, as with its predecessors, it  shows that the band are more than happy to grow old disgracefully with no gentle slipping into the night for them.

The album opens with a throbbing bass line and electric piano on The Drop, immediately reminding one of The Doors although Morrison and his chums never sounded as ferocious as this. They return to The Doors influence on Suckin’ On Nothing Street although here it’s the more poetic side of Morrison which is envisaged. Being The Primevals they can’t resist taking the song into a nihilistic underground and while singer Michael Rooney turns in his finest Morrison croon on the quieter moments (and just about admits to stealing the melody) a gargantuan riff dominates the song.

There’s a Beefheartian soul surely within the pumping pomp of Sonic Highway with Rooney wailing away about a beast on the loose as the band play like a Martian blues band high on whatever Martians get high on. Drifting Away is more straightforward as it’s propelled by the barrelling rhythm section with the guitars set to stun and Hang Loose hits you in a similar manner with the band whipping up a mighty storm fuelled by a stone cold solid organ groove and more guitars than you could shake a stick at. Grit & Grime opens this groove up somewhat with thrashed acoustic guitars and a massed vocal chorus popping up amidst the musical mayhem while Rest In Power, an obituary for a departed comrade, allows guitarists Tom Rafferty and Martyn Rodger to indulge in a brief moment of Eastern mysticism. As for the oblique title of WTFHTU, a truly demented rocker, listen closely to the freaky coda at the end for all to be revealed.

High Street is a rare moment of biography from Rooney as he recalls his Glasgow upbringing, close to a prison which was the scene of an infamous shoot out (years before he was around mind you). If you want to really want know who influenced him then listen to the litany of sixties icons he references here. Most striking is the apocalyptic creep of The Will Of The People, a close companion to the claustrophobic songs of Second Nature, the band’s pandemic album. Here they prowl and snarl with poisonous guitars snaking around the gritty urban background. The album closes with some Farfisa pumped garage rock on Walking At Night with all cylinders on fire. Here they approach the feral ferocity of The Gun Club on a grand close to what is another mighty album from The Primevals.

Website

Zach Aaron. This Lovely War

Posted on by

An actual rodeo riding cowboy, Zach Aaron thrilled us back in 2020 with his album Fill Dirt Wanted to the extent that it was one of our favourite albums of that year. While that album mixed his Texas roots with some Oklahoma dirt (with a Woody Guthrie influence well to the fore) along with a fine dash of dark humour, his new album, This Lovely War, cleaves more to the folky singer songwriter tradition of Guy Clark and John Prine while Terry Allen hides in the wings. It’s a more full bodied disc with Fill Dirt Wanted’s spare instrumentation replaced by full band set ups laying the bed rock for Aaron’s sardonic songs.

The album opens on a grand note with Aaron and stumblebum accompaniment – plucked banjo and squirreling guitars – regretting the march of progress which has cast aside western traditions on May The Iron Horse Get Fed. Nostalgic and suffused with regret, the song captures some of that longing for simpler times which fed much of Bogdanovich’s Last Picture Show. Whether the protagonist of the next song, Fall Down Drunk, is a victim of this is perhaps moot but he’s certainly down in his cups as Aaron delivers a magnificent portrait of a drunk who see-saws between despair and hope, gulping down last orders while reckoning that Jesus could save him if “he could only get him on the phone.” It’s a classic George Jones like beer stained confessional and Aaron delivers it perfectly, reminding one of Sturgill Simpson’s reclamation of classic country mores. Closely allied is the tremulous It’s You, a more redemptive song which finds Aaron rising from the gutter having found a soul mate who will take him forward from his Kristofferson like Sunday morning comedowns. It’s followed by the sweet keening sounds of Songbird which suggests that the lovers can rise above their problems with Aaron giving the song a touch of classic Willie Nelson circa Red Headed Stranger vibe.

Elsewhere, Aaron digs into history on the dark waltz of Someone’s Got To Bleed, the dainty two step instrumentation something of a danse macabre on this bloody tale. Lightening the mood there’s Aaron’s version of Marty Robbins’ Cowboy In A Continental Suit, a fine western morality tale based on a rodeo and Aaron closes the album with another rodeo tale. Latigo Joe is a talking blues about a cowboy convict offered a chance to ride a wild horse which ends in his swift demise.  It’s a throwback to the type of song which typified the excellence of Fill Dirt Wanted and it’s the topping here on another excellent album from Zach Aaron.

Website

Amelia White. Rocket Rearview.

Posted on by

While this album was released at the tail end of last year it’s fitting to mention it here as Amelia White has just embarked on an extensive UK tour playing alongside Carter Sampson. Previous encounters with White’s music found this writer comparing her favourably with Lucinda Williams with her gutsy, blues influenced country music. Rocket Rearview, despite being a product of Covid lockdowns, finds White still rooting around in a similar vein, a bit pared back, at times more introspective but still inhabiting a somewhat dark landscape.

Indeed, the album opens with the brooding Devil’s Going To Eat You Alive, a swampy slouch into voodoo blues rock. Similarly spooky is the quite amazing Waltzing With Your Ghost, a song punctuated by stabs of swooning and then spiky guitars as White revisits the debris of a failed relationship. Edge Of The Blues meanwhile has White singing over a powerful rock surge as she posits herself as an outsider lamenting politicians who are deluded enough to consider themselves Christ like. In The Time finds White inhabiting territory halfway between rap and Talking Heads with a slight David Lynch bent to it.

On a lighter note there are a couple of sublime and light footed numbers here. My Way Home, borne aloft gliding pedal steel, is a song worthy of Emmylou Harris while Beautiful Sun is a gem of a song which just glistens. The dichotomy of January And June lends itself to the best song on the album with White leading the way on another song which glistens quite wonderfully with its speckled and tender guitar parts and an overall sense of almost childlike wonder. Add to this the superbly absurdist tale of an American housewife waving goodbye to the planet via a rocket ship on the title song, surely a contender for a hall of fame of cosmic country songs, and you have what is a quite remarkable album.

Website

Ags Connolly. Siempre. Finstock Music.

Posted on by

For his fourth album, Oxfordshire’s most authentically American musician, Ags Connolly, takes a sidestep from his championing of “Ameripolitan” music (as named and championed by Dale Watson) for a deep delve into Texas. Connolly’s take on Texas is perhaps wider than the actual state but it certainly takes in its southern borders and tradition of miscegenation with Mexican music styles. He follows in the footsteps of luminaries such as Willie Nelson and Doug Sahm, both of whom have woven Tex-Mex sounds into their Texan tales.

While it’s the Maverick’s Michael Guerra’s accordion which provides much of the local colour, Billy Contreras on fiddle and Rob Updegraff’s excellent nylon stringed guitar playing are just as important. Topping it all, Connolly learned to play the Bajo Quinto, a ten stringed instrument which has long been an essential element of conjunto. Having assembled this Tejano crew, Connolly  embarks on a collection of songs which truly roam across the various strands of what, for want of a better word, we’ll call Tex-Mex, and it turns out he’s a dab hand at it.

The album opens with Connolly in an autobiographical mood as he sings of the rootless vagaries of being a musician on the road and announcing his intention to head south for a while for inspiration. Strangely, for an opening number, it’s the least engaging of the songs on the album, perhaps an indication that Connolly was indeed needing a transfusion. He surely has been revived on the delightful polka sounds of Change My Mind which takes both him and the listener close to the border. There’s more of this on the excellent Senora (Whatever Comes First In Your Heart) which reminds one of the great Freddy Fender while Tell Me What You Were Gonna Tell Me skilfully transports a covid lockdown song to a Mexican cantina.

Other songs are less Tex-Mex in style, Overwhelmed is an excellent lachrymose waltz, the band limping along quite wonderfully as Connolly wallows in self pity, his pain reflected in the weeping fiddle. I Trust My Heart These Days and Turns Out both recall the Willie Nelson of Spirit and Teatro with Updegraff’s nylon guitar the primary link. Nelson also comes to mind on the one cover song here, Wes McGhee’s Half Forgotten Tunes. McGhee was a pioneer of UK based Americana and Connolly pays fine tribute to him on this sepia stained number suffused with nostalgia. The album ends with I’d Be Good For You, a slight return to the yearning of Overwhelmed with Connolly ever the erstwhile suitor. A grand close to a great album.

Website

Kassi Valazza. Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing. Loose Music

Posted on by

Raised in Arizona, currently residing in Portland, Kassi Valazza gravitates to the sunnier side of the west coast of the USA on her album, Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing. She not only gravitates, she time travels also as the album is liberally sprinkled with touches of psychedelia and freak folk (before it was even a thing). Her touchstones seem to be lesser known psych acts such as Pearls Before Swine along with the shimmering haze of Tim Buckley and while it might be tempting to compare her to someone like Linda Perhacs, Valazza is much more grounded and much less ethereal.

While Valazza has a glorious, seemingly effortless vocal delivery, her words coming across as quite honeyed, much of the album’s success lies in her choice of backing band. Portland’s TK & The Holy Know-Nothings (hence the somewhat punning album title) who play superbly throughout. There’s a chemistry between them, heard best on the album’s highlight, Watching Planes Go By, and it’s quite astonishing to read that Valazza essentially presented the songs to the band in the studio with no rehearsals beforehand, the band having to make it up as they went along.

The album opens with one of the more conventional songs here. Room In The City is a wearied country tinged waltz which opens with Valazza on the road but pining for her home comforts and a warm embrace. It drifts along quite wonderfully, her words wafted gently over some great harmonica playing. There’s a Neil Young Harvest touch to the music here and it’s a perfect album opener. This extremely pleasant (and almost narcotic) cosmic country sound reappears on Song For A Season and on Long Way From Home (I’ll Ride You Down), the latter finding Valazza quite dispassionate as she dissects a failing relationship while the band limp alongside her quite wonderfully. The Know-Nothings go on to stamp their personality on the guitar laden Smile, lifting Valazza’s tale here of regrets into yet another cosmic orbit.

Amidst these already glorious songs, there are a brace of numbers which just simply astonish. Rapture is a perfect balance between the singer and the band with their limpid playing just perfect in its delicacy. Canyon Lines, a delicate portrait of a woman in an existential crisis, worms its way into your head with its spectral organ and skeletal guitar lines. Chief of all is the astonishing Watching Planes Go By. It’s rare these days for a song to stop you in your tracks but when this reviewer first heard this song on a local radio station we were instantly transfixed. Here Valazza weaves a tale of enforced boredom which leads to flights of fancy while the band go full blown into lysergic acid folk rock – Country Joe and The Fish battling it out with The Grateful Dead if you wish. In any case, it’s quite mind blowing.

On an album which just about achieves perfection, closing it with a cover song might have been a letdown. But here Valazza comes up trumps again with her delivery of Michael Hurley’s Wildgeeses, allowing her and the band to pay tribute to their living legend neighbour. It wraps up an album which is poised to be one of the best we’ve heard this year.

Website

Carter Sampson. Gold. Horton Records

Posted on by

The self proclaimed Queen of Oklahoma, Carter Sampson, more than lives up to the title on her latest album Gold. Five years on from the acclaimed Lucky (via an enforced Covid break) Gold was recorded by Sampson and her producer Kyle Reid at Sampson’s home with her saying of the process, “I’ve never been so comfortable in a recording situation. After all, I was in my own home and, heck, I didn’t even have to put real pants on.” Pants or not, the pair have delivered a solid 24 carat nugget which might just be the best red dirt country album you’ll hear this year.

The opening title track finds Sampson singing of her mother over a gutsy pedal steel romp with equally gutsy lyrics, paying tribute to the qualities she inherited from her mom. Sampson notes that the song was written “after breaking down and having a good cry to my mom” and then attempting to reassure mom that she was actually quite resilient. That certainly comes through in the song’s strong delivery. There’s more of Sampson’s inner thoughts on display on Can’t Stop Me Now, written as a springboard to launch her back into touring and playing live after being cooped up for so long. As she says, “I’m ready to put the Covid break into the rear mirror and get back to doing what I love.”

Catch her live and you’ll likely hear songs of the calibre of Drunk Text, a marvellous beer stained bar room ballad with weeping pedal steel or the dramatic maelstrom which is Black Blizzard, written about the infamous dirt storms which blitzed Oklahoma in the 1930s. It’s unlikely that Sampson would be able to replicate live the full blown keyboard and synth backing which adds to the song’s drama on the record but, having seen her live, we’re sure she could whip it up to a fine frenzy with just her and her guitar. Similarly, the sinewy southern blues of Fingers To The Bone, here adorned with Dobro and soulful organ wouldn’t be a challenge to a singer who can rivet attention on a solo delivery of Rattlesnake Kate (from Lucky).

With further delights to be heard such as the Daniel Lanois like lambent delivery of Home and the cornpoke country delivery of Yippie Yi Yo, a song which finds Sampson in cowgirl feminist territory with a Randy Newman like sense of satire, Gold finds Sampson on top form and truly worthy of that Oklahoma crown.

Website