Rolling Stones Magazine cleverly point out that The Royal Scam’s tracks, with the exception of ‘The Fez’, concern escape from some recently committed crime or other. The subject of outlaws drug dealers and cheaters is rich for exploration and Steely Dan do so immaculately. This was one of the most enjoyable albums of the month to date. The sheer variety and innovative sound which expanded on an already great roster of albums (this being their fifth) created something truly special.
But the Dan’s outlaws are also moral ones, guilt-ridden over comparatively minor sins. (Last time out, remember, Katy’s chief offense was that she lied, after all.) “Kid Charlemagne” is a selfish egotist, and suffers for it; “The Fez,” a sort of Dan-esque answer to Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” concerns a rather pathetic, if kinky, megalomaniac. At their best, these songs yield up concise surrealist introspection; at their worst, they suggest a paranoic death wish that is very amusing, if a bit unnerving. Rolling Stones
To keep you enthralled, I shall not write a song by song guide to this album. Instead I shall tell you about the ones I enjoyed most. Kid Charlemagne kicks off the album in style. It is my understanding that the track was written with Owsley Stanley, an acclaimed LSD maker in the 60s, in mind. This is shown in the exceptional guitar solo. As with most of the tracks on this album, the guitar leads and the other instruments follow.
All of the songs were written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who remade Steely Dan as a duo when they dropped the five-piece lineup of previous albums. Acclaimed session players like guitarist Larry Carlton and Chuck Rainey on bass contributed to many of the tracks. Ultimate Classic Rock
Haitian Divorce is an excellent track. Of course it covers the subject of an acrimonious divorce. This is yet another example of how the tracks on this album are constructed around the lead guitar. The excellent lyricism is not lost on me here. There is wonderful talk of defiance and preparation to fight which speaks to the nature of violent divorces, of which I am an expert, clearly.
Finally, I would have to say Everything You Did and Sign In Stranger are the highlights for me. The former is about a woman cheating on the protagonist. The latter features pianist Paul Griffin going on one of my favourite piano solos of any pop song:
On “Sign In Stranger,” as on that song, his touch even as he’s running his right hand rapidly across the keys is deft and light. Always keen on riding the hot hand, Becker and Fagen gave him a piano solo that was essentially just a continuation of the busy comping he was doing throughout the entire song. Something Else Reviews
All together, this is a wonderfully structured, cohesive and impactful album which merits more praise than it received at the time. Donald Fagan explains this being borne from the fact The Royal Scam was their fifth album and critics like albums less and less as the band succeeds. I hold this in very high esteem and hope you shall enjoy it as much as I do.
From the opening bars, one can tell that this offering from Metronomy is really quite singular. I have admired this British band for some time but hitherto only knew about their singles. Delving into their albums was nothing short of sheer joy. Indeed they released their latest, Metronomy Forever, this month. In a way it is a relief to hear comparatively less impressive music as it puts our most loved albums into perspective.
Anyway, on with the review. The eponymous track and We Broke Free, which follows it, can only be described as introductory. With few lyrics, the idiosyncratic rhythm which underpins all MEtronomy songs is still present. But these opening tracks set the tone for the rest of the album. The luscious We Broke Free follows giving me an isight into what Pitchfork describes as “low slung 70s studio rock”.
The group began in 2006 as glitchy electronic smirkers, proffering a garishly irreverent take on chinstroking IDM. Yet for their third full-length effort, The English Riviera, they’ve fully transitioned into a sleek, urbane pop-rock outfit, taking polished cues from the well-heeled likes of Steely Dan and Phoenix. Pitchfork
The Look is perhaps one of the band’s most known songs and with good reason. The track is beautifully polished. She Wants is reminiscent to me of Gary Numan circa The Fury/Telekon. The delicious underpinning synth gliding melody lends itself very nicely to the ear, and the Bass guitar is not to be underestimated. Though I must say Trouble is one of my favourites on the album. This is one of the tracks on the album which really involve the listener. It makes you sit up and listen, invites you to come with Metronomy along the soundscape they have created. Arguably, this makes it a quasi-masterpiece.
…vigorously scrubbed, songs like “Everything Goes My Way”, “The Look”, and “The Bay” reflect dance and indie sensibilities, aligning those efforts more closely with the likes of Phoenix, Hot Chip, Junior Boys, and Stars. Pitchfork
I only hesitate to call Trouble a masterpiece because The Bay follows it directly. This is the most known track by the band I should think, again, not without good reason. The Bay captures and entrhalls you from the opening bars. The bass made me get goosebumps and then… wait and see for yourselves if you haven’t already. This is one of the outstanding tracks from the album.
Loving Arms didn’t rub off on me as effectively as Metronomy would have liked. Pitchfork call it polished but I find it monotonous compared to the other tracks. Corrine is the last energetic offering on the album before the denouement begins. Some Written is more laid back than the rest before the ethereal finisher, Love Underlined. There is a tiny sample of Grace Jones (From Nightclubbing) in this track. See if you can spot it.
The English Riviera is an album about returning and starting again. The Look, lead single and first breakout hit for the band, begins with the lines “You’re up and you’ll get down/ You’re never running from this town”, a warning apparently straight from the school of small-town heartbreak. But it ends on a different note: “This town is the oldest friend of mine.” Maybe escaping home isn’t the point. It’s about returning home, returning to a lover perhaps, and seeing things afresh. The Guardian
Overall, I would say this album is a win for me. Metronomy found its voice in this 2011 work and I am privileged to be able to hear music of this quality. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
When my father suggests I listen to an album, I make a note of it and put it aside in my parental notes box. This box also includes such chestnuts of advice as “you must be careful with money” and “don’t get hit by cars on the Hagley Road”. Much like these nuggets of wisdom, introducing me to SAHB was a prime example of ‘Pater knows best’. Framed is a masterpiece to be sure. And the fact it is their debut is just astonishing.
Stage set for something far more theatrical, he unleashed the extraordinary textures of Framed with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, including Hammer Song (later covered By Nick Cave) and the epic Midnight Moses, while also dabbling with the witchcraft heroine Isobel Goudie and the superbly detailed Mafia-mobster-goes-to-the-electric-chair melodrama There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree, Mother, They’re Burning Big Louie Tonight. Louder Sound
I’m frequently at a loss when writing music reviews. Reading other people’s reviews makes me realise how little I know about music in general, despite knowing a great deal more than I am expected to know. One thing which sticks out to me is how genuine Framed is as an album. There is raw passion and pain visible to those who care to listen. Framed is packed full of energy and power.
The Hammer Song is a feat of rock and roll. The carefully crafted lyrics lead you to a conclusion in the lives of each of the character that the song portrays and then blows them up with a rock medley mid song which almost made me fall off of my chair at work, where I first heard it. This reminded me of Utopia’s Hiroshima, which had the same idea, except to demonstrate monstrosity rather than career complications.
If we’re talking classic 70’s rock riffs, ‘Midnight Moses’ has to be one of my favourites. A stop-start blues lick that doubles up on timing before giving way to a thunderous bass and drums rocker. Then there’s the singing. Having showcased a mellower style at the start of ‘Hammer Song’, Harvey really goes for the raw rock singing here, that accent again colouring the lyrics – far too many to mention here, though special credit to him for rhyming ‘Geneva’ with ‘Fever’. Genius. Head Heritage
Another highlight for me is Framed itself. Alex Harvey never strays from his Glaswegian vernacular, making it very clear at points throughout this album but especially in Framed. He embodies the pain in being wrongly accused beautifully. You wouldn’t blame him for being blue, and the SAHB play this song to a blues backing most apposite for the subject matter.
A lot of people seem to think Midnight Moses is the best track on this album. It is doubtless a thing of advanced rock n roll prowess. The track shows that Alex Harvey’s decision to merge with Tear Gas, a then failing rock and roll band, was one of the wisest of his career.
I liked There’s No Lights on the Christmas Tree Mother. The beginning was something near Dusty Springfield, and the bass is persistent throughout the track. In an almost country twist, this track is a real toe tapper. Harvey’s sensational Scottish accent remains a highlight. “Mardah in the first dagree!”
Overall, this debut album sent shock waves through British pop culture in 1972 and remains as fresh as the day it was released. This is a surprising and delightful album which should see you head banging on public transport or singing along in your vehicle as you listen to it for the third time in a row. Seriously, Framed is not an album to miss.
Music has the onerous and often overwhelming power to move us. Call it a primordial instinctive response or learned appreciation, we all have the potential to truly appreciate music for what it is: a great gift. I am moved to tears more often than I’d like to admit by the awesome beauty of music and how fortunate we, in the developed world, are to be able to enjoy it so effortlessly. To that end, I will attempt to describe this momentous work, Little Girl Blue, and hope that you, too, shall be awed by the never ending talents of Ms Nina Simone.
Simone was a classically trained concert pianist (Julliard) but because of the overt discrimination at the time, her career was stymied. She began playing jazz in Atlantic City and New York clubs and recorded this album at age twenty five. AnalogPlanet
From start to finish, Nina’s musical prowess is evident. Gus Wildi, the founder of the Bethlehem/ Analogue Production label on which this album is released, gave Nina complete creative control to make Little Girl Blue as she wanted. The arrangement is undeniably fine, from the syncopations in Plain Gold Ring to the improvisation in Good Bait, Nina shows herself to be an authority on Jazz piano. On a side note, her cover of Tadd Dameron’s Good Bait is nothing short of a miracle. The transformation from the original, combined with the astonishing prowess with which Nina grips you from the first note make for a truly superb piece.
She’s backed by Jimmy Bond on bass and Al Heath on drums and that’s all that’s needed as she idiosyncratically covers familiar territory like “Mood Indigo”, “Don’t Smoke In Bed”, “Love Me Or Leave Me” and “Porgy”. AnalogPlanet
Nina’s rendition of Porgy also stunned me. Few know but many should be able to guess, that Gerwshin is my favourite composer. To see an artist of Nina’s calibre take on Porgy and do it so well is mesmerising. Her gripping, almost haunting vocal range and sensitivity to the vision of the overall piece in her piano playing combine to make this version almost etherial.
Overall, this is an album of sensational scope, beginning with Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo, which speaks of depression, going straight into Don’t Smoke In Bed, a ballad about leaving one’s lover. Thence to He Needs Me to Love Me or Leave Me, which take us on Nina’s journey of shunning indecision in love. From My Baby Just Cares For Me to the astonishing Porgy as the final track, we see a theme of more poignant stability. In all, this album feels like a quasi warning to those who mess with Nina and, above all, a tale about one’s potential journey through love. I hope you’ll be moved as much as St Nick and I were.
This is a difficult album to listen to. I should say so immediately. St Nick’s brilliant album of the month review of Five Leaves Left goes some way to explaining why:
Great art has the power to change us, or so they say. But sometimes with our favourite artists we find they have not changed us, but rather that they have acted as a mirror, reflecting back to us an undistorted image of ourselves. Five Leaves Left Review, St Nick
The Book of Traps and Lessons is the fourth studio album of spoken word poet and Ted Hughes Award winning writer Kate Tempest. What makes this so difficult to listen to, for me, is that it sheds light on the macro idiosyncrasies which form the base of our modern way of life. For example, the following passage in Keep Moving Don’t Move is particularly harrowing:
Stroke the phone screen with your thumb
Like a mother trying to wipe clean the face of her only child
That blemish, that black dot that will not come clean
The first sign of the plague
Absorb the ache of all your friends
And sleep with the light in your brain burning UV all night
Wake tired, eat bread, eat oranges, eat bus stops
Eat traffic jams, eat shoes, eat shop windows
Eat the chair you’re sitting on, eat the table
Eat the idea there was ever more than this
Eta the beer, eat the takeaway, eat the boredom, eat the breakup
Eat the phone she’s hasn’t called
Eat her ringtone six times, six times
And when she answers, eat the silence in your mouth
Eat the pillow, eat the blankets, eat the moon
Eat the screaming drunks, eat the bad dreams, wake up
Eat the alarm, remember to chew
Are you doing this, too?
Keep Moving Don’t Move – Kate Tempest
‘Absorb the ache of all your friends’ hit me squarely. This is partly why I got rid of social media. I cannot tell you how freeing it is not to be made aware of the minutiae of other people’s lives. My mind is uncluttered and free to focus on things of import. Equally, nobody ever knows where I am, which is a huge comfort. My previous obsession with updating my ‘story’ on Instagram to seem like a more wholesome and interesting person were a danger to my security. Letting the world know where you are at any given point (my account was not private) is quite unsafe if you think about it.
But… but but but we are not here to talk about my social media freedom. Kate Tempest’s album speaks about much more than obsession. All Humans Too Late for example considers the stark reality of the humanity wide crisis we have created and are steeped in right now.
But what’s to be done
When the only way to defend ourselves
From what we’ve created is to merge with it?
What can be done to stay human?
The racist is drunk on the train
The racist is drunk on the internet
The racist is drunk at my dinner table
Shouting his gun shots and killing us all
All Humans Too Late, Kate Tempest
Closer to home, Three Sided Coin speaks of the mess that the UK is in right now. And it is a frightful mess. I shan’t say any more than that for fear of stoking divisions in a time when unity would be far more productive. I’ll let Kate Tempest do the talking:
Now the distance between objects
Can be measured out in fractions
But the distance between people
Is a scale that we can’t balance
We’re frail, our hearts haven’t had time to try fathom
The scales of old dragons are nails in gold coffins
This island of England
Oh, England
Three Sided Coin, Kate Tempest
This album is difficult to hear. However, for those with a stronger stomach, please do listening to this stark and honest work. Kate Tempest has shown us a piece of her soul and in so doing, allowed us to see ourselves. Tremendous strength and ingenuity go into creating music which makes us take pause. A lot of what is released these days has no musical integrity. It is reflective of a desire to pander to the club goer or to be played by the musically uninterested masses and will soon be played at second flight parties alone or forgotten entirely. Kate Tempest’s work will remain relevant for some time. It is harrowing and deep, which is more than I can say for a lot of modern music.
On 3rd July 1969, Nick Drake’s debut album, ‘Five Leaves Left’, was released . It sold poorly for the times, sales totalling about 6,000 records. A combination of Drake’s reluctance to tour, bad luck, and perhaps the complexity of the music meant that he was far from an instant hit. It was only after his death, at the age of 26 from suicide, that a substantial following began to grow. As the lines of the penultimate song on the album had so eerily predicted:
‘Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
‘Til its stalk is in the ground.’
Fast forward almost half a century to December 2016, a date of considerable less importance to the world (but of tremendous personal significance for myself), and to an Oxfam charity shop in Balham, south west London, when I was first shown a recording of Drake’s music. It was for me an instant hit. A number of things were immediately recognisable in the music, first of all the sensitivity of the Drake’s voice. I had never heard someone sing so softly and yet with such clarity. Secondly the skill and complexity of the guitar playing. Finally there was the poetry of the lyrics. A number of the lines already stood out to me like this one from ‘Time has told me’:
‘Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn’
Nick Drake (1948-1974)
That day I rushed back home to buy Five Leaves Left on Itunes (remember this was B.C. – Before Cedric, and consequently no Deezer). The album still stands out to me as an all time favourite, which is why I am so grateful for the honour of paying to tribute to it. A number of aspects are worth mentioning besides the enormous talent of Drake himself. The string arrangements are stunning, all completed by Robert Kirby (a friend of Drake’s from Cambridge), aside from the one on ‘River Man’. The supporting musicians, assembled by legendary record producer Joe Boyd, are incredible and the recording itself is superb, thanks in large part to sound engineer John Wood.
Years later, John Wood (left) and Robert Kirby (right) on a documentary discussing their friend Nick Drake’s music and life
I think to give you a glimpse as to why this album is so dear to me, I should discuss some of the songs in greater detail. The opening track ‘Time has Told Me’ is a particular favourite of mine, I have always loved the twangling electric-guitar of Richard Thompson (from band Fairport Convention) on this track, and Drake’s lyrical delivery. The words themselves appear to sum up a love that could not be, and there are some tremendous insights like this one:
‘Your tears they tell me
There’s really no way
Of ending your troubles
With things you can say’
Then there is ‘River man’. Perhaps, the very greatest on this album, and possibly the best Nick ever wrote. It’s in 5/4 time, established throughout by Drake’s faultless guitar line, giving the song its asymmetrical but constant rhythm, like the flow of a river. Composer Harry Robertson provided the string arrangement this time (the young Kirby felt uneasy arranging in 5/4 time). Drake mentioned composers like Ravel and Debussey as a template for the arrangement, and no doubt this influence can be detected by the cognoscenti, but it is also worth mentioning that Robertson was credited as composer on a number of horror films at the time. Perhaps this is in part what gives the arrangement such a haunting feel. The lyrics expand on this atmosphere, with lines like:
‘Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away’
There clearly is a macabre feel to the song, and it’s not surprising that people have interpreted the ‘River Man’ of the title as Charon, the boatman of the Stygian flood that divides our world from that of Hades.
Another favourite of mine is ‘Fruit Tree’. This time the arrangement is by Kirby, who said in an interview that this was just about his favourite he did for friend Nick. I would generally agree (which is a tough call given the high quality of his other arrangements). His use of the oboe and cor anglais in this song is particularly impressive and adds to the wistful melancholy.
Fruit tree has some of the best poetry of the album. Its tempting to read into the words a kind of premonition of the Nick Drake story. A tale of fame that was unsound because it could only truly flourish after his death. Yet when Drake recorded this album we know he was still fairly confident of success. It’s better to see in it a young man, wise beyond his years, steeped in the poetry of the English Romantics and French symbolists, making a universal statement, with language such as this:
‘Safe in the womb
Of an everlasting night
You find the darkness can
Give the brightest light.
Safe in your place deep in the earth
That’s when they’ll know what you were really worth’
The Drake family gravestone in Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, both parents outlived their child
Great art has the power to change us, or so they say. But sometimes with our favourite artists we find they have not changed us, but rather that they have acted as a mirror, reflecting back to us an undistorted image of ourselves. I have found this to be the case with Nick Drake. I do not believe I have changed after listening to his music, rather I believe it has always had such a strong effect on me precisely because it has spoken to me as I am, not as I might be. All art is a game at communication, and its aim is the same no matter the medium: to let us know we are not alone. For myself and many others since his tragic early death, Drake’s music has helped us feel that we are not alone. I hope that this article will encourage someone new to discover Nick. Perhaps, they will find as I have found, that he is:
