Blind Blake: Complete Recorded Works Vol. 1 (1926-1927)

BLIND BLAKE: COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS, VOL. 1 (1926-1927)

1) Dying Blues; 2) Ashley St. Blues; 3) Early Morning Blues; 4) West Coast Blues; 5) Early Morning Blues; 6) Too Tight; 7) Blake's Worried Blues; 8) Come On Boys Let's Do That Messin' Around; 9) Tampa Bound; 10) Skeedle Loo Doo Blues (take 1); 11) Skeedle Loo Doo Blues (take 2); 12) Stonewall Street Blues; 13) State Street Blues; 14) Down The Country; 15) Black Biting Bee Blues; 16) Wilson Dam; 17) Buck-Town Blues; 18) Black Dog Blues; 19) One Time Blues; 20) Bad Feelings Blues; 21) Dry Bone Shuffle (take 3); 22) That Will Never Happen No More; 23) Brownskin Mama Blues (take 2); 24) Hard Road Blues; 25) Hey Hey Daddy Blues; 26) Sea Board Stomp.

Arthur Phelps, a.k.a. Arthur Blake, a.k.a. «Blind» Blake (because, back in the day, what was a blind black boy to do but to play blindingly blisterous blues guitar?), only recorded for Para­mount for eight years (1926-1932), before the Depression drove him out on the road, where he either drank himself to death or got run over by a streetcar (accounts differ). I would be lying like a dirty dog, or a surprisingly exalted fanboy, if I told you that everything he recorded during those years deserves to be heard. Yet Blind Blake is still a tremendously important figure in the early growth of country blues; anyone interested in this type of music at all is obliged to have at least a one-disc collection (the 23-track long Best Of Blind Blake will do nicely).

The Document series did a good job of collecting all of the man's known output on four discs, though (with the usual reservation about sound quality: everything here is quite crackly-hissy, not as awful, perhaps, as on Charley Patton records, but still, reflecting the usual lack of quality con­trol for Paramount). The first volume goes heavy on filler, since on several of the tracks Blake is simply heard as a backing player for urban blues performer Leola Wilson — a Bessie Smith wan­nabe with a smaller set of lungs and an annoying nasal twang. And, honoring the contract, per­haps, Blake honestly does nothing but back up the singer — his playing on these slow numbers is utterly by the book, in fact, it almost seems as if he did not have any major liking for this type of music, simply playing for cash while he had the chance.

The first glimpse of Blake's greatness comes with ʽWest Coast Bluesʼ, jammed in between two takes of the much more straightforward 12-bar ʽEarly Morning Bluesʼ. It is the first example of his «ragtime blues», essentially a transferral of the genre's piano chord sequences to a guitar-based setting, which gives the music a decidedly rustic, rather than urban, flavor, but preserves all the toe-tappiness and playfulness. A «throwaway» instrumental dance number with a number of Blake's own spoken «directions» to the dancers, it shows a level of technicality that was quite rare even from jazz players at the time.

Then come the fully worded tunes — ʽCome On Boys, Let's Do That Messin' Aroundʼ, which, true to its name, already shows Blake «messin' around» with the chords as they go (showing his famous ability to «scatter» a musical line and then quickly pick it up together from the pieces for the next bar); and ʽSkeddle Loo Doo Bluesʼ, which does the same, but with an increase in tempo. With more and more confidence gained in the process, the man even starts to show off on others' records — ʽWilson Damʼ, on which he backs Leola Wilson again, already has the player eclip­sing the singer, as he changes keys in between verse lines and plays arrogant little flourishes even as Leola is singing, pulling away the attention.

Instrumental diversity is not the key here — one of the tracks features a lonesome kazoo accom­panying the guitar, and there are a couple of instances of «rattlebone» percussion — but every time Blake picks up speed, that ceases to be an issue. It all culminates in the last track on the disc, ʽSea Board Stompʼ, where the man pulls all the stops: sometimes slipping into one-bar long waltz tempos, sometimes spinning sentimental folksy phrasing, then effortlessly going back into rag­time mode, then showing a bit of sliding technique, then going into a brief bluesy interlude, then «scattering» the melody and picking it up again — basically, this is everything you need to know about Blind Blake rolled into one.

ʽSea Board Stompʼ alone would have earned this early collection a thumbs up; the fact that it is loaded with about a dozen not-too-interesting slow blues numbers (and even these tend to be «de­corated» by the end of the disc) should certainly be disregarded, since Blind Blake was a man of his times, and recorded what the people of his times wanted to hear — and the demand for gene­ric 12-bar blues was greater back then than it has been ever since. Well, maybe not «greater», but «holier» or something, if you get my drift.

Blitzen Trapper: Blitzen Trapper

BLITZEN TRAPPER: BLITZEN TRAPPER (2003)

1) The All-Girl Team; 2) Cunning Revolution; 3) Appletrees; 4) Reno; 5) Whiskey Kisser; 6) Triggafinga; 7) Ansel And Emily Desader; 8) Cracker Went Down; 9) Christmas Is Coming Soon; 10) Donkie Boy; 11) Texaco.

Blitzen Trapper did not really «blitzen» on the pop scene radar until 2007's Wild Mountain Na­ti­on; by that time, however, they were already active for more than five years on the local scene of Portland, Oregon, and had two self-recorded and self-distributed albums on an unknown indie label called «Lidkercow Ltd.» (which, I suspect, was run by the band themselves in a basement or something — no other releases but their own on it). Coincidentally, at least one of them, the self-titled debut, happens to be one of their very best albums, so, if you like Furr, it is your patriotic duty to locate Mr. Lidkercow, presumably living on Pirate Bay Avenue, and demand that he sur­render the goods, so that the glory of the state of Oregon may go undiminished.

The music of Blitzen Trapper is largely the product of bandleader Eric Earley, who also, not sur­prisingly, sings and plays guitar and the occasional keyboards. Initially, one might see Eric as a sort of wannabe Jeff Tweedy, and one might even be right: Blitzen Trapper has all the trade­marks of «intellectualized alt-country», although its debts to «alt-rock» are heavier than those of early Wilco records. However, Earley generally takes stuff less seriously than Tweedy — where even the earliest Wilco records already yield hints that these guys may wanna rule the world, Earley's creations are somewhat less accessible, somewhat more on the «obscurely hip» side.

The best news in town, however, is that Earley comes across as an accomplished songwriter. There is nothing particularly mind-blowing about these songs — but they are good songs with interesting melodies, whe­ther they are governed by tough riffage or moody slide guitars, and al­so regardless of whose territory the band intrudes upon: ʽThe All-Girl Teamʼ, opening the album, for instance, could easily be mistaken for a long-lost Blur song — it has all the required ingredients, apart from the lack of a clearly discernible Bri­tish accent: traditionally put together, but original riffs, catchy chorus, angry young man vocal delivery that occasionally spills into heart-warming poppy vocal modulations, and properly sarcastic lyrics ("I'm in charge of the all-girl team!").

But it isn't particularly typical of the album. Soon afterwards, it takes a sharp turn in a roots-ro­ck­ier direction; yet the songs are almost always positioned at some sort of genre crossroads. ʽCun­ning Revolutionʼ, for instance, alternates between mystically-oriented guitar jangle and a hard-rocking bluesier section. ʽAppletreesʼ, with its multi-tracked mind-warping vocals and melodic guitar phrasing loaded with special tones and effects, is dance-style psychedelia. ʽRenoʼ is an acou­­stic shuffle with some impressive slide guitar work that weaves a subtly dark-magical atmo­sphere. ʽWhiskey Kisserʼ is an uptempo «barroom rocker» with plenty of slide guitar as well, more in the «smart» department than in the «kick-ass» one, but still intriguing. And that's just the first five songs — there is definitely more.

Even if none of the melodies strike me personally as «phenomenal», to the point of wanting to take a particular riff or slide guitar flourish and frame it on the wall next to bits and pieces of To­ny Iommi or George Harrison, Earley and pals make the best they can of them. The album was recorded properly in a proper studio (which, according to their own accounts, nearly ruined them financially, but I'd say it was worth it), and the production is perfect — every note that needs to be accentuated is accentuated, every instrument that is supposed to play a larger role than the others gets to play that role. It is perfectly possible that, had a different band written and recorded the album, I would not be struck by the sweetness of the psychedelia of ʽAppletreesʼ, or by the brutality of the fuzz assault of ʽDonkey Boyʼ, or by the plaintive sentimental atmosphere of ʽAn­sel And Emily Desaderʼ (which, by the way, betrays a very strong Ray Davies influence).

I do not know, and cannot possibly know, the exact number of albums like this recorded over the last decades — there may be hundreds of them, really, with the level of their notoriety depending exclusively on the luck factor — but retro-oriented bands that do not stimulate their listeners into asking the question «why do I actually need to listen to this?» are few, and I would say that Eric Earley has enough talent to conveniently fall into that minority. Here be a nicely resonant, intel­lectually comfortable alt-hard-roots-psych-record for us all; thumbs up, no questions asked.

Archers Of Loaf: Icky Mettle

ARCHERS OF LOAF: ICKY METTLE (1993)

1) Web In Front; 2) Last Word; 3) Wrong; 4) You And Me; 5) Might; 6) Hate Paste; 7) Fat; 8) Plumb Line; 9) Learo, You're A Hole; 10) Sickfile; 11) Toast; 12) Backwash; 13) Slow Worm.

«What makes this sound so compelling is the way it explores the full spectrum of guitar-centric rock, pulling together the blunt and abrasive with the thoughtful in the musical equivalent of a shotgun wedding with the bride and groom doing everything in their power to hold it together while the family is watching in uneasy silence». -- Gregory Heaney, All-Music Guide.

Damn, I wish I could write that way — it takes so much time to realize how entirely devoid of sense this phrase is that no one will probably even bother, leaving the page in a dazed, confu­sed, and, perhaps, even mystified state of mind. On the other hand, I could not say that this band's lyrics — or even the title of their debut album — or even their own name, for that matter — do a good job of surpassing Mr. Heaney in terms of clarity. "All I ever wanted was to be your spine / Lost your friction and you slid for a mile" (ʽWeb In Frontʼ) is a fairly diagnostic couple of lines, and almost each song yields more of the same stuff.

Anyway, Archers Of Loaf stem from Chapel Hill, NC, and, in true indie-rock fashion, consist of 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 set of drums, and 1 soulful, but rangeless vocal coupled with one of the guitars (Eric Bachmann, no relation to Randy Bachman whatsoever, not to mention the extra n). Since they formed in the year of Nevermind, there is some temptation to pigeonhole them as «grun­gers», which they are not if, by «grunge», we mean the narrow spectrum from Nirvana to Alice In Chains to Pearl Jam and the like. The three differences are in that Archers Of Loaf are:

— nowhere near as heavy: they like low notes and power chords as much as the next guy, but it is clear that Black Sabbath is not a big influence. Sonic Youth, perhaps, but not Sabbath;

— absolutely not «depressed» or «depressing». Most of the music is energetic and angry, but the­re is no suicidal or end-of-the-world-ish ring in Bachmann's voice at all. Only once does he at­tempt to descend into autistic melancholy (ʽYou And Meʼ), but, set against all the other songs, it almost feels like a theatrical gesture for diversity's sake. Spiritual darkness as an essential compo­nent of grunge is completely lacking here;

— simply put, a «post-modern» band: much like Pavement and the Pixies, they inject their tunes with absurdism, irony, and nihilism, although the music is never as experimental as that of Pave­ment, and the band is also affected by a near-complete lack of sense of humor, which makes their post-modernism very, very strange (since we usually sense po-mo the best through the artist's abi­lity to laugh off and ridicule all of the cultural conventions of the past).

All of this puts an individual spin on Icky Mettle, which is a great advantage, considering that the actual songs kinda suck. Well, not «suck», perhaps, but whoever claims that Bachmann and the other guitarist, Eric Johnson, are accomplished riffmeisters must be fairly new to this whole «rock» idea: fifty percent of the time at least, the chord sequences are generic indie fare that you can just as easily encounter on an Avril Lavigne record. The other fifty percent show a little bit more inventiveness: ʽWrongʼ, for instance, opens with a simple, but fresh «scratchy» pattern (for some reason, complemented by an odd «cuckoo» tone from the second guitar — absurdism on the prawl!); ʽLearo, You're A Holeʼ comes replete with a head-splitting overdub of several dro­ning parts that paint the air in aggressively psychedelic colours; and the beginning of ʽToastʼ is like a lo-fi take on the mysterious otherwordliness of The Cure, before the proceedings calm down to give us a nice contrast between a thin, friendly, fun-sounding riff and an all-out scream-fest ("There's something wrong with my toast!" — go figure).

Repeated listens bring out the small details that should, perhaps, be the Archers' major claim to fame. For instance, the main guitar line of ʽWeb In Frontʼ is loud, but totally uninteresting — just a standard «chugga-chugga» recorded for the millionth time. Listen closely and you will notice a thin, almost harp-like, «ethereal» guitar playing a much more complicated role in the adjacent speaker, growing a bit more audacious by the end of the song but still not competitive enough to properly grab your attention until you've listened to this for a second time... and a third one... and a fourth one... by then, the main riff will finally fade away and the nice ringing guitar-harp will be all over your ears. (Stupid question: why not get rid of the main riff altogether?).

ʽPlumb Lineʼ is the slyest of the lot, giving Bachmann enough microphone space to deliver the catch phrase "She's an indie rocker / And nothing's gonna stop her / Her fashion fits" loud and distinct, over a proverbial indie-rock melody if there ever was one — and thus, ensure the band a firm position on college radio and in certain critical minds. But the idea of Icky Mettle is not to glorify indie rock, or propagate teenage rebellion, or even vent one's frustration over failed re­la­tion­ships — there is a little bit of everything, which all melds together in one big fat nothing, and that is the idea of Icky Mettle: to make a modern rock album about nothing. Of course, it would have helped, if, like Seinfeld, these guys at least had a sense of humor to compensate. In its place, they put loudness, brawn, and elements of weirdness, still rather random on this record (but they would grow in numbers by the time they got around to the follow-up).

Today, in knowledgeable circles, Icky Mettle is deemed as sort of a minor classic of the decade. I am not sure if it will hold up as well as the best grunge, indie, and pop-rock records from its era, because the songwriting seems fairly mediocre to me, even if the songs gain a lot through extra touches and flourishes once they are realized on tape. (Same problems as with the Afghan Whigs — another band vastly overrated by connoisseurs and reasonably forgotten by the masses). But there is certainly an enigmatic aura about the album — after all, not every piece of music will prompt the reviewer to describe it with the sort of quotation that I used to preview my own text. Trying it out won't hurt, and, want it or not, these Chapel Hill fellas were an integral part of the indie movement back in the day — gotta know our history.

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Asia: Silent Nation

ASIA: SILENT NATION (2004)

1) What About Love; 2) Long Way From Home; 3) Midnight; 4) Blue Moon Monday; 5) Silent Nation; 6) Ghost In The Mirror; 7) Gone Too Far; 8) I Will Be There For You; 9) Darkness Day; 10) The Prophet.

If I were a musician, and if my career had started at any point after 1985, I would have thought thrice about writing a song called ʽWhat About Loveʼ. Not only does the title ring stupid as such (what about love?), but it had already undermined the coolness of one formerly good band — and I am pretty sure that, in 2004, there must have been quite a few people looking at the track list and going, «oh no!... covering a Heart power ballad now?.. what next, Diane Warren?»

On the other hand, accusing Asia, especially in its Payne/Downes configuration, of showing in­excusable lapses of taste is like accusing Gene Simmons that his tongue is an inch too long: he can't help it, and neither can these guys. Instead, let us look on the bright side of things and admit that Silent Nation represents a brave, and not entirely unsuccessful, attempt at «rebooting the en­tire franchise», as they say. Indeed: for the first time ever, a «proper» Asia album whose title does not consist of an A...A word, and whose album sleeve is not designed by Roger Dean. An album released with a more or less stabilized lineup, without a host of extra musicians cluttering the pro­ceedings with close-to-zero efficiency. And, most importantly, an album that, for once, tries to be denser, more complex, more musical, and more «progressive» than it ever used to be — at least, in the Payne era. You have to admit that all of this at least sounds curious.

The overall sound has definitely changed. The songs are bigger, with more numerous and length­ier instrumental passages; guitarist Guthrie Govan gets to have a bigger impact all over the place than even Steve Howe was ever allowed; and Downes himself generally plays a normal organ (or, sometimes, a normal piano) — so consistently that, when he eventually jumps over to a cold syn­thesizer on ʽDarkness Dayʼ, this may be greeted as a welcome sign of diversity. Clearly, clearly, the band is trying to push up its status, migrating from «arena synth-pop» to «classic prog-lite for the mas­ses». Should we welcome the transition?

I would, except there is still one thing that bugs me — Silent Nation takes itself way too serious­ly, perhaps even more so than on the average Asia album. Most of the songs are social anthems, with one or two love ballads mixed in for «balance», and, although they raise important subjects, they usually do so in trivial ways, further losing adequacy points for oversinging and «overact­ing» — Asia bombast is, of course, easier to take when it is delivered through old-school instru­mentation than through the usual Downes-synthesizers, but it is still Asia bombast.

ʽWhat About Loveʼ, unlike the Heart song, is not about a power chord celebration of amorous rela­tionships between two people, but is dedicated to the entire human race — built on a catchy, brawny pop melody, but delivered without any sort of finesse: the chorus barges in with as much brute force as in the Heart song, yet its anthemic aura, as interpreted by Payne, sounds reserved and insincere. (The benchmark for such choruses is always ʽLove Reign O'er Meʼ the way it was carried out by Daltrey — at the top of his capacities and perhaps even overstepping them, which made it fully believable. Payne always keeps himself in check).

The «epic», multi-part compositions, such as ʽMidnightʼ and ʽBlue Moon Mondayʼ, have their share of moodiness, but still end up sounding like «prog theater». Payne is one of the culprits, but it's all in the air — the way they overdub the choral harmonies, the way they still utilize these pop-metal Eighties-style riffs, the way they pair feather-light acoustic guitars with big bashing drums (ʽGhost In The Mirrorʼ)... this band just cannot be «good», no matter how much they try, and on Silent Nation they try very hard.

I still give the album a light thumbs up, partly out of the general feeling of surprise (as it was with Arena, when the Payne lineup first tried to shake things up), partly because... well, you have your catchy choruses, your occasionally pleasant guitar solo, your goofy impersonation of a modern-day Gregorian chant (ʽGone Too Farʼ) — although the album is stretched over an entire hour, it does not feel overlong because of all the different tricks they try, and that is worth some respect. As for longtime fans of the band who are used to appro­aching them from a different perspective, I am sure most of them will be delighted with Silent Nation — the finest of all the­oretically possible conclusions to the Payne period.

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Average White Band: Warmer Communications

AVERAGE WHITE BAND: WARMER COMMUNICATIONS (1978)

1) Your Love Is A Miracle; 2) Same Feeling, Different Song; 3) Daddy's All Gone; 4) Big City Lights; 5) She's A Dream; 6) Warmer Communications; 7) The Price Of The Dream; 8) Sweet & Sour; 9) One Look Over My Shoulder (Is This Really Goodbye?).

The jolt, transmitted by «Benny», was electrified enough to inspire the band for another fine ef­fort, arguably their best in four years. No changes in style whatsoever — not only disco, which the guys continue to solemnly ignore, but New Wave influences as well begin to pass them by. But the compositions go up one or two notches. The slower grooves gain in the «sexy / sleazy» respects, and the faster ones are pinned to generally more delicious, juicy melody lines.

The former category is best illustrated by ʽYour Love Is A Miracleʼ, which is probably the closest they ever came to capturing the musky smell of Funkadelic — «lite», yes, but all of the instru­ments, rhythms, and harmonies work cohesively towards a nasty, dirty big-boy sound that no mo­rally trained housewife would ever tolerate. The title track is equally fine, with their most memo­rable chorus in years — there may be nothing revolutionary about choosing the line "we gotta have warmer... we gotta have warmer... warmer communications" as a hook basis, but its unin­tentional sex mantra seems to work against all odds.

On the faster side, ʽSame Feeling Different Songʼ kicks in with the finest brass riff we have heard from the AWB since ʽPick Up The Piecesʼ, and they keep it strung up and tense for five minutes, regularly switching the focus from brass to the blubbering, «telegraphic» guitar and back again. And the instrumental ʽSweet & Sourʼ, straying slightly away into jazz-fusion territory, is built upon a dep-reaching, nagging, ascending guitar line that goes straight to the subconscious and does strange things with it, especially if you are listening in headphones.

If it weren't for the ballads, which, unfortunately, cannot be moved from the usual levels of bore­dom (the cover of James Taylor's ʽDaddy's All Goneʼ is particularly trite, although, technically, it «got soul» all right), War­mer Communications could easily rival their best efforts in terms of consistency; and the band's conservatism, at this point, becomes almost respectable — at a time when traditional R&B was starting to get restructured into its disco and post-disco forms, minimalizing, if not nullifying, the role of particular instrument players, they continue to tighten up their act and rely on complex time signatures and tricky chord changes, instead of watering it all down. It may have been re­corded in 1978 all right, but it sounds positively 1973-ish, and for this type of music, it is an en­ormous plus, well worth the usual tepid, but friendly thumbs up. And if four or five «warmer» funky grooves ain't enough to thrill you, how about that album co­ver? Those were the days...

Andrew Lloyd Webber: Evita

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: EVITA (1976)

1) A Cinema In Bueno Aires, 26 July 1952; 2) Requiem For Evita / Oh What A Circus; 3) On This Night Of A Thousand Stars / Eva And Magaldi / Eva Beware Of The City; 4) Buenos Aires; 5) Goodnight And Thank You; 6) The Lady's Got Potential; 7) Charity Concert / I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You; 8) Another Suitcase In Another Hall; 9) Dangerous Jade; 10) A New Argentina; 11) On The Balcony Of The Casa Rosada / Don't Cry For Me Argentina; 12) High Flying, Adored; 13) Rainbow High; 14) Rainbow Tour; 15) The Actress Hasn't Learned The Lines (You'd Like To Hear); 16) And The Money Kept Rolling (In And Out); 17) Santa Evita; 18) Waltz For Eva And Che; 19) She Is A Diamond; 20) Dice Are Rolling / Eva's Sonnet; 21) Eva's Final Broadcast; 22) Montage; 23) Lament.

If not for Jesus Christ Superstar and its (a) superhuman musical impact and (b) nominal allegi­ance to the «rock» paradigm, I would hardly have a single pretext, or even personal stimulus, to include Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber in this section. As incredible as it may seem, JCS was an arti­stic accident — an achievement achieved simply because Webber, a talented, but misguided com­poser, for once in his life decided to «try it out this way». The result happened to transcend all known musical borders. But it was never Sir Andrew's conscious intention to transcend all known musical borders. He just needed a particular musical framework that could fit the subject, and he found it. Who knows: perhaps, in the wake of JCS' success, had he begun looking for subjects of comparable grandiosity — oh, I dunno, such as setting The Brothers Karamazov to music — he might have produced comparable results.

Instead, as Wikipedia niftily puts it, «the planned follow up to Jesus Christ Superstar was a mu­si­cal comedy based on the Jeeves and Wooster novels by P. G. Wodehouse». That is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to you, in a nutshell. Oh, there is nothing wrong in alternating grand tragedies with lightweight comedies, as such (Will Shakespeare could vouch for that); still, this was rather sym­bolic, and vaguely hinted at the idea that Webber would never again conceive a project on such a grand scale as JCS — and he didn't. (Enter all good Christians pointing out that you can never get a scale grander than the one upon which you mount the figure of Christ; exit all good Christi­ans after we politely point out the fact that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber himself was, and remains, at a significant distance from a «good Christian», and, probably, views Jesus himself as simply one of his action figures, on the same shelf as Old Deuteronomy and The Phantom.)

The «grandest» and «grittiest» that Webber ever got after JCS was in 1976. After the predictable flop of Jeeves (due in part to the fact that Andrew and his new librettist, Alan Ayckbourn, tried to cram as much of the novels as possible into the musical; Tim Rice had the wisdom to pull out of the project before it was too late), Webber and Rice reteamed once again, choosing, this time, a female deity figure for their next project — Eva Perón, who, by then, was a figure only slightly less legendary than Jesus himself, and, on the faraway shores of Argentina, was definitely «bigger than the Beatles», to paraphrase John Lennon.

As a musical, Evita is pretty damn good, if you have an ear for musicals; and it still managed to preserve some of the toughness of old, with much of the music built on a bluesy or R'n'B-ish fou­ndation. That said, this time around, the music is almost worthless without the story and the sin­ging; as in all traditional musicals, the tunes are there as backdrops for the singers and their per­sonalities — no wonder that the original concept album opens without an overture, since there are only a tiny handful of themes from which a solid overture could be drawn (instead, there is a sort of «underture», a ʽMontageʼ, crudely assembled from reprises of several parts of the show — quite annoying, considering that most of the themes have already been reprised several times).

The atmosphere is occasionally Broadwayish, but, on the whole, remains credible. The high quo­tient of Latin motives, flamencos, and ardent sentimentality, may displease, but, given the subject, hardly seems out of place — no more so than elements of Catholic church music (along with a children's choir on ʽSanta Evitaʼ), without which a musical about Argentina and its modern day neo-Madonna would be unthinkable. Many of the ballads are still cast in the typically 1970s soft-rock / folk-pop idiom (ʽHigh Flying, Adoredʼ, etc.), which is at least better than casting them in a Julie Andrews or Barbra Streisand manner.

As for the singers, well, Evita is really a one-actor show: although Paul Jones (the original lead singer in Man­fred Mann) is quite functional in lending his pipes to the impersonation of Juan Pe­rón, and Colm Wilkinson has enough sneer to convey the sarcasm and criticism of the narrator and one-man-Greek-chorus Che, the whole story basically belongs to Evita — with Julie Coving­ton nailing the part as perfectly as the composition allows. (Clearly, there is no comparison with the Madonna version — which arguably remains much better known simply because it is the Ma­donna version, but signora Ciccone, who admittedly had to take extra vocal lessons to sing the part, despite, perhaps, being somewhat close to the real Eva Perón in spirit — she handles the role rather well from a strictly visual viewpoint — could never accumu­late proportionally acceptable strength in her vocal cords).

Covington's arias are really the only good reasons to listen to the whole thing at all — and I do not mean just ʽDon't Cry For Me, Argentinaʼ, which actually works much better in the overall set­ting of the album than when ripped out of the show and overplayed and overcovered to death in the framework of our modern pop culture. ʽAnother Suitcase In Another Handʼ, ʽHigh Flying, Adoredʼ, and even the cooing ʽI'd Be Surprisingly Good For Youʼ, in which the dame is wooing over her future president husband, all have a touch of frail beauty — which is then topsy-turved into brawn and aggression on ʽBuenos Airesʼ and ʽRainbow Highʼ. All in all, Covington succeeds in making a fascinating musical character out of Eva — if not a very pleasant one: I do not know of the original reaction to the musical in Argentina, but Alan Parker's movie, twenty years later, caused quite an uproar, much as JCS succeeded in disturbing the minds of one too many mind­less Christian fanatics before it.

Composition-wise, Evita and its author could certainly be accused of laziness: recurring themes and leitmotifs crop up all of the time, and when you get it all together and start packing it in, there are maybe like five or six fully completed, fleshed out, memorable compositions on the album. But the record moves on with turbulence and dynamics, and there are quite a few unexpected sur­prises — for instance, the instrumental mid-section of ʽBuenos Airesʼ, delving into funk and even disco for a couple minutes; the boogie-blues of ʽDangerous Jadeʼ, associated, for some reason, with Perón's military officials; and the mournful minimalistic conclusion (ʽLamentʼ), backed with nothing but an acoustic guitar part. At the very least, Webber and Rice consistently keep it from becoming too boring.

Strictly «rock»-oriented listeners, not to mention all partisans of the «anti-commercial» move­ment, will find little of value in Evita — in fact, they will probably not even start looking for it. But it is definitely not yer ordinary Broadway show, and still shows Sir Andrew at the top of his game — even after a self-initiated change of rules. Just do not spoil your experience with the Ma­donna version: by all means, seek out the original. (There may be other good ones as well: last time I looked, there was something like twenty-five commercially available recordings of Evita in English alone — yet the original recording fully appeases the small Evita-loving part of my cha­rac­ter, so you are on your own for any follow-ups). A modest thumbs up — mainly for Julie Covington's performance, without which this would be «just another musical», with an unclear audience (regular musical-goers would prefer something softer and more family-oriented, where­as rock opera lovers would always just remember this as a cruel downfall after JCS).

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The Beach Boys: The SMiLe Sessions

THE BEACH BOYS: THE SMILE SESSIONS (2011)

CD I: 1) Our Prayer; 2) Gee; 3) Heroes And Villains; 4) Do You Like Worms (Roll Plymouth Rock); 5) I'm In Great Shape; 6) Barnyard; 7) My Only Sunshine; 8) Cabin Essence; 9) Wonderful; 10) Look (Song For Children); 11) Child Is Father Of The Man; 12) Surf's Up; 13) I Wanna Be Around / Workshop; 14) Vega-Tables; 15) Holidays; 16) Wind Chimes; 17) The Elements: Fire (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow); 18) Love To Say Dada; 19) Good Vibrations; 20) You're Welcome; 21) Heroes And Villains (stereo mix); 22) Heroes And Villains Sections (stereo mix); 23) Vega-Tables Demo; 24) He Gives Speeches; 25) Smile Backing Vocals Montage; 26) Surf's Up (1967 solo version); 27) Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into A Piano; 28) Capitol SMiLE Promo;

CD II: 1) Our Prayer "Dialog"; 2) Heroes And Villains: Part 1; 3) Heroes And Villains: Part 2; 4) Heroes And Villains: Children Were Raised; 5) Heroes And Villains: Prelude To Fade; 6) My Only Sunshine; 7) Cabin Essence; 8) Surf's Up: 1st Movement; 9) Surf's Up: Piano Demo; 10) Vega-Tables: Fade; 11) The Elements: Fire Session; 12) Cool, Cool Water (version 2); 13) Good Vibrations Session Highlights; 14) Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into A Microphone.

Sooner or later, this was bound to happen. After several years of «teasingly» slapping re-recorded and re-arranged shards and slices on incoherent LPs, somewhere in between Carl Wilson's soft rock ballads and Mike Love's pseudo-experimental oddities; after several decades of heavy reck­less bootlegging, filling a Beach Boy fan's life with sense and emptying a Capitol executive's po­cket of moolah; after Brian Wilson's brave and critically respected 2004 attempt to resurrect and mate­rialize the original concept in its entirety, unfortunately, marred by the hoarseness and seni­lity of his vocals, as well as the lack of original Beach Boy harmonies for pleasant authenticity; in brief, after more than fourty years of this strange fantom life lived by the original SMiLe, here we are — finally presented, under an official seal of approval and in shiny optimistic packaging, with what we should have been presented with in 1967. Back when it actually mattered, that is.

We are supposed to understand, however, that the nineteen tracks on the first CD of this archival release are not the «real» SMiLe. The «real» SMiLe, throughout 1966 and early 1967, was well organised within Brian's head, but not within any particular set of tapes. Brian's 2004 version is actually closer to «reality», although it should also be obvious that, over thirty seven years, that «reality» could not help but become slightly altered. Still, do we really care all that much? At the bottom of it, both the 2004 version and this «reconstruction» are fine additions to our catalog, and neither of the two could be explicitly called «disjointed», «messy», or «lacking artistic vision». For all I know, these fourty-eight minutes of music are SMiLe — that planned conceptual fol­low-up to Pet Sounds, that «teenage symphony to God» that Brian had announced before falling victim to his own unbridled ambitiousness and inability to adapt it to the actual surroundings. Smiley Smile, in comparison, was not SMiLe — not even close. This one, regardless of any de­ficiencies that Beach Boy historians and Brian Wilson's spiritual twins may detect, could just as well be SMiLe. Why the hell not?

From a «basic acquaintance» point of view, even if you have never heard any bootlegs and are a strictly «official release» kind of person, there will not be any major new-song surprises here if you already know Smiley Smile, the Beach Boys' entire catalog of 1967-1971, the anthological archive releases, and, of course, Brian's 2004 reconstruction. What matters is the coherence of it all: from the very fact that yes, a reconstruction from the original tapes is possible, to the joy of discovering the original, fully inspired recordings, and multiplied by the lovingly executed remas­tering — each single vocal part here, in particular, sounds clearer, cleaner, closer to home than could ever be achieved in the old days. (One way to relive your Sixties experience anew).

So — always the tempting question — could the album, as it is now presented, be the supposed equivalent of Sgt. Pepper? Clearly, it would have been less accessible. There is simply too much going on here: with most of the songs consisting of several parts, plus additional instrumental links tying them together, the kaleidoscopic ambitiousness would have been too much for most people — at times, it seems as if Brian were competing not so much with Lennon/McCartney as he was with Frank Zappa (Absolutely Free is comparable in terms of the sheer number of unpre­dictable leaps and twists, even if it leans far closer towards the avantgarde side of things and, thus, could not hope for commercial success at all). Sgt. Pepper cleverly knew where to stop; SMiLe knows no limits, which is why it will always be adored much more by eccentric «poetic souls» and relentless musical omnivores than «normal people».

On the other hand, SMiLe does correct what I have always thought of as the biggest mistake of Pet Sounds — it is much more dynamic, with the melancholic, introspective mood, slow tempos, and gentle musical flow replaced by head-spinning psychedelia, turbulence, and jarring stops-and-starts a-plenty. It is not «rock» at all (the electric guitar barely registers at all as an instru­ment among all the carnivalesque trappings), but it is energetic for much of its duration, and, some­times, even becomes aggressive (ʽMrs. O'Leary's Cowʼ, Brian's musical equivalent of a raging fire destroying everything in its path). Ever yawned at the languid­ness of Pet Sounds? Once or twice, at least? SMiLe gives you no time for yawning: open your mouth and something attention-drawing will happen before you close it.

But it is no coincidence that ʽGood Vibrationsʼ became the only SMiLe song to enter each and every household — it is the Beach Boys' equivalent of ʽAll You Need Is Loveʼ: behind all of its fabulous complexity lies a very simple, very basic, and very easily understandable message. Mu­sically, it belongs fully to Brian's «mature» period, but spirit-wise, it is like a perfect link between the early fun-in-the-sun days and the later transition into the realm of strangeness and charm. Be­yond ʽGood Vibrationsʼ lies the strange and charming, too strange and charming, perhaps, for the average musical listener to swallow. Personally, I think that the people at large would not be rea­dy for SMiLe in 1967, just as they are not all that ready for it now.

Which should not prevent critics, fans, and musical omnivores, of course, from holding their ground — SMiLe is, indeed, one of the finest achievements of pop music in the XXth century, and now we have the near-perfect package to prove it without having to do all that extra work for ourselves. In the long run, it is a more rewarding listening experience than Sgt. Pepper: the pay­off is smaller at first, with all the different links and overdubs and stops and starts and reprises and modulations and special effects dazzling and confusing the listener, but larger on subsequent listens, when all the flourishes start sinking in and you start to realize how well they all belong to­gether. It does not have its own ʽDay In The Lifeʼ — a sort of ultimate, mind-blowing, cathartic peak with a cleverly engineered mix of comic and tragic overtones that forces you to realize how small you are in relation to the universe — although the magnificent ʽSurf's Upʼ comes close, its solemnly mannered baroque flow, ungrammatical lyrics (I still think that Van Dyke Parks was one of the weakest links in the chain), and intentional coldness still stir up a very different kind of emotions. But apart from that, it still reflects a grand vision, dressed up in some of the most in­ventive clothes ever designed by a pop musician.

Regarding the package, I have only heard the «standard» 2-CD version, which includes about twenty extra tracks from the sessions, all of which are well worth listening to — SMiLe was such a fascinating project that even the demos and interrupted studio takes are exciting on their own, as you watch these songs unfurl before your eyes. Even the eight minute-long «montage» of acca­pella backing vocals for the project is jaw-dropping — these are, after all, some of the most un­usual and non-trivial harmonies the band had ever designed, and some of them do get lost in the background when you are listening to the completed takes. Heck, even the «silly bits» — such as the little staged comic-absurdist scene in which ʽBrian Falls Into A Pianoʼ are charmingly hila­rious this time. Why couldn't they think of something like that in the times of ʽBull Session With Big Daddyʼ?...

There is, however, an enlarged 5-CD boxset version as well, with a whole disc given over to the story of the development of ʽHeroes And Villainsʼ and another one given over to ʽGood Vibra­tionsʼ. For me, this is technical overkill, but I am fairly sure all of that is worth listening to at least once — if only to understand how much time, work, energy, and spirit had been invested in these creations. If you can afford the big boxset, by all means, do so: even a self-proclaimed ha­ter of SMiLe could be objectively convinced, I believe, that this is one of the few albums that does merit a whole boxset of such length all to itself. Thumbs up to all of the versions out there — and especially to the amazing fact that, now that the enigma has finally disclosed itself as fully as possible, it has not become the tiniest bit less enigmatic than it was before.

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Billie Holiday: Last Recording

BILLIE HOLIDAY: LAST RECORDING (1959)

1) All Of You; 2) Sometimes I'm Happy; 3) You Took Advantage Of Me; 4) When It's Sleepy Time Down South; 5) There'll Be Some Changes Made; 6) 'Deed I Do; 7) Don't Worry 'bout Me; 8) All The Way; 9) Just One More Chance; 10) It's Not For Me To Say; 11) I'll Never Smile Again; 12) Baby, Won't You Please Come Back.

It might actually be a good idea to forget about this album entirely, and let history record that it was Lady In Satin that served as Billie's swan song; well, technically it did, since this «follow-up», originally titled just Billie Holiday, was not released until a few days (or weeks) after the lady's death in July 1959 (for the record, from complications brought about by liver cirrhosis, rather than the stereotypical «overdosing» — not that she never overdosed, of course).

The sessions, held in March 1959, were again directed by Ray Ellis, although this time, the or­chestra took a few steps back, letting a jazz band in. As much as we could all be skeptical about Ray's orchestral sentimentality clashing with Billie's style, I almost sort of miss it on this album. Clearly, the idea was to record something a little lighter, poppier, more upbeat and perhaps even optimistic. And maybe — maybe — Billie was even up for it: at the very least, her voice notice­ably crackles less and sounds a little more vibrant and ringing throughout the sessions, somehow almost free of the «old woman rasp» so frequently catching up with her on the last Verve albums and on Lady In Satin.

But it does not sound very natural or believable, this attempt at previewing the sound and style of Nancy Wilson. At least, not in the overall context. Billie's voice and strength may have been fail­ing in the Fifties, yet she and her producers countered this with finding the right mood for those levels — all that quiet nocturnal melancholy for penthouse clients etc. Now, just as she was enter­ing the last months of her career, even if nobody knew it (but many still sensed it), Columbia tried to get her to cheer up again, right to the levels of twenty years ago. Even without all this knowledge, the fakeness of the effort shines through; with this knowledge, the album stirs up all sorts of unpleasant feelings, starting with pity and ending with disgust (or, rather, vice versa, be­cause the album opener, ʽAll Of Youʼ, beats all the other tracks in terms of upbeatness and happi­ness and sounds particularly skewed).

Of course, from a certain historical point of view, these sessions could have been a sort of «musi­cal therapy», and if they made Billie happy for three days in the midst of the misery, that is just good. And it would be ridiculous to say that these performances are «wooden» or «emotionless»: Billie never ever recorded if she didn't feel like recording, as all the huge archive boxsets prove to us these days. But for the «listener», not the «biographer», this Last Recording is useless. If you want a genuinely happy Billie, go for the early Columbia years; if you want a genuinely mise­rable Billie, go for Lady In Satin; if you live in a penthouse, go for the Verve collection. This record is just a collector's memento, little more, and, although it is not «awful» by any means, I still give it a thumbs down — the only explicit one in Lady Day's entire discography.

This pretty much completes the discography runthrough. In addition to the material collected on these LPs and later-issued boxsets, the archives contain numerous alternate takes, demos, etc., most of which you can find on even bigger boxsets, but I do not recommend going for «Complete Verve», etc., unless Billie is your life or unless you are attracted to the coolness of having these bulky objects gathering dust (and, perhaps, accumulating collectible value) on your shelves. It is a very good thing that they are available, though: they serve to emphasize Billie's legendary status and ensure a modest, but stable, level of popularity among future generations of listeners. At the expense of other, unjustly forgotten, legends, perhaps — yet why should we complain that, if there must be only one female jazz vocalist remembered from the pre-rock'n'roll era, it should be Bil­lie? She was not simply following the rules of the formula, nor was she setting them; all her life, she worked against the current, and the fact that for the most part she did so without out­stepping the limits of The Songbook only makes it more admirable. Like the Beatles in their pro­fessional sphere, or like Shakespeare in his, this is one hell of a legend to deserve «unforgettable» status, no matter how trite that may sound to hard-working connoisseurs of the genre.

Amy Winehouse: Lioness: Hidden Treasures

AMY WINEHOUSE: LIONESS: HIDDEN TREASURES (2011)

1) Our Day Will Come; 2) Between The Cheats; 3) Tears Dry; 4) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?; 5) Like Smoke; 6) Valerie; 7) Girl From Ipanema; 8) Half Time; 9) Wake Up Alone; 10) Best Friends, Right?; 11) Body And Soul; 12) A Song For You.

Well, the third album never came — with Amy joining the «27 Club» on July 23, 2011, we can only guess how things would turn out. Not that it was reasonable to expect any spectacular deve­lopments, but, clearly, the resurrection of healthy mainstream R&B suffered a major setback in the process. (On the other hand, this brings to a close the rather silly Amy / Adele competition, imagined and fueled by the media).

Although the lady's self-destruction process was utterly stupid and irresponsible (neither the times that she was living in nor the level of her personal troubles could justify it in any way), and the numerous scandals (such as the infamous June 2011 Belgrade performance) made it seem that she was «fi­nished» creatively at least a few months prior to the accidental demise, this collection of outtakes — the first in what will probably become a steady stream of posthumous releases — clearly shows that, in the studio at least, the spirit was still there. That is the only thing that Lio­ness shows: it is not a coherent model of the «third album», only two songs for which had been completed (ʽBetween The Cheatsʼ and ʽLike Smokeʼ), and the relative lack of well-written ori­gi­nals stamps this as a «fan-only» release. But it is definitely not a waste of plastic.

ʽLike Smokeʼ is definitely a highlight here, despite my predictable dislike for rapping (I'd much rather hear an extended instrumental passage than witnessing a guy called Nas attempting to steal the tune from Amy — sorry, hip-hop fans): Amy genuinely sounds «like smoke» on the number, and the little echo that producer Salaam Remi puts on her voice emphasizes that feeling. ʽBest Friends, Right?ʼ and ʽHalf Timeʼ also have their moments. That said, the majority of Lioness is given away to covers, and overall, it is much more interesting to watch Amy's take on other peo­ple's material here than fish out her own compositions, which do not generally hold a candle to her self-penned «proper» hits.

The covers are all respectable and have a wide range — from Carole King to Leon Russell to Ruby & The Romantics. Their problem is the usual one: the covers may have a wide range, but Amy herself does not, singing all of them in more or less the same (her usual) manner. But that is exactly what makes the result interesting — not everyone can sing ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ (re­mem­ber Astrud Gilberto?) and ʽBody And Soulʼ (remember Billie Holiday?) in the exact same emotional framework, and get away with it.

I would claim that Amy can, although it is a hard job trying to characterize that manner. Some­how, it melds together elements of toughness (overall low and razor-sharp voice), insecurity and frailty (reflected in the occasionally «swallowed» phrasing and intentional crackling), and habi­tual jazzy «nonchalance». Or something like that. Fact is, the cover versions of Lioness, like eve­rything else she did, further confirm that the girl was never «just another diva», that she had her own style to which she could easily convert «foreign» material as well as her own. The style may easily seem annoying to some, or monotonous and predictable to others, but we could just as well state the same about Billie Holiday or many other people.

The worst, and most misleading, thing about the album is probably its title. Not only is the majo­rity of these tracks completely undeserving of the name «hidden treasures» («unwrapped coo­kies» might have been a more telling expression), but «Lioness»? What's that supposed to mean? Okay, so it is actually the name of the record label she set up herself in 2009; but using it for an album title is not only unimaginative, it is plain wrong — the word suggests something like a combination of beauty, brawn, and aggression, which is not her style at all. Leave that crap for, I dunno, Courtney Love.

Anyway, that is just a minor complaint — on the whole, the album does not seem to have any flaws except for the most obvious one (not being an actual album). It goes without saying that if you have been overwhelmed by Back To Black, you need to hear this; but it is also clear that Li­oness on its own will not attract any new fans to the legend, certainly not on the same level that the legend's death has attracted. A modest, perfunctory thumbs up here.

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AIR: Le Voyage Dans La Lune

AIR: LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (2012)

1) Astronomic Club; 2) Seven Stars; 3) Retour Sur Terre; 4) Parade; 5) Moon Fever; 6) Sonic Armada; 7) Who Am I Now?; 8) Décollage; 9) Cosmic Trip; 10) Homme Lune; 11) Lava.

It is interesting, come to think of it, that none of AIR's albums, up to this point, were straight­forwardly «conceptual» (discounting the S. Coppola soundtrack), even if their whole musical strategy seems to have been expressly designed for harboring «concepts». If the decision was in­tentional on their part, then 2012 is when they finally give in to temptation. Technically, the re­cord was also proclaimed to be a «soundtrack» — but to a movie that was made 110 years ago: George Méliès' landmark A Trip To The Moon, recently brushed off and remastered to the delight of cinephiles around the world. In addition, while the movie itself runs for about 14 minutes in total, the «soundtrack» is more than twice its length — which certainly makes it an independent project (or a serious challenge for all those who want to splice the two works of art together on their own — another brilliant way to kill time).

Comparisons with Moon Safari are inevitable, if only due to the similarity of the ideas expressed in the titles; but the two records are really quite different. Moon Safari just used the title as an ex­otic mental stimulus, since most of the compositions contained psychedelic, but not necessarily «sci-fi» elements and associations. Le Voyage Dans La Lune is a much more straightforward conceptual recording, and each of its tracks loyally serves the function of illustrating one part of a space journey. The vocals, as it usually happens on old-time AIR albums, are few, mostly consis­ting of announcements or wordless harmonies; only ʽSeven Starsʼ and ʽWho Am I Nowʼ have vo­cal melodies, the former delivered by Victoria Legrand of Beach House, the latter by the girls from Au Revoir Simone (an electronic dream-pop trio from Brooklyn) — both of them good, sui­table choices, even if the songs themselves are not particularly staggering.

At this point, nobody expects any sort of musical revolution from Dunckel and Godin, but within the limits of their personal fantasy world, Le Voyage might be said to occupy its own particular little corner due to its well-planned coherence. Of the individual tracks, I could single out ʽAstro­nomic Clubʼ, whose major hook is a buzzing guitar riff with ominous overtones; and ʽMoon Feverʼ, which melds a piano sonata approach with ambient and psychedelic elements (think a joint Beet­hoven / Brian Eno collaboration with both of them on acid). ʽSeven Starsʼ does sound a lot like prototypical Beach House (that is, indescribable on the individual level once you have described the general man­ner in which Beach House work), and possibly the otherworldly, cold and detached ʽWho Am I Nowʼ sounds a lot like Au Revoir Simone, even though I have never heard them (yet).

The point, though, is to take all this stuff collectively — not a big deal, since, even with twice the running length of the movie, it still clocks in at just over thirty minutes — and admit that it is all quite imaginative and «moon-worthy». Long-time fans of AIR, in particular, will not be dis­ap­poi­nted; on the contrary, those who might have feared the band had «sold out» with its constant movement to­wards poppier song structures and trendier guest vocalists will be reassured that the band has re­turned to a slightly more «hardcore» approach, with trippy sound effects, dark electronic grooves, Floydian melancholy, tricky time signatures, and unpredictable collocations (for instance, just what exactly is that absent-minded banjo doing, lost in the middle of the shrill and stern ʽLavaʼ?).

I, personally, would have preferred a balance tipped just a little bit to the side of «hooks» — had they done that, who knows, perhaps this fresh way of conceptual thinking would prompt them in­to producing another equal of Moon Safari. But even without that, Le Voyage Dans La Lune is a more ambitious project than anything the band has done since working for Coppola, and there is still plenty of inspiration left — thanks, perhaps, to the magical influence of Méliès — to justify that ambition. Hence, thumbs up. Next on the list: a new score for The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, perhaps? That one runs for seventy minutes.

PS. The album is available both on its own and as a CD/DVD combo, the latter part containing the restored colorized version of the movie (not to panick here: colorized after Méliès' own initial design, as he is said to have originally hand-painted each frame himself) accompanied with AIR's soundtrack elements. I do not necessarily recommend going for that version — the movie is well worth watching, of course, but the idea of combining old silent films with modern scores has ne­ver thrilled me all that much (with some notable exceptions when the scores incorporate motives and elements appropriate for the time or situation — such as Richard Einhorn's oratorio that ac­companies Dreyer's Passion Of Joan Of Arc). Still, it's only three dollars more or something — and you probably get to own a collectible.

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Asia: Aura

ASIA: AURA (2001)

1) Awake; 2) Wherever You Are; 3) Ready To Go Home; 4) The Last Time; 5) Forgive Me; 6) Kings Of The Day; 7) On The Coldest Day In Hell; 8) Free; 9) You're The Stranger; 10) The Longest Night; 11) Aura.

A return to the tried and true. As on Rare, the list of steady personnel only includes Downes and Payne, but this time it is unnatural — Aura is not a side project, but a typical Asia album, and the fact that the duo either did not manage, or did not bother to assemble a steady line-up is a hint at the degree of disarray in which they had thrust their affairs. No less than five different guitarists make guest appearances (including Howe on two tracks and Arena's Elliott Randall only on two other ones; Ian Chrichton of prog band Saga and Guthrie Covan of nowhere in particular handle most of the duties), and no less than four different drummers are there to help them out (including Chris Slade of AC/DC fame and Michael Sturgis from Wishbone Ash).

Musically, Aura tries to carry on the aura (sorry) of Arena: rhythmic adult contemporary synth-pop with decreased emphasis on symphonic pomp and fanfares and increased emphasis on «moo­di­ness», vocal hooks, and overall danceability. The songs, however, are generally weaker, and the little odds and ends that made Arena a bit of a well-welcome surprise after the early Payne years are nowhere to be found. Alas, it says a lot about the album that, of all things, they chose a late period 10cc cover (ʽReady To Go Homeʼ) as the lead single — a big word of welcome from one dreadfully dull mainstream pop outfit to another; they might as well have covered Michael Bol­ton or Bryan Adams, to let us know for sure where their loyalties truly lay.

The only song here that got me interested a bit was the title track, a somewhat tepid instrumental prog-rocker that still sounds mighty energetic and inspired relative to everything else. Fast, not too spoiled by layers of production, and with plenty of aggressive soloing from Crichton that cla­shes nicely with Downes' keyboard riffs, it is intelligently designed and cheese-free. But it is the album closer, and thus, seems to represent a last-minute donation to «serious Asia fans» who are always willing to humiliate themselves by paying good money for all of the pop crap in order to get around to a few minutes of «prog lite».

Other songs that are probably intended to deserve mention are ʽFreeʼ, an eight minute monster with Howe throwing on some respectable licks in the instrumental section, but, otherwise, quite unremarkable; ʽAwakeʼ, an underproduced anthem to open the album that is modestly catchy but far more straightforward and generic than ʽArenaʼ; and a few tunes that also have annoyingly cat­chy vocal choruses but are disgraced by the lack of interesting chord sequences (ʽYou're The Strangerʼ, ʽLongest Nightʼ).

Anyway, it's all just a big bunch of mediocre supermarket muzak, easily disposable upon one or two listens. Big fans of Howe will need it for his signature presence in a couple of spots, but oth­erwise... even for generically mainstream tastes, the sound of Aura, in the 21st century, can only be appreciated on a nostalgic kick, and probably by the same people who get a nostalgic kick from The Blue Lagoon or something comparable. (Actually, we could think of at least one under­standable rea­son for The Blue Lagoon, which could definitely not be applied to Aura). Thumbs down, of course.

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Average White Band: Benny & Us

AVERAGE WHITE BAND: BENNY & US (1977)

1) Get It Up For Love; 2) Fool For You Anyway; 3) A Star In The Ghetto; 4) The Message; 5) What Is Soul; 6) Someday We'll All Be Free; 7) Imagine; 8) Keepin' It To Myself.

Who would have known it — a derivative, cautious funk act in the middle of a downhill slide, and a formerly great, but drastically outdated R&B hitmaker turn out to be a match made, if not in heaven itself, then at least somewhere on the outskirts. Well, sometimes even in the world of music two minuses yield a plus, and there is no question that in 1977, both acts could easily be considered as «minuses», despite their past achievements.

But this one-album collaboration project between the AWB and Ben E. «Stand By Me» King somehow managed to reignite the cold fuel in all parties concerned. At the moment, King was ac­tually not doing too badly: his disco single ʽSupernatural Thing (Pt. 1)ʼ had managed, two years earlier, to return him to a brief resurgence of national prominence. But he was unable to keep it up, and clearly needed outside assistance. Likewise, the AWB still hit the charts with regularity; but the original formula seemed to be exhausted.

As the two acts found each other, good things started happening. King's vocal delivery gave the band that element of authenticity that they usually found so hard to achieve, precisely because their vocalists could sing falsetto, but could never reach the level of conviction that great R&B stars seem to ascend with such natural ease. And the band, in turn, provided King with excellent backing, heavy on funk and light on strings and sappiness.

Already the first notes of ʽGet It Up For Loveʼ announce that the ride is going to be much more fun than it was on Soul Searching: a grumbly wah-wah track wrestles with ringing syncopation, the bass sets a very minimalistic, but stern and firm groove, and Benny gives us a nice repetitive chorus to sing along with. But, although the performance is far from a masterpiece, the coolest thing is that the same level is sustained throughout the album, unlike Soul Searching, which be­gan promisingly enough with ʽLove Your Lifeʼ and then quickly plummeted into puddly, wishy-washy balladry. (On Benny & Us, there is some balladry, too, but much less than we'd expect from a Ben E. King album, and much nicer than we usually see on an AWB album.)

The centerpiece here is ʽA Star In The Ghettoʼ — pure dance-pop formula with by-the-book brass and strings arrangements, but somehow it works for all of its seven minutes. Maybe it is because it is hard to go wrong when a genuine star from the ghetto sings this kind of song, but, actually, the orchestral arrangements are quite emotional, and the transition from verse to chorus has a lit­tle bit of cathartic effect worked into it. Somehow one does get the feeling that this is the real thing — even if it is nowhere near as catchy as the Bee Gees.

Further on down the line, both ʽThe Messageʼ and ʽWhat Is Soulʼ are fine dance grooves as well, although it is King's energy that consistently keeps them above generic mediocrity (otherwise, ʽThe Messageʼ is not too different from ʽGoin' Homeʼ off the previous record). Donny Hatha­way's ʽSomeday We'll All Be Freeʼ has King getting into character with more vitality and passion than anywhere else on the album; the decision to segue the number right into a somewhat dilu­ted and unfocused cover of ʽImagineʼ was hardly a correct one, but at least it is not the most awful take on ʽImagineʼ that you will ever hear (and you will hear plenty). Finally, the revised version of ʽKeepin' It To Myselfʼ is engineered by King in an Al Green manner, and nearly blows away the original — except that they change the tonality on the chorus, and, with this move, strip the song off its major vocal hook (at least, such is the effect produced on my ears).

Of course, all the differences are really very subtle. It is not as if the two acts were so thrilled by bumping into each other that they generated an accidental masterpiece. Benny & Us never inten­ded to break any new ground — in fact, it looks fairly conservative and «old-mannered» even next to its disco contemporaries of the Chic-type crowd. But the two acts liked each other, and clearly enjoyed collaborating, which makes the results friendly, inviting, and filled with a sense of purpose. Hence, a friendly thumbs up.