North America
USA
Chris Smither
Leave the Light On
The voice is as distinctive as ever, husky like smoked stones in syrup, the guitar always a delight whether up tempo and rocking or melancholic and aching, this is his best release for a while. Chris Smither occupies the same kind of territory as John Hiatt but has his own take on this bluesy, syncopated land. He can be witty and acerbic as on ‘Origin of Species’ or ‘Diplomacy’ - ‘we got some freedom we got an iPod store, we got the saviour you couldn’t ask for more’. On the title track he reflects on the accelerating passage of time in optimistic mode - ‘I’ve got plenty left I’ve set my sight on, don’t wait up leave the light on, I’ll be home soon’...
USA
Joan As Policewoman
Real Life
She calls it 'American Soul Music', others refer to Joan Wasser's torch songs, but whatever name you want to give her music there is no denying the quality of both the songwriting and the delivery. Her voice is the focal point of this album, possessing both range and depth, sometimes like warm honey, sometimes floating, sometimes almost murmuring the lyrics, and all the time underscored by the backing featuring her piano and strings, Rainy Orteca on bass and Ben Perowsky on drums and percussion...
USA/ALGERIA
Maurice el Medioni & Roberto Rodriguez
Descarga Oriental
The Marseilles-based ex-pat Algerian Jewish pianist & boogie king takes his sound into new dimensions with Marc Ribot collaborator Roberto Rodriguez, a percussionist with a fine pedigree who also leads the Latin band assembled for this project. Médioni's music contains a bewildering cross-current of sounds stemming from his early days in Oran learning jazz, salsa & boogie-woogie from black and Hispanic American GIs during the Second World War. After the war he began to work on variations of the exciting music he'd heard, fusing these sounds with music nearer to home, mixing North African instrumentation with that of the west and inventing a whole new genre in the process...
USA
Kevin Johansen and the Nada
City Zen
Johansen's blurb proclaims him...a Latin musician with a foot in North America and a North American musician with a foot in Latin/South America. Being Alaska-born and based today in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he's certainly one of North America's more northerly citizens now living in one of the southern hemisphere's major music cities and his music more than slightly reflects these unavoidable facts. Kevin's 7-piece band, The Nada, play a broad variety of instruments, from the very principle instrument of tango, the bandoneon, through conventional rock instruments, plus flute, cello, percussion to more rarely-heard instruments like the glockenspiel and other Latin American instruments such as the charango...
USA
Various Artists
Rogues Gallery. Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs...
I had heard about this project some time before the album arrived and it was with some trepidation that it went into the cd player. Bono? Sting? Bryan Ferry? Anthony? Rufus Wainwright? How wrong can you be? Expecting a kind of Disney does Winnie the Pooh treatment, a money spinning adventure on the back of the Pirates of the Caribbean phenomenon, I was wrong. This works, in the main. Sting is a revelation, 'Blood Red Roses' is raw, Geordie and powerful; Bryan Ferry surprises too, especially on 'Lowlands Low' with Anthony. You would expect solid performances from Eliza Carthy, her dad Martin (who sounds rejuvenated on 'Hog - eye Man'), Richard Thompson, Teddy Thompson, and Loudon Wainwright on this kind of material, and you get them, but so you do from unexpected quarters...
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