Reviews

The search of the meaning that weren't meant to be there.

The roar still raging on, the predators bring their fresh prey aurally and visually.

The NWOBHM can't go wrong with these big cats as they're not inclined to change their tack that works like a charm thirty years on since the band crashed the English crowds for the first time. And why, if the opening "Rock Candy" tastes so sweet? The only original member Rob Weir exchanging piquant riffs with Dean Robertson, the band charges wild yet with great dignity, and the quintet's steady course is evident on the bonus 2009's re-recording of their 1982's hit, the classic "Love Potion No. 9".

When the ensemble's voice, Iacopo Meille, cries "Let It Burn" over driving rhythm, it's really hot in there, with "Hot Blooded" slinging back to the '70s contagious glam, whereas "Winners & Losers" is stylictically a shot to the next decade when heavy metal went all curly, but it rings quite nice as well as the gloriously gloomy "Dark Rider". Anthemic "Raise On Rock" and "Live For The Bay", a Whitley Bay FC Cup Final anthemic and a re-write of the album's "Live For The Day", add even more appeal to the package topped with a DVD which catches this line-up in their live element. Can't go wrong, indeed.

***

Americana getting all over the world is the best way of expansion.

On his ninth album, singing guitarist Vince Falzone continues to plough his cinematic furrow to a seismic effect. But if the skewed stadium riffarama of the title track suggests some heads will roll in its bluesy swamp, the threatening superficiality doesn't live neither here, nor in the metallic thunder of "Kick It" and "Overdrive" with their nods towards Robert Plant and Marc Bolan's vibrato. The depth is revealed in the "I Believe" exquisite Moroccan-shaped acoustic drift which welcomes in the fusion lace, and folky drones of "Home Is Where You Are", whereas the "Sad Eyes" otherworldly picking betrays Nick Drake's influence. There's a great potential in the rootsiness of "Because Of You" and the moving "Be Free", yet overall the album's too diverse to imagine a movie it could have soundtrack.

***

The beginning of a beautiful friendship and a musical-cum-literary itinerary.

There's nothing new in turning a book into a song cycle; likewise, telling a story through music is an established thing. John Taglieri, though, has found a different approach to it. An acclaimed singer and guitarist, he embarked on a project which would include several EPs, but it was on writing the second one that Taglieri and his co-writer Brad Whitley saw a certain common thread running through the pieces and with the help of writer Gil Gonzalez came up with a novel called "Lives" where each chapter points to a composition of the same title. What crystallized was six records and six books, this being the first installment.

While the travelogue documenting the adventures of "self-professed rejects" Max and Cate is interesting in itself, reading the book before listening is optional - yet it enriches the experience. You don't have to know you're in New Jersey to imagine the fair behind the playful "Ferris Wheel" that goes into a headspin once its infectious chorus kicks gentle picking into electric swirl, and vertiginous love in the anthemic, almost orchestral, drama of "With You I Want To Be". There's an inviting thick ring and a bagpipe-like hook to "Make A Mistake With Me", and if "Breathe" throws an alternative cloth on the '60s harmonies, it has a tasty organ bite and a soul-warming guitar solo, so when "Epilogue" leads you back to the fair you're already asking for more.

****

Lighter and warmer, the Dutch band bring a breeze and summer weather.

Life moving in tandem and perfectly parallel with the entirety of human existence? The concept is heavier than the music as the music's pure and clear.

"The pieces of the puzzle have finally come together and fit", declare the Oxford trio aiming to bepuzzle their listener.

The hired guns shooting for themselves now - and shooting high enough to hit it.

Separately and as a tightly-knit unit, singing guitarists Fabrizio Ugolini and Massimo Bozzi have written songs for artists from Italia and abroad for ten years now. Quite a cause for a celebration which this disc clearly is even in its mood. It's slick but there's enough rock grease to make it alluring for both AOR and pop music fans who would have sent songs like the acoustically textured "Reason Of The Heart" and "Nobody Tonight" up the charts back in the '80s. And big choruses and six-string gloss feel good still.

Not surprisingly, then, that Danny Vaughn recorded the duo's soft charmer "Always" and former TOTO singer Joseph Williams opted for the gently rocker "Together". Save for new takes on these two, all the tracks here are new, even though most of them sound deceptively familar, "Inside" being the prime example of adorable Italian song from the times of another Toto, Cutugno, while the lace of "Call My Name" and "A Matter Of Time" is simply beautiful - or beautifully simple. Just like the whole album, in fact.

****

Some highly charged, yet perfectly understated, Indonesian kind of blue.

Back in the '70s there were ensembles in such unlikely places as Indonesia who mixed their roots music with blues but globalization made it all homogeneous. Thank God, then, for the bands like this that graft gamelan instrumentation upon the fusion canvas, and for the label supporting the drive that's not easy to get into.

As soft as it is, the band's main man Riza Arshad's Fender Rhodes dances over the traditional percussion in "Salilana Pertama" while Tohpati's guitar, alternately sailing or riffing, takes a flight of its own for a delicuious aural attack and soars higher and higher to get down in acoustic lace and handclaps of "Salihana Kedua" with its jazzy twists and turns. In the two-part "Tak Jauh" the electric piano shimmers into view again, "Romantic Warrior"-way, and there's a children-like delicacy in it, but the "Trah Lor" second portion sees various drums enchanting the shy synth sound which takes revenge in the classical jazz tones of "Karuhun". Still, bar the prog-rocking closer, "Disapih", there's a feeling of understatement throughout which makes the album ever more thunderous.

****1/2

The guitar tech to the stars takes it further with many friends in tow to enjoy the trip.

When the flame was beginning to burn, the fire felt hot even then.

Hard to label, this English band swung from progressive rock to electropop in the late '70s - early '80s, but the quartet took in much more than it was needed to produce their only hits "Der Kommissar" and "One Rule For You". The latter graces this, ATF's first collection of radio sessions that shows the ensemble's many facets better than their studio output.

While "Joy" is pure keyboard wizardry of artsy kind, the audience greets it with the same enthusiasm as the "Time To Think" rocking or the jagged punk of "A Little Sun, A Little Rain" with Andy Piercy's Gene Vincent-like yelp. The 1979's charged concert brings most of the band's second album, "Laser Love", to the stage, but its title track opens also the following year's radio recording - in less immediate version - as Peter Banks' keyboards start to overweight John Russel's guitar. At the same time, the newcomer's Pete King's drumming adds a fuller scope to songs such as the 2-Tone-inspired "Can You Face It?" and hugely enliven "Billy Billy", the typical '80s product with, again, prog rock leanings a la ASIA. It also characterizes 1981's "Frozen Rivers", colder indeed, as well as the charming, reggae-spiced "Sailing Ship". And though the bopping "Take Me Higher" from the quartet's debut LP makes a welcome return to the set, that's when ATF begin to lose their specialness and err towards their next year's demise. But before that, their fire burnt wild.

****

A piano bliss lies where the jazz giants meet the geological heights.

The title - a morphing of Blue Note Records and Blue Ridge Mountains - says much but doesn't express what a kind of a diversion this, his fourth solo, album is for Roger Powell. From the days with UTOPIA the keyboard wizard has mostly been known for his bold excursions into synthesized sound but here the veteran scales some new plateau with his grand piano. With serenity always on the horizon, the pieces gathered on "Blue Note Ridge" are tastefully jagged like the sparkingly sparse "Flint Hill" or the opener "Path To The River" which has a nicely poised swing to it. Elsewhere "Take To The Sky" pays a tribute to George Gershwin's "Summertime", and there's Chopin-like majesty in "First Light" where the blues-skewed dissonance plays a mind game. When the droplets of "Watershed" awash the ears, all these improvisations leave so much to imagination that a new spin of the disc feels necessary to have something fresh revealed every time.

*****

En masse, the loaded guns ablaze and shoot.

If there was something wrong with this band, it's the lack of image but not the power for when former GUN members Paul and Adrian Gurvitz teamed up with the CREAM skin-hitter Ginger Baker, their accumulated strength was immense - yet, perhaps, too artsy to make an impact the trio felt capable of. By 1976, though, their ranks expanded to quintet including ex-SHARKS Mr. Snips to handle lead vocals and jazz buff Peter Lemer on keyboards, and it's this line-up that's on "Still Alive", a 2CD set recorded on top of their game and close to the edge of demise. But there's no sign of the end in the sludgy attack of "Hearts Of Fire", Adrian incendiary soloing throughout or the groovy cover of "Freedom" by the big GUN fan, Jimi Hendrix. Four drums showcases might be be a bit too many yet, with Baker's dynamic range, they open another dimension; still, he's better be watched on the "Beat Club" DVD which accompanies this set and alone is worth the price of admission - not least for the sight of inebriated Ginger falling of his stool but immaculately keeping the beat and "Whatever It Is", a track that the band have never seemed to properly record in a studio.

For all the restraint of the blues intro and easy harmonies, "4 Phil" comes on boppingly gritty, and "Sunshine Of Your Love", with Paul's earth-shattering bass, is more funky than CREAM had it, but all the elements of the band's forte reach the peak in the epic "Inside Of Me" where each instrument shines while complementing the rest to takу on almost orchestral proportions, and Snips' vocals ram it all home. So if there's only one BGA record to be kept at home, let it be this one.

*****

The Yardbird sings on his own - with just a little blues in sight.

If it may come as a surpirse to many that THE YARDBIRDS still exist, much more surprising is the fact that their singer's horizon's much wider than the the legendary band's chosen genre - but then, that was the same with his predecessor, Keith Relf. A great vocalist in his own, here the Detroit-born John Idan goes the whole distance playing every instrument with a delicate help from a string quartet and tells it like it is - or, in the case of "The Ballad Of Myself" - like it was. His sincere delivery and the namechecking of his idols' is disarming but there's no naivete: just listen to the blues and raga aural allusions at the appropriate lyrical places. The ballad of his soul? Idan's voice in "I Began To Realise" is soulful while the arrangement is Latin-tinctured and breezy.

This easiness pervades all the album so even with "We All Belong" John escapes anthemic lures which he surrenders to in Lennonesque "Set Out Before The Sadness Comes", but then Idan follows the George Harrison route in "That's You And Me" with rare elegance, the influences are worn proudly on the sleeve. While the psychedelic chant of "The Kali Yuga's Gettin' Hot", as fantastic as it is, sticks out of context like a soar Sly Stone-shaped thumb, "Banging My Head On The Wall" feeds to the boogie crowd with its jolly piano, and the organ-laden "Five More Nights" has the answer to the blues-asking lot. With so much going on here, John's a revelation.

*****

Derelict dirges driving desperation away. Keep your secrets stashed so well.

However futuristic they might be, most prog rock bands, the genre's name notwithstanding, cast their collective glances, stylistics-wise, to the past - too afraid to sound too modern to be filed under "Prog". This New Jersey quartet, the brainchild of singing guitarists Patrick and Dan McGowan, are different, they're living in the intense "here and now" which bares its teeth with the misty, if desperate, march of "Werevolves" where soft passages instil more fear than the preceding onslaught. In the multi-layered "Big Al" the band show their mastery of Frippery but do it with much bile and gusto, while the sublime "The Moon" puts forward the brothers' vocal harmonies and the folky undertow, and there's a grandiosity hidden in "Castle Builder". Still, it's the closing "Ice Clock" their utmost magical moment which indeed might point to a great future.

***

The Californian ensemble track back their roots with some heavy guests in tow(er).

What's the best way for a soul band to mark their 40th anniversary if not to shine up their brass and make some of their genre classics shine anew? Saxophonist Doc Kupka masterfully eschews the obvious and steers his ensemble - with George Duke in the producer's chair - away from the rocks. With only Otis Redding's "Mr. Pitiful" coming from the collective subconscious, although here anguish is served much jollier, and shorter, by another Stax veteran, Sam Moore, there's TAVARES' "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" stripped from its disco lustre to gain impact. Which can't be said of "You Met Your Match" where singer Larry Braggs follows the song's composer Steve Wonder's style too closely and, for the same reason, the James Brown medley, "Star Time". Maybe that's why TOP decided to invite more vocal talent on board, and Joss Stone does a mellifluous Tammi Terrell to Braggs' Marvin in "Your Precious Love" and fantastic Kim Weston in "It Takes Two", while Huey Lewis gets all Wilson Picketty in "634-5789", and Tom Jones' pipes sound fantastic with the trumpets of Isaac Hayes' "I Thank You". Quite a right thing, to be thankful to all the great artists who created this songbook and to the band who delved into it to dust off the gems.

****

When the past slumbers turn into dreams of the future.

Poland might be re-christened and be called Progland: of all the former socialist countries it's there that the art form thrives without too much looking back, neo-prog-like. But it's the times gone that is the focus of this album. With it keyboardist and drummer Wojtek Szadkowski, well-known for his COLLAGE endeavors, opens a new chapter of his other band's story which leaves their debut trilogy behind. "Every Desert Got Its Ocean" splashes on like a tidal wave of raging synthesizers and sharp guitar but then the storm invites the calm, and Robert Amirian's voice turns sireny serene. And so it goes, from thunder to subsiding, the pain hanging on in-between to get soothed in the harmonies of "Repaint The Sky" where keys deliver one great hook. While "Am I Losing Touch" is desperate, on the verge of collapse, it introduces a gentle acoustic folk tune, and there's spaciness abound, never more so than in the "Over Horizon" pulsating ambience which appears to be as creepy as it is crawling under the skin until the chorus breaks out to call to "step out from the dark". Velvet gloom flows through the finale, "Is It Over", but the touch of it is very very warm.

****

His own time is then and now, so Chappo lets loose and gets looser.

Clap your hands and shout out Devil! That's what's rock 'n' roll about. The awesome threesome from Deutschland rub all the right places.

Hear the ring of 12-string and look for some beauty in yer kitchen sink.

If Donovan was supposed to be the British answer to Dylan, by the same token Beau, or John Trevor Midgley, was the England's echo of Phil Ochs' outpourings. Yet when John Peel signed his compatriot to his Dandelion Records, in 1968, he might sense there was a singer in the vein of Ralph McTell. Whatever, by 1972 the label had blown up in the wind, and Beau - who, as John Trevor, worked with TRACTOR - could find no place for the "High Mass" album. And that where this disc starts, with "The Smoke Of Eden": subtle percussion underpin the harmonica-harmonium interplay while guitar chimes around the delicate voice, and the song builds up, electrically, to the point where tension just begs for a resolution - just like the gloomy optimism of the lyrics. Sign of the times just gone, but the playful folk of "St. Elizabeth Of Hungary" harks even further in time, and Sandy Denny might inhabit it too well - just like the "Cartoon" brooding politics from 1975's recordings that were to be the "Twelve Strings To The Beau", yet remained unreleased too as the auteur was promoted at his day job. The acoustic baroque grandeur of "Bristol Museum" would have fallen on fallow ears in the glam year anyway.

From 1978 to 1982 Beau worked at home, secure in the knowledge that the "the dangerous scent is the Profumo fate" sentiment of "Flowers Of The Sea" had a nice sound to it, especially with "perfume" lurking nearby, but it was not for the age of plastic, though it's quite relevant today. The clock-ticking rhythm in "The Mirror" is still mesmerising, whereas "The Cumberland Brigade" 1985's demo written about post traumatic stress disorder feels Donovan-ish indeed. Then, "Red Light In Arcady" hits hard with only guitar and lashing voice - and links it all back to the opening track's paradise making this collection an album in itself. Not for everyone, but there's much to think about when listening.

***1/2