KATIE MELUA: "The Ultimate Collection"

Original released on CD Digipak BMG 538433672

(EU 2018, October 5)

BRIAN WILSON's Xmas Album

Original released on CD Arista 82876.71809.2

(US 2005, October 18)

"What I Really Want For Christmas" consists mostly of Brian and Wondermints' renditions of US perspective Xmas classics. Even though they are sometimes wonderfully arranged (especially the a cappella "Auld Lang Syne" sounds almost heavenly), I wouldn't care much for such a package. However, there are exceptions among the material – songs composed by Brian Wilson himself. Of those five, "The Man With All the Toys" and "Little Saint Nick" are new versions of Beach Boy originals, with lyrics by Mike Love. The new stuff includes the superb "What I Really Want for Christmas" and "Christmasey." I have the idea that "On Christmas Day" is also 'new', but it isn't that special; it is mostly Brian repeating the Xmas clichés, and one surely remembers Brian has composed both of his masterpieces ("Smile" and "Pet Sounds") with help from an 'outsider' lyricist (Van Dyke Parks and Tony Asher). This time the project has brought the famous Jimmy Webb and Bernie Taupin together with Brian, and the result is a complete success. (in RateYourMusic)

Eric Is Back Home, To His Family

Original released on CD Reprise 49395-2

(US 2005, August 30)     

Eric Clapton claimed in the press release for "Back Home", his 14th album of original material, that «One of the earliest statements I made about myself was back in the late '80s, with "Journeyman". This album completes that cycle in terms of talking about my whole journey as an itinerant musician and where I find myself now, starting a new family. That's why I chose the title. It's about coming home and staying home.» With that in mind, it becomes clearer that the studio albums Clapton released during the '90s did indeed follow some sort of thematic logic. 1989's "Journeyman" did find Clapton regrouping after a muddled '80s, returning to the bluesy arena rock and smooth pop that had been his signature sound as a solo artist. He followed that with 1994's "From the Cradle", where he explicitly returned to the roots of his music by recording an album of blues standards. Four years later, he released "Pilgrim", a slick album that had Clapton strengthening his collaboration with producer/co-writer Simon Climie (who first worked with EC on his electronica side project T.D.F.). If "Pilgrim" touched on father issues, 2001's "Reptile" loosely returned Clapton to his childhood (complete with a smiling boyhood shot of him on the cover) and found the guitarist struggling with a seemingly diverse selection of material, ranking from '50s R&B to James Taylor. After a brief blues detour on 2004's "Me and Mr. Johnson", Clapton returns to the sound and feel of "Reptile" for "Back Home", but he doesn't seem to be as tentative or forced as he did there. Instead, he eases comfortably into the domesticity that isn't just the concept for the album, it's reason for being. In fact, the album doesn't need "back" in its title - ultimately, the album is just about being home (which, if the center photo of Clapton at home with his three young daughters and wife is to be believed, looks alarmingly similar to the set of Thomas the Tank Engine, complete with a painted rainbow shining through the window).

While it's hard to begrudge the 60-year-old guitarist for finding a happy home after all these years, what is puzzling about this calm, comfortable album is that Clapton is equating domestic bliss with a glossy, consciously classy sound that's swept clean of dirt and grit, or even the blues. Consequently, "Back Home" is pitched halfway between the lite contemporary soul of "Pilgrim" and Clapton's time as a Michelob spokesman in the late '80s. Each track rides a tight, professional groove - sometimes a bluesy vamp, sometimes a reggae jam, usually something soulful but relaxed - and while instruments sometimes bubble up from the mix (sometimes it's Clapton's guitar, but just as often it's Billy Preston's organ, or occasionally a synth straight out of 1987), the emphasis is always on the smooth, shiny surface. Unlike such peers as Bob Dylan, Elton John, and the Rolling Stones who revitalized their recording careers with back-to-basics moves that stripped their music down to its essence, Clapton seems to harbor an aversion to what he built his reputation on, whether it was the lean, sinewy blues of the Yardbirds and Bluesbreakers or the psychedelic freak-outs of Cream, or even the rootsy rock he learned from Delaney & Bonnie in the '70s. Based on "Back Home", it really does seem like he considers "Journeyman" ground zero for his solo career, but instead of replicating the well-balanced mix of rock, pop, and blues that made that record one of his best solo efforts, he settles into a tasteful adult pop sound that makes this record the ideal soundtrack to a pleasant Sunday afternoon at home with the family. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

ROBERT PLANT & STRANGE SENSATION: "Mighty Rearranger"

Original released on CD Sanctuary 06076-84747-2

(2005, April 25)

   

On "Mighty Rearranger", the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's "Dreamland" - and named the Strange Sensation - is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's "Physical Grafitti". The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration - and why shouldn't they? "Mighty Rearranger" opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums. Adams' guitar shifts it over to rock in the middle, but never crowds the crystalline lilting vocal. The single, "Shine It All Around," sports Deamer's crunch and crack drums, while Adams' canny emulation of Jimmy Page's Les Paul toneography fills Plant's sung and moaned lines with ferocity. But it is "Freedom Fries," with its startling percussive syncopation and juxtaposition of roots rockabilly blues and hard rock - à la "Black Dog" - that breaks the record wide open and shatters the sensual tension with pure Dionysian RAWK swagger. On "Tin Pan Valley," Baggot's whispering keyboard lines under Plant's nocturnal moan set a mood - slippery, sexy, undulating - before Deamer cracks through with cymbal and snare work that not only emulates John Bonham, but evokes his power, unfurling the Zep talons deeper into the core of the album. 

The beautiful balladry of "All the King's Horses" offers solid proof of Plant's ability to reference the English folk tradition with elegance and taste, and his continued acumen for fine lyric writing. The acoustic guitars purposely kiss the same space that Page did on "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Goin' to California," but are balanced by Adams' pastoral electric country fills. But here's the important part: the Zeppelin spirit that is seemingly ever present here takes nothing away from the startling imagination and creativity on "Mighty Rearranger" - it actually serves, rather than houses, the songs it adorns. And it's the songs, like the sultry slow stroll of "The Enchanter" and the North African-flavored rocker "Takamba," that matter. Plant and Strange Sensation have painstakingly and energetically crafted an album that takes his full history into account, yet offers something living, breathing, and actually new. This is big rock music making an appearance on the scene agian. It's music that is full of itself, sneers at the competition, and pushes forward by acknowledging the full breadth of the music's tarted-up history. The dramatic "Let the Four Winds Blow" touches everything from early rock & roll to droning Delta blues to biker soundtrack music in a dramatic and utterly serious song. The title track uses the Malian guitar plank and turns it back on itself, pointing its gaze toward John Lee Hooker, Skip James, and the piano blues of Otis Spann. The album closes with Baggot's barroom blues piano that propels Plant to pay a brief barrelhouse tribute to Ray Charles on "Brother Ray." "Mighty Rearranger" is a literate, ambitious, and sublimely vulgar exercise in how to make a mature yet utterly unfettered rock & roll album that takes chances, not prisoners, and apologizes for nothing. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

MELUA's SECOND ALBUM

Original released on CD Dramatico DRAMCD0007

(2005, September 26)

Georgia-born (as in the country, not the state) singer/songwriter Katie Melua found herself atop the British charts in 2003 with her breezy debut, "Call Off the Search", which sold over three million copies in Europe alone. Her laid-back blend of blues, jazz, and pop with a kiss of worldbeat drew comparisons to Norah Jones, and rightfully so. She sticks to the formula on her lush, ultimately safe follow-up, "Piece by Piece". This is Coldplay for the Diana Krall crowd, a perfectly rendered slice of adult contemporary pie for a lazy summer day delivered by an artist whose beautiful voice is almost striking in how unremarkable it is. Her longtime collaborator, producer/songwriter Mike Batt, provides the catchiest number, an odd and endearing little confection called "Nine Million Bicycles." It's both silly and sweet, two things that work in Melua's favor. Sure, she can vamp it up with the best of them on bluesy asides like "Shy Boy" and the dreadful "Blues in the Night," but there's a whole lot of innocence in that voice that just shrivels in the midst of all that bravado. Only in her early twenties, Melua's got plenty of time to decide on a persona, and "Piece by Piece" has enough quality material on it to placate fans until she does, but there's some tension here, and it doesn't sound intentional. Besides, anyone who covers Canned Heat and the Cure on the same record is still trying to figure it all out. (James Christopher Monger in AllMusic)