As an aside, my listening was briefly interrupted this year by the final expiry of my trusty hi-fi, after 23 years sterling service, as the amplifier died and the attached CD player made an increasingly alarming range of noises. So what to do? I’m as impressed as anyone by the clever new ways of listening to music; my credit card sized iPod containing 250 CDs-worth of music still amazes me, providing tolerable sound quality and a handy ability to be plugged into the car stereo, and networked and blue-toothed options abound. But still nothing comes close to a decent hi-fi with a couple of reasonably-sized high quality speakers, fed by good quality source material, for fully appreciating a piece of music in all its detail, mood and subtlety. It frequently even trumps live music when focussing purely on the music, as the latter is at the mercy of remarkably common dodgy sound systems, engineers and acoustics that can leave you deafened and/or puzzling over the lyrics or the crudeness of the sound.
Reports in recent years of the impending death of the CD in favour of the download, streaming, or some such internet-enabled nebulosity, left me wondering if it would still be sensible or even possible to invest in a replacement CD-based system. It became necessary to take a deep breath and plunge briefly into the rather disturbing world of hi-fi magazines (£200 for a 1m cable anyone?) to educate myself. The message I got from this little exercise was strangely reassuring; buried in many of the reviews of weird and wonderful digital audio devices at absurd prices was the frequent referral to CD-quality sound as the standard that many new devices still aspire to, but frequently don’t reach. And since I’ve also detected a renewed commitment to the issuing of new music of the sort that interests me on physical CD (not to mention my existing collection), I decided I was going to stick with it for as much of the next 23 years as possible. So a couple of shiny new boxes have been installed at moderate expense, the sound quality is even better than before, and I can get promptly back to thinking about the music rather than equipment (very much the opposite, I fear, to regular readers of those magazines - I believe it’s largely a male thing)...
The Gloaming
The Gloaming are the new band of the profoundly
impressive Irish sean-nos singer Iarla O Lionaird that I was fortunate enough
to see perform in great style in 2014 (see 19May2014 post). On this, the bands eponymous
first album from 2014, the deeply moving Gaelic songs performed by Iarla on the
first and final tracks would alone justify its purchase price, yet there is so
much more to it than that. Indeed more than half the tracks of the highly
coherent whole, more like a symphony of movements rather than a collection of
disparate tracks, are instrumentals. And these, including both fiddle and
guitar played respectively by the formidable Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill,
but also fine sensitive piano from Thomas Bartlett, are measured,
consequential, and often semi-classical in range and flow, though always with a
traditional Irish core that is occasionally allowed freer rein. Overall this is
a serious, magnificent, timeless piece of work that will always reward the
thoughtful listener.
Olivia Chaney: The Longest River
So at last the long awaited debut album arrives, and has
to immediately run the gauntlet of the sky high expectations that have been
given too much time to accumulate. On initial listen it’s a pretty good piece of
work: crystalline, emotive, intricate, elegant and polished, with material
centred on youthful growing pains that the recording label, witness promotional
tours in Australia and the US but not the UK, have clearly decided is best
suited to an offshore/transatlantic market. Good yet measured and caveated
early press reviews however, prioritising timely publication perhaps, suggest
that those high expectations have not been exactly met. After a couple of
listens I tended to agree, there seemed no immediate wow-factor of the sort
perhaps we were all expecting, knowing just how uniquely talented and engaging
Chaney is - based on live performances and the 5-track EP of a couple of years
ago. And yet. This album has refused to let go and has drawn me back again and
again, and has grown in stature with every listen in a way I recall of the best
of the likes of Joni Mitchell. I’ve finally had to admit that this is actually a very fine
and often poignant work, with sufficient depth and quality to provide substantial
and sustained rewards, and am left pondering whether some of the writers so keen
to be first with a review would actually write something different given a
later opportunity.
Attwenger: Spot
23 tracks in 40 minutes from Austria’s finest alpine duo
delivers a quick-fire Germanic accordion/ drums/ synthesizer based object lesson
in rampant creativity and sheer beguiling entertainment that leaves
many other established artists looking comparatively shabby in those
departments. See my previous (15Nov2015) post on this splendid, criminally unsung
outfit for far more.
Stick In the Wheel: From Here
This is not a nice album. It’s brash, in-yer-face, Essex.
Raw down-to-earth contemporary stories are mixed with almost brutal no-nonsense
reworking of traditional folk standards for an effect that some of a nervous
disposition might find offensive (“the antidote to twee” has been one
description, “punk-folk” I might almost suggest). Somehow evocative of many current
injustices and with an air of not-so-quiet desperation; but boy is it
bracing! They still call it folk, but it seems to have blown guys in Arran
jumpers with fingers in their ears to kingdom come. fRoots magazine Critics
Poll Album of 2015. Awesome. Nuff said.
Moriarty: Epitaph
I picked this up while stranded at Orly airport, nudged
by a vaguely remembered favourable review and, yes, its exquisite hardback book
format. Moriarty are a well-established French-based band fronted by
distinctive singer Rosemary Standley, who sing in English but have been
strangely absent from British soil for some years. Whatever their origins, the
bands core sound is, if anything, gusting towards American traditional (blues,
ballads, hillybilly…), though always versatile and, as I’m discovering, always
compelling. Epitaph indicates an album whose central theme is death, and how it
is variously coped with, yet this is not the complete downer it might sound –
Moriarty have a talent for originality, atmosphere and for getting the feet
tapping, and spirits (pun intended) can’t be kept down for long. They also put
a high value on craftsmanship, evident both in the sheer quality of their
performances and their beautifully presented albums – Epitaph comes in a cloth-bound
book full of intriguing and elegant drawings and hand-written lyrics.
The White Stripes: De Stijl
OK so this is catch-up time for the old codger who is
just 15 years late on this one. Based on the well proven rule that 90% of
current mainstream pop/rock music is mutton dressed in myriad different ways as lamb, I don’t
really track it very much. This obviously runs the risk of missing the odd gem,
which is a pretty good description of Jack and Meg White, alias The White
Stripes. This is the first album of theirs I picked up, and I was immediately
blown away by the power of rock music being performed with greater charisma, originality
and sheer competence than I’ve heard it for a very long time. Superficially
some of it may sound like much that has gone before, but this is somehow considerably
superior to most, with some great classy musicianship, and very very addictive.
It’s a while since I bought three albums by the same outfit in as many weeks,
and it was also rather novel to be twice congratulated on my choice by young
music shop staff; respect!The White Stripes also have an irresistible ability to tease you into nudging the volume up, and up, and even to wonder if perhaps some slightly bigger speakers might be in order… Hmmm, where exactly did I put those magazines?
