Past Programs
Pop - 2008
CD of the Week - Katie Noonan
24/11/2008
To record Blackbird, her new CD of 15 Lennon/McCartney classics, singer Katie Noonan and pianist Sam Keevers travelled to New York to record with the cream of US Jazz players - Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Ron Carter and Lewis Nash.
Recorded in a day and a half, the group quickly gelled, with Joe Lovano’s sax work slinking in and out of Katie’s vocals which are informed by classical, pop and jazz musics for a unique take on these great songs. Katie deliberately left out George’s songs because she plans to devote an entire CD to him someday. She plans to devote 6 to 8 months to exclusively performing the Blackbird repertoire, starting with shows in Eastern Australian capital cities in December.
La Cherga
20/11/2008
Tito's experiment of a united, peaceful and prosperous Balkans under the one name of Yugoslavia may have failed eventually in its intended form, but the group La Cherga have certainly realised his aims in a small way, even if they had to form in Austria to do it. The band fuses a variety of Balkan styles with dub and elctronica to form an exciting, if sometimes challenging whole.
The band is led by Kosovar expat singer Irina Karamarkovic and Croatian electronics wizard Nevenko Bucan. They're joined by two Macedonian brass masters and a pair of Bosnians on guitar and bass. The CD notes for Fake no More describe the band as representing a pan-Balkan consciousness ... ripe, bright and tasty as stuffed peppers - with a shot of rakija!
Amos Lee
19/11/2008
Elvis Costello and the Imposters
26/06/2008
Elvis Costello and the Imposters’ new CD Momofuku ranges lyrically from sentimental to angry and musically from gentle to thrashy, always with the element of surprise and delight in its creation.
Costello’s liner notes remember Momofuko Ando (1910-2007) by saying of the inverntor of the Cup Noodle that ‘he fed those that study’. ‘Like so many things in this world of wonder’, added Costello, ‘all we had to do to make this record was to add water.’ After having told people that he was finished with recording, a session for Jenny Lewis convinced Elvis that it wasn’t the studio that was making Elvis miserable, but the ‘music business’ that predictably follows it. So he assembled the Imposters and some special guests - Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, Imposters’ drummer Pete Thomas’ daughter, drummer Tennessee Thomas - and made a quick record full of Costello-isms and sounds ranging from music hall to soul to punk, all new songs, including co-writes with Roseanne Cash and Loretta Lynn.
Simphiwe Dana
15/05/2008
On her latest CD, The One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street, modernistic fashion icon and vocal-harmony loving Simphiwe Dana sings her songs inspired by Steve Biko’s philosophy.
To Simphiwe (her first name means ‘gift’), Biko was saying that you must first love and respect yourself in order to love others - that by having faith in your capabilities through an intense love for life, for the Divine in yourself, you cannot help seeing the Divine in others. Simphiwe grew up in a poor family in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa, carrying water while chanting ceremonial circumcision and wedding songs, resolving to have music as part of her life. She’s now based in Johannesburg to pursue her singing career. Her sound is jazzy and smooth - South African pop music with an emphasis on rich vocal harmonies.
Bakelite Radio
24/04/2008
On his new CD, Bakelite Radio Vol. IV, Joe Camilleri, the chameleonic master of beautifully produced roots music, takes on the colours of New Orleans R&B, with a couple of Allan Toussaint and Dr. John numbers each and some Camilleri/Nick Smith originals.
The tenor sax is king with Joe and Wilbur Wilde sharing the crown, with Joe Creighton taking up the bass roles as the band steers away from country and towards soul with a touch of rock and roll. Joe is so good at such a large range of roots music and records it so tastefully and prolifically that we’re in danger of taking the Melbourne hipster-entrepreneur empire that he’s created for granted.
Billy Bragg
27/03/2008
On Billy Bragg’s new CD, Mr. Love and Justice, the highly political singer/songwriter, who bridges the commitment and idealism of folk with the bluntness of punk, brings us a set of finely understated songs about love, sacrifice and justice.
It comes 6 years after his last album, England, Half English, but Bragg has been busy writing a treatise about England, collecting his back catalogue and directing a program that brings guitars and lessons to prisoners, among other things. He’s in remarkably fine voice and his group, The Blokes, focus the anger into the sound of commitment in these songs that cover the homeless, threats to freedom, the need to protect free beaches, and the potential evils of advertising. Like his previous album, its title is taken from a novel by Colin MacInnes.
Shelby Lynne
25/03/2008
Alabama-born singer Shelby Lynne’s new CD, Just A Little Lovin’, is an album of covers of songs done by Dusty Springfield, but she replaces the originals’ huge string and horn-laden original productions with a small band that tastefully draws attention to Shelby’s perfectly measured vocals.
Shelby has always dumbfounded record companies by changing her focus for successive records - straight country to Memphis Soul to Western Swing to alt-country to rock - all good, with integrity, so it was no surprise when a record company man in a dark bar in Hollywood said that they didn’t know what to do with her last record. Towards the end of this frustrating evening, she remembered a conversation that she’d had with one of her admirers, Barry Manilow. Barry asked her whether she’d ever considered covering the Dusty Springfield songbook. According to Shelby, the record man almost dropped his drink, got all saucer eyed and said, ‘Well, I can see getting behind that.’ Next was choosing a producer - key to a project like this where it could end up sounding like another cover record sounding like it was made for all the wrong reasons, despite the fact that Dusty’s been an inspiration to Shelby. Phil Ramone was the man chosen and his stripped-back production, with only drums, bass, guitar and keyboards, makes this covers album truly original.
k.d. lang
18/02/2008
k.d. lang’s new CD Watershed is a collection of her songs about love and relationships, but is also ‘about finding peace; being settled with the skeleton of things.’
On the CD, lang found no need to belt. ‘I think that is age and wisdom,’ she said. ‘It’s like a painter discovering earth tones again in a whole new way. Sometimes communicating is about whispering or about simply stating something in a gentle, quiet manner. I love that I’ve uncovered that part of me. I love to sing that way, it feels really good on the throat, it feels very natural.’ Watershed is her first CD of her own songs in 6 years and her first self-produced album.
