Past Programs
Rock - 2008
CD of the Week - Loudon Wainwright III
18/08/2008
Since he was a young man, Loudon Wainwright has been writing songs about getting old, so the 13 songs he revisits on his new CD, Recovery, the last one composed in 1974, have a richness gained from the singer-songwriter’s actual ageing.
Joe Henry and Loudon worked together on his previous release, Strange Weirdos, Music From and Inspired by the film ‘Knocked Up’, and it was Joe who finally got Loudon to respond with more than a shrug to the idea of reworking some of his early catalogue. The new arrangements build subtly on Loudon’s original guitar-only accompaniments and the songs are still great - no one plumbs the emotional life of the self-obsessed as funnily, or as lovingly and insightfully, as Loud-O.
CD of the Week - Ry Cooder
11/08/2008
Ry Cooder is in fine form on his latest CD, I, Flathead, his humorous and loving vision of California of the ’50s and ’60s, a world of Western Swing lovers, unsuccessful songwriters, carnies and drag racers.
On this, the 3rd of his California trilogy, Cooder’s voice is rich and confident, whether singing or speaking, and his liner notes, in the persona of the record’s nominal author, Kash Buk (and the Klowns), are as surreal and funny as anything out there. The music is spare, held down by three fine drummers, and Cooder’s guitar is on the mark with a big tip of the hat to Hollywood emigrant Merle Travis. The songs are well-written vignettes of the colourful characters who came from elsewhere to make Southern California the land of a million dreams. Ry’s song Steel Guitar Heaven manages to evoke the maverick world of early Californian Western music with nary a steel guitar played. This tribute to this unique time and place is so subtle and real that you can smell the knotty pine panelled country music clubs, the petrol fumes and the California eucalypts.
CD of the Week - Eliza Carthy
04/08/2008
Eliza Carthy’s new CD, Dreams of Breathing Underwater, uses her extensive knowledge of English folk and reconstructs it into an edgy, post-rock collection of her songs which bristle with magical realism.
The daughter of English folk doyens Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, Eliza’s fiddling is impeccable, as is her sense of how much to sing or write into a song. The production is big, mixing melodeons and fiddles with strings and brass, and the songs have an elusive quality that demands your participation. As Tom Waits has refashioned American music into his crooked frame, Eliza does the same with English music, with more than a touch of English Music Hall mixing strangely with her acerbic vocal delivery.
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.
John Hiatt
11/06/2008
Although he’s been recording for 34 years, Same Old Man is John Hiatt’s first album of all love songs.
With the North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson on guitars and mandolins, and longtime occasional Hiatt colleague Kenneth Blevins on drums, John ranges from un-ironic heartfelt songs to whimsical ones with lines like, ‘I’d rather be in a barrel of salt and pickle brine with a 1000 papercuts’. He’s definitely looking back, with a song about the characters he met in his early days and vocal performances that resemble Dylan, latter-day Dylan at that.
Funkalleros
01/05/2008
Casserole of Humanity is the name of the new, ebullient, second CD by the Funkalleros, the Fremantle-based Latin music band founded by Argentina-born brothers Abe and German Dunovits.
Abe sings, plays the lutes and wrote the songs, all in Spanish, which relate to politics and his experiences growing up in Argentina and in Madrid. German plays timbales, Panamanian-born Raul Rojas Villa plays congas, bata and other percussion, and a section of trumpet, sax and flute add to the festivities. The all-original song component is unusual for a Latin band, but so are their influences - Freddie King, Funkadelic, The Clash, Manu Chao and flamenco-blues group Pata Negra.
Two-Faced Friday
25/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Saravah Soul
23/04/2008
Founded and fronted by dynamic Brazilian break dancer, guitarist and singer Otto Nascarella, Saravah Soul play Brazilian soul-funk and samba with the inspiration from the showmanship of James Brown.
The London-based group are half-Brazilian and half-British and sing in both English and Portuguese as they deliver a supercharged mix of very danceable Brazilian Funk on their self-titled debut CD. In addition to quoting the greats of the genre, they create a new chapter by drawing a wider range of funk into their music. ‘Saravah’ is a salutation used in Afro-Brazilian religions which carries a deep sense of Brazilian-ness.
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.
