Damon Albarn’s first solo album in 7 years finds him in a somber mood. Written during COVID lockdowns and inspired by both Iceland and his home in Devon, the black and white cover feels right for this album that captures both light and dark in the world. Snow, rain, and especially the sea all play into the album’s themes.
“Darkness to Light” starts off with horns on a nice little tune about the dawn coming later in Iceland than elsewhere. Over an electronic beat, “The Cormorant” documents the bay that Damon regularly swims in, one that also offers a bit of danger depending on the current. “The Tower of Montevideo” takes its travels to South America and adds a bossa nova feel.
A propulsive, echoey beat in “Polaris” makes it a standout before the atmospheric album closer “Particles”. Five singles have thus far been released from The Nearer the Fountain… including the excellent “Royal Morning Blue” that captures the wonder of the rain turning to snow. “and nothing like this had ever happened… before” adds a wistful feel to the lyric. With three instrumentals, Albarn’s latest can be a slow moving, dark affair but also adds sparkling beauty on several tracks.
The first release as Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds came in 2011, two years after the break-up of Oasis. While it is a near impossible task to follow up the legendary band, the new Noel Gallagher solo act has released three albums that have all gone to #1 in the UK and he continues to be a large concert draw. Chart wise, the singles have been less successful with the highest charting single for the middle Gallagher brother being the first one, “The Death of You and Me” that peaked at #15 in the UK. However, 10 years into his solo project and with a fairly extensive list of singles and EPs behind him, it was time for the Chief to release a double Best Of set plus a third disc of remixes/rarities.
His first two albums provide the bulk of disc one that starts with early highlight, “Everybody’s On The Run”. The James Bond sounding theme is a mini epic with choir and strings. The David Essex influenced “Lock the Doors” reportedly took 23 years to finally complete. “AKA…What a Life” is a harder rocking single from the self-titled debut and later Johnny Marr adds guitars to the driving “Ballad of the Mighty I”. Both discs are close with new songs, the first of these “We’re On Our Way Now” is an adult oriented symphonic ballad.
Disc two opens with the throbbing electronic beat of “Black Star Dancing” but is bettered a few tracks later with 2020’s “Blue Moon Rising” that rides a more subtle groove but with lyrics no less ridiculous. “A Dream is All you Need to Get By” adds a 60s inflected dreamy quality. “It’s a Beautiful World” is lifted by its celestial chorus and adds a French spoken section. Second new track, “Flying On the Water” is an upbeat guitar song that sounds refreshing after several electronic songs.
The double disc hits a high point early on disc two with “Holy Mountain”, the first single from 2017’s Who Built The Moon. The glam rock stomper features Paul Weller on organ and is based around a tin whistle sample. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the giddy excitement of the playground lyrics of “she fell right under my spell/she danced right into my hands”. This may be the happiest Gallagher has sounded in years. The tracks that make up Back The Way We Came Vol 1 are all very slick but see Noel exploring his musical boundaries, as narrow as they may be, to make up a consistent batch of songs that have made his second act one well worth exploring.
The enjoyment of the third disc of rarities depends on your feelings on “Black Star Dancing” that appears three times in various remix forms. Several acoustic versions of songs appear that don’t sound like much of a departure from their originals. Better is “International Magic (demo)” that could be a lost 90s Chemical Brothers’ track and several instrumental versions of songs including “It’s a Beautiful World”. Disc closer “Be Careful What You Wish For” adds a funky groove to what otherwise sounds like high level studio noodling.
The second Lana Del Rey release of 2021, comes seven months after Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Blue Banisters is a lowkey affair with spare instrumentation, many tracks with just a piano and some strings. The album was preceded by a trio of singles including first track “Text Book”. Del Rey sings “And there we were/screamin’ black lives matter in the crowd” over a slow tempo that gets amped in the chorus as she remembers her Dad. “Blue Banisters” its slightly surreal lyrics of being with friends and painting her banisters blue.
Several of the tracks date back several years including both “Thunder” and “Dealer” that were recorded with the Last Shadow Puppets in 2017. The latter features Miles Kane on the verses and adds a funky drum/bass to the affair while Del Rey screams the chorus. Relationship stories appear regularly – an ex gets told “Don’t say you’re over me/When they all know you ain’t” before adding bit of horns on “If you Lie Down With Me”. She sings of finding her life again after a break-up on the sweeping drama of “Violets For Roses”.
Like a lot of her work, Blue Banisters is a mood piece, a vibe. Her hazy torch songs evoke hanging out beneath the neon lights of a 7-11 but in black and white, while she wears a white dress and cars bumping hip hop slowly drive by. It’s an album to listen to and not study, with occasional moments appearing to grab your attention like the Ennio Morricone interlude that adds a modern beat. Lana Del Rey keeps her steady work pace going and Blue Banisters is another fine collection of her particular style of pop song.
September saw the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s landmark second album, Nevermind. The album changed the music world, brought the alternative sound into the mainstream, and made singer Kurt Cobain into an icon. The album knocked Michael Jackson off the #1 spot on Billboard’s album chart on its way to selling over 30 million units worldwide. Two years before that, for a mere $606, the band recorded it’s debut Bleach with Jack Endino producing and Chad Channing on drums for most of the tracks. While initially selling just 40,000 copies, the album has gone on to sell over a million and it’s 20th anniversary edition adds a Portland concert recorded a few months after the album was released.
The first single released was a cover of Shocking Blue’s 1969 “Love Buzz”. An inauspicious start for the band but has the fine bass sound of Krist Novoselic that sounds similar to The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play”. The single is one of the highlights of Bleach. “School” features a hard guitar riff that captures the “grunge” sound in full force as Cobain sings about “no recess”. The ferocious “Negative Creep” walks the line between punk and metal while first song “Blew” adds in fuzzy guitars and bass.
The most familiar song for most listeners would be the original version of “About A Girl” that would later open their legendary MTV Unplugged show in 1994. The track is a standout with a bit more tune and melody plus clean production. The song is in stark contrast to the more sinister sound of “Floyd the Barber” whose lyrics are about being murdered and raped by characters from the Andy Griffith Show and “Paper Cuts” where Cobain sings about being locked in a basement with blacked out windows.
While the album does have it’s moments, it is letdown at times by the drumming of Chad Channing that seems to speed up in places. Three of the tracks have Melvins drummer Dale Crover sitting in. While recorded for cheap, it often shows in the production that doesn’t always bring out the best in the music. On “Scoff” there is a great guitar riff that could have been turned into a more compelling song but instead gets buried. While Cobain’s songwriting certainly improves, having Dave Grohl join the band and the production smarts of Butch Vig really do help elevate the band into a whole other level.
The live album captures the band in full flight with several tracks from Bleach and also adds several songs that would later appear on the compilation Incesticide. The Vaselines’ cover “Molly’s Lips” gets an airing as does “Been a Son” and hard riffing “Dive”. “About a Girl” appears in a sped up form, with Cobain’s voice straining to hit the notes before ending the concert with the growling, bass heavy “Blew”.
Arguably, The Beatles’ Let It Be album released in 1970, is the fab four’s most controversial album. Recorded before Abbey Road but released after, it has long been associated with the documentary of the same name that filmed the fraught recording sessions that did not depict John/Paul/George/Ringo as the close knit group many assumed. Eventually, the tapes were left for Phil Spector to sort out which caused another storm in the group when orchestras and choirs were added to several backing tracks which niggled at Paul McCartney for so long that he eventually released Let It Be… Naked in 2003. Starting in 2017 with the Sgt Pepper album, Giles Martin has been reworking the last albums by The Beatles in newly mixed stereo editions tied in with unreleased alternative takes.
Musically, the songs on Let It Be are a curious bunch. The album contains three massive singles and another one of their most famous songs. The most famous single is the iconic McCartney sung title track that appeared to him in a dream about his long deceased mother. Strong in religious overtones, it is hard not to get wrapped up in the emotion of the track that seems much longer than it’s 4 minutes. Influenced by transcendental meditation, Lennon’s “Across The Universe” is reportedly one of his proudest lyrics that get amplified by the celestial strings and choirs. Starting off with “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup”, the track adds the sung mantra “Jai Guru Deva, Om” before the famous “nothing’s gonna change my world” line that gets repeated several times.
The final track of the album is “Get Back”, a worldwide #1 single that grew out of a jam session. The song is carried by Ringo Starr’s chugging rhythm, some fine lead guitar playing from Lennon, and Billy Preston’s swinging Rhodes piano solo that is one of the most memorable moments on the album. To the hardcore fans, the single that is most remembered as one of the main arguments of latter day Beatles is McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road”. With the tapes left behind for Spector, he adds his wall of sound to Macca’s simple tune. While it does add a whole lot of orchestral gloss to the song, it also likely made it accessible to the older generation pushing the song to #1 in North America and acts as a wistful final moment for the band that would soon break-up.
The rest of Let It Be is more of a hodgepodge of tracks including “Dig It” and the folk song “Maggie Mae” that both clock in at under a minute each. Neither of George Harrison’s tracks are his best but “I Me Mine” focuses on egos which is an interesting comment in the shadow from the songwriting team of Lennon/McCartney. “For Blue” is a fine bit of blues rock that gets lost between the orchestral flourishes of “The Long and Winding Road” and one of the band’s finest rock songs, “Get Back”.
The album tracks that do stand out include the first track, “Two of Us”. Seeing the band get back to it’s roots of Lennon/McCartney duetting into the same microphone, the track is reportedly about Macca and wife Linda but could easily be associated with his relationship with Lennon. As internal tenstions rise in the band, it’s hard not to hear their relationship laid bare in the lyrics, “you and me chasing paper, getting nowhere/on our way back home…. You and I have memories/longer than the road that stretches out ahead”. “I’ve Got a Feeling” uses tidbits of three different tracks that come together to form a belter, with Macca sounding like a preacher on the opening lyric and Lennon singing that “everybody had a good year”.
As it is, Let It Be is hodge podge of smash hit singles, a few good tunes, and several forgettable ones. It’s regrettable that this is the final statement from the greatest band of all time in that they released an album that feels mostly thrown together with a lack of flow in several spots. Still, it’s hard to dismiss an album with four of the band’s most memorable tracks. While Let It Be is a hard album to love, it’s also one that does surprise in certain spots with a few fine performances.
The two disc edition adds a second disc of alternative takes from the sessions and oddly enough, sounds like the more cohesive album. Stripped of the controversary and aura of the released album, the alternative takes sounds like a legendary band playing a few great songs together. Highlights include the chatter before Macca belts out “Let It Be” and a version of “The Long and Winding Road” that leaves off the Spector overdubs. “Across the Universe” appears in a Glyn Johns 1970 mix that also leaves out the gloss while “Don’t Let Me Down”, that was inexplicably left off the album, shows up in the version from the famous rooftop performance. The album tracks have a looser feel with “For You Blue” appearing earlier and fits in better with the tracks surrounding it. There is a joy on disc two’s performances that really carry it as a standalone product and one that is a helluva lot of fun to listen to.
The Light Appears 