Jazz På Svenska - Jan Johansson

 

Provenance: In a Classic Rock article about the music that influenced them, one of the members of Opeth mentioned Jazz På Svenska. The concept behind it - Swedish folk music played on piano and double bass in a jazz idiom - intrigued me, so I bought it.

Review: I like jazz, I like Sweden, I like the piano. What I don't tend to like is minimalism, particularly. Or, to be more accurate, its sparseness that tends to turn me off. I've bought music, damn it - so why would I be content paying for the gaps in between?

Of course, those gaps are as integral to the sound as all the noisy bits I treasure so dearly. Nonetheless, I would guess there is an impatience lurking within my heart that finds most music that is meditative and ruminative in nature to be lacking. It's not quite the "don't bore us, get to the chorus" celebration of hooks, melodies and concision that admittedly has worked as a formula for much superb pop music; rather, I think I just like stuff to happen. As much as I clowned Gryphon for their strange an unaccountable pretensions, at least their music constantly shifted and probed, at times to bamboozling effect. Fundamentally, I could tolerate being guided through a maze of keyboards and krumhorns due to the energy and propulsion that went into their dizzying souffle of sound.

Here, on Jazz På Svenska, we are presented with a very different proposition; Jan Johansson on piano, Georg Riedel on double bass and...that's it. Two guys playing jazzy folk music, with no virtuoso moments or dazzling solos. Or vocals. It's the most barebones sounding thing I own, because as far as I can tell everything is done live with nary a hint of an overdub or any other production wizardry. There isn't even a producer listed on the liner notes, just a recording engineer (shout out to my boy, Olof Swembel).

In the past I've made much of how I love the sound of jazz albums of a certain vintage - essentially, that the music lives and breathes through all ensemble members being in one room and playing with each other, as music has been performed for millennia. As basic a concept as this is, it's unlikely to feature on any music that makes it to the charts. As such I cannot help but feel that huge swathes of modern audiences are missing out on the pure and crystalline beauty of hearing music played without stultifying layers of studio 'magic' mediating the experience between performer and listener.

Of course, there's plenty of music that relies on this membrane of teases and tweaks to achieve the intended result, but there's a small thrill in hearing music being played the way its done on Jazz På Svenska. And hey, you could argue that I'm cheating, what with volume knobs, stereo equalisation, even the concept of microphones. "Listen Swinetunes," I hear you say, "why don't you just go and listen to some fucker playing a flute in the woods if you think it's so great?" and yeah, I won't do that. But I did see - before buying this album, incidentally - the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. Some might find their strictly trad repertoire hokey, but hearing it being played in a small room, with the musicians almost at arm's length, with zero by way of amplification, really brought home to me just how distorting a lens technology can be when in the service of music.

However, I'm not about to become the music blogosphere's version of the Unabomber (on this issue, at least); rather, this perspective on the creation and playback of music has, I feel, given me a greater appreciation for Jazz På Svenska as a work of art. Next to the congested sound of rock, pop and the rest, it's a lovely, refreshing thing, redolent of clear mountain springs and wide blue skies. One could quite easily have this playing at a dinner party or a dentist's waiting room, sure - but that's only because its understated, unobtrusive charm lends itself to such settings. Active listening is advised.

On a couple of numbers, such as 'Berg-Kirstis polska', there are echoes of Brubeck's playfulness with tricky time signatures in Johansson's playing. In the main, however, Johansson relies on the tasteful lyricism of interspersing the sparse arrangements with jazzy little touches, such as diminished and minor seventh chords that were unlikely to have existed in the original folk songs. Nonetheless, the playing is deceptive, with even a novice pianist such as myself being gulled into thinking I could replicate much of the right-hand work on tracks like 'Visa Från Utanmyra' or 'Gammal Brollopsmarsch' until I listen again. Combined with the strolling bass of Riedel, there's more going on than is obviously apparent in these sweet, mournful little songs.

Despite being recorded at the dawn of the post-bop era, there is nothing exploratory, swinging or dissonant on Jazz På Svenska; on that basis, one could charge it with being perhaps too polite and conservative. No matter - mood, subtlety and elegance are the watchwords here. A peculiar album in relation to the rest of my collection, but one I treasure immensely. 

Willing - Lady Nade

 

Provenance: Idly browsing Twitter on evening I saw an account I follow had posted a link to 'Ain't One Thing', a track on Lady Nade's forthcoming album Willing.

Ten minutes later and I was into my third listen, and had pinged out the link to about five WhatsApp chats. Not something I do very often.

This is one of the very few albums I've pre-ordered (trying to think of others - maybe Ghost's Prequelle?), but I knew I wanted to hear more of the what I'd heard on 'Ain't One Thing'.

Bottom line - I hadn't been this excited about a voice in donkey's years. And it all came from a Twitter recommendation I clicked almost at random.

Review: I've always appreciated good singers, but I'm also big on imperfect technicians who nonetheless have character in their vocals. Lady Nade is both a wonderful singer and someone who brings heaps of personality to the microphone. One of the most joyous aspects of Willing is hearing an unalloyed voice that, for the most part hasn't been teased 'n' tweezed to the point of blandness. You hear every catch and quaver in Lady Nade's remarkable performances, which is rare, human and altogether rather intimate.

There are a couple of exceptions to this on Willing, such as 'One-Sided', where to my untrained ears the words, delivered in a variety of sprechgesang, have been multi-tracked to mildly psychedelic effect. It feels like a clever move to use such trickery so judiciously, because within the context of the wider album it opens up new colours and textures to the soundscape. As an aside, it's also primo to hear a distinctive regional accent in popular music! (Is it Bristolian? I'm useless at these things.)

I could, truthfully, listen to Lady Nade sing my car insurance policy to me and I'd be pretty happy. Better yet is the marriage of voice to these lovely, unfussy arrangements; ranging from fingerpicked folk to rocky Americana, the breathing space in the production allows for some tasty little instrumental touches to come to the surface, like the swirling guitar that wraps up 'Rock Bottom' and the sprinkling of - what, pedal steel? - on 'Willing'. 

Something I haven't even mentioned yet is the songwriting - Lady Nade takes the listener through a variety of moods on Willing and it's all done with a directness and sincerity that is utterly, utterly charming. It's genuinely moving to hear a lyric like "You're so damn perfect / In every kind of way" sung with an audible smile; I suppose what I'm grasping at here is that, at the heart of Willing there seems to be a purity of spirit and emotion. The overall impression is that Lady Nade is letting you in on her innermost unfiltered thoughts, albeit set to music.

I cannot recommend this enough; highlights for me are 'Willing', 'Wildfire', 'One-Sided' and 'Ain't One Thing', but the whole kit and caboodle is superb. Warm, uplifting, tender, beautiful - Willing is all these things, plus a lesson in what can happen if you take a chance or two where listening habits are concerned.

60 Horses In My Herd - Huun Huur Tu

 

Provenance: I developed a fairly low-key interest in throat singing after watching the amazing documentary Genghis Blues. Did a bit of research and Huun Huur Tu were a name who kept cropping up. They are from the Russian federative state of Tuva, a south Siberian state that borders Mongolia - which is where the action of Genghis Blues happens to take place.

I don't really know a whole lot about wealth and status in Tuvan society, but I'm guessing that 60 Horses In My Herd is quite the brag. I don't even own a single horse.

Review: I have never been to Tuva. I've seen one documentary that focused on a very specific practice - throat-singing traditions - and I own a couple of albums featuring music from the region. I know nothing of the place, its language, its people and possess only the most minuscule appreciation of its music.

It's very easy, I imagine, to put on an album like 60 Horses In My Herd, close one's eyes and visualise mounted warriors in elaborate costumes sweeping across the rolling steppe. That's the kind of trick music can play on you. One thus conjures up a world of freedom, open plains and endless horizons; what doesn't come through are the bald statistics, such as Tuva being the state with the lowest life expectancy in Russia, or the problems relating to alcoholism in the region. 

We're all prey to this though, aren't we? One or two parps into an oompah number and it's all lederhosen and foaming steins of bier for me; gimme a hint of slide guitar and I'm in the Mississippi Delta (albeit, this is a place I've actually visited). I wonder - do non-Brits experience this with regards to England? What kind of mental imagery is wrought by the Beatles, Shakespeare, Doc Martin? And does the inevitable, disappointing reality of out-of-town shopping centres and fights in pub car parks invoke a domestic variant of Paris syndrome? Answers on a postcard.

I do understand that the soaring eagles and smoking yurts I picture when listening to Huun Huur Tu aren't real, but a part of me thinks "why not indulge?", because from about 1944 Stalin's administration really did a number on Tuva, ushering in a period of persecution against Buddhist and Shamanist practitioners. In addition, collective farm policies and centralised directives around agricultural productivity were brought in, which clashed with the nomadic lifestyles of the Tuvan people. This was, in sum total, little less than an attempt to destroy a centuries-old way of life - and for what? Cattle yields?

Perhaps, then, if I get misty-eyed when I hear the keening of an igil or the still-remarkable 'sygyt' style of overtone singing (hard to describe, but a kind of springy whistle sound), I shouldn't feel so guilty. Music is supposed to be bigger than we are, after all. It's not wrong, says I, to think of verdant pastures when one hears 'Jerusalem', or to picture the tumbling blue peaks and deep hollows of Appalachia when you hear the music of Dock Boggs or Ola Belle Reed. One of the most exciting aspects of music is that it takes you to places that you've never been to, or might not even exist. 

It's difficult to talk about highlights of individual songs when one's knowledge is so slim, but 'Kongurei' evokes a rare, delicate air of mournfulness; 'Tuvan Internationale' uses 'kargyraa', a low, rumbling chest voice, as a drone throughout, making it sound like one of the more doomy Ennio Morricone spaghetti western compositions; and 'Ching Soortukchulerining Yryzy' is a rhythmically hypnotic number that features a variety of singing styles but starts off sounding a little like Mike Oldfield's 'In Dulce Jubilo'. Mostly, though, 60 Horses In My Herd is a beguiling window into a universe of sound so remote from what I am used to that, when I first heard Tuvan music, I was left in something akin to a state of shock. That's no bad thing where art is concerned. 

Townes Van Zandt - Townes Van Zandt

 

Provenance: This is slightly odd, insofar as a half-remembered post on a music message board percolated away for more than a decade before breaking through into my consciousness.

Back in 2018 my partner was away for a few days, and I was idly lounging around on my bed trying to think of something new to tickle the tympanic membrane with. For some reason, the name 'Townes Van Zandt' floated to the surface, and as we own a couple of those accursed Amazon Echoes, I asked it to play me some of his music.

The only reason I even knew of TVZ was due to a single poster on the forum, who during the mid-2000s would respond to every 'best songwriter', 'most underrated songwriter', 'most overlooked artist', etc., thread with the same answer: Townes Van Zandt. Going purely by a few detail-light posts sandwiched between threads on John Corabi and Bang Tango, I has assumed he was some sub-Neil Young Laurel Canyon folkster.

Ten minutes after commanding my personal surveillance device, I felt like punching myself. I'd heard what sounded like the strangest, most pungent, deep country music I'd ever encountered - the mighty, cinematic double-cross ballad 'Pancho and Lefty', the harrowing 'Waitin' Around To Die' and one of the most singular compositions ever, the ominous, apocalyptic two-chord blues 'Lungs'. I bought this album, which features the latter two, and The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, almost immediately.

Review: I like discussions about great songwriters - in fact, just last night my father-in-law and I were marvelling together at the prodigious output (and success) of the Brill Building stable of the 1960s and 1970s. A few nights previous, I was advancing to a group of friends that Ray Davies of the Kinks has to be considered in the same bracket as Lennon and McCartney, at least where British performers are concerned. There's no real answer, obviously, because what are you looking for in a song? Beautiful music? Storytelling? Mood creation? Nonetheless, if I were to put together a Mount Rushmore of American songwriters, Townes Van Zandt would be my first nomination.

Here, on his third album, is the most consistent and cohesive collection that TVZ put out in his career. For the most part it's three- or four-chord country music, with acoustic guitar to the fore, songs driven by Van Zandt's deceptively complex fingerpicking and swooning, keening Texan drawl. Although it's absolutely the kind of album to inspire me to dribble out inanities like 'timeless', there are signs of an era; hand drums on 'For the Sake of the Song' and a harpsichord to back that and subsequent track, the pure romance of 'Columbine', mark it as a product of the late 1960s.

These two are perfectly good compositions and would be standouts on any other singer-songwriter collection, but it's on 'Waitin' Around To Die' where things get interesting; an itchy, nervy drum tattoo and tubercular harmonica underscore a tale of almost grotesque woe, taking in abandonment, infidelity, criminality and drug dependence. Reflecting some of the bummer endings creeping into popular cinema at the time, this doozy ends on one of the grimmer twists in country. 

What's abundantly clear is that Townes Van Zandt is a testimony of an artist fully in command of his talent and his craft. In any other hands, 'Colorado Girl' would be pedestrian, perhaps even a little goofy. However, TVZ's ability to imbue his simple, homespun poetry with untold depths of feeling make this remarkable. When he steps outside his established metre to deliver the line "I got to kiss these lonesome Texas blues goodbye" it just about breaks your heart. If you're missing somebody in your life right now, perhaps save this one for later. A few tracks later, he's back to making you feel like utter dogshit again on the tender, consolatory 'I'll Be Here in the Morning'.

Betwixt and between moments where he's duffing your into an emotional wreck, something else remarkable happens - the ominous, hallucinatory 'Lungs', apparently written whilst in an illness induced delirium. Crossing the imagery of the Book of Revelations with the haunted Texas blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson, 'Lungs' feels like an entire dread universe has been called into being in the span of two and a half minutes. As mentioned previously, it's a whole two chords, with a needling guitar riff and some gunslinger slide playing added in to spice the recipe, but that doesn't tell half the story. Above it all is TVZ sounding both fearful and mighty, as if he knows the spell he is weaving possesses a rare and unpredictable power. Lightning in a bottle.

In just ten songs, and less than thirty-five minutes, Townes Van Zandt manages to do something peculiar. The palette of sounds Van Zandt works with is not particularly diverse, and nor does he ever demonstrate much vocal range (albeit, the singing is gorgeous). Nonetheless, this album takes in the ache of romance, existential horror, teary-eyed wistfulness and the depths of insanity. Both 'Lungs' and, say, the delicate country waltz of '(Quicksilver Dreams Of) Maria' are indelibly TVZ songs, yet in terms of sensibility couldn't be any further apart. This is one of the many reasons why I feel Townes Van Zandt ranks right up there: it's not just brilliant, it's also substantial, and maybe even important.

Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake

Provenance: I remember receiving this, plus Bryter Layter and Pink Moon as a Christmas gift. How I had suddenly developed Drakemania is altogether murkier; I can't recall being conscious of hearing Nick Drake at university (I was too busy getting into Hanoi Rocks), nor had I been radicalised by Volkswagen.

Given that the number of albums I own is comfortably into four figures by now it's becoming increasingly tough to pinpoint each eureka moment. Here, though, the likeliest culprit is Dotun Adebayo's 'Virtual Jukebox' show held deep into the night on Radio Five Live. It's not the first time I've been stirred from a semi-somnolent state by an arresting piece of music - I vividly recall the instance I first heard Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring', which, even with my radio turned down low, sounded like the monstrous awakening of some pagan god. 

Incidentally, I don't know if I'll have another chance to state this, but a couple of years ago I met Dotun Adebayo backstage at a Taj Mahal & Keb Mo' show, and had the opportunity to thank him for keeping me accompany through countless late nights. We wound up having a fairly lengthy chat, and I can attest to the fact that he's one of the finest fellows around. Of course, the 'World Football Phone-In' is a wonderfully idiosyncratic and colourful take on the beautiful game as played around the globe.

Weren't we supposed to be talking about Nick Drake?

Review: Coming from the same Britfolk scene as other luminaries such as John Martyn, Sandy Denny, John Renbourn and the rest, Nick Drake now looms as a big beast but during his own lifetime sold a paltry number of records and, by all accounts, was a useless live performer. As a keen reader of books and articles about the British folk revival movement (for anyone interested, Rob Young's Electric Eden is a great primer; and JP Bean's Singing From the Floor is as entertaining an oral history of any moment that you're likely to encounter), there is a definite sense that Drake was of the scene but not exactly part of it. His diffident nature and standoffish attitude to people he didn't trust (i.e. almost everyone) created a kind of static with Britfolk's other performers, who seemed a gregarious bunch and were very promiscuous in terms of performing on each other's projects. In a world where openness, community and collaboration were the watchwords, one can almost picture Drake huddled in a corner.

And perhaps it is this very quality that means Drake endures as a folk icon where others have faded from consciousness; for Five Leaves Left burns with an intense introspection. If you've ever experienced the discomfiting intimacy of someone leaning in too close to talk, you have some idea of the effect that Drake's music can have. The spell is broken somewhat on tracks with a degree of orchestration to them - the swelling strings of 'Way To Blue' and 'Day Is Done' allow the listener to step back a pace or two - but those songs where it's just Drake and his guitar (and perhaps a smattering of bongos - it was 1969 after all) can feel harrowingly personal.

Isn't this what we want, though? Don't we hope that the very best music jolts us away from the workaday and prosaic reality that most of us inhabit most of the time? Just yesterday I was listening to Jorge Ben Jor and, at his best, the soft pulse of his tropicalia rhythms enable me to dream myself away from the flinty rain of East Sussex. And so it is with Five Leaves Left, but in this instance I feel like I'm not in any geographical location that exists in reality, but in the dark meadows of a strange and sad land of the imagination. When John Martyn recorded 'Solid Air', a song about Nick Drake, he created a thick and woozy sound, a soup of indistinct fuzz that moves beyond words to capture the essence of Drake's music. Martyn sang that song in an exaggerated slurring manner, which again feels nothing more than a magnification of Drake's hushed and humble delivery, the opposite of the kind of declamatory holler that many folkies of the period preferred.

This, then, wasn't the voice of the rowdy ale-sodden basement club, but of solitary twilights and lonely bedsits. However, I wouldn't call this confessional music; yes, it sounds like Drake is trying to impart some inward melancholy to you (and only you), but what emerges lyrically is so opaque and elliptical that one is left with impressions rather than exactitudes. I believe that this is a source of Drake's endurance as an artist; no matter how many times you listen to Five Leaves Left, there's a sense that, once final track 'Saturday Sun' has slipped away from view, you still haven't quite grasped the whole picture. The vague sense of dread, the amorphous thought-pictures, the indistinct edges to Drake's music sum up to a cloud of unknowing, a feeling that there are further layers and mysteries to be uncovered. And who am I to state otherwise?

It seems churlish to mention album highlights - 'River Man' and 'Fruit Tree' are oft cited in this regard - because this is truly a collection of music to sit with, to absorb and to contemplate in its totality. Five Leaves Left is not an album I would ever listen to whilst performing tasks or chores, nor would I ever consider it wallpaper music. Such quietly powerful music, with the potential to transport you temporarily from the humdrum clatter of life, deserves the attention it quietly - but insistently - demands. 

A Capella - Todd Rundgren

Provenance: My brother bought this for me as part of a three-album set of Todd Rundgren's Warner Brothers releases.

Having dwelt a fair bit on some pretty straightforward classic rock releases, I asked my brother what I should review next. His suggestion was A Capella, which certainly fits the bill of being a wee bit left-field, because...

Review: ...every sound on this album was created using Todd Rundgren's own voice. It's not entirely free of instrumentation - the liner notes of this release note the use of the Emulator sampling keyboard, which was deployed to manipulate those sounds into chords or percussive noises. On the other hand, this was put together back in 1984 and used entirely analogue recording techniques.

Of course, a capella performances are nothing new. The phrase 'capella' derives from the Italian 'chapel', and so the root of unaccompanied singing in western tradition is linked to sacred choral performance. This gives me a good excuse to embed the following video, which I regard as rather remarkable:



In African-American traditions there is, of course, gospel; its own overt religiousness hardly proving a barrier to becoming popular, both in the past and epitomised by modern ensembles such as Sweet Honey in the Rock. (NB - for a provocative take on the origins of gospel, jazz musician and academic Willie Ruff has got you covered, claiming that its roots can be found in Hebridean line-singing.)

Cutting across ethnic lines, although again beginning in African-American communities, the doo-wop explosion of the middle of the 20th century began with corner singing, though instrumentation was often added in the studio. Typically, doo-wop groups would feature a lead tenor taking the melody, a bass voice to provide rhythmic underpinning, and a combination of high tenor leading down to baritone to fill out the backing sound, going 'top to bottom' in range. Hit up groups such as the Orioles, the Moonglows and early Drifters if you want a taste. I haven't even gotten onto barbershop quartets, floor singing in folk music, field hollers, or non-Anglo ensembles such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo - but the world of vocal performance is rich and varied.

However, what Todd Rundgren has done here feels almost ridiculous. My first reaction, when my brother told me about the concept behind A Capella, was "why go to all the bother?". Especially if you're going to mash and twist your vocals through a series of electronics just to produce the desired effect. On reflection, I have an inkling that it was precisely this ability to manipulate sound in such a way that appealed to Rundgren; that, and the sheer challenge of creating such a weird album. For someone who has genre-hopped his entire career, it does seem of a piece.

The best thing about A Capella is how damn fun it is. Opener 'Blue Orpheus' is absolutely stunning; the audacity to produce something that sounds so startlingly odd still has me laughing every time I hit play. I can't easily describe it; perhaps like a cut from Yes' 90125 album, if Trevor Horn made the band ditch their instruments. It's all the more remarkable that it has such a strong melodic sense, the lead vocal soaring over a backing more multi-layered than anything Queen or 10cc ever managed to conjure up.

Indeed, even after repeated listens, the sounds leaping from the speakers can still surprise; the chorus to anti-war paean 'Johnny Jingo', on its last pass, is overwhelming in its immensity. The effect is dimmed a little on the ballad 'Pretending to Care' and the only cover in the collection, if only because it's are the kind of song one can imagine performed on piano in a nightclub or cocktail lounge; low-key, and only a slight shuffle away from being sung unaccompanied. Nonetheless, the curtain of wordless 'oohs' and 'aahs' Rundgren stitches together to recreate what might've been a lush string arrangement is killer.

My personal favourite on A Capella is 'Hodja', a dizzying admixture of doo-wop and gospel, its meticulous creation shot through with a lively sense of spontaneity thanks to some delightful scat singing. Some of the joints on this piece are pretty tough to categorise - 'Lost Horizon' is Sensual World era Kate Bush meeting So's Peter Gabriel crossed with the shiny white soul romanticism of Hall & Oates. Meanwhile, 'Something To Fall Back On' sounds like one of Kenny Loggins' dancier numbers, if he had the Bee Gees backing him up. I'm at a complete loss as to how Rundgren was able to recreate the organ on this track, given the technical limitations he was dealing with at the time (though, of course, actually at the time, Rundgren probably found the Emulator to be an incredible, labour-saving piece of kit).

As each track unrolls, one can't help but be awed at Rundgren's facility and expertise, even if the song doesn't quite strike home. I'm not overly keen on either the Bloody Mary fable 'Lockjaw' or 'Miracle in the Bazaar' and its cod-Orientalism but these are rare moments of filler, and in fairness 'Lockjaw' did sound like fun to put together (but - if it was just a few notches less goofy it could easily have been a cut from a late-era Tom Waits cut). 'Honest Work' is a touching and poignant folk ballad, that's the 'straightest' thing on A Capella and I can't figure out whether it would benefit from a more maximalist approach or whether it would ruin the sentiment. The confection ends on a high, the bouncy, joyous 'Mighty Love' (originally by the Detroit Spinners, the only cover here) taking us home with gospel-inflected soul power.

What a peculiar artefact A Capella is. It certainly stands out as unique in my collection, if only because nobody else that I rate would be bonkers enough to put in the Stakhanovite effort. In any other hands this would be 'experimental' (=unlistenable) but Rundgren has too keen a pop ear to fall into that trap. A dazzling, baffling testament to a singular and restless genius, I can't recommend A Capella enough.