The fragile, shifting aspects of existence have found an eloquent chronicler in Crenshaw, although his voice may be too pretty for the crashing rhythms that surround it in “Someone Told Me.” “I sadly wondered, could we ever be on common ground?” he wonders after being told something disturbing, noting “so many worlds colliding” (“Someone Told Me”).
Killing Him Didn’t Make the Love Go Away: Amy LaVere, Anchors & Anvils and Died of Love
What are the acts that begin, nurture, sabotage, and end a life? Paul Taylor’s “Pointless Drinking” is a drinking song that critiques drinking, drawing focus to the contradictions and disappointments that could cause weeping but are here merely sobering, the kind of song selection that suggests significant intelligence in a singer, in Amy LaVere.
One More Listen: U2, No Line on the Horizon
The lyrics of “Breathe” blend reflections and observations, personal details and social events, and there is something surprisingly, pleasingly, Asian in some of the music. “Spent the night trying to make a deadline, squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline,” Bono sings in the song “Cedars of Lebanon,” an admission which seems less an ideal than a compromise to me, and part of the song’s Dylanesque rambling.
Woman as Center: Jill Sobule, California Years
It is impressive how much of the world Sobule gets into her songs, how easily she creates or documents characters. “Spiderman” could be the rantings of a mad man, but it is more likely the ruminations of one more person in California trying to make a little money off Hollywood by impersonating a movie figure. California Years ends with “The Donor Song,” a song made up of the names of people who contributed funds allowing Jill Sobule to create the album California Years.
American Masters, Southern Artists: Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi, Buckwheat Zydeco’s Lay Your Burden Down, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys’ Best
The pianist, songwriter, and singer Allen Toussaint’s collection of song standards The Bright Mississippi is elegant, haunting, pleasing. Is that what is expected of music made by a musician in Louisiana? If anyone wants to know what music in Louisiana is like, they can listen to Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi, Buckwheat Zydeco’s Lay Your Burden Down, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys’ Best of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. This is American music by American masters.
A review of The Sicilian Bb5 Revealed by Neil McDonald
There is an occasional dry wit, too, which is no bad thing (e.g. after a cool positional display by Adams, he remarks that ‘the Hedgehog wasn’t so much squashed as slowly marinated’). There are a plentiful number of diagrams and the text is clear and well-spaced, however, one would have liked to have seen an index of players or complete games. Other than that, The Sicilian Bb5 Revealed is a model of its kind.
Beautiful Sadness, Bright Rhythms: Death Cab for Cutie, The Open Door
Gibbard has noted that liking interesting things doesn’t make a person interesting—well, that may be true, but it certainly gives you something interesting to think about, as with The Open Door, making us glad that the band values its own artistry as much as it does, and has had the talent, luck, and commitment to fulfill its own goals.
The Return of Irreverent Favorites: Cracker’s Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey
The band of musical boasters, herders, and nut-breakers known as Cracker are singer and guitarist David Lowery, guitarist and keyboardist Johnny Hickman, drummer Frank Funaro, and bassist Sal Maida; and their influences include British rock and America’s southern music. Listening to Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey, one can hear musicians ready to claim any sound that appeals to them, whether it’s the roughness of punk or the slickness of new wave.
The Persistence of Memory: Streisand’s The Way We Were/All In Love Is Fair album and the television program “Live in Concert”
Streisand is bitterly ironic (sad, frightening, funny) in “The Best Thing You’ve Ever Done,” in which she uses an actress’s sense of drama, and offers the most ageless singing imaginable. “The Way We Were,” a song of contemplation and remembrance, may contain too many strings, and drumming that lacks conviction, but Streisand’s voice saves what might otherwise be nothing more than deplorable nostalgia, and she emphasizes a fact: we often remember and wonder if our lives might have been different.
A review of Lemniscate by Gaynor McGrath
The reader moves along the lemniscate path with Elsie, as she tries to make sense of what she sees, and work out what it means to her own life in its broadest context. Throughout the book the writing is descriptive and interesting, full of the sights, sounds and tastes of the places she visits. The book takes the reader to places that are both exotic, and made familiar by human elements.