New Music

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This article was published 17/03/2012 (5263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JOHNNY REID

FIRE IT UP (JOHNNY MAC ENTERTAINMENT/EMI)

Fire it Up burns any notion that Johnny Reid is a country artist.

There is the occasional touch of twangy instrumentation on Reid’s seventh album, but the majority of Fire it Up is filled with R&B, soul, adult contemporary pop and ballads with horns and backup vocalists more prominent than banjos and fiddles.

Reid has ditched the country sound that has earned him numerous awards, but not the style’s sentimentality. Love is the main focus of Reid’s songwriting and the answer to the statement (not question) What Makes the World Go Around. “There’s no question, there’s no doubt/Love’s the one thing we can’t live without,” he sings earnestly. Elsewhere he offers up a potential wedding dance on the string-drenched ballad Love of a Lifetime and delivers his autobiography on the syrupy Right Where I Belong.

 

When he’s not delivering tear-jerkers, he’s in a loose, playful mood, most notably on the slow burning mid-tempo title track, the soulful Serena Ryder duet Walking on Water, retro groove of Dancin’ Shoes and piano-based rocker Let’s Have a Party, which should go over great in a live setting, but is a tad too timid here.

That won’t be a problem for Reid’s fans who appreciate his old-fashioned family values. He’ll get all fired up and take you out dancing at a party, but he’ll be sure to have you home on time, safe and sound. He often gets compared to Rod Stewart because of his musical style, Scottish roots and raspy voice, but deep down maybe he’s really Richie Cunningham. Three stars

— Rob Williams

 

COWBOY JUNKIES

The Wilderness: The Nomad Series Volume 4 (Latent Recordings)

THIS album, by Canuck indie-rock groundbreakers Cowboy Junkies, is the fourth and last instalment of their wonderfully eclectic Nomad Series and is a fittingly somber finale. While the previous three albums have been at times edgy and iconoclastic, this short 10-tracker is a gauzy, low-wattage affair. In fact, many of these tracks were written in 2007 and 2008 before bandleader Michael Timmins tripped off to China, a sojourn that inspired the series.

Singer Margo Timmins is front and centre on these somewhat sombre tracks, at times her voice echoing with a thick yearning and a palpable world-weariness. These are personal songs with the kind of broad and listenable reach that speaks to their clarity of meaning. The musical accompaniment is sparse yet poignant and draws you in to its cosy embrace. Closing track F–k, I Hate The Cold sounds like a lost and forgotten outtake from Whites Off Earth Now, the 1986 album that first brought this band to anyone’s attention in this country.

Our suggestion? Start here and then buy the other three volumes. Three and a half stars

— Jeff Monk

 

MEAT LOAF

Hell in a Handbasket (Sony)

MEAT Loaf has dubbed his latest album the most personal of his career, or rather, he selected songs written by other artists (sadly no Jim Steinman) that meant something to him.

He may not have written them, but he makes each of the 12 tracks on Hell in a Handbasket his own as he examines the plight of the world and his personal faults. All of Me is a fitting introduction as he lays out the album’s premise: “This is my anger these are my doubts/These are my emotions all strung out.”

His voice is as strong and passionate as ever and you can feel his rage roar out of the speakers, although there are some major misses, including a dour cover of California Dreaming, a reworking of Tom Cochrane’s Mad Mad World and the inclusion of Stand in the Storm, a song originally recorded as a charity single during his time on Celebrity Apprentice. The album’s highlight is the melodramatic power ballad Blue Sky (every Meat Loaf album needs one).

Meat Loaf may be all fired up — let’s face it, he could make a restaurant menu sound like a bombastic Broadway musical — but Hell in a Handbasket is lukewarm. ‘Ö’Ö1/2

— RW

 

BIG WRECK

Albatross (Anthem)

IN their initial incarnation, Canadian post-grunge rockers Big Wreck released only two albums before front dude Ian Thornley dove head first into a solo career. While it’s unclear why the newly reformed Wreck would name its album after a metaphorical omen of bad luck, Albatross will please most older fans still clinging to the tired idea that grunge music is anything but alive and well.

All that business aside, the album is pretty good. Sure, many tracks pay homage to the very style that made these guys quasi-famous back in the day — moody rants overlaid by plenty of tight guitars and earnest vocals — yet the quintet shows renewed promise on tracks like the Zeppelin-esque All Is Fair and the bluesy You Caught My Eye, which sounds completely like latter period ZZ Top in full flow. These arrangements hold interest and Thornley exits his comfort zone often, with good results.

Once they shed their former disingenuous trademark sound for good — their proverbial albatross as it were — then we may have something. Three stars

— Monk

 

THE TING TINGS

Sounds from Nowheresville (Columbia/Sony)

INDIE rock. Dance-punk. New wave. England’s Ting Tings seem dedicated to exploring enough precious sub-genres to transform every review into the tag cloud of an annoyingly hip music blog. But somehow, the duo mostly makes it work, with energy and endlessly looped handclaps.

The variety is impressive. Sometimes the Ting Tings sound like Portishead running their instruments through amplifiers instead of supercomputers. On other tracks, it’s Blondie making fun of ska. Guggenheim has a Velvet Underground/Nico vibe without the weightiness. One by One sounds as if it should be the menu music of an early ’90s Nintendo game. And Give It Back fires off bursts of controlled guitar energy.

Still, there are a few too many ironic Ke$ha rap verses and forced bounciness for everything to really come together. Three stars

— Al Kratina, Postmedia News

 

COUNTRY AND ROOTS

 

CLAYTON BELLAMY

Everyone’s A Dreamer (MDM/EMI)

CLAYTON Bellamy is flying solo again but he’s not really alone.

The Road Hammers member has packed up, moved to Nashville and enlisted new co-pilots, Grammy winning producer-engineer Ray Kennedy (Steve Earle/Lucinda Williams) and producer-songwriter Gary Nicholson (Delbert McClinton) for his new solo album Everyone’s a Dreamer. Although a seasoned writer himself, Bellamy recorded several from Nashville’s finest including Nicholson, whose Nineteen is a strong contender to get Bellamy noticed in the U.S. with references to high school football, the Twin Towers and the death of a young marine. The disc’s highlights are from lesser known writers like Paul Thorn (Mood Ring) or co-writes with fellow Canucks Mike Plume (Drop ‘er in Low) and Big Sugar’s Gordie Johnson (Alberta Bones).

Everyone’s a Dreamer has less of a roots feel than some fans may have hoped for but is overflowing with radio-friendly country-rockers that should do well on both sides of the border. Three stars

— Bruce Leperre

 

CLASSICAL

ALISON BALSOM; SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE, BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, LAWRENCE RENES

Trumpet Concertos (EMI)

A trumpeter’s achieved something when a straight-through listening of three trumpet concertos sounds more like a concert than a catalogue. British trumpet star Alison Balsom has a warm yielding tone, lyrical impulse and clean technique that further enhances this set of nicely-ordered contemporary concertos.

Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto is well-known and tuneful, with an Armenian tang not unlike Khachaturian. James MacMillan’s Seraph was written for Balsom and has its moments, with opening nods to Haydn and Shostakovich, a delicately evocative slow movement and satisfying finale. Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a composer who knew his share of angst in a volatile life. His 1954 trumpet concerto Nobody knows de trouble I see is an involving array of blues, jazz and finely spun variations, some of which sound nearly unplayable. A short piece by Toru Takemitsu rounds out the set. Three and a half stars

— James Manishen

 

JAZZ

 

WES MONTGOMERY

Echoes of Indiana Avenue (Resonance Records)

THIS nine-tune disc is actually a prequel to the career of celebrated guitarist Wes Montgomery, capturing him in the studio and the easy atmosphere of clubs in his hometown of Indianapolis in 1957 and SSRq58, before his debut Riverside album in 1959 helped propel him to a national audience in the U.S.

The playing is great over eight standards and After Hours Blues, which is just what it says: the kind of late-night jam where you wish you’d been in the audience to hear Montgomery let loose with the guys.

A pair of Monk tunes — Round Midnight and Straight, No Chaser — are terrific, with the guitarist’s subtle playing, especially on Midnight, putting a different spin on the bebop staples. The opener, Diablo’s Dance, is a spicy number that gets you moving.

Having this music surface is lucky find for Montgomery fans, of course, but really for anyone who loves jazz guitar. Three and a half stars

— Chris Smith