Like many great artists, poets, musicians and writers, Nick Drake only achieved the fame and recognition he desired after his untimely death. In a cruel case of life imitating art the lyrics to Fruit Tree, from his 1968 debut album Five Leaves Left, seemed more prescient than ever as he sang “No-one knows you but the rain and the air/Don’t you worry, they’ll stand and stare/When you’re gone.” When his short life ended in 1974, Drake had been crippled by depression after what he perceived to be his failure to reach an audience, and with only a few thousand records sold he retreated inwardly.

The catalyst for Drake’s sense of resignation and despair were the poor sales figures for his second album, Bryter Layter; this was his most fully realised attempt to produce a genuine commercial record, and displayed a notable change in sound from the restrained, gentle Five Leaves Left. Drake’s record company backed his ambition, and musical support was supplied in the form of folk-rock group Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks and Richard Thompson, with The Velvet Underground’s John Cale appearing on two tracks to provide organ and harpsichord, amongst other things. In addition to this expanded line-up of talented musicians, Drake’s Cambridge University friend Robert Kirby provided arrangements for strings and brass on almost every track, and the overall result was an album with a much more accessible, ‘pop’ sound. As always, Drake’s remarkable guitar playing underpins every song, with his strong finger-picking style evident throughout, and his soft, breathy voice sounding clearer and more confident than ever before on his most overtly catchy set of songs. The characteristic pastoral sound of Bryter Layter, however, is due in large part to Kirby’s stunning string arrangements, as they perfectly counterbalance Drake’s guitar and backing group with lush extra layers of melody without ever overpowering the songs themselves. Nowhere else is this contrast better demonstrated than on Hazy Jane I, as forcefully picked guitar gives way to graceful, sweeping strings which add grandeur and tangible emotional depth.

Three of the album’s ten tracks are instrumentals, and it is the music which does the bulk of the work in charming the listener here – so much so that it is easy to miss some of Drake’s most unsettling lyrics up to that point. Although his life was yet to take the unfortunate downturn which would eventually catch him there is still a notable pessimism in many of the words on offer, and in the wider context of his eventual fate it is possible to discern the seeds of the depression which would ultimately blight his future. Even the first words sung on the album, in fact, suggest a distinct forboding on his part, as he begins Hazy Jane II with the question “What will happen in the morning/when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t look out the window in the morning?” Drake’s positivity and sense of calm wins out, however, as later he urges himself to “take a little while to grow your brother’s hair/Now, take a little while to make your sister fair”. The impression of a duel of personalities between the Nick Drake who strives to be positive and the Nick Drake who won’t let him is present throughout the set, as on Hazy Jane I where some disturbing verses are once more followed by the singer checking himself on the chorus (“Hey, slow, Jane, make sense”), and the juxtaposition of playful piano and melody on One of These Things First with what is ostensibly a list of objects he’d sooner be than the man he is. The undoubted sense of unease reaches a clear pinnacle on the melancholy Fly, as Cale supplies mournful viola and harpsichord whilst Drake begs and pleads “I’ve fallen so far for the people you are/I just need your star for a day”, and the listener gets a clear glimpse at the tragic figure the artist will become. It is left, though, to arguably Nick Drake’s strongest candidate for a single to have the last word on the album; the shimmering, gorgeous Northern Sky sees a renewed positivity win out in the form of a fragile, vulnerable and honest love song, as a sumptuous piano and organ raise the song to lofty heights. What makes it all the more remarkable is the fact that a man of so few words in his personal life can express himself so vividly and with such painful candour when projecting himself through song, and Northern Sky is without parallel in this distinction.

Despite his hopes, his second album did not prove to be the commercial breakthrough for Nick Drake, and his increasing discomfort and reluctance to tour the album or give press interviews further compounded its lack of impact. Embittered by the failure and wracked with disillusionment, he would make one further album – the stark, brooding Pink Moon in 1971 – before his death. His music was rediscovered in the following decade, however, and succeeding generations have discovered his back catalogue and its wonderous gem, Bryter Layter.

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Inundated with powerfully voiced, female artists, the British music industry in 2006 was an era dominated by Déjà vu lyrics, Aguilera’s comeback album, Back to Basics, and not to forget, Girls Aloud were still on top. With that said, it was surprising that a young woman from North London would come on the scene, so breathtakingly, that the world was oblivious to the fact that the music playing over the airwaves was, in fact, from her second album.

Evidently steered down a path to an enamouring music genre, music lovers have engrossed themselves in a music style that has grown ever since Amy Winehouse gave us her second album Back to Black, a compelling, eclectic mix of relationships, pain, and individuality. Produced by Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, Back to Black is an autobiography by a woman learning the ramifications of drugs, sex, and heart break. It unravels the way in which she deals with pain, how she values love, the only difference, however, is that it’s bound in lyrics and written with ink drawn from a churned pot of Soul and R&B.

The first single released from the album was Rehab, a foreshadowing set of lyrics that came back to haunt Amy. Her defying words “No, no, no” are part of the chorus that makes this first track eye-opening. Winehouse’s fearless response to her parents’ advice of going to rehab is met with shear arrogance for she “Ain’t got the time” and obviously, she’d “rather be at home with Ray,” which later became “Blake,” her bad romance that sent her off the edge. An interesting preview, the song was successful, but once the catchiness wore off the album offered another ten tracks that really caught our attention.

Songs like You Know I’m No Good, Love is a Losing Game, and >Tears Dry on their Own are the ones that can be taken more seriously, more sentiment applied, as throughout these three songs Winehouse delivered a tasteful passion that showed the world her brilliance as a songwriter. The second single You Know I’m No Good told listeners “I was trouble,” “I cried for you on the kitchen floor,” piercing images that are buttressed with references to her lifestyle in the lyrics “Tanqueray” and “Stella.” Contrastingly, “Tears Dry on their Own” gives us a bite of an intelligent Amy, a woman who asked herself “why do I stress the man?” and “I don’t know why I got so attached.” We clap our hands as we listen as Winehouse realised the “inevitable withdrawal” of a painful relationship, and she held her head up high letting her “tears dry” as she, like many people in life, didn’t see the good side of love, which is clear in her opinionated but agreeable song Love is a Losing Game. The album’s title song Back to Black, is arguably the soundtrack to Winehouse’s deteriorating life. Black, obviously, is a morbid, dangerous shade, which is what the lyrics in the song point out. “We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times” are words sang by a love-bruised Winehouse who felt her solution was to return to a dark place where “life is like a pipe” and ultimately, where life wasn’t possible to maintain. Winehouse gave the masses deep words on a plate, poetic words, which grasped the attention of everyone, for she, like nobody before, wrote so eloquently from a pierced heart that we, as fans, wanted to fix all her problems.

A protégé of nobody, Winehouse gave music a different edge. Even the album cover draws a wondering eye to a confident, but innocent, Amy trying to put the pieces together of a scathed relationship, a time of her life from which she so brilliantly plucked 11 songs. After all, no one can forget that her image (remember “swagger” wasn’t mainstream five years ago) was at the vanguard of showbiz media, and everyone sat back and watched teenage girls use more mascara than ever before, and prop their hair up higher, because Winehouse portrayed her lifestyle through her own stereotype, a tattoo-showing, ruthless, and down-to-earth stereotype that we all, at the time, adored.

In the aftermath of her death, fans must ask themselves what it was that made them fans in the first place. Was it simply Amy Winehouse? Was it her music? The honest answer is both. The press wanted a piece of her, and rightly so, her tumultuous life warranted high readership for day after day she was in the public eye, albeit, for the wrong reasons. However, it was her controversial lifestyle that yielded her second album; her defiance over going to rehab; her loving heart that drew the wrong types of men; her addiction to drugs; Winehouse translated her turmoil into bold lyrics, Marvin Gaye backing music, and five wins at the Grammys, she had a talent for injecting life into music, which can only mean that yes, indeed, it is both her music and herself that kept us listening, and will keep us listening, as we all know, deep down, she has left us with a legacy.

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Adele – 21 | Album Review

Choosing once more to utilise the services of producer/collaborator Brian Eno, Talking Heads continued to explore their own musical and artistic boundaries with their fourth album, Remain In Light. Their previous outing, on 1979’s Fear of Music, showed a marked progression from the nerdy jerkiness of their first two efforts, with its darker themes, esoteric lyrics and more experimental sound, and under Eno’s guidance once more Talking Heads set out for newer, unchartered territory.

Musically, the band sought to re-frame themselves as a group in the most fundamental sense: previously they had been essentially a backing group to frontman and creative leader David Byrne, and with this in mind it was decided that the whole group (Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz and guitarist Jerry Harrison) would work up the basis for what would become Remain In Light’s songs from instrumental jams. Influenced by the afrobeat music of Fela Kuti, the band experimented with polyrhythms, moving away from the short, spiky New Wave of old and towards a groove-based style of music; for the tour of the album Talking Heads’ line-up would be augmented by a further four musicians to carry this over to the live performance. Thus — although not displaying an overt afrobeat element — the record is strikingly different to anything they had attempted before, and distinct emphasis is placed throughout on repetition of musical phrases to afford what is at times a hypnotic quality to much of the music on offer.

Unlike previous albums, many of the songs in this set lack a narrative element to the lyrics, with Byrne eschewing his usual tendency for quirky emotion-free observations in favour of short, chant-like phrases and ominous proclamations, and a sense of urgent paranoia is quickly established when Byrne sings “I’m not a drowning man/I’m not a burning building” on opening track Born Under Punches. The qualifier that “drowning cannot hurt a man/fire cannot hurt a man” — sung with an air of taut, nervous conviction – only serves to heighten concerns for the manic, sermonising character who has clearly taken leave of his senses, despite his protestations of sanity as he declares “I’m a government man”.

The essence of what the first person narrator is (or is not) lies at the core of Remain In Light, as Byrne’s lyrics touch upon themes of identity, alienation and suspicion with a vocal delivery abundant with burning restlessness. Without doubt the album’s most famous and accessible example comes in the form of the bizarrely brilliant pop of Once In A Lifetime, where Byrne dons the guise of a faux preacher-cum-life coach, boldly evangelising to listeners bemused by the speed of their modern lives who may ask themselves “well, how did I get here?”. Elsewhere, Houses In Motion finds him “walking a line/just barely enough to be living”, whilst veering off into the cryptic (“I’m keeping my fingers behind me”), and it seems at every turn the uncertainty is there; on the superbly agitated Crosseyed And Painless he declares: “lost my shape, trying to act casual/can’t stop, I might end up in the hospital”
to the backdrop of an irresistibly danceable rhythm, before reeling off a list of ‘facts’ about facts themselves, as seen through the fractured lens of the song’s delusional protagonist.

Having epitomised his existential angst with frenzied delivery and arcane poetry, one could be forgiven for thinking that nothing more comprehensible is forthcoming, so it is perhaps typical of Byrne that the most explicit rendering of the record’s central premise comes hand-in-hand with his most dispassionate vocal. On the spoken word of Seen And Not Seen he flatly recounts the story of a man seeking to change his physical appearance by the power of thought alone, with the remarkable effect of making the whimsical and slightly tragic sound serious and matter of fact. The song might even serve as a punchline of sorts, had the setup not been as unnerving and Byrne’s tone of voice not so unconcerned.

Even the album cover sought to almost drive the point home in an artful manner, and in keeping with the spirit of distributed creative control the artwork was entrusted to Tina Weymouth. It may appear clunky in the 21st century but her collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (utilising cutting edge techniques at the time) afforded a perfect visual embodiment to the recurring subject matter of ambiguous identities. There was even a nod to her father – a former pilot – in the motif of a series of war planes on the reverse of the sleeve.

After high watermark of Remain In Light, Talking Heads would subsequently take three years to record the follow up, unveiling another change in direction and drawing the curtain on perhaps the more experimental phase of their career. They would go on to produce more successful singles, bringing them to wider attention, but creatively, musically and critically they would never top this.

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Thirteen compact discs in a boxed set
Let’s take a trip back in time. We won’t go very far back; we’ll just time travel to 1962. That is not quite fifty years. And let’s look at popular music back in that deep, dark, distant past.

AM radio ruled the airwaves. There were FM stations, but they were mostly PBS and classical stations. Satellite radio, the Internet, MP3, and MP4 were all science fiction. The invention of the compact disc had not occurred. IBM had just announced the big computer in the marketplace, and it was the Model Thirty F50. It had forty-eight kilobytes (you read that correctly, kilobytes) of RAM, a single processor, and one accessed it by using punched cards. It required a special power supply and a climate-controlled room.

The king of recorded music was the 45-rpm vinyl single. The listener used a monophonic record player that was either stationary or portable to play the records. The tone arm held a ceramic cartridge, which contained the needle and tracked the grooves on the record with a tracking force of about fifty– to one hundred grams (my current cartridge, which is moving magnet, tracks vinyl at 2.0 grams.) 33 and 1/3 LP’s, known today as vinyl, were a rarity. Stereo was new technology. Most of the people who listened to vinyl in stereo had high-end audio systems consisting of quality turntables, receivers or integrated amplifiers, and separate loudspeakers. Some listeners even had a separate preamp, or head amp, for their cartridges. They tended to converse about such things as sealed box vs. ports, vertical tracking force,and stranded as opposed to solid-core loudspeaker cable. Most of their listening was limited to Classical music or cool jazz, as performed by such artists as Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, and Dave Brubeck.

Suddenly, four young men from Liverpool, England, appeared, and set the pop music world on its ears. The band was The Beatles, and in the slightly more than seven years that they wrote and performed songs together; they changed the world of Rock music forever. They also changed the way most music critics and music historians would view Rock and Roll music. Furthermore, they helped usher mass acceptance of the stereo LP.

Most pop acts did not release LP’s. There were exceptions, such as the Beach Boys and the Motown soul groups produced by Berry Gordy in Detroit, Michigan, who would later produce a group called the Jackson 5. The usual rule was for a pop artist to have two or three hits. Then the studio put together an LP with the three hits, some covers, and whatever garbage was lying around. It was purely a moneymaking proposition aimed directly at the performers’ fans.

The problem the music industry had with The Beatles was that every song they recorded and released became a hit. Furthermore, neither John Lennon nor Paul McCartney were stupid. They loved music, they loved rock and roll, and they took their craft very seriously. They more songs they wrote together, the more their music improved. It did not make a whole lot of sense, from the financial standpoint, to release an album of hits.

The Beatles were also doing something else with their music. A great many of their songs seemed to belong together. Sure, they held up well as singles, but it just seemed as though Love Me Do, She Loves You, and I Wanna Hold Your Hand were part of a natural grouping. As the band continued to compose and record, it did not make sense to purchase a Beatles’ single. The albums Revolver and Rubber Soul are really songbooks, and the songs would be out of place on another album. This activity would see its apex with the album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. To be fair, this was not original with the Fab Four. Frank Sinatra released a number of albums like this, such as In the Wee Small Hours and Songs for Swingin’ Lovers. But Frank was a jazz master, singing in front of a big band or orchestra, and not a rocker with a guitar hung over his shoulder.

So, why would a band of this stature and earning power record in mono? Because, at the time, most Rock and Roll acts recorded in mono and The Beatles was no exception. Indeed, The Beatles’ recorded all of their albums in mono and remixed for stereo with the exception of the final two, Abbey Road and Let It Be. Abbey Road was actually the last album recorded, but Let It Be was the last album released. Those two albums are not part of this boxed set. George Martin, the Beatles’ engineer, recorded the last two albums in stereo. When EMI chose to create this boxed set, they decided to use only the original mono master tapes.

Now, how do these CD’s sound? They are nothing short of marvelous. There is no stereo image, so to speak, but the realism and freshness of the band comes through, loud and clear. George Martin was concerned with the fact that John’s voice was somewhat pinched and thin when he reached for the high notes. The listener can hear this quite clearly, particularly in Norwegian Wood. Paul’s bass has a bit more bounce than in the stereo releases. Ringo’s drums have more punch and definition in the mono.The kick drum as more substance and the cymbals sizzle. George’s guitar has an edge that never appears in the stereo mixes. Listen to Revolution if you do not believe me.

Furthermore, if you listen to the CD’s in chronological order, you can hear their music increase in complexity. The difficulty in performing a lot of this music live was one of the reasons the Beatles stopped touring. You can also hear an increase in the skill level of their songwriting as well as in their singing. The band was developing and growing, and you can really hear this on the mono CD’s. This growth and development would eventually, combined with other reasons, tear the band apart.

If you like the Beatles, this boxed set is well worth the purchase price. I paid US $212.00 for the set. The set is nicely packaged, with the CD’s arranged like the original albums on the Parlophone label (The Beatles’ music was released on Capitol in the USA.) Included is a nice booklet with a history of the group’s recordings. If you are a fan of The Beatles or of British Invasion music in general, this box is a must-have.

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Luckily Brian Eno, former keyboard Roxy Music keyboardist come ambient pioneer and producer Tony Visconti, found this emotionally drained Bowie and helped him create arguably the greatest album of his career. Such a claim is bold one, considering Bowie’s considerable back catalogue, but Low saw Bowie hit a creative high unmatched by his undeniably impressive output. That’s not to undermine such triumphs as Ziggy Stardust or Scary Monsters, but Low contains something extra special.

With Eno’s help Bowie took the rejected music from Man Who Fell to Earth and shaped it into an album, even the cover shot is from promotional material from the film and, along with the title, forms a pun the phrase ‘Low profile’. However the title probably referred to Bowie’s mood at the time of recording as almost all the lyrics explore themes of loneliness, lethargy and self destruction, all sung in a cold monotone like a man struggling to pull what remains of his emotions to the surface.

Stay with me, share my life, be my wife he sings over clattering ragtime piano on the blistering Be My Wife like a indifferent lover going through the motions of romance in a vain attempt to reconnect with the world. A similar effect is felt on the truly bizarre What in the World where a hyperactive backdrop of electronic beeps and bloops surround Bowie’s disaffected cry of I’m in the mood for your love.

Other highlights include the sweeping Sound and Vision, its breezy guitar and synthesised drums completely at odds with the withdrawn lyrics, and Breaking Glass’s squalling guitar riff. Real surprises however, come in the second, instrumental half of the album where Brian Eno’s influence becomes more apparent and Low shifts from the good to the truly exceptional.

The second half consists of four tracks that together form a master class in how to create atmospheric synth music. While so many artists have turned to synths in order to freshen up their music, so few secede in endowing them with the emotion that comes more readily from analogue instruments. The synths used here all weep and wail beautifully, creating a rich tapestry of audible melancholy that is astounding to hear. The standout piece Warszawa, on which Eno’s presence is most felt, is also supposedly the song that inspired Ian Curtis of Joy Division fame to form a band. With Eno and Visconti’s help Bowie created some of the most original and daring music of his career and one of the most influential synth albums of all time, and one that deserves a place in any self respecting music lover’s collection.

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The original version of this iconic song was written by Jay Hawkins and released on his At Home With Screamin’ Jay Hawkinsin 1956. At only 2:25 minutes in length, it transformed the way we listen to, and view, music, even making its way on to The Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs Of Our Time, and the song has been covered by every artist imaginable.

It’s hard to imagine what impact it would have had, if Hawkins had stuck to his first decision to record it as a regular blues ballad, but luckily things got crazy in the studio, and instead we were treated with the now ”Screamin” Jay Hawkins’ raw, primal howls. The original version didn’t really make an impact on the charts at the time (some thought it to be cannibalistic) but it sure did get all the attention it deserves, later in music history.

As written above, it has been covered a number of times, most famously by Nina Simone in 1965, where she turned the song into a slow, soulful blues ballad, and even though the song loses the great, sexy rhythm, her voice succeeds in high-lighting all the hurt and obsession of the song.

Other artists from the sixties including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Manfred Mann and The Animals (with a very different, but interestingly so, bass line) covered the song, and it was even translated for Italian singer Caterina Caselli to sing: Puoi Farmi Piangere makes an interesting listen, as she was something of Italy’s answer to Cilla Black, and the song can easily stand up to being sung in a different language: the feelings and sentiments of the song are so strong, you could pretty much do anything to it, and still not ruin it.

The song had a revival in the 90’s, when it was covered in 1993 by Bryan Ferry, and in 1998 by Sonique, the latter making a typical late 90s dance record out of it. Still the song shines through.

More recently the song has been sung by Katie Melua, She & Him (aka Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and was chosen by Shane MacGowan for his Haiti charity single (do check out the video on youtube, as it features amazing talents: Nick Cave, Paloma Faith and a guitar playing Johnny Depp to name a few).

The song has also been used in various films; including the 2009 remake of the musical Fame, the Disney movie Hocus Pocus (sung by Bette Midler, with different lyrics) and 2010’s John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy.

After having listened to countless different covers, it is clear that two versions, or directions, seems to be the norm: Either you keep Hawkins’ rhythm and make for a sexy and raw track “CCR, Shane MacGowan, The Kills) or you opt for a more soulful approach (think She & Him, Joe Cocker, Ray Charles).

Finally, the song’s rhythm has been sampled by a few artists, for example Notorious B.I.G. (Kick In The Door) and The Heavy (Sixteen), and you can hear traces of it in James Brown’s It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World and Frank Sinatra’s The World We Knew (Over And Over).

So where does that leave the song? Well, despite being covered by a wide range of artists, from Buddy Guy to Marilyn Manson, it is my belief that the best version is still the original, done by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and it will always continue to amaze people, with its rhythm, and heartfelt lyrics.