Gee muses

Okay, I take some of it back. Oasis are not washed up old Britpop has-beens. While 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth had white-limbed little Pommy critics bouncing up and down in their bedsits proclaiming the return of the Gallaghers, some of us were less convinced. Okay, it wasn’t quite the tub of lard most of their recorded work since the brilliant (What’s The Story) Morning Glory had been - stodgy, gormless, piss-driven and unimaginative. It at least had legs and and some sort of fitness and life about the songs. Basically, it was b-grade rock. Pleasant but no nutcracker.

Enter stage right Dig Out Your Soul, the first Oasis album in three years and an absolute corker. Somewhere the Gallagher boys and their current compatriots have discovered what made them compelling a decade and a half ago. The songs are sometimes quasi-psychedelic, sometimes bluesy, occasionally Beatlesque, mostly rock hard and imaginative. There are moments when you seriously want to examine the album cover to check this really is an Oasis record. Noel has his writing mojo back, his six songs are standouts, no more so than on the utterly gorgeous, swirling, Falling Down, but the biggest surprise is saved for the album ending Soldier On, a mood piece that expands the Oasis world dramatically. Elsewhere, Liam’s Lennonesque, I’m Outta Time, is so convincing you could believe the ex-Beatle was reincarnated for the sessions and then there’s a beautiful piece of Gallagher driftwood called The Turning that is just a great song. But it’s the sprawling, brawling, slightly weary, punchy rock (check out Bag It Up and Waiting For The Rapture) that dominates the rest of Dig Out Your Soul that says here is a band that has done what the title suggests. What a surprise.

Guitarist Gem Archer is having a cuppa , elevenses as they say, and bemoaning the unplanned tour break forced on the band after a stage incident involving Noel.

“Basically, this guy got on stage and pushed Noel,” Gem says, “and because of that he has three broken ribs. Five gigs have been cancelled, Hopefully, there won’t be any more. Noel’s in a lot of pain and the ribs aren’t a great injury to deal with. They heal slowly. It’s like a broken nose - not much you can do for it. But it’s one of those freak little things you can’t predict. I actually thought he’d got the injury from falling on the monitor but it was the impact of the guy.”

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Metro Theatre, Sydney
29/07/08

Famously, a reviewer once declared he’d touched God at a Radiohead concert. I didn’t at The Polyphonic Spree but I went so close it didn’t matter. This was the best concert of 2008. An extraordinary celebration of everything that is great about rock music; uplifting, deeply moving at times, thunderous symphonic rock, contrasted by great delicacy and shade, performed by a group of 23 musicians and singers. So good was this amazing performance – and I’m not prone to waxing lyrical and tossing out superlatives left, right and centre but I’m going to here - that I’d put it up there with greatest shows I’ve seen over the past 40 years: Led Zeppelin in 1972, AC/DC (1974 and ’76), Frank Zappa (1976), Radio Birdman (1977), Tom Waits (1978), The Cure (1981 and 2000), Bob Dylan (2001), Brian Wilson (2004), to name a few … revered company, indeed.

What made this concert special though was the pure inescapable joy that lies at the core of the Texans’ distinctly un-American’s music. They reach for the sky – physically and spiritually, and this audience was drawn in. The result was that incredible energy that surges back and forth between the two. Everywhere people smiled; for the whole two hours, they embraced, danced, sang, punched the air, moshed – nobody who was there will ever forget the cover of Nirvana’s Lithium that had the entire Metro moshing as one! Couples pashed, several people were heard telling their partner they loved them; the audience parted – like the proverbial Red Sea - when the band shucked off its black army fatigues for the original white smocks and returned to the stage via the back of the Metro and down the stairs through the crowd. People hustled just to high-five a member or get close. It all sounds religious, cultish, dangerously close to overkill but, you know what, it was simply glorious.

Led by founder and lead vocalist, Tim DeLaughter, who has an extraordinary amount of energy and a marvellous voice, the six back-up singers, two drummers, two violinists, one cellist, one harpist (yes, a harp), three brass players, a flautist, three guitarists, bass guitarist, and two keyboardists, simply soared. It was extravagant, poetic, humbling. People even cried with joy. It even blew The Arcade Fire away – and anybody who saw its January shows will know just how good they were. This was a massive triumph, a masterpiece, more reasons to believe than you dare to dream. I’m still smiling 24 hours later.

Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

EMI

**** (4 stars)

It’s perhaps fitting that Sigur Ros appear naked on the album cover because this, the great Icelandic band’s fifth album, is largely its most stripped back and bare. That’s not to say those epic signature atmospheres are entirely absent. Festival builds magnificently over its 9 minutes-plus to a huge ending while Ara Batur, which is only marginally shorter, is one of the most moving pieces the band has ever recorded. Opening on gentle, intimate, solo piano, it gradually swells until the London Oratory Boy’s Choir and the London Sinfonietta break over the last few minutes. Elsewhere Gobblediggok and Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur are pure upbeat three-minute pop gems that open the album with unexpected simplicity and lightness. Acoustic guitars and solo piano fill much of the rest record as it moves from those jaunty beginnings to that afore-mentioned vast middleground before easing to a gentle finish over the final three tracks. The last, All Alright, is set around simple piano notes and has lyrics sung in English for the first time in Sigur Ros’ recorded history, not that you would necessarily know it. It is utterly haunting and heart-rending. In a way you are left wanting more, but at the same time know that more would be less. The evolution of Sigur Ros continues unaffected by anything but the band’s own imagination. This time it has examined and reacted to its own grandiose beauty, sought to bare a little more soul and discover what would happen if it was to destructure and restructure. It is still Sigur Ros, it is still breathtakingly beautiful but it is another shade on a palette that seems to have unlimited colours.

John Taylor is a talkative 47-year-old slightly rock star for whom time may be ticking. And you get the feeling he knows it. If that sounds tough it isn’t meant to be. Duran Duran, the band he founded and in which he’s spent 26 of the last 30 years, are genuine survivors and still know how to be put on a show and cut it live. Its latest album, Red CarpetMassacre, isn’t as bad as its been made out to be by some critics; there are moments of real grandeur and working class grunt and some of the melodies match the band’s best. The problem is that uber producer Timbaland and his protégé Nate “Danja” Hills have cut the band out of the album. Yes, SImon Le Bon is on every track, and Nick Rhodes gets to whirl his keyboards on and off but the band’s strength - its rhythm section of bassist Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor, are pretty much eliminated from the mix by Timbaland’s taste for electronic beats. You’d think Taylor would be pissed about that: Instead he says the chance to spend five days with Timbaland and get three songs out of him plus the presence of Justin Timberlake on two songs has extended the band’s credibility and give it a real boost.

Still there has to be a point where the line in the sand shifts too far; where a band needs to say ‘Sorry, we’re the band. We have to be on the record.’ That aside, 30 years on Duran Duran remains the epitome of New Romantic cool; a cultural icon that briefly changed fashion, pop culture and all that hangs off it.

“Thirty years ain’t what it used to be,” Taylor says. “With the technology we have today bands can get a lot further a lot faster. It’s hard to take all the changes on board but it doesn’t really change who I am. I’ve still got a little of the infantile in me. I’m not sure whether I’m trying to be a child or resisting becoming an adult.

“It has been a trip. Who would have known we would have got the cards we did. We’ve got to take it as it comes now. I feel we’re on borrowed time. Every day working together, doing gigs, making records, is a bonus. Who knows it could go on forever.”

And in that single paragraph lies all the dichotomies of being a rock star. The hopes and fears and possible realities all run into a few words that take half a lifetime to reach and just a few seconds to say.
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Warner Bros
***1/2 (3.5 stars)

It has become fashionable in the past seven years or so indulge in a bit of R.E.M. bashing - they make easy targets. Here’s band that cares about the world we inhabit, tries to bring some kind of conscience and morality to the fore through both its actions and songs, makes music that at it’s best defines why rock music is the greatest aphrodisiac around or a friend in need when the dark has done its deed. How unfashionable (said sardonically). And, yes, the band’s latest studio sets have been a shadow or two behind some of its defining 1980s and ’90s release, but anybody who has seen them live will tell you that they remain an inspirational and forceful act. This 2CD + DVD set, recorded in February 2005, features a nice blend of the standards - Everybody Hurts, Orange Crush, The One I Love, Losing My Religion, Drive, Man On The Moon, The Great Beyond - with lesser known gems such as the storming I Took Your Name and the perfect pop of Cuyahoga. With the core trio of Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck expanded by musicians such as Ken Stringfellow, Scott McCaughey and current drummer Bill Rieflin, R.E.M. do what they do best - play great rock music with a passion and quality most can only dream of.

Look out the window: It isn’t the end of the world as we know it - yet.

EMI
*** (3 stars)

What’s right about this, KT Tunstall’s second real studio album (there’s an acoustic album which popped out last year, initially by mail order only) is that there’s nothing wrong with it. What’s wrong with it is that everything’s right about it. Drastic Fantastic ticks all the boxes. Tunstall has an irresistible voice, can write a mean song, has lovely ideas about harmony and melody, flirts with rock bravado but most comfortably nestles in the bosom of mother pop. But her debut, Eye Of the Telescope remains the better album, simply because it’s less processed. KT was simply coming off her strumm and bash background and letting it fly. Nobody expected a mega hit, countless TV soundtrack appearances - oddly, Suddenly I See has been tacked on the end of Drastic Fantastic - and the odd likelihood that a Scottish singer/songwriter could break big in the US. So in a way it was only natural the album seems aimed at consolidating all those conquered territories. That said there’s enough of those quirky Tunstall tunings to keep it interesting. The third album could be very interesting indeed.

The curse of the sophomore set is largely overcome but too much fizzy drink does taint the party.

Sony/BMG
**** (4 stars)

It is somewhat sad that this classy record has been largely ignored in Australia by a public that once adored its creator. Annie Lennox has few peers when it comes to contemporary female vocalists. She is also a woman of some conscience and her fourth solo album, Songs Of Mass Destruction, is a pointed reminder - if you need one - that not all is well with society, with this fragile world. Lennox said a few weeks ago it’s “a dark album, but the world is a dark place. It’s fraught, it’s turbulent. Most people’s lives are underscored with dramas of all kinds: there’s ups, there’s downs - the flickering candle”. As such AIDS, climate change, global poverty, the Iraq War, all come under the spotlight. Annie is frankly “sick and tired” of just about everything and isn’t mixing her metaphors. All this chest beating could be overwhelming but it’s to Lennox’s credits that the arrangements and the variety she brings to the songs carry the album effortlessly. ‘Songs’ is soulful, funky, strident, pop and rock, but never predictable. Her vocals are as good as they have ever been. At 53, she remains vital, an intrinsic part of the greater popular culture. And this record deserves much better than a chart high of 41 in Australia.

Sweet dreams aren’t neccessarily made of this but who cares when the chocolate is so good.

Sony/BMG
**** (4 stars)

It’s about meat and potatoes. Sometimes you need meat and potatoes. Now Bruce, as good as he’s been over the past decade, has mostly been serving up green salads - aesthetic and healthy, often stripped down to the raw essentials … man, guitar and voice. But The Boss, it seems has finally realised you cannot live on vegies alone - or he’s just got plain bored with trying to ensure his place in the US Smithsonian music archives (he’s safe). With Magic, he’s performed some spectacular wand waving. It’s a good old old meat and potatoes album, in the mould of Born To Run - and let’s say here and now the title track of that particular road hog is one of the best 10 rock songs ever. Just wind down the windows and turn it up loud - which is what you should do with Magic. From the opening blast that’s Radio Nowhere through the Byrdsian You’ll be Coming Down and the beautifully crafted classic rock of Gypsy Biker, The Boss is back and firing up with his buddies - the big man on sax Clarence Clemons, Stevie Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg and the rest of the band. Magic indeed.

A well-cooked side of beef served with roast potatoes, pumpkin and lashings of gravy.

Sydney Entertainment Centre
August 15, 2007
Some 2000 shows and nine years into the now infamous The Never Ending Tour, Bob Dylan swings like the coolest dude in the bar-room. Perhaps, a tiny shade less impressive than at his outstanding outdoor bash in Centennial Park a few years back, Dylan was still the chameleon, reinventing his classics to a more modern, but no less imperious, perspective.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ is no longer a folk standard - this version had Dylan half-rapping, half spitting out the lyrics to a waltz tempo; a brilliantly twisted Tangled Up In Blue toyed with the main melody and messed up the rhythm; Masters Of War was a breathtaking blues monster; Watching The River Flow boogied and swung like there was no tomorrow; Workingman’s Blues #2 was a highlight, slow and moving; and Highway 61 Revisited – well, it was breathless, paint-stripping stuff, a roaring wind of a song.

Driving all this was the band Dylan describes as the best he’s ever played with. Stu Kimball (guitar), Donnie Herron (pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, electric mandolin, banjo, fiddle), Denny Freeman (guitar, slide guitar), Tony Garnier (bass, standup bass) and George Receli (drums) are simply outstanding – one of the best bands ever to grace the Entertainment Centre.

With Dylan now well immersed in 1950s swing, boogie, Southern blues and country-tinged rock, this black-suited, variously-hatted quintet never missed a beat and showed a level of musicianship that’s rarely heard these days. And Bob? Well he played guitar for the first five songs, then stood behind his keys for the remaining 12. He growled, snarled, poured the words out in gushes, then swallowed them whole. He ranged from unintelligible to perfectly enunciated and ended with a take on All Along The Watchtower that again redefined the song.

By then, the shoulders on the old master were jerking, the left knee twisting and he even allowed himself a wry smile from time to time. And why not? It doesn’t get much better than this and he knows it. Bob Dylan is very comfortable and very vital in these modern times.