Marriage has apparently mellowed her but you wouldn’t know it from the tone of the songs on Lucinda William’s latest. They still excoriate, castigate and scorn as blithely as ever – and in as poetic a vein. Daughter of a nationally renowned poet who read his work at Bill Clintons second inauguration, Williams’ apparently effortless songwriting template has again produced a collection of enduring classics delivered in her sublimely harrowed voice. Production is exquisite, Don Was steering a well-oiled machine with Elvis Costello donating gentlemanly, if sometimes suitably reckless guitar work. On first lesson the album handles like its predecessors, never straying too far from the ‘Car Wheels’ handbook, but inevitable repeats leads to an understanding that you are listening to a ineffable mastery of modern songwriting.
Month: March 2011
James Cruickshank – press release for ‘Note to Self’
James Cruickshank, acclaimed guitarist and keyboardist for the Cruel Sea, releases his second solo album, Note To Self, through Mullumbimby’s Vitamin records.
Flashes of Sam Cooke, David Bowie, Tom Waits and Beefheart reveal in the swinging gait and crooked instrumental passages of a moody serenade through Cruikshank’s yellowed back pages. Tinkering with strings and keys, swamp jazz and electronic propulsion, these meditations on maturing in a Peter Pan era could have been recorded in a time capsule, but the production, resolutely 21st century, lands it safely in a contemporary quarter.
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Mick Daley - Musician and Author. 