320 kbps | 201 MB | LINKS
Divided into two discs, Gloucester Docks Revisited and Other Tales Of Love, Paradise And Thorns finds “the single most important figure in English folk rock” (© Bob Dylan) revisiting his seminal autobiographically- based 1987 solo work (already the subject of a live version and revised re-issue) in the wake of reuniting with the old flame (never identified but likely named Patricia) around which it was based and complementing this with a collection of his personal favourite love songs and stories.
Visiting the docks first, this is a sort of continuance of a previously unfinished story that mixes together past recordings, new material, readings and film clips, opening with an echoey Hutchings reading an extract from John Donne’s poem of parted but constant adulterous lovers ‘Elegie XII’ with JJ Stoney providing keyboard effects. It’s followed by a 1985 live recording of ‘Kitty Come Down The Lane’ by the Ashley Hutchings All Stars, featuring Clive Gregson and Polly Bolton, and, in turn, with another reading, this time ‘The Meadow’, a single line extract from Louis MacNeice’ ‘The Strings Are False’.
The first new recording comes with the pastoral ‘Art Nouveau’, exploring the woman as flower metaphor, co-written with Ken Nicol, sung by Barry Coope and featuring string quartet arrangement by Joe Broughton, with himself on violin and Jo Hamilton on viola.
Another reading, ‘St. Valentine Day Sonnet’, is one of Hutchings’ own, about getting a rose tattoo, written in the manner of Donne, then it’s back to 1987 and a recording of the bouncy ‘Trip To Bath’ by The Albion Dance Band, Bolton again on vocals. Jane Wildsmith provides the voice of Pat in ‘Sultana Cake’, a brief extract from a letter, then it’s into the second new song, Tim Walker on trombone and Chris Sheldon on banjo for the New Orleans-influenced ‘Cul-de-Sac’, a playfully wry reference to how the original romance ended. Another live recording, the lost relationship ‘Our Stolen Season’ comes from a 2000 Rainbow Chasers concert, Hamilton on vocal and Ruth Angell on violin, followed by the first of the film clips, a brief extract (in French but translated in the booklet) from Alain Resnais’ 1960 Last Year In Marienbad before Fred Claridge’s drums introduce the Western-movie soundtrack flavoured ‘Devil-may-care In Our Dancing Shoes’, a down to the crossroads lost souls number co-penned with son Blair Dunlop who also plays acoustic guitar, that brings Pat back into the picture with the lines “Years passed by, then out of the blue/ The call of the road and a text or two.”
Michael Maloney voices an excerpt from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, followed by another French film clip, this time ‘It Was My Heart’ from Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du Boi de Boulogne, the screenplay by Cocteau. Then, preceded by a lengthy introduction in which Hutchings explains the background to Gloucester Docks (and the title’s links to both the psalm ‘By Waters Of Babylon’ and Elizabeth Smart’s ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept’ as well as offering a Tristan and Isolde context to the story of doomed love), a 1988 All Stars concert recordings of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ featuring just Bolton and John Shepherd’s keyboard.
The last of the new songs, again written with Dunlop, and featuring both him and Nicol on electric guitars, brings things up to the present day with the lyrically optimistic ‘Thirty-two Years And A Lifetime’, which, after the initial set-up, breaks out into a punchy, upbeat folk-rock melody that may well have travelled over the Cork and Kerry mountains.
It ends with the brief spoken ‘Epilogue’ which brings the lost love back into his life, the pondered question “What is to become of us?” possibly answered as the tracks flows into an arrangement of the traditional ‘French Catholic Wedding Tune’ with Stoney on churchy organ and Becky Mills providing the choral vocals.
Having duly conjured a romantic glow, the second disc beats the heart with a collection of all new recordings, again intercut with clips and readings, that gets under way with rising star Kitty Macfarlane on acoustic singing her own ‘Avona And The Giant’, a song based around the legend of the Bristol giants Vincent and Goram and how, after losing the love of Avona, the latter through himself into the river, his torso forming the isles of Steepholm and Flatholm.
Macfarlane also closes the album, this time, preceded by an extract from the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, with her arrangement of ‘Fear No More The Heat O’ The Sun’ from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.
In-between clips are taken from the 1932 film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s WWI story A Farewell To Arms with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, Tony Richardson’s 1968 Charge of the Light Brigade and, given the theme, what else but Bogart and Bacall in Casablanca, here in the form of the “I remember every detail” scene.
There’s readings too, Michael Maloney giving John Donne another outing with ‘Aire And Angells’, Hutching and cheering crowd with 30 seconds of ‘If Love Has Wings’ from The Marriage of Figaro (Beaumarchais not Mozart) and a brace of Chekhov with two extracts, pre and post-marriage, from the playful ‘Notes from the journal of a quick-tempered man’.
There’s only one previously releases track, ‘Welcome To The World’ taken from The Albion Band’s eponymous 1999 album, the remainder being all new material. Evoking formative Fairport folk rock and preceding the Donne, ‘Above The Angels’ is sung by Mills with Nicol and Dunlop on electric guitars and Stoney tinkling the piano, ‘If There’s No Other Way’ is an acoustic, strings-arranged Hutchings/Broughton ‘love in vain’ ballad with Bolton on soaring vocals and, revisiting bird imagery, simple acoustic ‘The Swift’, with its title wordplay, is written and sung by Mills.
There’s two traditional numbers, ‘Polly On The Shore’ (or at least an except therefrom) providing a solo showcase for Dunlop, accompanying himself on electric guitar, while, co-produced by Joe Boyd, ‘Sykaleshe’ is a love song performed in their native tongue by Albanian folk outfit Saz’iso, and which seems likely to be an outtake from their 2016 album At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song. Which just leaves ‘Lost In The Haze’, father and son teaming for a first time ever I saw your face memory of first love recalling how Hutchings was smitten by a girl he met as part of a 1964 Methodist Youth Club ramble though Hertfordshire, immortalised in the photograph in the superb accompanying annotated hardback lyric booklet.
The original ‘By Gloucester Docks I sat down and wept’, released in 1987, ended on a painful note, but it finally now has a happy coda; after waiting by the Quay for 30 years, Hutchings’ ship has come in.
Mike Davies
320 kbps | 82 MB | LINKS
Like the Weather Station’s Loyalty, Doug Paisley’s Starter Home was recorded after an entire album’s worth of music was set aside in order to make something that the artist could live with.
Yet the strain of high standards, four years and as many studios isn’t apparent when listening to this effortless-sounding album. Paisley’s guitar playing, reminiscent of David Rawlings’ mellifluent runs, gently hints that his songs could go on forever, busting out of mellow, dusky confines into brilliant light, which is a bit like what it sounds like when Alison Melville’s recorder solo carries off the gorgeously reflective “No Way to Know.”
The characters in Starter Home are looking forward, looking back, thinking about what might have been and looking through windows. In the opening title track, the “starter home” a couple is convinced to buy eventually through a series of vignettes becomes a sign on a lawn to entice new people. Similarly, “This Loneliness” takes a lifelong view, glancing back to the ’60s and forward to present longing. “It’s the same house we lived in in 1963,” Paisley sings conversationally. “You were only 22, seemed so much older to me.”
After the earthier “Easy Money,” which sounds a little like ’70s Dylan, and the nostalgic “Mister Wrong,” Paisley transitions into “Drinking with a Friend,” the only song on the album from 60 or 70 tracks Paisley recorded with dobro player Don Rooke, of the Henrys, along with his longtime collaborator Chuck Erlichman, who were just learning the song as it was being recorded. It carries the fleeting, spontaneous magic of players figuring it out as they go along.
Starter Home is a mostly quiet album despite its many players — including Afie Jurvanen (aka Bahamas) on guitar, Matthew Barber on harmony vocals, Michael Eckert on pedal steel and guitar, Drew Jurecka on strings, John Sheard on piano, Mandolin Orange’s Joe Westerlund on percussion and both Bazil Donovan and Ben Whitely on bass.
Paisley wisely gave Jennifer Castle her own section of the album to sing backup on; she joins him on the last three songs: “This Loneliness,” “Waiting,” a love song that ends in her heavenly “ooos” and finally, “Shadows,” a schmaltzy (for Paisley) coda that could be an encore or the backing track for a dance party during credits.
By Sarah Greene
320 kbps | 115 MB | LINKS
On November 2nd, Rosanne Cash will release her first new album in nearly five years, She Remembers Everything. The poetic, personal and incisive collection features ten songs, all written or co-written by Cash, that reckon with a flawed and fragile world from a uniquely feminine perspective.
Recorded in Portland, OR and New York City, with Tucker Martine and John Leventhal respectively, and featuring contributions from Elvis Costello, Kris Kristofferson, Colin Meloy, and Sam Phillips, She Remembers Everything follows Rosanne’s triple-Grammy winning 2014 album The River & the Thread (Blue Note), and marks a return to more personal songwriting after a trio of albums that explored her heritage.
In the wake of the latest tsunami of survivor stories, Cash has had to contend with the fact that much of what she hoped would change across her lifetime really hasn’t. It’s a reality that is reflected in her deliberate embrace of women’s narratives on the new album. “There is a woman’s real life, complex experiences and layered understanding in these songs,” Rosanne says. “I could not have written them 10 years ago—not even close. Time is shorter, I have more to say.”
To accompany the announcement, Rosanne has released two songs from ‘She Remembers Everything;’ the haunting title track, and “Everyone But Me,” an exquisite mosaic of generational grief and reckoning. Listen to “She Remembers Everything” and “Everyone But Me”.
In addition to the ten-song release, a deluxe version of She Remembers Everything with three bonus tracks will be released digitally and as a limited edition casebound book CD. Fans will also have the option to purchase a limited edition box set entitled the She Remembers Everything Memory Box, which will include personal letters of correspondence signed by Rosanne, and exchanged between her and T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Joe Henry, Tucker Martine, and John Leventhal; an exclusive Rosanne Cash Live at SFJAZZ CD, recorded in 2017 and featuring Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams; She Remembers Everything pressed to pink vinyl; the deluxe casebound CD with three extra tracks; and a digital download redemption card. The box will also include a copy of ‘Bird On A Blade’ (UT Press), a new book of lyrics and illustration by Rosanne Cash and Dan Rizzie, along with an 8” x 10” printed lithograph featuring an original Rizzie illustration from the book.
The announcement of She Remembers Everything caps an already busy year for Rosanne in which she debuted new songs at Lincoln Center from a forthcoming original musical about the life of Norma Rae (a story of union organizing and a woman’s transformation in 1970’s North Carolina), performed a program of her father’s music with Ry Cooder at SFJAZZ where she is an artist in residence, received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, executive produced (with Steven Soderbergh and Errol Morris) the acclaimed documentary film ‘The King,’ and just last week earned the “Spirit of Americana” Free Speech Award at the Americana Honors and Awards in Nashville for her activism on behalf of artists’ rights and gun control, among other worthy causes.
320 kbps | 91 MB | LINKS
My childhood memories of Christmas aren’t warm and fuzzy. The holidays were more of a nuisance for my parents than cause for celebration. This is not to say that on behalf of their only child they didn’t give the season a halfhearted try. There were Christmases when I found under the tree an electric football set, a Daisy pump air-rifle and a basketball goal that never got nailed up. But, there were also mornings when apples, oranges, hickory nuts and a hammer signified that year’s bounty. Which is to say that Christmas in our household was mostly a wait-and-see proposition. I was finally ready to record an album of original Christmas songs. With Dan Knobler producing and some very gifted musicians and vocalists lending their talents, the making of the album Christmas Everywhere ranks as some of the most enjoyable recording sessions I’ve ever experienced. The record was close to being finished when it occurred to me that to set the tone for the albums mostly irreverent subtext, I needed to compose a lyrical prelude. In honor of Clement Moore, who wrote the poem we all know as, “The Night Before Christmas,” I came up with a short piece called “Clement’s Lament (We’ll See You in The Mall)”. Tania Hancheroff and Kim Keyes stopped by the studio and performed the tune with Jordan Lehning’s orchestral backing and the album was pronounced complete. Seasons Cheer, – Rodney Crowell
Tracklist:
1. Clement’s Lament (We’ll See You in the Mall)
2. Christmas Everywhere (Feat. Vera Lynn)
3. When the Fat Guy Tries the Chimney On for Size
4. Christmas Makes Me Sad
5. Merry Christmas from an Empty Bed (Feat. Brennen Leigh)
6. Very Merry Christmas
7. Christmas in Vidor (Feat. Mary Karr)
8. Christmas for the Blues
9. Come Christmas
10. Let’s Skip Christmas This Year
11. Christmas in New York
12. All for Little Girls & Boys (Feat. Daddy Cool and the Yule
320 kbps | 441 MB | LINKS
This year’s Dave’s Picks series comes to a close just as the band’s getting back together again in ’76. By the time the Grateful Dead hit New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre – for the very first time – on 6/17/76, they were buzzing from their reunion, armed with new and revived material, the Rhythm Devils reformed with the mischievous Mickey Hart once again behind the kit. They’d skived off the unwieldy Wall of Sound and scaled back the venues from cavernous arenas to intimate theatres. Quite the treat!
During the first set, the Dead’s playing was nuanced (“Cold Rain And Snow”), detailed (“Looks Like Rain”), and intricate (“The Music Never Stopped”); the singing struck softly (“Row Jimmy”) and raised hairs (“Ship Of Fools”). But it’s the big barreling energy of the second set you’ll want to brace yourself for, replete with a disco’d “Dancing In The Streets,” a low-down funky “Help”>”Slip”>”Franklin’s” and a wind ’em up to wind down “Let It Grow”>”Wharf Rat”>”Around and Around.” Can you keep up? There’s only one way to find out.
This complete show, balanced out with a couple of bonus tracks from 6/23/76 and 6/28/76, was recorded by Betty Cantor-Jackson and has been mastered to HDCD specs by Jeffrey Norman.
![Dynazty - Firesign [Japanese Edition] (2018)](http://lossless-galaxy.ru/uploads/posts/2018-11/thumbs/1541102760_00.jpg "Dynazty - Firesign [Japanese Edition] (2018)")
![Skull Fist - Way Of The Road [Japanese Edition] (2018)](http://lossless-galaxy.ru/uploads/posts/2018-11/thumbs/1541104127_00.jpg "Skull Fist - Way Of The Road [Japanese Edition] (2018)")
![Striker - Play To Win [Japanese Edition] (2018)](http://lossless-galaxy.ru/uploads/posts/2018-11/thumbs/1541105172_00.jpg "Striker - Play To Win [Japanese Edition] (2018)")
![Heaven's Trail - Lethal Mind [Japanese Edition] (2018)](http://lossless-galaxy.ru/uploads/posts/2018-11/thumbs/1541106276_00.jpg "Heaven's Trail - Lethal Mind [Japanese Edition] (2018)")
![Tetra - Lullabies from the World (2018) [Hi-Res]](http://img.israbox.com/uploads/posts/2018-08/1534451953_folder.jpg)
![Tetra - Lullabies from the World (2018) [Hi-Res]](http://img.israbox.com/img/2018-04/15/edo2hwixvo2zkbn2l5qvz7xh3.png)
