Bob’s back with his five-stars band

ROCK

BOB DYLAN AND THE BAND

The Bootleg Seres Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Raw (Columbia)

*****

DON’T mistake this for just an alternative version of the 1975 release The Basement Tapes, in itself an expansion of a bootleg that had been floating around since the ’60s. This is a complete revision, and one that holds more true to the historical record of what happened in 1967, post world tour and motorcycle crash, when Dylan and his touring band The Hawks (not yet known as The Band) retreated to rural Woodstock and started playing, mostly for what seems to be the fun of it, just to see where it would lead.

Which is not to take anything away from the original Basement Tapes, but it seems those presented a more Band-ist view, with reverb added, overdubs sweetening the vocals and Band tracks like Katie’s Been Gone and Bessie Smith inserted. This two-CD set is more from the Dylan point of view, lots of Band stuff (and reverb) excised, vocals taken back to the raw originals, with many songs not featured on the original or in different versions, some never released before and some not even rumoured to exist until now.

The vocal pitch and tuning isn’t always perfect, the recording quality basic. Who cares? The pitch and tuning is perfect on modern recordings and most of them will be forgotten by next Saturday, never mind 47 years in the future.

This two-disc Raw set is the best of the six-CD Complete set of all the recordings from these sessions in Dylan’s house and the basement of bassist Rick Danko’s rented home, known as Big Pink.

The box set adds many of the covers, traditional folk, sea shanties, blues, country and spirituals, that informed the music being written at the time. Without The Band, Dylan had already recorded the bare-bones folk-country album John Wesley Harding in Nashville.

Something else, a reaction to the high-volume world tour and psychedelic sounds then prevalent in rock music, was already at play.

The locality played its role too. At this time, if you were a big name you went to an expensive studio and recorded in what could be a very stiff environment, watching the clock and keeping to the company schedule.

This is another world, home recording on a reel-to-reel tape, no engineers in sight, loose, lighthearted and informal, occasional laughter, breakdowns and plain old giving up part way through, or running out of tape, all part of the patina. It’s recorded in the country and sounds like it.

As guitarist Robbie Robertson explained, this required a completely different approach to the Dylan world tour, which was the loudest thing anyone had heard at that time. The acoustics and the room at Big Pink demanded they play quietly, facing each other. Doing that, Robertson says, they found a ‘‘timeless spirit’’.

It might be going too far to call this music the birth of Americana since The Byrds, The Dillards and others had similar interests at this time. But The Basement Tapes is a pivotal moment in music history.

You can follow a direct line from this music to Dylan’s music today, from the vaudeville rhythm and humour of Open The Door, Richard toa band version of Blowin’ in the Wind that clearly inspired the one Dylan played on his Australian tour this August.

As ever, Garth Hudson’s Lowrey organ adds to the carnival favour, and the quality of the vocalists joining Dylan (Richard Manuel and Danko were present, Levon Helm mostly absent) completes the magic. A miraculous version of One Too Many Mornings (originally a folk ballad on The Times They Are A-Changin’) features Manuel’s plaintive voice singing the first verse, Danko joining in before Dylan takes over. There are extraordinary takes on Tears of Rage and I Shall Be Released, where the voices of Dylan, Manuel and Danko entwine to deeply emotional effect.

There are songs you know, like Nothing Was Delivered and The Mighty Quinn, (soon covered by The Byrds and Manfred Mann); others in new forms (see the version of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues), others released for the first time (the feelgood R & B groove of Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby).

Not The Basement Tapes you know, but a new interpretation of the source material that no Bob-nik could, or should, resist.

Noel Mengel

R & B

NEIL YOUNG

Storytone (Warner)

***1/2

EVEN by Neil’s standards of chaos, 2014 has been quite a year, what with the low-fi A Letter Home album, divorcing his wife of 36 years, a feud with David Crosby, another memoir, Special Deluxe (It’s better than Waging Heavy Peace) and now an album that arrives, well, twice. The 10 tracks are presented in two forms, solo, then again backed either by orchestra or band. Some of the songs work better as solo piano pieces, like Glimmer (“Like the changes in our life that hit so hard the day I couldn’t find you’’), some work well with orchestral flourishes (Plastic Flowers and All Those Dreams), and there is one that should have been left in the driveway (bluesy clunker I Want To Drive My Car). Neil rails against fracking, coos about finding new love, gets into an R & B groove with big brass section (Like You Used to Do)
and delivers a country tune that could have come from Harvest Moon (When I Watch You Sleeping). The tunes are simple, the lyrics direct and honest. There’s a good Neil album in there but it’s up to you to design your own mix tape.

Noel Mengel

CLASSICAL/POP

THE JOHN WILSON ORCHESTRA

Cole Porter in Hollywood (Warner Classics)

****

TWO stars shine in this CD, composer extraordinaire Cole Porter and conductor John Wilson, who has recreated choice hits from hundreds for which Porter wrote words and music. Along with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, Porter belonged to pop royalty from the 1930s to the ’60s. His classical training in Paris in harmony, counterpoint and orchestration helped shape his distinctive musical voice. Wilson does it faithful service, bringing zip to Stereophonic Sound from Silk Stockings of 1957, its energetic moods well realised by vocalists Matthew Ford and Anna-Jane Casey. The effervescent beat of Begin the Beguine in this vocal quartet setting, Wunderbar from Kiss Me Kate, High Society Overture and one of this musical’s many hit numbers, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?), and Kim Criswell purring her way through My Heart Belongs To Daddy are among gems that are apt for the festive holiday season. A package dedicated to “those who are in love and all those who can Re-mem-ber”.

Patricia Kelly

ROCK

THURSTON MOORE

The Best Day (Matador)

***1/2

NO MATTER how much the guitar band approach gets written off in the mainstream, there is always someone doing something exciting with the format. Moore has been at it for close to 30 years with Sonic Youth, and anyone who enjoys their most song-focused albums will find much to absorb them here. While Moore is involved in an array of noise-exploring side projects, melody-focused solo work only comes along occasionally but he’s certainly got a strong collection of tunes here. Opener Speak to the Wild rolls on hypnotic, rippling waves of guitar for eight minutes without losing its inner tensions. It’s a reminder you don’t need that much to create a good rock record. : a sympathetic band, a good amp, a head full of ideas, someone to press play on the tape machine. Forevermore stretches out across 11 minutes without overstaying its welcome, while Grace Lake finds the joy in a towering wall of feedback. Tape carries on the experimental tone with droning acoustic guitars, somewhere in a world between Robyn Hitchcock and Roy Harper
.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

FOO FIGHTERS

Sonic Highways (Roswell/RCA)

***

AS IF being one-third of a band that defined a generation wasn’t enough, Dave Grohl is now the self-appointed curator of American music history, first with his Reel to Real tribute to Sound City Studios and now with the Foo Fighters’ travelogue Sonic Highways. As with Reel to Real, it’s hard to tell whether the album is the point of the exercise or just a by-product of the accompanying documentary (in this case, an HBO miniseries). And just as it’s hard to get that warm and fuzzy analog feeling of Reel to Real on your iPhone, it’s hard to distinguish between the eight cities in which these songs were written and recorded. Sure, there are local references in the lyrics, and local music heroes guest star — from Chicago’s Rick Nielsen to Nashville’s Zac Brown and LA’s Joe Walsh — but, overall, it sounds like a regular Foo Fighters record, with perhaps a weightier back story to the stadium-pleasing rockers. Sadly, the eight-city limit keeps the track count low. Drummer Taylor Hawkins said U2’s latest album sounded like a fart. Sorry to say phooey to the Fooeys, but this seems to be a similarly self-indulgent exercise.

John O’Brien

POP

KARISE EDEN

Things I’ve Done (Mercury)

***1/2

WINNING a television talent show can be a mixed blessing, as Karise Eden discovered when she was named The Voice of 2012. Swept away by the intensity of it all, the 22-year-old from the NSW Central Coast simply disappeared for two years. She’s since resurfaced with her second album, 12 original songs co-written with the likes of American producer Mike Elizondo, his Canadian counterpart Jon Levine and honorary Australian Mark “Diesel” Lizotte. Eden’s debut, essentially a collection of covers, sold on the strength of The Voice but Things I’ve Done is a far superior, largely autobiographical piece of work. The hooks are huge, the material consistently strong and Eden’s voice is still a thing of stupendous power. She’s sounding less like Janis Joplin than another, more recent American singer, Anastacia, with a similar range and even more control. Eden’s voice has two gears — top, and overdrive — and on occasion you wish for a little shade to contrast the blinding light. Still, songs such as She Don’t, Taking It All and the title track have more than enough internal dynamics to compensate.

Phil Stafford

ROCK

BROKEN DOLL

2014 Australian Tour EP (Valve)

***1/2

JAPAN’S Broken Doll dress in hyper-’80s-inspired Harajuku fashion with a smattering of ’77 UK punk thrown in for good measure, and play a poppy, ’90s-influenced blend of pop-punk. The lyrics, a mix of broken English and Japanese, are barely decipherable — and, more often than not, nonsensical when they are — but there’s a kitschy, naive earnestness that’s difficult not to embrace. Opening track Angel Forever is reminiscent of early Blink-182 with saccharine vocals from singer Sachi, and lead single I Miss You is a straightforward, synth-heavy rocker. Iikodenante Irarenai is a more cutesy, synthesiser-based number, Samishikunanka Nai is Ramones via J-rock, and I Fear Norting and Fredom (no, they’re not typos) are both equally delightful three-minute bursts of power-pop. Although the band’s fashion sense and music are inextricably linked, this Australian Tour EP is proof Broken Doll have substance and style in equal measures.

Daniel Johnson

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