Very model of a lonesome cowgirl
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The tunes are top-shelf, but Ruby Boots’ voice seals the deal.
Source: Supplied
THIS week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars):
COUNTRY ROCK
Ruby Boots, Solitude
(Lost Highway) ****
Ruby Boots knows a thing or two about solitude, you get the feeling, and that’s before you hear anything of her story.
That lonesome yearning which is at the heart of so much of the best country-flavoured rock ’n’ roll is right there in her voice and lyrics.
But solitude isn’t always a bad thing. Ruby Boots is the working title for West Australian singer-songwriter Bex Chilcott, and she sings on the title track of this album, “Solitude’s a good friend to me’’.
She spent time working as a deckhand on a pearl boat, teaching herself to play and write at night, “out at sea’’, emotionally speaking. In solitude is a better place to be than just being lonely: she still goes to that place when she writes.
These days she has plenty of friends to help her along the way, including the tasteful licks of her guitarist Lee Jones who plays a key role.
If you can judge an artist by the company they keep, you know her album is going to be special since guests include Davey Lane of You Am I, Bill Chambers and Vicki Thorn of The Waifs.
The album was recorded with different bands over nine months in three Australian states and in Utah and Spain, although you wouldn’t know that from the results: a tight, concise band sound that sits nicely with American practitioners like Lucinda Williams, The Jayhawks and The Delines.
Ruby Blue finds Chilcott singing to her internal muse: “When I was a child you were a seed inside my soul/Who’d have known you would grow to be such a part of me,’’ as electric guitar bites through the honky tonk piano and Hammond organ.
Sure you can call it country, but it’s closer to the Rolling Stones’ version than Nashville.
Pedal steel provides a lonesome counterpoint to Middle of Nowhere; Jordie Lane steps up for a duet on Lovin’ in the Fall; and Baby Pull Over suggests that the character singing the song has more urgent things in mind than simply getting to the next flyblown freeway motel.
The tunes are top-shelf, but it’s the quality of the voice that really seals the deal.
No Stranger needs just an electric piano and harmonica to set the scene for Chilcott’s stunning vocal performance, battle worn yet somehow defiant in the face of desperate odds.
For a start, check the title tune, with Davey Lane providing the soaring lead guitar for Chilcott’s thrilling delivery, by the end of which you’re convinced that some solitude is perfectly all right — as long as you’ve got songs as good as these for company.
Noel Mengel
ROCK
Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues
(Nonesuch) ***
Avant-prog-bluegrass, anyone? Even that’s underselling it a bit. Imagine players with mandolin, banjo, double bass and fiddle who apparently spend more time listening to Phish and The Beach Boys’ Wind Chimes than anything from the hills of Kentucky. Convention is the enemy of this American quintet (no brothers and no one with the surname Punch). Everything about this screams that if you like mainstream music, keep out, from the cover painting by Rene Magritte to the opening Familiarity, a 10-minute suite with numerous sharp left turns and nothing in the way of a chorus. The musicianship is impeccable but it’s not really about flying fingers either: they can sound old-worldy too, like a palm court orchestra from an alternate dimension when their own Julep collides with Debussy’s Passepied. Just when the listener is looking for some solid ground, they deliver a catchy pop melody like I Blew It Off. But not too often. It’s music that’s more impressive than it is easy to like, but easy isn’t what the Punch Brothers are about.
Noel Mengel
POP
White Shadows, Secret of Life
(Wicked Nature/MGM) ***
Nick Littlemore helped sculpt Luke Steele’s arty rock impressionism into the stuff of mainstream pop success: out with The Sleepy Jackson and in with Empire of the Sun. Maybe he can do it for Craig Nicholls. It works when Nicholls’ pop sensibilities mesh with the synths and marimbas of Slip Away, for example. Apparently a huge cast was assembled for a live recording, everyone from Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie to kodo drums and Egyptian singers. Yet mostly it still comes out like Nicholls singing the same kind of songs he has always written with a different kind of backing. Sometimes the collision between Nicholls’ voice and simple songs makes something exciting, like the dreamy comedown throb of Sun and the anthemic pulse of Give Up Give Out Give In. On tracks like these you feel Nicholls is inspired by the possibilities, pushing himself into virgin territory rather than simply laying down the guitar and letting someone else colour his tunes. But too often those are carefully applied pastels when something wilder is required.
Noel Mengel
CLASSICAL
Various Artists, Elegy: Music of a New Dawn From the Shadows of World War I
(ABC Classics) ****
“The European summer of 1914 was the most beautiful in living memory, the Continent bathed in sunshine and warmth, the Belle Époque at its height, unprecedented wealth and prosperity. The Lark Ascending, composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1914, captured the spirit of the times.” So starts Martin Buzacott’s essay for this two-CD set of wartime treasures, if war can bequeath treasure. The Lark Ascending (definite treasure), played by Sinfonia Australis, Antony Walker (conductor), Dimity Hall (violin) and Bryn Terfel singing The Lads in Their Hundreds, words A.E. Housman, music by George Butterworth, killed at the Somme in 1916, set the mood. Works by Ivor Gurney, Gustav Holst, Ravel, Debussy and Frank Bridge are among many, including this premiere recording by Tasmanian Symphony, Johannes Fritzsch conducting, of Elegy.
A sad omission is a requiem, such as Benjamin Britten’s mighty War Requiem (performed in Brisbane in 1988, 1994, 2002, 2013. Three under John Curro’s baton).
Patricia Kelly
ROCK
Beth Hart, Better Than Home
(Provogue) ****
Those expecting more of the same following her outings with blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa may be surprised by Beth Hart’s new solo album. Challenged by her producers to write a bunch of positive songs, the LA-based soul and blues diva has gone beyond the brief with Better Than Home.
From the opener Might As Well Smile, to the exultant Mood That I’m In and the valedictory As Long as I Have a Song, this is Hart’s new statement of intent.
Where she used to write from the bottom of a bottle or the depths of a bruised and beaten heart,
these songs are a celebration of life, rather than a wallow in its injustices. Even the title track, though it harks back to a bittersweet childhood marked by her parents’ divorce, confirms she has arrived at a better, more contented place in her own marriage. Can a blues singer change her stripes? Sure. Yet she’s no less the tiger. This from Trouble: “When I talk, damage is done/when I walk, the angels run.” Musically, Better Than Home is surprisingly restrained, with no single instrument daring to get in the way of Hart’s formidable vocals and heartfelt sentiments.
Phil Stafford
POP
Brian Wilson, No Pier Pressure
(Capitol) **
Brian Wilson’s been on a winning streak with Smile, reimagining the great “lost’’ Beach Boys album of the ‘60s, a solid solo album (That Lucky Old Sun), a successful world tour with The Beach Boys and a good BB album to match (That’s Why God Made The Radio). But anyone seeking the artistic highs of the best of those releases will be disappointed with this. Even when BB originals Al Jardine and David Marks drop by, the sparkling harmonies are let down by insipid production and clichéd material. There is a collaboration with Sebu Simonian, of electro duo Capital Cities, a Brian-goes-disco number so out of whack with the rest of the material it leaves the listener floundering. One collaboration works well: with country star Kacey Musgraves on the sweet pop of Guess You Had To Be There. But other attempts to connect him with a younger audience miss the target. After Mike Love flicked him from The Beach Boys at the end of the world tour, Wilson needed something that showed who is really heart and soul of the band. A record as good as That’s Why God Made the Radio might have done it. But not this.
Noel Mengel
ROCK
Death Cab For Cutie, Kintsugi
(Atlantic/Warner) ****
Neil Sedaka reckoned breaking up was hard to do. Now US indie heroes Death Cab For Cutie have turned departure and loss into a work of wonder. During the recording of the band’s eighth studio release, founding guitarist and producer Chris Walla announced it would be his last with the band. Its title, Kintsugi, codifies the break, taken from a Japanese art style in which smashed ceramics are fused back to life with metal. Walla stepped back to let Rich Costey (Sigur Ros, Foster The People) produce — the first outsider to helm a DCFC album. But Walla adds plenty of flair to his farewell, from the ringing guitar of opener No Room In Frame to the hypnotic hook of Little Wanderer. Themes of loss reign throughout Ben Gibbard’s lyrics. You’veHaunted Me All My Life is masterfully maudlin as he laments, “You are the mistress I can’t make a wife”. On Good Help (Is So Hard To Find), Gibbard perhaps bids adieu to Walla as he sings “only a fool gives it away”. The rhythmic pulse driving El Dorado adds a bit of zip, but DCFC play their strongest hand harnessing the heartache. Sad songs do say so much.
Matt Connors
