Brand New
Robert Plant Carry Fire
Science Fiction PROCRASTINATE! MUSIC TRAITORS
NONESUCH/WARNER BROS
Eleventh solo album with the Sensational Space Shifters, featuring a duet with Chrissie Hynde.
M
aybe it’s the times we live in, with the knowledge and diverse resources available to musicians, but despite the parlous state of the industry, for veterans with more than a scintilla of curiosity, age is not necessarily a process of inevitable artistic deterioration. Robert Plant has just turned 69 and there’s a distinctly melancholic, late autumnal feel to some of the lyrics on Carry Fire. However, in its intricate, hybrid weave of folk, rock, North African rhythms and stylings, and even discreet fibres of electronica, this album represents a higher creative point than, say, his somewhat poodle-haired solo work of the early 1980s. Carry Fire once more features the Sensational Space Shifters, whose slightly cheery moniker belies their excellence. Their instrumental contribution is worth listing in full as it conveys not just the credits but the flavours of the album’s bill of fare. There’s John Baggott (keyboards, Moog, loops, percussion, drums, brass arrangement, t’bal, snare drum, slide guitar, piano, electric piano, bendir); Justin Adams (guitar, acoustic guitar, oud, E-bow quartet, percussion, snare drum, tambourine); Dave Smith (bendir, tambourine, djembe, drum kit); and Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson (dobro, guitar, acoustic guitar, pedal steel, twelve-string). Albanian cellist Redi Hasa performs on three tracks, as does Seth Lakeman on viola and fiddle. Their interplay is evident immediately on The May Queen, in which Moog synth drones, Arabic percussion, russet hints of folk and a palpable boogie pulse mix naturally, evoking a sense of a mature and distilled contemporary blend rather than the tired, dated feel that hampers the releases of other eminent 60-somethings. Most noticeable is Plant’s voice. It may be that he simply can’t scale the vocal heights of his youth. It’s commendable, however, that he doesn’t merely attempt to recycle the 70s Plant tricks and tropes as a mere exercise in preserving the Robert Plant Brand. His voice has developed into something quite different with age: smoky, intimate, delicate, hankering, with none of the epic, blues-orientated screeching that was once his stock-in-trade. It’s an approach that suits the likes of Season’s Song, one of a number that seem to speak of an old romantic increasingly
aware of his own mortality: ‘My senses have escaped me/My mind is on the run.’ The arrangement patters discreetly like snow on a window pane. Still, there’s life in the old dog. New World… is announced by a heavy, billowing guitar intro, crashing onto a ‘virgin shore’. The allusion to ‘immigrant’ is one of a few fragmentary Zeppelin references that blow back on the winds of these songs, adding to a sense of Plant as a figure etched and weathered by great adventures from long ago, unsure how many lie ahead of him. Dance With You Tonight dramatically exacerbates that sense, haunted by the backward taping on the soundtrack. This, however, is an album rooted in the present day. Carving Up The World Again …A Wall And Not A Fence feels explicitly geopolitical, with its Native Americanstyle drum beats. Guitars breaking over the horizon are a reminder that this album isn’t entirely an exercise in contemporary fusion. Rock courses through it, as is further evident on the rumbling Bones Of Saints, and Plant’s defiant refrain of ‘No, no, no!’ That said, Plant shows a great grasp of modern atmospheres on A Way With Words, as if such an understanding comes with experience. There’s the evocation of evening clouds drifting, night insects gathering in the warm dusk, memories rearing – the unique emotional intensity of late middle age. The title track, meanwhile, is practically a sonic transcription of a Marrakesh that’s still bustling at sunset, traditional instruments plucked beneath starry skies of synth. There’s a sole cover version – Ersel Hickey’s Bluebirds Over The Mountain – which is given a revved-up treatment, with a sawn-off riff and percussive drive fit to rattle the remains of John Bonham. Chrissie Hynde provides guest vocals, and it’s a sign of something or other that in 2017 their vocals actually sound more similar than you might expect, as if to suggest that everyone eventually arrives in the same place. That is a somewhat romantic idea – rock has its fair share of stragglers and casualties. But as for Plant, the truth is that Carry Fire is about as good an album as we could reasonably expect from him in 2017.
‘As good an album as we could expect from Plant in 2017.’
QQQQQQQQQQ David Stubbs
Farewell album from Long Island alt.rockers. Arriving as an emo band in 2000, Brand New have since sculpted their sound and indulged their ambitions to create a niche for themselves in the pantheon of alternative rock. With Science Fiction, their first album in eight years and the last before they will split in 2018, they have written their own eulogy. Seething with anxiety and frontman Jesse Lacey’s trademark sarcastic self-flagellation, and with a gorgeous production that gives the music space to breathe, it’s an emotional, intelligent work of grace and beauty. Early growing pains have been replaced with the older and wiser Lacey’s view of the big picture, the spiderweb-delicate Could Never Be Heaven taking a distinctly grown-up look at the nature of relationships. And when they let loose and allow guitarist Vinnie Accardi to stretch himself, as on the sprawling, grunge-meets-prog 137, the power they possess is almost physically palpable. Goodbyes are never easy, but they’re going out on a high, on their own terms, leaving us with genuine musical treasure to remember them by. QQQQQQQQQQ Emma Johnston
Sons Of Apollo Psychotic Symphony INSIDE OUT MUSIC
All-star progressive metal troupe deliver the goods. The rogues gallery of ‘usual culprits’ cast in Sons Of Apollo invites two iron-clad certainties: guaranteed virtuoso musicianship and a healthy dose of cynicism. Uniting members past and present of Dream Theater, Guns N’ Roses, Mr Big and Journey, Sons Of Apollo succeed in the proficiency stakes but, unusually, they’ve crafted an exceptional debut to shoot down all suggestions of fiscal opportunism, convenience or, God forbid, lethargy or laziness. Former DT alumni Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian bring the inevitable prog element, with Billy Sheehan and Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal administering a hummable hard-rock twist, but the bridge linking those two styles, the factor that brings everything to life, is Jeff Scott Soto. JSS was
the wrong singer for Journey but he sounds magnificent here. Fuck the term ‘supergroup’: that’s not what this is about. Sons Of Apollo are simply a group that are super. QQQQQQQQQQ Dave Ling
Steve Hill Solo Recordings Volume 3 NO LABEL
Roll over, Don Partridge. If this is Vol 3, then Montreal one-man blues band Steve Hill is not a novelty one-off. It may be a low-fi experience and you may have heard many of these riffs before, but you can’t fault Hill’s committed determination or his talents as a performer. The gruff boogie of Damned and the mud-stirring Dangerous set up the album’s hard-rocking credentials, and Hill has clearly learnt from the masters, from Hendrix onwards. Subtle it ain’t, but he can certainly play, as the acoustic love song Emily and his dextrous take on Going Down The Road Feeling Bad clearly show. The niggling thought remains: how good would he be as a singer/guitarist in a band? QQQQQQQQQQ Hugh Fielder
Bigfoot Bigfoot FRONTIERS MUSIC Hard rockers pumped up and primed. A five-piece band from Wigan, Bigfoot have spent the past three years pounding their way round the club circuit. Tellingly, though, every time they’ve stepped out onto a festival stage, they’ve left their mark. You don’t have to get far into their debut album to work out why – their full-on, well-honed hard rock would rouse and focus any sluggish mid-afternoon crowd. Commanding vocals, a twin guitar attack that meshes fierce staccato rhythms and lightning lead guitar lines, and a stomping beat all combine to grab your attention. And they hold it through killer tracks like The Fear, Karma and Eat Your Words, swaggering showpieces like Freak Show and Prisoner Of War, and anthemic, harmonydrenched power ballads like Forever Alone and The Devil In Me. They have a broad range of styles – too broad maybe. They need to hone in on what they’re best at and concentrate on that. QQQQQQQQQQ Hugh Fielder CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 87