Lee Hazlewood - "This is Lee Hazlewood" (1967)

Another album by one of my favorite artists. This time without Nancy Sinatra, instead we hear Miss Suzi Jane Hokom on some of the songs, but mostly it's only Lee himself. I've never really understood Lee's releases. As usual, I already have all the songs on other albums by him, which is OK I guess, as this album is a compilation (I assume). There are some interesting things with This is Lee Hazlewood, we get to hear These Boots Are Made For Walkin' with Lee at the mic, and on Sand sings Miss Suzi Jane Hookom the parts that you're used to hear Nancy sing. Somewhat different versions than the classics, in other words.

This album has given me a little more headache than usual. Looking at Lee's official discography, this one is not included. However, it exists a very similar one, Lee Hazlewoodism - It's Cause And Cure, released the same year and where more than half of the songs are identical.

The back sides of the cover of both albums have the same content, although not the same layout, with a humorous text about the cause and cure. But on This is Lee Hazlewood, at least on my release, there is an error in the text. Instead of "The cure: Buy the damn album" it says "The cause: Buy the damn album". Things like that are always fun. You can see it on the right picture, at the bottom.

MGM has released both mentioned albums, but as I've understood the info on internet, This is Lee Hazlewood was only released in Norway and Germany. I can't swear I am absolutely right in this. On one site, someone claimed this was a unique Swedish release, and asked about 150 USD for it. So who knows.

Anyway, the music is really great. You seldom go wrong with Lee. A good selection of his earlier songs, where both black and tragic numbers are mixed with Lee's cool, dark humor. Tragic stories are told in a way you can't help smiling. The last song, My Baby Cried All Night Long. is a good example of this. The album can be recommended.


Tracklist

Side A
1. The Girls In Paris 2:31
2. Jose 4:32
3. Suzi Jane Is Back In Town 2:26
4. After Six 2:25
5. Dark In My Heart 2:03
6. The Nights 3:16
7. Home (I'm Home) 2:22

Side B
1. For One Moment 2:36
2. Sand 3:35
3. Move Around 3:04
4, These Boots Are Made For Walkin '3:09
5. So Long Babe 2:50
6. Bugles in the Afternoon 3:10
7. My Baby Cried All Night Long 3:13

Dr. John - "Gris-gris" (1968)

Dr. John, aka the Night Tripper. Or Mac Rebennack as his real name is. Gris-Gris was his debut album, a boiling keettle of psychedelic voodo blues, music that awakens the sleeping swamp spirits and attracts the undead from their hiding places.

Dr. John lived in New Orleans and was a sought after studio musician and producer. Trouble with drugs and the police (he had been a drug dealer, had run a brothel and spent a few years in prison) made him escape to Los Angeles. There, he joined a group of other musicians in exile from New Orleans, and managed to get by on occasional gigs.

Before starting the recording of Gris-Gris, it was thought that another New Orleans singer would take the the role of Dr. John, but in the end Mac Rebennack himself had to shoulder the responsibility, and maybe that was for the best, he has remained in this character until today. The inspiration for the character was Dr. John Montaine, an African magician Mac felt a spiritual closeness to. And perhaps we also should thank Sonny & Cher for Gris-Gris, it was leftover studio time from them which Dr. John could use.

The music then? Gris-Gris is not a record to be played a beautiful summer's day, when the sun is shining, the birds are singing and happy children play outside in freedom. But when darkness has fallen, humidity approaches 90%, the thunder rumbles somewhere nearby and everything, including yourself, feels hot and sweaty. Then it's time for Gris-Gris. It's psychedelic blues with a voodo ingredient, which at least I appreciate. Dr. John's growly voice is complimented by female choirs that contributes to the mystique. Suddenly you are in the deep South, where noone hears you scream.

When the album was released, it wasn't received with a lot of interest. But as the years have passed, the record has grown in esteem and is now hailed by many as a masterpiece. The spells have worked. On me too, because I like the album. Another one of my naive project of finding a used copy in the Montreal stores, of an older date. Impossible. In the end I had to get a reissue from Amazon. The album is played at your own risk. Who knows what's going to knock on the door.


Tracklist

Side A
1. Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya 5:36
2. Danse Kalinda Ba Doom 3:39
3. Mama Roux 2:59
4. Performing Fambeaux 4:56

Side B
1. Croker Courtbullion 6:00
2. Jump Sturdy 2:20
3. Walk on Guilded Splinters 7:37

Ray LaMontagne - "Ouroboros" (2016)

Mr. LaMontagne is a new acquaintance in my life. I met him one spring day when I listened to the only internet radio station I sometimes use, Radio Paradise. I needed to lighten things up a little at work.

Ouroboros is a really groovy record, fuzzy and druggy without being too much. It's like a mix of Spiritualized, Pink Floyd and Beck. It's one of these albums you sometimes meet which have no weak tracks. Produced by none other than Jim James from My Morning Jacket, who also takes part with some singing and instrument playing. A total of eight songs, but the record describes itself as Part One and Part Two. And that's exactly the way it is, two consecutive sides that create a whole. I also have LaMontagne's previous record, Supernova. That's also a good record, but I think Ouroboros is even better.

So, not much more to say, get the album, inhale and float away. Modern psychedelia at its best. LaMontagne ends the entire album with the lines 'You never gonna hear this song on the radio'. I hope he's wrong.

Tracklist

Part One
1. Homecoming - 8:28
2. Hey, No Pressure - 6:34
3. The Changing Man - 4:13
4. While It Still Beats - 4:10

Part Two
1. In My Own Way - 6:36
2. Another Day - 3:05
3. A murmuration of Starlings - 2:33
4. Wouldn't It Make a Lovely Photograph - 3:58

David Bowie - "Heroes" (1977)

A summer has passed, and a longer stay in the motherland of Sweden paused the blogging for a while. But now the Canadian everyday routine is back, and so the blog starts again.

The thread running through the last posts has been recently deceased musicians, and Bowie is perhaps the greatest legend of them all. His passing spread shock waves throughout the world. Just like Lemmy and Prince, Bowie always went his own way without too much worries what others would think. This must be respected.

Heroes offers a pretty messy and noisy side A and a much calmer side B, more towards the ambient genre. I am fascinated that Bowie became such a huge artist as he did, for his music is not always easy to grasp. This very much applies to Heroes, which is the second part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy. On the album both Brian Eno and Robert Fripp participate, and with such a company it's not strange that the musical result becomes a challenge.

I'm not entirely fond of the A-side, it's a little too messy and loud for my taste. The obvious highlight is of course the title song, perhaps the highlight of Bowie's whole career. It is a song which in itself makes a record worth buying, and though I've heard it so many times I haven't grown tired of it. The other songs are not really my thing, though. Generally concerning Bowie, his voice always creats a sort of unpleasant neurotic feeling within me, so I don't really know how to handle the listening.

When you switch to side B, it gets more interesting. It's more experimental where Bowie, with the help of amongst others Eno, creates different instrumental soundscapes. Perhaps not music for the radio or the pre-parties, nonetheless of high quality and interesting. The album ends with a more "normal" song with voice, perhaps to bring the listener back to the reality again.

Although Bowie was / is popular amongst the masses, and even though Heroes is an album that has sold large quantities, I consider the record to be a challenge. It requires a lot of listenings to be fully understood, and I don't know if I've really understood it yet.


Tracklist

Side A
1. Beauty and the Beast 3:32
2. Joe the Lion 3:05
3. Heroes 6:07
4. Sons of the silt Age 3:15
5. Blackout 3:50

Side B
1. V-2 Schneider 3:10
2. Sense of Doubt 3:57
3. Moss Garden 5:03
4. Neuköln 4:34
5. The Secret Life of Arabia 3:46

Prince - "Sign o' the Times" (1987)

Many great artists have left us recently, and of these Prince's depart must have been the most unexpected. The spontaneous feeling when I heard the news was "can this really be true?". If I felt more emotionally affected by Lemmy's death, Prince's death was a more surreal event, in that it really came from nowhere.

Prince has not been a big part of my musical life as an adult. In my teenage years his records were played more regularly, but over the years they have increasingly ended up in a retired state in the record shelf. When I now listened to Sign o' the Times, it was the first time in maybe 20 years.

Sign o' the Times is considered by many to be his greatest work. Initially it was supposed to be a triple album, but the record company slimmed it down to "only" a double. It was Prince's first album after he got rid of the backing band The Revolution. In various lists in magazines and the internet on the topic "Best album ever", "Best album of the '80s" and so on, Sign o' the Times is ranked very high. This was not reflected in the sales numbers, though, that couldn't be compared to the sales of e.g. Purple Rain, although the critics already then loved the album.

I have the greatest respect for the Prince as an artist and musician, there are not many in the industry who can match him in knowledge. But his music is not really my thing. Sign o' the Times is a rather eclectic album with many different styles - funk, psychedelia, pop, ballads. But it's often a quite dry and minimalist production that is not really to my taste. Also, I have never been a funk guy, and then it can be difficult to love Prince's music.

On some of the songs we hear his alter ego from this time, Camille, where his voice is sped up and therefore considerably brighter / more feminine. My personal favorite on the album is The Cross, perhaps the least Prince-ish song on the album, which I guess proves that this is not really my thing anymore. If you only going to have one Prince album, this could however be the record to own. Here you get the most of what Prince had to offer.


Tracklist

Side A
1. Sign o' the Times 4:57
2. Play in the Sunshine 5:05
3. Housquake 4:42
4. The Ballad of Dorothy Parker 4:01

Side B
1. It 5:09
2. Starfish and Coffee 2:50
3. Slow Love 4:22
4. Hot Thing 5:39
5. Forever in My Life 3:30

Side C
1. U Got the Look 3:47
2. If I Was Your Girlfriend 5:01
3. Strange Relationship 4:01
4. I Could Never Take the Place of Yout Man 6:29

Side D
1. The Cross 4:48
2. It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night 9:01
3. Adore 6:30

Motörhead - "Bad Magic" (2015)

I've never been a huge Motörhead fan, listening to the band is like being run over by a truck. But I've always been a Lemmy fan. I've seen him as one of the coolest persons in the music industry, and that under the somewhat unpolished surface there was a gentle and funny guy. Someone I can identify with. I have admired his ability to withstand the surrounding's expectations and just do his thing (although, of course, after a while this exactly becomes the expectations). As a man who is an obeying part in society's machinery, I wished that I too would have more of the ability of liberty and go my own way. Lemmy lived the life I would want to live. He was a hard tocking rebel with a kind heart.

So when Lemmy passed away about six months ago, I became more emotionally touched than usual when a celebrity you've never met dies. The world lost a really nice guy. So to somehow honor the memory of him, I immediately went out and bought Motörhead's latest and of course last studio album, their 22nd.

In my record collection there's a couple of other Motörhead albums and a number of Hawkwind records, the band Lemmy played in before he formed Motörhead. But as mentioned, I'm no great knower of their music, Generally the album received positive reviews when it was released, in which a thread was that it sounds like Motörhead always does. No greater variation between the 22 albums the band has done. Lemmy insisted that they didn't play metal, they played rock'n'roll. Hard rock'n'roll, I would say. It's fast, quite aggressively in my ears, and in punk circles Motörhead has always been a popular band,

One must respect bands that are trios. You can't hide behind someone else. Here Motörhead is in the fine company of bands like The Police and Rush. Lemmy has said that his distinctive bass playing comes from that he plays bass as if it's a guitar, since he started his musical career as a guitarist. I myself am an old hobby bassist, at the lowest level, and can only say I respect anyone who can play the bass and sing at the same time.

Lemmy's autobiography, White Line Fever, can be recommended, in which his adventurous life journey is described. Bad Magic is probably as good as any of Motörheads albums, but of course not everyone will appreciate the rock monster Motörhead. Inside the LP box, some good stuff await the owner. In addition to the (almost) mandatory mp3 download, you'll get the CD, a cool patch to sew on your jacket's shoulder, a back patch for the same jacket and finally a Bad Magic poster. Very appriciated. The last song on the album is a cover of the Stones Sympathy for the Devil, which became the final words of Lemmy and Motörhead.

Tracklist

Side A
1. Victory Or Die 3:09
2. Thunder & Lightning 3:05
3. Firestorm Hotel 3:34
4. Shoot Out All Of Your Lights 3:14
5. The Devil 2:53
6. Electricity 2:17
7. Evil Eye 2:20

Side B
1. Teach Them How To Bleed 3:11
2. The End 4:05
3. Tell Me Who To Kill 2:57
4. Choking On Your Screams 3:33
5. When The Sky Comes Looking For You 2:55
6. Sympathy For The Devil 5:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

Sufjan Stevens - "Carrie & Lowell" (2015)

When I was young and more often part of the night life, when the awaiting night was an adventure with an unknown end, when the feeling of freedom permeated life and led the way forward, then Sufjan Stevens latest album wouldn't have been played on the pre-party. Then you wanted to hear fast-paced, energetic music that gave the spirits momentum. Carrie & Lowell would not have found a place there.

Today I'm almost never out with the night crowds, I don't remember the last pre-party I was a part of. The phenomenon "pre-party" doesn't even exist in my life anymore. I think that's good and age appropriate, but I'm not sure. Have I lost something on the way?

Carrie & Lowell is a fairly low-key, sparsely arranged record, where a large part of the inspiration comes from Sufjan's mother's death, in 2012. With this as its main inspiration it's not surprising that the album is sad, quiet and beautiful. It allows me to get into a melancholy mood far from the young years' pre-parties. Yes, rather the opposite. I like the album. Many believe it's Sufjan's best and that it was the best album of 2015. I haven't heard enough albums from 2015, so I can't have an opinion, all I can say it's a really good record.

Sufjan had a complicated relationship with his mother. She suffered from mental disorders and a substance abuse, she abandoned him as a child and was a figure that only occasionally appeared and disappeared again in his life. It made her death a bit more complicated to relate to, I'm guessing. It's beautiful, fragile creations on the album, which fit well on a cloudy day, when you feel alone, you realize how you get older, and the earlier, more adventurous years increasingly fade to a memory. Ah, sweet melancholy.

So I can definitely recommend the album. Should I be somewhat critical, it may be that not a lot of variety is offered. The songs keep the same pace, the same sort of arrangements and convey the same mood. But that's OK, it makes you stay in a calmer mindstate.

As 20 years younger, I would also have liked this album. But then it had probably been played the day after, when the night, which always ended the same way - you went home alone, wondering what you did wrong - and in the morning you kept thinking about what you really wanted to do with your life. A question that is still unanswered, by the way.

Tracklist

Side A
1. Death with Dignity 3:59
2. Should Have Known Better 5:07
3. All of Me Wants All of You 3:41
4. Drawn to the Blood 3:18
5. Fourth of July 4:39

Side B
1. The Only Thing 4:44
2. Carrie & Lowell 3:14
3. Eugene 2:26
4. My Beloved John 5:04
5. No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross 2:40
6. Blue Bucket of Gold 4:43