A strange retrospective...

It is strange, the things one ends up discussing at work.
Here is one from today and it is anything but new music! (This album was released on September 18, 1970 in the UK: Reprise Records, RSLP 9004). Here it is...

Album artwork and design: Christine McVie.

I don't expect you saw this post coming and... the above picture is one I took, of my example of RSLP 9004 about an hour ago! It is music from the days that I am too young to remember, but I have owned this LP for twenty-three years now, and I love it to bits.

To Listen to in 2008 - Part 4

While you might think it perhaps just more of the usual fare I have to admit that I've had very considerable help here.
Thanks to Beki, who happens to have provided most of the trans-Atlantic input including several artists of which, if I had ever even heard of them before, I have no recollection of whatsoever. [I'm getting old you see...]
This first I was aware of; A Fine Frenzy is the alter ego of Los Angeleno singer-songwriter Alison Sudhol but it is not my place to attempt to even paraphrase the comment so I haven't:

"The singer has a great voice but I think I would end up seriously depressed if I listened to a whole album in one go."

Three more were mentioned and the artist that, as of now, I haven't investigated further is Tyler Hilton. The other two were these, again in her own words:

• Kate Voegele's album 'Don't look away' is actually rather good, she reminds me a bit of Michelle Branch.
• Colbie Caillat's album 'Coco' has also found it's way onto my laptop and I wasn't too sure at first but she's really growing on me... it's coffee shop music :)

Now these are two that had completely passed me by although, by virtue of being older I suppose, the name Caillat rang distant bells and, after some on-line investigations, this is why. Her father, Kenneth Caillat, was co-producer of one of the biggest selling pop albums of all time, Fleetwood Mac Rumors (1977) and also the, often maligned, Lindsey Buckingham-inspired follow-up double album Tusk (1979).

This was regarded as a failure, at least commercially, but it has now sold rather more than four million copies and for most that would be an heroic achievement - that it is not is comparative and simply because Rumors is now past the thirty million mark! The fact remains that almost everyone knows of Rumors, at least in passing, while Tusk is also a very good album but largely forgotten. I don't know where all the other copies are languishing but here is one that remains both loved and listened-to:

Warner Brothers K66088 in all its original vinyl glory.

This has proven very interesting and not just because I've discovered perhaps rather obviously that I'm not the only one willing to experiment by listening to things that can, in so far as they are discernible as a category, at best be lumped together as being 'beneath UK radar defences'. Some may in time become household names while others will doubtless disappear without trace, but equally that can happen to home-grown acts too and there is certainly no shortage of those either, in any flavour you might desire.

OK. I admit that I've gone a bit off-message here and so the ramblings will have to be continued in another post soon. This is why it is fun, not merely just another job.

Heroes & Thieves - still no release in the UK!

I've been waiting for this since forever but there is still apparently no official UK release, and it was exactly the same with Harmonium three years ago. Quite what is going on here is a mystery to me but, such nonsense notwithstanding, I now have a genuine US release that is distributed by Universal Music. That it had to come from the US is merely an annoyance that can again be blamed, almost certainly, on major label machinations and not the artist.

Vanessa Carlton - Heroes & Thieves (2007)
(click image to view at 900 x 900 px.)

The album itself it is as stunning as it should be and a true progression from the first two, Be Not Nobody (2001) and Harmonium (2004). It is less obviously piano-heavy than the latter but also rather more assured than the former. It is quite possible that the reason Harmonium sold poorly compared with her début was, at least in part, because it was less easily accessible to the myriad floating-buyers and maybe even lyrically unpalatable (the lead single White Houses in particular) to the conservatively minded. I actually, and not just to be awkward, much prefer Harmonium to Be Not Nobody and so I can certainly see where Heroes & Thieves is going.

She has certainly not sold out but the piano aspect, although very much still there, is not so predominant. Her songwriting is actually at most only a little less quirky than it was on Harmonium but this album is less likely to provoke a boycott by the conservative element and actually marks a return to favour in the US. The odd thing is that I suspect the factor that, at least in part, has facilitated this is that the album was produced by none other than Linda Perry -
a former member of 'Four Non-Blondes' - who is also no stranger to a conservative backlash, as she experienced first hand after a US TV appearance, but has since become one of the most reliable US pop producers (and also songwriters) of recent times and particularly so for female artists.

I haven't really settled on favourite album tracks yet but, having listened to it several times now, I like it every bit as much as Harmonium overall and thus also more than Be Not Nobody. My current opinion is that it that there isn't a weak track on this album and it just seems more natural and less fractious than the latter and also so much more complete than the former. Excellent though Harmonium is, and I still listen to it regularly and not only for its highlight tracks, Heroes & Thieves is thus probably even better!
Interestingly enough track 5 - The One - features what might seem a rather risky undertaking that works beyond the extent that it doesn't seem in the least out of place. The co-vocalist on this track is an icon of 1970s pop - none other than Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac (and also considerable solo) fame.

Heroes & Thieves is more commercial than Harmonium, that is certain, but the truth is that doesn't necessarily mean it can't also be better.