Album Reviews

“If you follow every dream, you might get lost,” Neil Young admonishes lovingly on “The Painter,” the opener to his new, excruciatingly personal album—his first since Old Ways to be recorded in Nashville. Young isn’t advising against following every dream, just to be prepared for unexpected turns in the road and to take it as it comes.

Analogue Productions’ third series of limited edition 45rpm 180 gram “twofers” will surely be as popular as the first two sets, with key titles selling out and fetching big bucks on the used market. The musically well-balanced offerings from the Riverside, Pablo and Prestige catalogs controlled by Fantasy Records include The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album, Bill Evans’ How My Heart Sings and Interplay, Miles Davis’s Workin’ and many other long sought after jazz and blues titles.

For some reason, audio enthusiasts have a need to latch onto female vocalists with a passion that borders on the fanatical. Once they find her, they never let go. The careers of Amanda McBroom, Jennifer Warnes, Diana Krall and Janis Ian have all benefited from this compulsive/obsessive behavior. I have nothing against it. I just find it fascinating.

These ten acoustic tunes cut by Buddy Guy on 6 and 12 string guitar, and Junior Wells on harmonica back in 1981 during a visit to Sysmo Studios in Paris, France states the case for the acoustic blues as well as any album I can think of, but if you’re not into the genre, don’t expect this reissue to pull you around. Well, take that back: the sound may drag you in.

As with William Shatner's infamous cover of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” Paul Anka's big band cover of Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was not meant to be a goof. However, unlike Shatner's mangling, Anka pulls it off brilliantly, thanks in part to the suave, sensitive arrangements, but mostly because the Vegas veteran clearly takes the tunes seriously and sees their intrinsic musical and lyrical merit. Whoever did the A&R work made inspired choices as the mix of tunes is eclectic and sometimes daring.

Does American music get much better than this? No. Cash's twangy Sun sides represent the purist distillation of his art: the mournful, unadorned nasally voice bathed in perfectly timed tape delay backed by the “Tennessee Two.” Could there be a White Stripes without Johnny Cash? Not likely. His influence was enormous, yet no one dared to imitate Johnny Cash, so singular was his musical persona.