- The Guardian
14 Friday 30 August 2019
MetalArtist ToolAlbum Fear InoculumLabel Volcano/RCA★★★★☆
It says something
about the power
of Tool that, even
after 13 years,
four blokes who
like weird time
signatures and lyrics about purging,
fear and fl esh can nearly knock a
pop star off the global top spot. At
the start of August, the enigmatic
prog-metallers fi nally made their
entire back catalogue available
on streaming services for the fi rst
time: every one of their albums
went Top 10 on iTunes, while Sober
became the highest charting song
after Ariana Grande’s Boyfriend.
The band realised that they had
to “roll with the times ”, guitarist
Adam Jones said recently – although
pleasingly they are still fl ogging such
ancient-sounding artefacts as “a
tri-fold Soft Pack Video Brochure”
with their new album (£79.99, in
the deluxe version ).
It’s a diff erent world they return
to , but their fi fth record makes
a case for immersion in the age
of distraction. Only one of their
tantric chugs comes in under 10minutes – Chocolate Chip Trip ,
a preposterous Whiplash -style
drum solo couched in analogue
synth burbles – and there are few
cathartic, sing-along moments.
Instead, these are songs like spells,
almighty whirls of riff age intended
to pull you under. Most are in the
great prog tradition of 7/4 timing ,
the eff ect being a hypnotic riptide as
they try to out-hammer Thor.
There’s something extra-
primordial about their new music.
Judging by the djembe drumming
and polyrhythms of the title track,
Tool want us to embrace our
primal selves, paint our bodies and
dance around a burning pyre like
it’s 7am at Glastonbury’s Stone
Circle, possibly before the titular
tempest of the album’s fi nal track
obliterates us all.
Perhaps that’s because, as Tool
have said, Fear Inoculum is about
ageing, and pondering relevancy.
Certainly the track Invincible
seems to question the band’s
place, as singer Maynard James
Keenan details a defeated “warrior
/ struggling to remain ”. It’s as if
Tool are the lumbering giant, their
purpose after all this time uncertain.
That couldn’t be further from
the truth. Fear Inoculum is a legacy
album that shows the band are not
some rock relic but undisputed
masters of metallic churn. And if the
end of the world is nigh , at least now
we have its soundtrack.
Kate HutchinsonRockArtist Sheryl Crow
Album Threads
Label Big Machine
★★★☆☆
With her 11th and
reportedly fi nal
album, Sheryl
Crow undertakes
a confi dent albeit
meandering victory
lap. Across 17 songs and 75 minutes
of frayed Americana and back-
porch country she collaborates
with no fewer than 23 artists,
each representing either Crow’s
musical idols turned friends (Keith
Richards, Stevie Nicks) or new-ish
musicians she sees as the future
(St Vincent, Maren Morris). Most
of the 12 originals, four covers and
one re working of her own anti war
anthem Redemption Day loosely fall
under the umbrella of protest songs,
with the Chuck D-assisted Story of
Everything touching on political
idiocy, while opener Prove You
Wrong tackles sexism and, as she
recently said, the sentiment of: “if
anyone thinks that I can’t, let me just
show you that I can. ”
It’s a stance Crow has continually
been forced to take since she
swapped being Michael Jackson’s
backing singer in the late 1980s for
her own hugely successful career
dabbling in rock, country and pop.
Not cool enough to hang with the
mid-90s rock crowd, Crow found
herself dismissed as MOR-lite. But her
biggest hits were often Trojan horses
for more challenging topics ( Everyday
I s a Winding Road , for instance,
touches on a friend’s suicide),
infused with an easy melancholia.
While Threads’ pop nous isn’t quite
as obvious, and its themes more
heavily sign posted, it still off ers some
beautiful moments, specifi cally the
crumpled rock of Cross Creek Road
that recalls the highlights of her 1996
self-titled album. Elsewhere, the
aforementioned Prove You Wrong,
featuring Nicks and Morris, is a breezy
bar-room stomper, while the fragile,
Vince Gill-assisted closer For the Sake
of Love showcases Crow’s lived-in
voice to perfection.
Threads starts to, ahem,
unravel when the tempo
is kicked up a gear. So the
hobbled strut of St Vincent
collaboration Wouldn’t Want
to Be Like You awkwardly
showcases Crow’s rap
aspirations, while Story of
Everything’s six-minute
genre-hop takes you on an
occasionally embarrassing
journey from dustbowl
honky-tonk to really-
makes-you-think hip-hop.
Some collaborators could
have been edited too, not least
tantric yoga’s Sting, who mews
unhelpfully on an otherwise
welcome cover of George
Harrison’s Beware of Darkness.
As a fi nal hurrah, however,
Threads is an ambitious,
gloriously over stuff ed reminder
of Crow’s talents. Michael Cragg
Reviews Music
‘W
hen I’m playing, I’m never
through. It’s unfi nished, ”
Miles Davis said in a revealing
interview with NME in 1985.
“I like to fi nd a place to leave
for someone else to fi nish
it. That’s where the high comes in .” As it undoubtedly
would have when John Coltrane was reacting to the
teasing daydreams curling from Davis’s trumpet-bell.
But Davis never got to fi nd that place with 1985’s pop-
oriented Rubberband sessions, ditched after three
months’ work by his new record label, Warner Bro s. The
tapes have fi nally been reinvented – 28 years after his
death – by Davis’s drummer nephew Vince Wilburn Jr,
and original producers Randy Hall and Attala Zane Giles.
Vocal celebs Lalah Hathaway and Ledisi take the parts
originally intended for Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau.
As so often in this late period, Davis’s playing is
beguiling in bursts. Rubberband of Life is a remake of
the original title track – also present, with its scalding
Mike Stern guitar break – and though the new mix’s
promisingly D’Angelo-like vibe could valuably have
been extended on the album, its polyphonic soul-vocal
choruses are ethereally compelling as the delicate
muted trumpet line picks its way through. Davis is
quick and fl uent on the Prince/James Brownish Give
It Up , Hathaway is powerful on the neo-soulful So
Emotional , and the ballad See I See – the standout, with
its zigzagging runs – glows with the pure-Miles light
that this cut-and-paste job needs about twice as much
of to really justify his name as its author. Rubberband is
better than 1991’s Doo-Bop , the star’s fi nal attempt at pop
glamour (not least because it doesn’t include any clunk y
adulatory raps), but as a career-twilight curio it’s nothing
like as interesting as its fusion-powered 1985 predecessor
You’re Under Arrest , nor a memorable successor such as
Marcus Miller’s thoughtful, compositionally integrated
production of Amandla at the end of that decade.Also out this month
Game-changing German label ECM celebrates its 50th
anniversary with live recordings from two fi ne Miles
Davis-inspired trumpeters – Enrico Rava ’s classy
collaboration with American saxophonist Joe Lovano on
Roma , and the ever-surprising Tom Harrell with former
Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson on Common Practice.
Imaginative Canadian saxist/fl autist Jane Bunnett’s
Maqueque collective unwrap their impishly vivacious
and fast-moving variations on Afro-Cuban postbop,
jazzy soul vocals, and percussion uproar with On Firm
Ground/Tierra Firme (Linus Entertainment).
John FordhamArtist Miles DavisAlbum RubberbandLabel Rhino/Warner★★★☆☆
Traces of majestic
Miles
PopArtist Ezra FurmanAlbum Twelve NudesLabel Bella Union★★★★☆
When Ezra Furman
released Day of the
Dog in 2013, it was
a last throw of the
dice before giving up
music. The ecstatic
reaction to that album didn’t just
convince him to continue, it stoked
his ambition on the two albums that
followed, Perpetual Motion People
and Transangelic Exodus , the latter
of which was as confounding as it
was brilliant. Twelve Nudes, which
is almost entirely a punk rock album
( only I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend
harks back to doo-wop and
rock’n’roll) might sound like a step
back , but really it’s tightly focu sed
on one aspect of his writing: despair.A raging hopelessness
permeates Twelve Nudes.
Sometimes it’s that of others:
“What makes a man take a
hammer in his hand / Shatter
every last window of the company
store?” Furman asks on Trauma.
Sometimes it’s his own: “I refuse
to call this living ‘life’ and I refuse
to die,” he pleads on My Teeth
Hurt. And sometimes it is the
whole of America, as on the song
of that name: “I don’t give a shit
what Ben Franklin intended /
What slaveowner men said – glad
they’re all dead.” Even when he
off ers hope ( Evening Prayer AKA
Justice ), the ferocity of the delivery- both his and the band’s – makes it
plain there will be no redemption
without struggle.
It’s the harshest record he has
made. The absence of saxophonist
Tim Sandusky means there is
no softness to the corners, just
jagged edges – but the melodies
are still indelible, the hooks still
exhilarating. It’s the sound of
someone exploding. Michael Hann
r the Sake
ived-inntast
ews
eess.
er,nder
CraggJazz
album of
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