(^96) Australian
ROCK ON
By Jez Ford
avhub.com.au
Sara Bareilles| What’s Inside: Songs from Waitress
Tamam Shud| Eight Years of Moonlight
Janis Joplin| Little Girl Blue (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Steven Wilson | 4½
First known for his band Porcupine Tree, Wilson has
become a go-to Grammy-winning producer for
remixing (not merely remastering) and surround-
mixing classic albums by Yes, King Crimson, ELP,
Jethro Tull and others. Perhaps he’s itching to
update some mid-period Rush—the opening
9½-minuter on this ‘between real albums’ release
is awash with neo-progressive guitar textures
and diminished fifths, trippety time signatures
and sizzling synth solos, while four shorter pieces include
a Frippian Vermillioncore and the delightful 12-string
Genesis-esque Year of the Plague. A ravishing remake of
Porcupine’s Don’t Hate Me tops it off, all magnificently
produced with some in-yer-face bass and absolute clarity—
Wilson is noted for believing that mastering is ‘actually not
necessary... people have been brainwashed over the years
that mastering engineers do something magical’. On this
evidence, he’s on to something.
Is the world ready for remastered, extended,
old Phil? The album itself comes up crisp, drum
tracks especially tight, many augmented by the
Roland CR-78 drum machine so prevalent on
this and the concurrent Genesis album ‘Duke’.
Lost delights include the restrained pop ofThis
Must Be Love, the Gabriel-esque instrumental
Drone, andIf Leaving Me Is Easywith its fine alto
sax from Don Myrick of the EWF horns (as well
as a near-inaudible Eric Clapton). The extras are seven live
tracks, nice if a bit vocal-bright and over-reverbed, plus five
demos, of which onlyThe Roof Is Leaking is of serviceable
quality. The others include what sounds like a multitrack
cassette demo ofAgainst All Odds, and Genesis song Please
Don’t Ask, so plagued by h.f. instability that it’s unlistenable
on any system with tweeters. These should have been left
in a dark corner of the internet for those wishing to seek
them out, not included on a retail compilation.
The selections for this compilation were
governed by the new Amy Berg documentary,
and sound quality rises from ropey (an early
recording of JJ mimicking Odetta’s version of
Lead Belly’sCareless Love) through numerous
live shows of varying quality to the cleaner
delights of five studio tracks, four of those
from the ‘Pearl’ sessions with John Till’s Full-Tilt
Boogie Band. For new fans, then, it’s nowhere
near as definitive as the 2009 ‘Cry Baby’ collection, but
existing fans can celebrate its live emphasis (though the
distortion-splattered 1968 Generation Club bootleg of
Piece of My Heartshould have been excluded on quality
grounds). What shines throughout this collection is Joplin’s
explosive stage energy and talent, improvising through
dead stops a minute and more in length, the crowd hung
high on every whisper and croak. There’s nothing cheap
aboutthese thrills, and we mourn her all over again.
A sequel to her 2007 album of remixes and
reconstructions (one highlight of which was
Steven Wilson’s work onDeath of Samantha),
here Yoko hands over her vocal masters for
reworkings by Death Cab For Cutie, Moby,
Sparks, son Sean Lennon, and Peter, Bjorn
and John, among others. Much of it is loud
and thumpy, and a few emerge as dreary
dance updates—Penguin Prison’s She Gets
Down On Her Kneesand surprisingly, Moby’s Hell In Paradise
both plod along atop a pounding kick drum—but where
creativity has been correctly applied it’s an effective way of
revisiting her work, and worth checking out for highlights
such as Jack Douglas’s driving guitar take on Move on Fast,
Danny Tenaglia’s synth-strings opus under Walking On Thin
Ice, and especially Sparks’ wildly dramatic setting of Give
Me Somethingwhich veers entertainingly from pathos to
bathos and back. But she is a witch.
Piano pop-folkster Bareilles is no churn-them-
outer—she’s released one album every three
years since 2004, with her third having been
rewarded by becoming a number one album
in the US. So it was especially bold to take
on an entire Broadway musical adaptation,
yet the results are spectacular, presented
here in her own recording style rather than
as a soundtrack with the cast of the show
(which starts a Broadway run this month). Nearly every
song is a stunner, the cake-baking, shop-opening first
three being particularly pure earworms of delight—
lyrically snappy, tonally tight, melodically magnificent,
her enchantment of a performance continuing solidly
through to the existential second-act crisis of the drop-
dead gorgeous balladShe Used To Be Mine. It’s a slam-
dunk of an album—and you may never see your friendly
neighbourhood bakery waitress in the same light again.
A new LP (vinyl+download) from these Australian
acid-prog-surf-rock pioneers whose previous
releases date from 1969, 1970 and 1994, plus
tracks for the classic surf movie soundtrack
‘Morning of the Earth’. This 2016 release covers
eight years of sporadic recording, revealing various
shades of hard-edged post-grunge, vocals huddled
between twinned guitars or lifted by harmonies as
onBroken Chair, one of several highlights that lead
off with the growling bass and slamming drums, as does
You Set Me Freewithits spoken verses and Nirvana-like
chorus drawl, while instrumentalOuter Reef conjures the
acid-surf of old.Monkeys with Technology rails against
dumb humans with smart devices (perhaps ironically
issued as a digital-only bonus). Declaration: Tamam Shud’s
drummer is hi-fi industry luminary Nigel Macara, which
does not, of course, affect our review (though receiving it
on vinyl mighthave). Jez Ford
Phil Collins | Face Value (Deluxe Edition)
Yoko Ono | Yes, I’m A Witch Too
amelia
(Amelia)
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