Recording Reviews

Laura Nyro Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro Columbia/Legacy C2K 48880 (1997), 2-CD Laura Nyro was in so many sensual aspects a New York Tendaberry. Her passing in early April at the tender age of 49 (succumbing to ovarian cancer) leaves us with significantly less potent a vision of urban utopia. Nyro's was one mother of a hard-won innocence. Handpicking her final flower arrangement, this two-CD set of her self-selected best continues Nyro's trusting and generous aural intimacy, as reflected in her wary lines from 1970's wintry reverie "Christmas & The Beads of Sweat": "clothespins on wash ropes/ window to window tie/ socks and bells and nightgowns/ Tassels in the morning sky/ Womanchild on the sidestreet/ flashin' in blackpatch/ lipstick on her reefer/ waiting for match..." Nyro could be both trusting and wary, even as she wrote, played, and sang from a feverish sweat on an icicle-hung Christmas morning. This duality accompanied Nyro's artistic development as pastoral slum goddess. She played her first major gig at the age of 19, spending a week at a North Beach jazz cellar, being discovered by columnist Herb Caen (who also passed away this year). This was before being booed off the stage of the Monterey Jazz Festival by a mob wasted to see Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The street-smart New Yorker could already see San Francisco's flower children turning Baudelairian black. On the same Verve LP that later became David Geffen's ticket out of the mailroom at Columbia Records, when he brokered Nyro's lucrative publishing and longterm recording deal, First Songs could be heard spanning the barely pubescent effervescence of "Wedding Bell Blues" through to the precocious morbidity of "And When I Die." As the current collection demonstrates with five cuts from that debut, Nyro could embody much that was clearly beyond her years and experiences. Barbra Streisand, certainly the last of the Brooklyn miners, took a brief detour to the rock charts with Nyro's "Stoney End," a defiantly class conscious number sung from the point of view of a miner's child rebelling against the enforced limitations of that inherited life. Nyro maintained a delicate balance. One necessary piece missing from that heady period is "Buy & Sell," a languorous mise-en-scène that now sounds like an outtake from some 60s wise West Side Story sequel. Nyro's vocal line was among her surest and deserves to be included here as she cooed in her summery youth: "Cocaine and quiet beers/ sweet candy and caramel/ pass the time and dry the tears/ on a street called buy and sell." Nyro passed up a fine segue as the listener is led from the set of her teen coming-of-age songs into the major and minor changes in her piano-led combo through the complex prelude to "Gibsom Street." Co-producers Charlie Callelo, Roy Halee, Arif Mardin, and Felix Cavaliere each place Nyro's quirky chrysalis as a composer and arranger against backgrounds appropriately Mediterranean in flavor — Alice Coltrane's harp, Mihaly Szihai's Magyar cimbalom, Joe Farrell's reeds, George Young's flutes, Ashod Garabedian's oud, Bernie Glow's lone trumpet between Chuck Rainey's and Richard Davis' spacey bass fills alongside Michael Mainieri's breezy vibes bending and swaying like a batik against the sky. Nyro's wildly flexible touring bands recorded live in 1975-76, resulting in the long out of print Season of Lights. Paralleling Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, equally pathbreaking in its consideration of America's spiritual history occasioned by the bicentennial hoopla, "Sweet Blindness" and "Money" both get rhythmically slinky treatments with the band's stage dynamics well captured in this first digital edition. With bitterness I must report that the outdoor Oakland horns of Jeanie Fineberg and Ellen Seeley (driving a heavier version of "The Confession," a more womanly "Cat Song," and radically anti-corporate "Morning News") remain out of print. The folksinger I hold perhaps in highest regard nevertheless remarked to me (after I confided that despite having never met her, Laura Nyro's death hit me as hard as a roommate's would): "Oh, didn't she work in pop, or something?" Such a question won't ever be formed by a listener donning headphones and laying down to spend some quality time listening to these two discs. Eli is indeed coming, albeit without the "Lonely Women" on "The Poverty Train." - Mitch Ritter (Oakland Gardens, NY)

Menage à quatre is the fourth CD from Canadian four-piece Ad Vielle Que Pourra, and it's one that finds them re-formed and rejuvenated. From the opening salvo, a bagpipe tune with driving guitar accompaniment, lashes of hurdy-gurdy, and catchy foot tapping, it's clear that this is a band with both energy and finesse. New member Pierre Imbert, a veteran of the French folk scene who has played with the bands Le Grand Rouge and Lo Jai, fits in perfectly with Ad Vielle's sound and ensures that the vielle-à-roue is part of even more of the group's arrangements — good news for gurdy fans! In addition to Ad Vielle's other three members, Daniel Thonon, Alain Leroux and Jean-Louis Cros, the CD features former members, friends and family members Benoit Bourque, Gaston Bernard, Luc Thonon, Felix Thonon and Claude Schnéegans. With such a large complement of musicians, they are able to include a wide range and dense interplay of instruments on every track.

Diatonic accordion, mandolin, clarinet, various guitars and hurdy-gurdies, Flemish bagpipes, recorders, and all manner of percussion instruments combine in lively and interesting ways. The sound ranges from pretty straight French folk, to typically Québécois turlutter, to world beat, and on into "rock and reel hurdy-gurdy tunes" and "a Greek dance played on a bluegrass mandolin by an Acadian musician, accompanied by a French and a Belgian hurdy-gurdist and an Arab darbouka"; if world salad is what you're after, there's a healthy side portion here. As usual, the singing isn't their strongest point, but there are very nice versions of "La Fille du Marechal de France" and an original song by Bourque that are both sung with true flair. Another original song by Daniel Thonon, sung in part by his nine-year old son, is a little too calculated a heartstring-tugger for me, however.

— Steve Winick (Philadelphia, PA)

If you want to call Jade Bridge a Chinese super group, you'll get no argument from me. The quartet comprises China-born American residents Tang Liangxing on pipa (lute), Sisi Chen on yangqin (hammered dulcimer), Chen Tao on dizi (bamboo flute), and Zhang Bao-Li on erhu and gaohu (fiddles). Each performer is a highly accomplished soloist, and all of them are graduates of the rigorous musical education system of contemporary China. Four selections place each individual in the solo spotlight: the yangqin and dizi cuts are short, upbeat ones, the piece highlighting erhu (with subtle, understated yangqin accompaniment) is the soothing and beautiful "Moon Reflected at Second Springs," and "Ambushed from Ten Sides," a composition depicting a decisive battle in 206 B.C. from the winners' side, features some intense and wild pipa playing. The remaining seven instrumental tracks are ensemble pieces with the erhu or dizi usually providing the melodic lead. The material comes from different sources, ranging from the joyful, playful "Thunder Ends the Dry Season," from the Cantonese repertoire; to the refined, evocative "Journey to Gusu," done in Kunqu opera style; to the stately "Street Procession" (of a new Chinese bride) from the Jiangnan region. All of Jade Bridge's virtuosos make important contributions to the success of this stunning recording.

What a fascinating array of sounds, delivered with grace and style, awaits your ears on Moonlight in Vietnam! The five-member Khac Chi Ensemble, based in Vancouver, British Columbia since 1992, was formed in 1982 and revolves around the husband/wife team of Ho Khac Chi and Hoang Ngoc Bich. Both are multi-instrumentalists and vocalists, born and musically trained in Vietnam, who helped spur a current trend in that country to revitalize and revive interest in all kinds of indigenous Vietnamese instruments and music, especially from the mountain-dwelling or "highland" minority peoples.

Some of the wonderful traditional instruments featured here are the t'rung, a suspended bamboo xylophone, the ko ni, a two-string stick fiddle with a resonating disc placed in the player's mouth (Ngoc Bich can coax some dynamic wah-wah sounds out of her ko ni), and the k'longput, a series of large bamboo pipes (placed on their sides) which the musician never touches — the performer cups both hands and claps quietly in front of the pipes, forcing air down them. My favorite instrument is the dan bau, a plucked one-string zither made with a long narrow sound box and a curved water buffalo horn. The variety of sounds Khac Chi gets from this one-stringed instrument is truly amazing, and his electric dan bau sounds like that experimental electronic instrument the theremin. And that's just the beginning. Add in bamboo reed mouth organs, bamboo flutes, wood clappers, drums, bamboo buzzers, and bells on a selection of seven instrumentals and six songs, which cover a wide range of Vietnamese folk music from a light, airy piece portraying the beauty of a small stream, to a call-and-response harvest song sung by farmers in the fields, to catchy dance tunes, and you're in for an extraordinary aural experience.

Both albums contain plenty of documentation and information in the liner notes to get you up to speed on the music, the instruments, and the musicians. If you look around, you can find fine CDs of Chinese and Vietnamese music, but you can't find any better than these.
— Al Riess (Buffalo, NY)

Over the last few albums, Nanci Griffith has moved increasingly toward pop and, particularly with her last album, Flyer, into rock and roll. Her new release, Blue Roses From the Moon, both continues the move toward rockier material and marks a shift back towards the gentler, more acoustic sound that characterized her best, middle-period work. Overseen by hot rock producer Don Gehman, the new disc consists of 10 Griffith originals and four covers recorded with her long-time touring band, The Blue Moon Orchestra (who are given co-billing on the recording).

Some of the ballads, like "Wouldn't That Be Fine," "Not My Way Home," and "Saint Teresa of Avila," recapture the magic mood of her earlier work. Others, like "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "I'll Move Along," don't have as much to offer musically or lyrically. A puzzling inclusion is a stilted cover of Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack's "Love is a Battlefield" which, like Griffith and Harlan Howard's "Maybe Tomorrow," show that her vocal forte is not rock and roll. On several tracks, Griffith and band are joined by Lubbock rock and roll legends Crickets. One of these is a driving rockabilly cover of Cricket guitarist Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the Law," on which Griffith takes a vocal back seat to the Crickets. The most effective cover is a plaintive rendition of Guy Clark's "She Ain't Goin' Nowhere." Griffith presents a new version of the gorgeous "Gulf Coast Highway," performed here as a duet with Darius (Hootie) Rucker.

Although it is an uneven, stylistically diverse recording, Blue Roses From the Moon represents some of Griffith's strongest recorded work in several years.
— Michael Parrish (St. Charles, IL)

In the wake of the new-found commercial success that was generated by his last two CDs, John Prine returns with a document of the extensive tours he has mounted in support of those discs over the last two years. Live On Tour focuses on Prine's recent material, and highlights the crack band he has utilized on recent tours. Tunes like "Picture Show" and the wry, previously unrecorded Prine-Pete Case tune, "Space Monkey," rock ferociously. Slower material, like the restrained "Storm Windows" and the dark, bluesy "Quit Hollerin' at Me," is fleshed out by the multi-instrumental dexterity of long-time band member Phil Pharlapiano. Prine's witty introduction to "Jesus the Missing Years" explains his motivation for writing the song, which speculates on the undocumented years in Jesus' life between the ages of 12 and 30. The extended take of "Lake Marie" features a soaring, arena rock arrangement with powerful vocal harmonies and stinging lead guitar.

All and all, Prine's material doesn't sound dramatically different live than on record, so this disc will probably appeal the most to completists and those wanting a souvenir of one of his recent shows. In addition to the concert material, Live on Tour features three studio outtakes; the western-swing inflected "If I Could;" the bouncy, playful "Stick a Needle in My Eye;" and a straight piano-and-vocal romantic ballad, "You Mean So Much to Me."
— Michael Parrish (St. Charles, IL)

Ani DiFranco may carry an acoustic guitar, but she's plugged in, has green hair, multiple body piercings and is outspoken to the point of constant earburn. So how's she charming the masses? Her albums have all contained hard, biting, honest and crude songs of vitriol, gender confusion and focused personal politics. Yet, for all her stark heart and energy, the songs weren't strong enough to break through beyond an avid cult audience because they were too stripped down, most often just DiFranco's guitar and drums from longtime cohort Andy Stochansky, and they often leaned more to story telling than song singing.

On Dilate, released last year, DiFranco finally jumped past the "folksinger" role, adding her own overdubbed bass and other instruments along with hip-hop samples to the mix. This allowed songs such as "Superhero" to hit as hard as they need. Sound samples and ghostly voices let DiFranco create a hauntingly original version of "Amazing Grace," which is an amazing feat. Sure, in most songs she uses just about any offensive and/or dangerous word you can imagine, but DiFranco's unique because she uses such language appropriately to express intense emotion and with wit and imagination. For instance, "Untouchable Face" weds a simple and simply beautiful melody to a bitter kiss off that pays off with the repeated "fuck you" in its chorus.

As strong as Dilate is, the live Living in Clip presents the whole DiFranco picture. She's an extremely personable performer, and her silly, witty between song conversations are almost as important to her connection with her audience as her songs. Here, you get two hours of both on two CDs. Songs from older albums live anew, thanks to expanded arrangements from Stochansky and bassist Sara Lee, including yet another stunning and funky take on "Amazing Grace," this time with the Buffalo Philharmonic. More Joy, Less Shame offers four different takes on "Joyful Girl" from Dilate (who really wants four versions of one song?) plus two other tunes.
— Jeff Lindholm (Charlottesville, VA)