kagablog

21. Drive-By Truckers – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)

- despite the loss to his own career of Jason Isbell, one of their outstanding trio of singer/songwriter/guitarists, the Deep South’s finest have produced arguably their best album since the wonderful “Decoration Day”, on which Isbell had in fact debuted – his place as singer/songwriter goes to his ex-wife, the group’s bass player Shonna Tucker, and as guitarist to John Neff, whose guest steel had previously contributed importantly anyway, and both rise impressively to the task – this is clearly, in general approach, still the intelligently Southern rocking Truckers we have grown to know and love so well, but these moves do create a little more welcome variety, especially given the band’s penchant for making long albums – most significant, though, are the huge songwriting strides made by Mike Cooley, whose nine songs (out of nineteen) make him easily the record’s individual star

22. Randy Newman – Harps And Angels (Nonesuch)

- this may be the first Randy Newman album of new songs in nearly a decade, but he’s just as clear eyed, sharp tongued and acid penned as he ever was, and he hits the target with the same pinpoint accuracy (see, just by way of example, A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country) – sardonic, fiercely intelligent and often devastatingly funny, it’s closer to vintage Newman than we have a right to expect from a 65 year old who mainly writes for film these days, even one with his songwriting track record

23. Calexico – Carried To Dust (Quarterstick/City Slang)

- returning, but without labouring it, to the wide-land, desert-steeped mariachi-accented folk-rock that got them to a point when I thought, just for a moment, that they might be the best band in the world (my cellphone ringtone is the intro from Across The Wire, so you know I care), Calexico, with important Spanish contributions from members of once roots fashionable Spaniards Amparanoia, especially on the lovely tribute to Pinochet murdered Chilean activist poet and singer Victor Jara, has delivered what looks like a keeper – other, less obvious contributors include members, just to establish the album’s sonic territory, of Tortoise and Iron & Wine, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player and Greg Brown’s guitarist Bo and daughter Pieta

24. Trygve Seim & Frode Haltli – Yeraz (ECM) / Dans Les Arbres – Dans Les Arbres (ECM)

- Dans Les Arbres is a Norwegian improv ensemble featuring Christian Wallumrød on piano and the French clarinet/harmonica of Xavier Charles, with guitarist Ivar Grydeland’s banjo contributing unusual tonal colour and a sruti box providing the drone - the album closely interrogates the sonic possibilities offered by the unconventional lineup, arriving at conclusions and suggesting new areas for exploration that might bewilder at first but that will continue to surprise and delight throughout further listens with just a little patience and an open musical mind – Seim and Haltli are Norwegian, too, the former arguably the heir to Jan Garbarek’s glacial saxophonic throne, the latter a visionary accordionist - using the space around the notes as much as the instruments’ natural sonic, if not necessarily cultural, synergy, they deliver a beautiful, partially composed, partially improvised set incorporating Armenian folk song, pieces by Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, Seim’s search for the tones and spirit of the Armenian duduk, Bob Marley’s by now nearly sacred Redemption Song and several outstanding originals

25. TV On The Radio – Dear Science (DGC/Interscope)

- it shows how out of touch I am with the commercial reality of the record business – there I was convinced that this must be a number one album, given the fuss made over what was, in what I considered broadly mainstream rock terms, its extraordinary predecessor, and the fact that TV On The Radio was now under the wing of a major label, but I see “Dear Science”, with its general advance on “Return To Cookie Mountain”, its fabulous array of pop, rock and funk tropes and its fierce musical intelligence, didn’t even make the US Top Ten (the predecessor only reached No 41) – more fool them, I say; personally, I’m glad to remain out of touch

26. Crooked Still – Still Crooked (Signature Sounds)

- if self-styled alternative bluegrass group Crooked Still has a fault, it may be a tendency towards scholarly earnestness, causing its absolutely gorgeous exercises in what might be termed old-timey chamber music (well, what would you call a cello driven banjo and fiddle band with vocals this exquisite?) to spill over into preciousness – the thing, though, is that it’s so good when it works (and it works more often than not) that you need the occasional misstep, which is never less than pretty anyway, to balance the books – and I don’t think that this impression is caused by the fact that Greg Liszt, whom they share with Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions band, is a doctor of molecular biology - he’s not the first doctoral banjoist, either, all those jokes notwithstanding … Pete Wernick of Hot Rize has a doctorate in sociology

27. Emmylou Harris – All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch)

- having just turned sixty and five years on from her last excursion into Daniel Lanois influenced sonic territory Emmylou looks back in order to look ahead, with former husband Brian Ahern returning to produce a work of considerable elegance and grace that will re-attract the “Blue Kentucky Girl” crowd without losing those who prefer “Red Dirt Girl” – a number of trusted musical friends come along for the ride and, as usual, she totally inhabits the songs, by one time Johnny Cash stepson-in-law Jack Routh, craggy Texan Billy Joe Shaver, Patty Griffin, former trucker Mark Germino, even Tracy Chapman, but mainly her three originals and two co-writes with the McGarrigle sisters, with the folky How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower and the heartbreaking Not Enough especially poignant

28. Samamidon – All Is Well (Bedroom Community) / Lissa Schneckenburger – Song (Footprint) / Cath & Phil Tyler – Dumb Supper (No Fi)

– American traditional music is alive and well, and still played, at least on this evidence, without fuss or flamboyance, or any sense of historical chic, and in such a way that all resistance is rendered quite hopeless – to set the record straight, Samamidon is a duo of which Sam Amidon is a member, and they play quiet and often lovely versions of the kind of thing that can be found in its more rugged form on the Harry Smith collection, but, crucially, without losing that essential mystery that so characterises traditional music; the husband and wife Tylers, she an American singer out of the splendid Cordelia’s Dad, he a fine guitarist from Newcastle in the English style, are a little more raw and earthy, especially on those wonderfully spooky harmonies; but the jewel in this particular crown is fiddle playing New England singer Schneckenburger, who sings and plays with such natural ease and fluency you’d almost think the songs were somehow handed down directly to her

29. Eliza Carthy – Dreams Of Breathing Underwater (Topic)

- undoubtedly the star of a new generation of British traditional folk music revivalists (how could she not be with the parents she has, you ask – well, in truth her talent stands up way beyond and apart from a musically steeped upbringing and a famous name), Carthy reveals, on her second album of original songs (far better in every way than on 2000’s somewhat disappointing major label “Angels & Cigarettes”), that she has songwriting skills to burn, too, as she acknowledges and then demonstrates, much more clearly, in material and arrangement, the way the music of that upbringing can be given a contemporary focus

30. Etran Finatawa – Desert Crossroads (Riverboat) / Terakaft – Akh Issudar (IRL)

- the concept of desert blues is now almost a marketing brand, thanks to the adoption by the hip and trendy of the Tuareg group Tinariwen, who have managed to remain musically wonderful despite it all, but whose 2008 output was confined to a live DVD – so, into the breach, with considerable class and without a hint of hype, stepped Etran Finatawa, from Niger rather than Mali, only partly Tuareg, and, when not essaying that by now archetypal call and response of mesmerising rolling guitar and eerie vocal chant, musically quite a bit harsher and vocally more shrill, and Terakaft, who sound (unsurprising, given the presence of two former Tinariwens in their ranks) exactly like I hope Tinariwen are going to once the mainstream media loses interest and moves on to the next big cross-cultural thing