Neil Young delivers heartfelt ‘A Letter Home’
The CD cover image of “A Letter Home” by Neil Young
This CD cover image released by Alive Records shows "More Primitive," by Lonesome Shack. (AP Photo/Alive Records)
Neil Young’s sporadic concept records aren’t for everyone. “A Letter Home” should be.
While still an esoteric venture – Young recorded it in a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph – the songs he chose are familiar, making this more accessible than previous out in left field Young releases.
Among the songs: Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country,” Bruce Springsteen’s “My Home Town,” Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and “Crazy” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain.” They are a reflection of Young’s roots and musical backbone, made all the more clear by the heartfelt and intimate delivery.
Now, back to the box.
Young, 68, was captivated by the Voice-O-Graph that Jack White had restored and made available at his recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee.
Typically used by amateurs to record one song at a time, which is immediately laid down on vinyl, Young decided to cram himself into the phone booth-sized contraption and record an entire record.
The songs sound like they came from another age – complete with scratches, pops and imperfections usually only heard on old vinyl records. Adding to the idiosyncratic approach, Young fashioned the entire record as a letter home to his deceased mother, delivering her a playlist of some of his favorite tunes.
It’s clear these songs are a part of Young’s musical DNA, and it’s almost as if the listener is being invited into his living room for a private concert – delivered from inside a phone booth, of course.
- Scott Bauer
More than anything else, the blues is meant for dancing. The guys in Lonesome Shack seem to know this deep down in their bones.
These three middle-aged white dudes from Seattle surely have little in common with Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and the great bluesmen of north Mississippi who developed the distinctive and influential Hill country blues sound. But they share knowledge of the same truth: Nothing soothes the soul like boogie music.
Lonesome Shack’s new 10-track album, “More Primitive,” is the group’s first for Alive Naturalsound Records, the label that discovered the Black Keys and released that now platinum-selling group’s first album. It has an authentic, lived-in feel. At the same time it’s more accessible than the group’s previous work, and you could see it appealing to fans of blues miners like The Keys, Jack White and the North Mississippi Allstars.
Ben Todd lovingly recreates a sound that’s mostly disappeared with the deaths of Kimbrough and Burnside with vocals that are high and plaintive in the old style and yet lyrically modern.
His acoustic and electric guitar work creaks and crawls (“Old Dream,” “Evil”) or builds to a ramshackle sprint (beat tracks “Big Ditch,” “Wrecks”), depending on the mood.
Everything’s driven along by a tirelessly bouncy groove provided by bassist Luke Bergman and impressionistic drumming from Kristian Garrard.
On the title track, Todd sings, “I want to live, I want to live more primitive” to a Pied Piper beat, and not only do you believe him, but you also want to join him in the pursuit. Dancing all the way.
- Chris Talbott
Electronic dance music favorite Afrojack wants to make people dance and it’s mission accomplished (if you’re under 25) with his 13-track debut album, “Forget the World.”
Beats come courtesy of the Grammy Award-winning DJ, while guests such as Wrabel, Chris Brown and Sting – yes, that’s right Sting – bring the vocals.
And showing why the 26-year-old’s remix skills have him on speed dial for Beyonce, Pitbull and Paris Hilton, he includes his remix of Thirty Second To Mars’ “Do or Die” as a bonus track on “Forget the World.”
Unfortunately the guest vocalists don’t leave much of an impression. Brown’s singing is nondescript in the high energy “As Your Friend,” while Wrabel talks about “never coming down” and “touching the sky” as he plays the piano to a backdrop of high octane beats on “Ten Feet Tall.”
If you’re not into loud, pulsating beats, however, there’s not much for you here apart from the wispy vocals of Sting on the pop-friendly “Catch Tomorrow,” which offers light relief.
Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa offer the album’s best moments. While some of the more “electronic” songs all sound a bit formulaic and meld into one after a while, Snoop’s “Dynamite” and Khalifa’s “Too Wild” manage to stand out. They’re energetic, bass driven and laden with dirty beats.
“Forget The World” will no doubt have the EDM kids punching the air in joy.
- Reetu Rupal
Tori Amos’ 14th album marks a return to her traditional approach – some call it “chamber pop” – after a 2011 experiment with classical music.
The piano playing and singing on “Unrepentant Geraldines” are strong and straightforward, with Amos’ sure touch and confessional approach, while the lyrics can be dense and occasionally confounding even as they deal with the rigors of aging and the challenges women of all ages face in a male-dominated, youth-obsessed society.
The songs do not offer simple answers, but there is pleasure and joy in the process, and warmth in her descriptions of the challenging relationships she describes. And, as she deals with turning 50, Amos offers hope to others by suggesting in song that 50 may be “the new black.”
- Gregory Katz