Album reviews: Eric Clapton, Richard Ashcroft, Terry Reid, and more

Also Terry Allen's Juarez and Andy Shauf's The Party

Eric Clapton, I Still Do
Bushbranch/Surfdog

****

Download this: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine; Alabama Woman Blues; Can’t Let You Do It; Cypress Grove; Stones In My Passway

Reuniting him with Slowhand/Backless producer Glyn Johns for the first time in four decades, I Still Do is Eric Clapton’s most assured album in ages, its understated poise and refinement reflecting the influence of his late compadre JJ Cale, while the frequent accompaniment of accordion brings a swampy flavour of the bayou to blues like Skip James’ “Cypress Grove” and Robert Johnson’s “Stones In My Passway”. A relaxed stroll through the standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” finds Clapton in the languid crooner mode adopted by Dylan on Fallen Angels; and it’s a Dylan piece that offers the most satisfying moment here, with the guitarist injecting a light, syncopated funk feel into his delivery of “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”, ingeniously dispelling the song’s tendency towards trudging solemnity.

Various Artists, Day Of The Dead
4AD

****

Download this: Candyman; Box Of Rain; St. Stephen; Black Peter; Dark Star

Four years in the making, six hours in the listening, Day Of The Dead is a gargantuan 59-track tribute to the Grateful Dead curated by Aaron & Bryce Dessner of The National, featuring Dead songs performed by the likes of The War On Drugs, Bonnie Prince Billy, Mumford & Sons, and The Flaming Lips. While many capture the Dead’s fragile harmonies – Jim James & Friends being particularly impressive on “Candyman” – few attempt to emulate Jerry Garcia’s guitar peregrinations. Bryce Dessner brings his minimalist experience to bear on “Garcia Counterpoint”, a Reichian exercise of layered guitar lines, but only Wilco’s Nels Cline comes close to the spirit of exploratory abandon in Wilco’s live version of “St. Stephen”. And amongst a tranche of dutiful replicas, Anohni’s “Black Peter” stands out for its transformative orchestration and delivery.


Richard Ashcroft, These People
Righteous Phonographic Association

*

Download this: This Is How It Feels

Richard Ashcroft’s first album in six years is a dismal affair, not helped by the echoes of former glories like “Bittersweet Symphony” and “The Drugs Don’t Work” in songs such as “This Is How It Feels” and “They Don’t Own Me”, respectively. Bolstered by Wil Malone’s string arrangements, the tone throughout is ponderously anthemic, with a touch of Coldplay in the piano motif of “Hold On”. But it’s Ashcroft’s arrested development that torpedoes the album: it’s one thing to posture as a visionary sage in your twenties, but if you’re going to appropriate Blakean notions (“Songs Of Experience”) two decades on, you’d better have more to offer than life being “just a riddle of bad dreams”, and the kind of sententious, slightly paranoid sermonising displayed in this slim portfolio of songs.

Terry Reid, The Other Side Of The River
Future Days Recordings

****

Download this: Let’s Go Down; Avenue; River; Country Brazilian Funk

British blue-eyed soulster Terry Reid may not have had the best career advice – he turned down the vocalist slot in Led Zeppelin, for instance – but he made some enjoyable albums, none more so than 1973’s River, from whose sessions are drawn the outtakes assembled here. It’s a lovely, laidback collection, with percussionist Willie Bobo adding a languid Latin feel, and multi-instrumentalist David Lindley excelling on guitar and violin, while Reid’s sepiatone delivery is expertly framed by master producers Eddy Offord and Tom Dowd. Of particular interest is a version of “Avenue” featuring The Ikettes on backing vocals, while the previously unissued studio jam “Let’s Go Down” gives some idea of the musicians’ impromptu genius, positively seething with understated fatback funk.


Terry Allen, Juarez
Paradise Of Bachelors

****

Download this: Cortez Sail; Writing On Rocks Across The USA; There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California; La Despedida

Originally released in 1975, Terry Allen’s Juarez is a cornerstone work of Americana, the omni-talented singer-songwriter-playwright-artist building a haunting narrative about two star-crossed couples’ exploits across the sun-scorched American south-west border country, created from little more than a piano, a voice, and an occasional guitar. Drawing on elements of Tex-Mex and norteno music, and delivered by Allen with a wild, lonesome spirit, it’s like an American offshoot of the Mexican narco-corrido tradition, though in tracks such as “Cortez Sail” that outlaw impulse is explicitly linked to conquistador heritage. It’s a fascinating oddity streaked with sex, violence and sorrow, a sort of seedcorn of the Robert Rodriguez aesthetic, presented complete with the lithographs that accompanied the original, albeit in cramped CD size.


Andy Shauf, The Party
Anti-

****

Download this: The Magician; Early To The Party; Begin Again; Eyes Of Them All

Like Terry Allen, young Canadian songwriter Andy Shauf sketches off-kilter narratives, though in the case of The Party he operates like an observer drifting through a gathering, noting the traits and foibles of characters briefly glimpsed in passing: the “overdressed and under-prepared” guest who arrives “Early To The Party”, the free-spirited, dancing girl who has the “Eyes Of Them All”, the “halfwit spilling his guts out” in “Begin Again”. Played entirely by Shauf save for the lush string arrangements, it’s a baroque-pop exercise with echoes of Seventies smarties like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Steely Dan, though rather more empathetic than them. And less cynical: in the final frames of “Martha Sways”, our furtive observer actually gets the girl.