“Crank It Up!” is the fourth album from the Billy Walton Band, following 2 studio albums and a live set recorded at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park.  Billy Walton and bass player William Paris have been together from the start, playing alongside various studio and live players to bring the Billy Walton Band to the world.

First of all, if you haven’t read any reviews of the Billy Walton Band live, you need to know that Billy Walton is a great guitar player.  The first 2 studio albums (“Billy Walton Band” and “Neon City”) tended to focus on the guitar playing, although the songs “Neon City” and “Soul Song” on the second album also show a genuine songwriting talent emerging.

For the third studio album, there are a couple of crucial differences to the mix.  First of all, Billy Walton is writing with keyboard player Randy Friel who also plays on the album.  Secondly, the band is also joined by tenor sax player Richie Taz but more about that later.

Conventional wisdom says that you open the album with a big track and the title track “Crank It Up” covers that one from the opening riff.  It’s a big good-time song featuring a horn section and it wouldn’t have sounded out of place on either of the first two albums.  You could probably say the same for the second track “Lifeline” where the intro gives a brief nod in the direction of Keith Richards and features the first low-key contribution from Richie Taz.  Both tracks are good, but they only give a taste of the quality to come.

“Summertime Girl” feels like Springsteen’s Jersey shore twenty years down the line, and an arrangement which features piano and organ accentuates the E Street Band feel of the song.  If this song was on a Bon Jovi or Springsteen album it would be a Top 40 single. “The Deal Went Down”, later on the album, has the same personal Jersey feel with a nod in the direction of The Boss’s “Spirit in the Night” and more great sax from  Richie Taz.

“Deal with the Devil” is a country blues which again demonstrates Billy’s versatility, featuring acoustic guitar, where he rejects the bargain that Robert Johnson made. “Till Tomorrow” is another song which is strong lyrically, features great horns in the chorus, plenty of hooks and a lovely understated guitar solo leading to the fadeout. “One in a Million” and “Hot Blues” are both firmly back in blues territory, taking the album full circle back to the rock-out ending of “Black Jack Dealer” featuring a vocal from William Paris.

By any standards, this is a good album which you really should be listening to if you like real songs and real instruments.  It’s an important step for the Billy Walton Band because the playing is as good as ever but the songs here are better and more personal than on the previous 2 studio albums and the band line-up and arrangements seem to work together much better.

You can get a copy at www.billywaltonband.com or, even better, go watch the band live when they tour the UK in April and buy a copy there; a great night out and a great album to take home with you.  What more could you want?

Elizabeth Harper is in her own film noir; she’s been to the club, she’s left the bar with The Man and he won’t be there in the morning and this album tries to provide a smudgy, woozy musical imprint of that evening; thing is I’m not sure if we’ll be there for breakfast either. Her vocals are reminiscent of the late 1980s Ze records icon Cristina, all cut-class vowels and a register much deeper than we’re used to hearing from this particular genre; odd Harper’s a Brooklyn girl, she sounds more like an Upper East Side Manhattanite.

‘Rapprocher’ suffers from severe front loading, the first three tracks are the best songs on the album, ‘Love You Like You Used To’ in particular hitting a perfect stride with tense, foreboding synths and Harper’s crystal clear pleading, it’s a pretty intoxicating mix. BPMs barely get above 110 and by track 7 you long to change the pace a little and the song writing begins to suffer greatly. It’s a shame because there’s a great EP here (check out their excellent, slightly rougher around the edges EP that proceeded this album; ‘Journey of Ardency’) and some brilliant, very high quality synth work.

Things do pick up again with the disorientating and interesting ‘Hanging On’ where Harper’s breathless list of  bedtime  favourites really does feel, er, authentic and ‘Bienvenue’ sounds a bit like an electronic, poppier Pretenders but they will need to pull something bigger and more engaging out of the bag song-wise to get the attention they will need in order to make the great album that’s hopefully in them somewhere.

The Stone Electric are Noni Crow and Austyn Crow (covering all the guitars and vocals between them) and drummer Rich Matlock.  It’s easy to pick out the band’s major influences and inspiration; pick any of the British blues-rocks bands of the early 70s and you won’t go far wrong.  What sets them apart from the Free/Humble Pie/Bad Company stereotype is Noni Crow’s voice, which you could compare to Janis Joplin, but the great Scottish singer Maggie Bell is probably closer to the mark.  And, in case you didn’t know, Maggie Bell sang with the band Stone the Crows in the early 70s.

The album opens with the scene-setting “Elephant” with a fat guitar riff and Noni Crow’s great rock voice.  Like everything else on the album, fast or slow, the feel is always slightly loose, leaving room for plenty of drum and guitar fills.  The pacing of the album works well, with the slower songs such as “Beggars Would Ride” and “Mercy Me” being used to break up the out and out rockers while acting as a showcase for the soulful vocals.  “Gotta Get Out” sounds really familiar; the reason for that is that it’s virtually the same intro as “Speak to Me/Breathe”, the first track on “Dark Side of the Moon”.  That’s not a criticism, just an observation.

Over 3 years in the making, ‘Hollywood Under The Knife’ sees BRM reunited with the cool, spacious electronic sound of her first and most successful late eighties band; Electribe 101. Martin possesses the kind of voice that makes an impression; a soulful and haunting wail of a thing, perfect for the glamorous and tragic figures she sings about here.

She channels Warhol transexual Candy Darling on the lead single Rainy Days and Saturdays, an obvious and self-conscious nod to The Carpenters and a somewhat foolish attempt to try and make in this case. Much more successful is the second track ‘I’m Not Simone Choule’, a reference to the suicidal character in Roman Polanski’s film ‘The Tenant’ and a suitably chilling and densely structured song that takes time to reveal itself with BRM completely occupying the track like the ghost she’s singing about.

Apart from the Numan-esque synths of the pounding and compelling ‘Reality TV’ and the Giorgio Moroder gallop of the previously released ‘Candy Coated Crime’ this is a mainly downbeat collection of odes to despair and destructiveness and one that gets under the skin due to the hot and cold of Martin’s voice and Solheim’s synths and the high quality of song writing evidenced here; ‘Silent Comes The Nighttime – Again’ takes subtle cues from early house music and is in many ways the second part of Electribe 101’s biggest hit ‘Talking With Myself’ with Martin literally talking to herself again and ‘Jalousies and Jealousies’ melody weaves its way in and out of Martins double tracked, stuttered vocals beautifully.

Recommended.

There are a lot of good things to say about the album, but there are a lot of jarring little things which don’t quite work as well.  The songs are inventive melodically but often lyrically limited and the influences on the lead guitar parts are sometimes painfully easy to pick out.  The overall sound is obviously influenced by the Stone Roses and the mid-90s Britpop sound, particularly the vocal style but some of the lead guitar work is very derivative.

When the songs, performances and production on the album gel, the results are outstanding.  The album’s second track, “Fantasia”, with the tribal floor tom intro and the vaguely menacing harmonies works perfectly and “Lazy Daisy” is a great Faces/Black Crowes –style riff monster which doesn’t have to mean anything; it just sounds great.  The penultimate track “Let the Good Times Roll” is an acoustic piece which sounds great if you don’t analyze the lyrics too closely and ignore the overdone acoustic guitar soloing under the vocal.  Some of the production and arrangement tricks on the album are a little bit too obvious; a bit too much unison playing with guitar and vocal, bass and guitar and drums and guitar.  Maybe the problem is that a first album is so much easier to get out now.

The songs that made the final cut are a mixed bag; some Robertson originals, some Phil Lynott songs, some Frankie Miller songs and some collaborations with Lynott and Miller. Some have been released before and some haven’t. The only element common to all the songs is Robbo himself and the band (Ian Haughland, Nalley Pahlsson, Leif Sundin and Liny Wood) put together for the album.

The album opens with 2 Robbo compositions, the title track, and “Passion” which wouldn’t sound out of place on an 80s Don Henley album and runs through various permutations of Robertson, Miller and Lynott compositions, finishing on the Frankie Miller classic “Ain’t Got No Money”. The poppiest song ever written by Phil Lynott, “Running Back” from the “Jailbreak” album, appears in 2 versions here, a slow blues version and a mid-tempo rocker which works well apart from the jarring piano solo.

It’s obvious, even on the first listen, that Robbo is still a great guitar player. His growling and howling Les Paul/Marshall sound is as distinctive as ever and his solos still show great technique and melodic invention. Even the vocals are good and the rhythm section and production are excellent. Which tells you that there’s a big “but” on the way.

Although Robbo plays virtually everything except drums on this album, he isn’t a one-man-band. He has a talent which only functions properly with a collaborator strong enough to encourage the greatness and to know when to apply the brakes. Apart from the Celtic soul brothers Frankie Miller and Phil Lynott, and perhaps Jimmy Bain (also Scottish), Robbo hasn’t worked with anyone strong enough to bring out the best of his abilities live or on record. The best material on the album is written either by or with Lynott or Miller apart from, possibly, “Texas Wind”.

Robbo’s musical versatility also works against him at times. He’s known mainly as a melodic rock lead guitar player but he grew up playing with a band (Dream Police) which later formed the core of the Average White Band and also played on a live Graham Parker version of “Hold Back the Night”. Most fans like their heroes to stick to one predictable style and Robbo is just too good for that, which is one of the reasons why he always polarises opinion in the rock fraternity.

Brian Robertson, November 1978 (Photo by Allan McKay)

“Diamonds and Dirt” is patchy because the songs are written by a variety of people over a relatively long period of time and some songs don’t wear too well. The one constant throughout the album is the great playing which we expect from a rock hero. If you set aside the rock sectarianism and listen to this album with an open mind, it’s actually really good.

On first listen, “The People’s Key” impresses on a musical level; there are melodies which are instantly accessible and loads of instrumental hooks and riffs to pull you in to the arrangements. The vocals display Oberst’s voice at its best, emphasising the plaintive, keening qualities to good effect especially when it’s pushed to the point of cracking. Even when the voice is thickened up by overlaying it with a slight delay, the effect works and the production wrings out the maximum emotional effect from the vocal line.

There’s a very commercial feel to the big choruses of “Shell Games”, “Jejune Stars” and “Triple Spiral” which offer a contrast to the stark piano backing of “Ladder Song” towards the end of the album. Musically, the album offers a variety of styles with plenty of light and shade, good melodies and interesting arrangements and good, bordering on great, vocal performances. Then you start to listen a little bit more closely to the lyrical content, and that’s where the problems start.

The opening track “Firewall” sets the scene for the rest of the album and exposes most of its problems. The track opens with a rambling, mystical, pseudo-scientific spoken piece referring to the Sumerian Tablets (never a good sign) which links aliens to the birth of mankind and ultimately to Hitler. This is the kind of stuff which you might expect to hear from a stoned hippie but not as the intro to an influential album. This nonsense also reappears later in the album and there’s nothing to suggest that it’s ironic, so the best we can assume is that there’s some theological and scientific confusion going on. Lyrically the song contains several references to Rastfarianism and a reference towards the end of the song to “crooked crosses” (bear with me here).

The lyrics throughout the album seem to be confessional and hinting at some sort of crisis of faith (particularly in “Triple Spiral”) and a lack of certainty which you wouldn’t normally associate with Conor Oberst. Trying to deconstruct the lyrics doesn’t really help, because they seem to have been written in a code which hints at general themes without actually making anything explicit. Very enigmatic, but ultimately very frustrating because we’re always left on the edge of understanding what’s going on.

It’s easy to pick out the references to Rastafarianism and Christianity running through the album and hinting at some sort of personal spiritual crisis, but it’s a little more concerning to hear a couple of lyrical references to Eva Braun and Hitler along with the “crooked crosses” mentioned earlier. The combination of these references and the spoken word sections throughout the album point to a worrying tendency towards an unexpected New Age mysticism and some of the some strange philosophies spinning out from this. It’s sloppy and we deserve better than this.

Musically it’s great, but the verbal content makes the overall experience very frustrating.

Alphabeat are special for a number of reasons. For one, they’re from the Danish version of Motown – their hometown of Silkeborg is famous for its huge number of car dealerships. For another, there’s loads of them, six in fact. Anders SG sings, as does Stine, Anders B plays guitar and some keyboards and is quite the whizz in the studio, Rasmus is the band’s resident keyboard player, Anders R plays bass and is another keyboard player while Troels is the drummer – without him, there is nothing. They went to school together and aged fifteen (they’re now all in their early 20s) they formed a band. They first moved to London in the summer of 2007 around the release of their debut top ten album This Is Alphabeat and the huge pop smashes and playlist staples Fascination, Boyfriend and 10,000 Nights. They lived in a big house together. In Hackney. Now, rather sensibly, they live in three different houses

Alphabeat have recently been confirmed as the main support act on Lady GaGa’s Monster Ball tour in the UK in February. In a recent interview with VH1 she picked them as one of her favourite new acts, saying “I really love Alphabeat, they’re great and they’re going to come out on tour with me.”

Check the dates after the break.

18-Feb-10 Manchester MEN Arena
22-Feb-10 Belfast Odyssey Arena
24-Feb-10 Liverpool Echo Arena
26-Feb-10 London O2 Arena
27-Feb-10 London O2 Arena
1-Mar-10 Glasgow SECC
3-Mar-10 Cardiff International Arena
4-Mar-10 Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
5-Mar-10 Birmingham LG Arena
7-Mar-10 Sheffield Arena
8-Mar-10 Nottingham Trent FM Arena

This is David Saw’s second album and the publicity surrounding it focuses on the fact that David’s best friend is James Taylor’s son, Ben Taylor and that one of his early songs was covered by Carly Simon who is Ben Taylor’s mum and ex-wife of James Taylor (the singer-songwriter ,not the English jazz organ player of JTQ fame). So Carly Simon covered a David Saw song. Why?

If you want to know why the singer/songwriter/troubadour genre vanished after a period of huge popularity in the early to mid-70s, this is a great demonstration. The genre became so popular that even the most mediocre acts managed to get record deals (a bit like Scottish bands in the mid-80’s). This album sounds like it came from the butt-end of the 70s troubadour boom.

David Saw has a reasonable voice and is a reasonable guitar player but the songs sound like they were written by an angst-ridden year 11 music student; musically they’re simplistic and lyrically it’s all a bit naïve. It’s frustrating to hear someone with a sliver of potential fail to deliver because they’ve pinned themselves into an out-dated frame of reference.

The singer-songwriter genre has undergone a dramatic shift since peaking in the mid-1970s. The style and the subject matter of artists like David Gray, Newton Faulkner and Jason Mraz is a world away from James Taylor, Carole King and Carly Simon. Unfortunately David Saw is firmly rooted in the 70s school of songwriting, concentrating on melancholy songs of lost love with the occasional lightweight, uptempo song (“Buy My Record”, for example) and that just isn’t enough for a 21^{st century singer-songwriter.}

If you want to hear a good contemporary male singer-songwriter, listen to some of the people listed at the start of the previous paragraph, or maybe Neil Young if you want to hear someone who was part of the original scene which influenced David Saw’s songwriting. For a real wild card comparison, you could try the 2000 album “Northern Songs” by Lee Griffiths (also influenced by James Taylor) which is a much more gritty version of the British troubadour’s art. Alternatively, you could just listen to anything by Malcolm Middleton or Richard Hawley.

If David Saw can move away from the obvious 70s influences, then he may have something interesting to sing about but it doesn’t look good on the evidence of this collection.

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This is one of those albums that creates an instant impact from the dirty opening synth intro of “Detroit” and leads you through a kaleidoscope of musical styles. The arrangements feature electronic and acoustic instruments blended together with a batch of songs which ranges from ballads (“After The Flood”) to widescreen epics (“Plans And Reveries”) and everything in between.

Black Gold happily admit to incorporating their many musical influences into the patchwork quilt of “Rush” and invite us to identify the original sources of their sonic petty larceny if we can. There are various species of musical magpie: the “Jeff Lynne”, which steals audaciously and produces a wonderful song which is original and makes no attempt to hide the theft; the “Guy Chambers”, which uses a phrase which you recognise but you have to think about for a while before working out that it’s from “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” or “Dear Prudence”; and the species on display here which, like The Avalanches in 2000/2001, steals a couple of bars at a time from anywhere they can and throws them all in to the blender (you can spot a reference to Ronnie Wood’s playing on The Faces 1971 single “Stay With Me” if you listen carefully) . There is another species, the “Mika”, but we won’t go in to that.

Erick Ronick’s voice is strong enough and versatile enough to deal with an incredibly wide dynamic range, effortlessly moving from the solo acoustic arrangements to big electric and electronic songs and throwing in some interesting falsetto for good measure (and great vocal harmonies as well), while the varied styles and instrumentation make this an album that grabs the attention from the opening synth riff and refuses to let go.

A couple of tracks from this album (including “Plans And Reveries”) have already been used as incidental music on US TV shows and the rest of the album is strong enough to suggest that you could be hearing a lot of Black Gold in the next year or two.

There are albums which you can listen to once and all of their secrets are revealed; “Rush” isn’t one of those. This album rewards perseverance because each time you listen to it, you pick out another reference (or two, or three) to songs or styles which don’t necessarily jump out at you on the first listen.

And the bad news; maybe the programming of the tracks isn’t quite right. Towards the end, the album falls off dynamically, but this is minor criticism of a great debut album.