Former Chicken Shack singer is to soul what Linda Thompson is to folk -perhaps the UKs greatest practitioner. Yes, this song is a cliche but it wasn’t when she covered it and this is among the best versions I’ve ever heard – A
Linda’s cover of Anna’s “Fast As My Feet”, with her three kids and Grandson joining in, works as an antidote to Rufus’ sorrow, as though despite all odds there is joy in life and in family that can remove the sting even from death through love and art. Perhaps the moral of this entire album.
“If you ever leave me I’ll be sad and blue, don’t you ever leave me I’m so in love with you”… Written by Lennon (“I Call Your Name” is on the flip side) this is Brill building brilliance from a 1960s pop superstar. The Beatles would have gone at it harder, there would have been a touch of self-parody – A
The rock and roll world reeled from the death of one of the all time greats Lou Reed and I wrote “this outpouring of affection for Lou Reed: it is like mourning Scrooge if Scrooge had died before he was visited by the ghosts.” though I was pretty upset myself.
It is about itself as much as anything you will ever hear, it is self-referencing and not past referencing: it circles itself in family and lives inside its own sound and feel and world. Despite a few folk song, it sounds more like itself than an idiom, or a form.
Arcade Fire, Maria Taylor, Linda Thompson ruled this week, I could have filled every position with their songs. AF, maybe I’m being difficult but I really do like it, and Maria and Linda are both on my top 10 albums list of 2013.
As Fast As My Feet – Linda Thompson – A pop song but an old fashioned one that walks on its title melodic hook all the way there, with a sound not folk but folk-rock and of course, Linda’s gorgeous voice.
6. Something About Knowing – Maria Taylor – One of the top indie Queens finds a truth within the truth, a truer truth in true love, marriage and childbirth, then she tells us how it feels to be a mother and how it feels to know what she didn’t know. A miraculous album.
Any week with a new Swift song ain’t gonna be an entire dog but the only hold over from last week is Pearl Jam and going round down this list you will find some terrific new songs
Maladjusted – Morrissey – “On this glorious occasion of this splendid defeat…” Morrissey’s mid-career masterpiece was the opening track that seems to get lost in the shuffle – A
Written for a guy we here at rock nyc are familiar with, Rufus Wainwright, it parries axioms like “if you scratch a lover you’ll surely fine a foe”, which, really, you wanna tattoo go for that. Even the title has a wistful sense of hard earned lessons learned and there is always in Linda, certainly nobody does wistful like the great singer.
Dear Mary – Linda Thompson – A Linda blueprint English folk song to lead of her terrific 2002 album, Linda might take her time but she has never recorded badly and this new one finds her at the peak of her powers – A
The thrill here is Linda Thompson’s new album, except for that song earlier this year “Never A Bride” and it was a killer, we haven’t heard anything new in years. Maybe we will get a tour out of it!!!
