Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
Folk
Nanci Griffith, “The Loving Kind” (Rounder). After dabbling in torch songs and ornate classic pop, Nanci Griffith makes a strong return to her country-folk roots with “The Loving Kind.” A subtle, understated collection of tunes centered around Griffith’s wispy but deeply affecting singing, the album is also notable for the breadth of topical songs the singer tackles with quiet determination and poise. Prominent among them is the album’s title song, which offers a compassionate take on the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, a white man and African-American woman who were jailed and subsequently forced to leave their native Virginia after marrying in the early ’60s. Griffith’s take on the absurdity of miscegenation laws a mere 40 years back also deftly suggests that today’s laws regarding same-sex marriage might be equally bigoted. That’s a tough task to pull off via a simple folk song, but Griffith is up to the task. If “The Loving Kind” is not really a return to form, since Griffith has never really faltered, it is certainly a record that sits comfortably beside her best work. ★★★( Jeff Miers)
Jazz
Carol Duboc featuring Hubert Laws, “Burt Bacharach Songbook” (Gold Note Music). “And you cannot say his name without also saying the name of Hal David,” Dionne Warwick told me when I interviewed her and asked about Burt Bacharach. And she’s right. Who ever topped that line in “What Do You Get When You Fall in Love?” that rhymes “pneumonia” with “phone ya”? Here are 11 Bacharach/David hits, with their peculiar retro worldliness and glitter. Carol Duboc, with her brave little voice, does a nice job with these songs. She could work a little more to sing them as if she means them. “Always Something There to Remind Me” is too bouncy, and “Anyone Who Had a Heart” needs more anger. (You should sing that song as if you’re flinging it at someone.) But Duboc has a vulnerable sound that, set off by splashy little figures from flutist Laws, is cute in “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” (complete with trickling water effects) and “Close To You.” A fine tribute not only to a great songwriting team but to an entire age. ★★★( Mary Kunz Goldman)
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Melody Gardot, “My One and Only Thrill” (Verve). She’s been on Letterman and is, on her second CD, already a sort of mood jazz best seller. Even so, there’s something more than a little cutesy and tremulous in both her voice and her songs that isn’t there, for instance, in that wonderful new CD by Austin, Texas, native Kat Edmondson, whose voice is both far more unusual and satisfying. Gardot’s producer here is Larry Klein, who continues to be the on-call man for all well-presented new female jazz singers (including his wife, Luciana Souza). For all its girlish excesses, it’s a pretty disc with a few interesting songs but of no more consequence, really, than Sade’s records used to be. ★★ 1/2 ( Jeff Simon)
Classical
Vladimir Horowitz, At Carnegie Hall –The Private Collection: Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Liszt’s Sonata in B-Minor (RCA Red Seal/Sony Classics). These 1948 and 1949 performances of the two great virtuoso extravaganzas by his era’s most fabled virtuoso pianist are making their appearances on record for the first time. They were recorded in Carnegie Hall recitals and were part of the Horowitz collection originally donated to Yale University in 1988. Subsequent Horowitz “Private Collection” discs in the series from the same era will include music by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Haydn and Beethoven. It goes without saying that no matter how much sonic cosmetology is applied to these performances, the sound remains on a level far from modern—especially in the Mussorgsky. It also ought to go without saying that Horowitz comes directly from the Russian tradition that considered Mussorgsky a bit of a dunce/genius who always required the ministrations of a greater musical intelligence (a Rimsky-Korsakov, say) to turn his great creations into the masterworks they were. So what you hear, then, here is Horowitz’s adaptation of Mussorgsky which is definitely not for purists. No matter. The sound is more than good enough and Horowitz’s performance is predictably mind-boggling, even more so in the later 1949 performance of Liszt’s great B-minor Sonata that the great piano connoisseur David Dubal now considers even greater than Horowitz’s 1932 recording of it. An amazing addition to the Horowitz catalog. ★★★★( J. S.)
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Maria Joao Pires, Chopin (Deutsche Grammophon, two CDs). In this all-new set of late Chopin, Pires lives up to her reputation as, to quote the London Times, “thoughtful, serious and weighty.” Her delicate performances will be to some people’s tastes, and if accounts from Chopin’s time are to be believed, it might be the way Chopin played. But I think the music could use more enjoyment and passion. Two nocturnes threaten to fade into nothingness; a set of mazurkas seem wan. It gets frustrating. For the cello sonata inGminor, Op. 65, she is joined by Pavel Gomziakov, and it could be her best effort here; Pires is a sensitive team player. ★★ 1/2 ( M. K. G.)
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Villa-Lobos, The Complete String Quartets performed by Quartetto Latinoamericano (Dorian/Sono Luminus, six discs). The dense, overgrown jungle of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ complete oeuvre (more than 2,000 works) is one of the least-explored wildernesses in modern music. He lived a long life and was wildly active and prolific. It stands to reason, then, that there is more great music to his work than just those commonly known guitar pieces, piano concertos, Choros’ and Bachianas Brasileras. It also stands to reason that there’s a lot of rubbish, too, and anyone who’s heard Villa-Lobos at his most fatuous is not eager to hear more. His string quartets, though, are a separate and far-from- overplayed country all to themselves, all 17 of them composed over the course of 42 years from 1915 to 1957. The notes here claim that some find them the equal of those of Bartok and Shostakovich, and as dubious as that is, there’s an immense amount of great music here, all played capably by the chamber quartet known as the leading proponent of the Latin American Quartet repertoire. One of the major virtues of this collection, by the way, is that the works are not presented chronologically but rather with samples from several of the composer’s eras on each disc. ★★★( J. S.)
Country
Brad Paisley, “American Saturday Night” (Arista Nashville). Brad Paisley’s new album seems perfectly timed for summer. With 15 songs co-written by the country superstar himself, “American Saturday Night” is a sunny showcase for his clean-cut charm and crowd-pleasing songcraft, while the many twang-fired instrumental passages that pepper the songs allow the West Virginia native to display his considerable guitar prowess without seeming self-indulgent.
If Paisley relies a little too heavily on the clever and the cute, he shows again that he’s capable of more, although you’d still like to see someone of his talents used to dig a little deeper. The first single, “Then,” is a run-of-the-mill love ballad, but “Everybody’s Here” and “Oh Yeah, She’s Gone” effectively let some darkness in, and “No” offers a blunt life lesson. Then there’s “Welcome to the Future.” It’s a series of observations about how times change that seems to be Paisley at his most trite and innocuous—until he gets to the last verse and starts singing about a burning cross on a lawn and Martin Luther King. Even with a black president in the White House, that’s pretty gutsy for a country boy. ★★★( Nick Cristiano,
Philadelphia Inquirer)
Hip-Hop
The Beastie Boys, “Ill Communication Remastered Edition” (Capitol). Though not widely held to be the band’s masterpiece—that honor is more commonly bestowed upon the albums “Paul’s Boutique” and “Check Your Head” —there can be little question that “Ill Communication” is the Beastie Boys’ most ambitious effort. It’s long, it’s a bit of a mess, it can be maddeningly dense, and it doesn’t always work. But when it does, “Ill Communication” is brilliant, a street-savvy, multicultural mash-up that succeeds as both hip-hop and rock. For this remastered edition, the sound has been cleaned up, compressed and pushed heavenward; you’ve never heard “Sabotage” or “Root Down” with so much low-end oomph, certainly. A bonus disc—half remixes, half previously unreleased ditties and B-sides— rounds out the package. Do you need to rush right out and buy the thing? Check your head, then your wallet. This is for the most devout of Beasties fans. ★★★ 1/2 (J. M.)
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