Tony Cox’s latest album, China (Sheer Sound), is a tribute to his buddies. In the sleeve note about the title track he tells us that he’s called this work China because ”some friends are as precious and … fragile as china.”
Cox’s chinas are also his collaborators, and so there are sentimental dedications to his long-time friend Steve Newman and meaningful jams with the cream of the musical crop — artists such as Wambali Mkandawire, Mauritz Lotz, Louis Mhlanga, Noise Khanyile and Johnny Fourie. The coming together of such a hefty crew of talent can only be proof of the esteem in which Cox is held in musical circles.
The result is, to say the least, effervescent. Metaphorically speaking, the album is like a long trip to Cape Town from Johannesburg. There are strains of kwela (Just One of Those Days), blues (Karoosin’), Cape minstrel (Kaapse ‘amba) and African gospel (Southern Hymn). All in all, it is South African to a T.
But even though many of the tracks border on theme music, China is way above middle of the road. Each song paints its own distinct and rounded image, even if the work itself is somewhat trapped in a mould.
<Cliff Richard: Wanted (David Gresham)
Some musicians just don’t know when to stop. Here Richard performs insipid, synthetic covers of Tina Turner (What’s Love Got to Do With It? completely massacred), Louis Armstrong (a terrifying medley of his classic What a Wonderful World and The Wizard of Oz movie hit Somewhere over the Rainbow), Elvis Presley and even Richard Marx. Whoever wants this must have really low standards. — Riaan Wolmarans
Alanis Morissette: Under Rug Swept (Maverick)
Alanis Morissette’s third album sticks to the blueprint that sold a remarkable 40-million copies of her first two records, pairing crunchy guitar pop with earnest declamations about ”gender conflicts”. By now you’ll either love or loathe her verbose dissections of male-female relations and rhyme-free writing style, neither of which has moved on since 1998’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Still addicted to the therapy-babble that only North Americans don’t find hilarious, she sings of ”conflict resolution” and ”engaging in dialogue”, and on 21 Things I Want in a Lover demands, ”Do you have a big intellectual capacity but know that it alone does not equate wisdom?” The better news is that she has tapped a vein of wistfulness that turns the folksy You Owe Me Nothing in Return and the gently quizzical Flinch into shimmering jewels. Still, you never escape Morissette’s rigorous self-analysis, which gives you an idea of what Sex and the City would be like if it were scripted by New Age therapists. — Caroline Sullivan