M&G reviewers reveal the latest releases, including Harper Simon’s debut
Harper Simon: Harper Simon (Sheer Sound)
Being a musician and the offspring of musical royalty is a double-edged sword. You are going to be judged against your famous parent, at least initially, but at the same time, you are more than likely to have grown up in the industry, so when you do venture into it, you should feel slightly at home.
I must admit I wanted to hate this debut album by Paul Simon’s son, Harper, mostly because of the music legends that grace its 30 minutes. For a start, the producer is the legendary Bob Johnston, who has produced everyone from Bob Dylan to Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash to Willie Nelson and even some of his dad’s records with Art Garfunkel. Then there is Charlie McCoy on the harmonica, who has played with Dylan, Cash and Elvis; bassist Mike Leech and Lloyd Green on pedal steel, who have both played with Elvis; and Al Perkins on guitar, who has recorded with Dylan, Cohen, Gram Parsons, Roy Orbison, the Rolling Stones and Randy Newman.
I mean, come on, how is this fair? Singer-songwriters around the world are crying into their guitar cases just looking at that line-up. Then his dad pops up on The Audit playing some acoustic guitar.
“Rigged!” I hear you yell. Yes, Harper Simon has definitely used his dad’s music connections to his benefit, but the fact of the matter is that the 10 songs that make up his self-titled debut album are incredibly well written and, if you’ve ever been a fan of Paul Simon’s work, you should love it. All I Have Are Memories and Tennessee are country pop songs that wouldn’t be out of place on The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Wishes and Stars is a gentle song that you would swear was written by his dad, and Shooting Star sounds like a Tom Petty number.
Harper Simon may have had some esteemed help on his debut album, but it’s a real statement of intent. I just hope he can follow it up without the five-star line-up. — Lloyd Gedye
Grover Washington: Grover Live (Sheer Sound)
Grover Live was recorded in 1997, a few years before the death of the soul-jazz saxophonist. As this designation seems to suggest, Washington’s music is sometimes called smooth jazz. In this genre jazz’s angular edges are smoothened, its troughs filled up and its highs straightened. Sometimes all of this is not enough if the end product is not some innocuous tune that can be played in a busy airport lounge.
The question one has to ask about Grover Live is: can you play this at an airport? The short answer is: no. Featuring standards like Take Five, Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues and his own tunes, the eight-track CD is easy, soulful listening, peppered with bits of dialogue and the polite applause of his audience.
The exponents are certainly schooled in their sound, but have chosen an accessible way to reach out. Grover Live is a lovely CD. — Percy Zvomuya
The Black Heart Procession: Six (Sheer Sound)
One listener’s poetic is another’s ponderous and I fear I lean towards the latter evaluation of The Black Heart Procession’s sixth album, wittily titled Six. Nick Cave without the fire and passion, Tom Waits without the whimsy, this is a relentlessly gloomy series of dirges about devils, love, drugs, darkness and fish cakes. Okay, not fish cakes, but it would have added a refreshing twist, some much needed contrast.
The BHP do get their groove on every now and then, but it’s more the groove of a scar on your wrist than any carnivalesque dancing with Mr D. There is a certain beauty to a song like Heaven and Hell, with its slow, sliding rhythm and emphatic, almost dogged drumming, but lyrics like “I found heaven and hell/I thought you came to save my heart/you came to crush my soul” make you long for the overblown metaphors of, say, Alice Cooper. Iri Sulu is a pretty, evocative track too, once you’ve got over the disappointment of realising it’s not a reggae homage to the helmsman of the Starship Enterprise.
But with lyrics like: “Am I alive or am I dead/am I awake or in a dream”, you can’t help thinking: “Who cares? Just make up your mind and take these torpid songs somewhere with a beginning and an end.
It’s fodder for your iPod playlist, but Six isn’t an album you’ll often want to listen to from beginning to end. — Chris Roper