Bob Dylan: "Time Out Of Mind" (Columbia)
It's nearly a decade since Dylan released an album which legitimised his title as the most important singer-songwriter of this century. Both of his recent folk albums were classics, but featured no original material. Now the sly old devil has gone back to Daniel Lanois, who produced 1989's magnificent but patchy Oh Mercy and delivers a masterpiece.
In Love Sick he may kick off with a cliched "head" and "dead" rhyme but the poetry is in the purity of expression, the power in what still is one of rock's most resonant voices, the feeling. With Aguie Myers rippling licks from a Farisa organ and Duke Robillard on bluesy lead, the set also favourably evokes memories of Dylan's best work with the Band.
Dirt Road Blues is a throwaway, blown away by the characteristically moody DylanLanois sound-painting, Standing In The Doorway. Gospel without the need to refer to God. Seven minutes of heaven. Likewise, the perfectly titled Trying To Get To Heaven, with its catchline "before they close the door". If the man is to be judged on this or, Lord forbid, come even closer to death than he did recently and never records another album, his soul will find its allotted place on the strength of Not Dark Yet alone. Or the astounding, 16-minute High- lands. Maybe when you come that close to death and you are Bob Dylan Time Out Of Mind is the only kind of album you can bring back from that space.
By Joe Jackson
Rock/PopDubstar: "Goodbye" (EMI)
Fifteen tracks of shining, heavenly pop melodies, Dubstar's second album sees them scooping up the last few slivers of tinsel left by bands such as St Etienne and The Human League, and turning them into pure platinum. Walking a thin filament between the sublime and the insipid, Sarah Blackwood, Steve
Hillier and Chris Wilkie weave a fine thread of programmed sound, touching on reference points often overlooked in the vain search for indie cred. There's the blurred vision of The View From Here, the unveiled threat of I Will Be Your Girlfriend and the commanding voice of No More Talk, just three dazzling spots in this bright, brash follow-up to the band's debut, Disgraceful. Every now and again Sarah's northern English burr cuts through some of the more acidic lyrics, giving the words a Smiths-style edge. Say The Worst Thing First, Can't Tell Me and When You Say Goodbye are songs for swinging ex-lovers, and Polestar, Cathedral Park and My Start In Wallsend are snapshots of life in a northern town.
By Kevin Courtney
The Pixies: "Death To The Pixies" (4AD)
Had you forgotten how good they were? Well, here's a 17track retrospective to refresh your memory of Boston's finest purveyors of noise, who, along with Husker Du, were one of the most influential American bands of the 1980s. This compilation will delight and enrage in equal measures, because although it contains some of the Pixies' finest moments, including Debaser, Wave Of Mutilation and Monkey Gone To Heaven, it also omits many crucial moments from the band's brilliant career. Since nearly every Pixies song is crucial, it's arguably impossible to create the definitive Pixies compilation, so this one will do nicely until 4AD re-releases their entire back catalogue. Death To The Pixies goes back to the band's birth, with tracks from their debut mini-album, C'mon Pilgrim, plus an even helping from Surfer Rosa and Bossa Nova. Their final, flawed album, Trompe Le Monde, is glossed over with the inclusion of Planet Of Sound and U-Mass, while pride of place is given to their superb second album proper, Doolittle.By Kevin Courtney
The Rolling Stones: "Bridges To Babylon" (Virgin)
"A scrap of flesh/ and a heap of bones/ one deep sigh/ and a desperate moan" - no it's not a description of The Rolling Stones circa 1997, just the opening lines to Flip The Switch, the first track on Bridges To Babylon, the latest offering from the ancient ones. The Stones rumble through the 13 tracks like a creaky but reliable caboose. The four Stones are helped by Don Was and The Dust Brothers on production duties, plus bass players and guest musicians, including Me'shell Ndegeocello,
Wayne Shorter, Billy Preston, Jim Keltner and Darryl Jones. Anybody Seen My Baby?, Low Down and Too Tight are your standard Stones' riff 'n' tumble, while Already Over Me and Always Suffering are bluesy ballads with a hint of grey around the temples. Gunface works well, while Saint Of Me remains unrepentant. Might As Well Get Juiced, however, is a bit torpid, while You Don't Have To Mean It and How Can I Stop are stalled by Keith Richards's drawling vocals. The Stones might be getting a bit musty of late, but Bridges To Babylon still gives off a slight whiff of rock 'n' roll excess.
By Kevin Courtney
FolkHazeldine: "How Bees Fly", (Glitterhouse)
Let's take the short-cut first courtesy of the band's colourful press release: "Hazeldine is American desert music. Out of the southwest, Hazeldine are forging a path into the wide open space of free alternative country music and rock." Get the message? No. Well try this: "They are the bastard son and daughters of Neil Young and Emmylou Harris." Still puzzled? Take one helping of irresistible moody Telecaster guitar jangle, add a large dollop of Shawn Barton's husky vocals, mix in strong doses of sensitivity, abstract lyrics, distant harmonies and choruses to ward off the night chill and you are getting close. Hazeldine are three women and one man who are based in Albuquerque, New Mexico and this collection is their first stab at the stars. And what a mighty stab it is. There are times when they sound as wet around the ears as they are, but there is a warm hue hovering over these 10 tracks. Savour it.
By Fintan Vallely
Iarla O Lionaird: "The Seven Steps To Mercy" (WOMAD)
Caoineadh Luimnigh is the air borrowed for Iarla O Lionaird's opening song, Seacht, which like another song, Aoibhinn Cronan, in moments disturbingly evokes Johnny Mathis. But this NewAge dreamer's blend of lungs and electronics touches the heart deeply on Aililiu Na Gamhna and achieves a moving angst on Caoineadh Na dTri Mhuire. Original lyrics mediate the deeply-worked old airs, praying voices, breathing, blowing and groaning, synthetic drummery and cymbalism. The a cappella Loch Lein rises gracefully out of the fussiness, and moments of a delicious, seannos offcentredness stylistically clash. A long way from Emmet Spiceland's Pop-as-Gaeilge, but then so too is Davy Spillane from Liam O'Flynn.
By Fintan Vallely
Kelly Joe Phelps: "Roll Away the Stone" (Rykodisc)
It pays to listen to the radio, believe me. And these days we are a spoilt bunch. If not listening to the boy Kelly, then on Monday nights tune in to that indefatigable upholder of all sounds good and worthy on Radio 1, P.J. Curtis. It was there I first heard this man arch the cat's back with some spine-tingling slide guitar playing. This collection of songs reveals him to be also a wonderfully intimate singer, someone who, in the words of Blues Revue, "occupies a musical landscape somewhere between Blind Willie Johnson's burnt down house and Springsteen's Nebraska". Everything is stripped down to bare essentials. A man, his guitar and his mission to let "his song fly". There is a deep spiritualism about Phelps's music and a deep sense of foreboding informs it. It's no accident that one of the three covers is Blind Lemon Jefferson/Furry Lewis's dark See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. Yes folks, a model for Top Of The Pops!
By Joe Breen
Classical
Bernadette Greevy sings Mahler. (Naxos)
Bernadette Greevy recorded Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the RTESO under its then principal conductor Janos Furst in 1987. The technical quality of the original LPs and tapes left a lot to be desired, so the belated reissue on a clean-sounding, bargain-priced CD in tandem with a three-yearold recording of the Ruckert Lieder with the NSO under Franz-Paul Decker is all the more welcome. The singer's full-voiced, dark intensity in Mahler needs no introduction to Irish music lovers. The voice is leaner, the style less emphatic in the later recording, though Decker's conducting is not as sensual or atmospheric as Furst's.
By Michael Dervan
Mendelssohn: Elijah. Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Paul Daniel. (Decca, two CDs).
Has the marketing department got it right? The new Decca Elijah comes with a sticker declaring "Decca, the Opera company" and a photo of Bryn Terfel, close-up, in risible operatic make-up as the great prophet. Perhaps it's all a warning that Paul Daniels and his cast have elected to steer an operatically vivid course through Mendelssohn's greatest oratorio. Daniels's is a vigorous, punchy reading, with much use made of the thin, penetrating bite of his orchestra's brass and forceful singing from Terfel himself, soprano Renee Fleming, Dublin contralto Patricia Bardon and tenor John Mark Ainsley. Yet for all its heightened theatricality I found this Elijah excited the senses much more than it stirred the heart.
By Michael Dervan
Scarlatti: Stabat Mater and other works. The Sixteen/Harry Christophers. (Collins Classics)
Domenico, the best-known member of the musical Scarlatti family, is famous for his legacy of 500-plus harpsichord sonatas. It is his father, Alessandro, with strings of operas and cantatas to his name, who has the reputation for vocal music. This new disc delves into the lesser-known sacred choral music of the better-known Scarlatti - a Te Deum, the Missa Breve La Stella and Iste Confessor - before climaxing with the composer's most frequently recorded choral work, the richly-patterned, 10-part Stabat Mater. More than anything else in this finely-sung collection, the final piece makes the connection between the composer's early work and the ever-fascinating adventures of the keyboard pieces he would later pour out in his years in Portugal and Spain.
By Michael Dervan
Single Of The Week
Spice Girls: "Spice Up Your Life" (Virgin)
The Spice Girls have cottoned on to the Latin disco craze with this slice of Rio rave, guaranteed to get those suntanned arms in the air. The tune is peppered with the usual "girl powaaah" cliches, plus some absolutely woeful lyrics about "yellow men in Timbuktu", "kung fu fighting" and "tribal spacemen". If the Spiceys can't knock Elton off the No 1 spot, no-one can.
By Kevin Courtney
