CD Odyssey Disc 1716: Dori Freeman

Happy Leap Year! I don’t know why getting one extra day every four years is so whimsical and fun but…it is.

Maybe it is fitting that the other three albums by this next artist were reviewed within a year of their release but this next one took seven before I finally rolled it. Was there some leap year magic involved? Let’s say there was.

Disc 1716 is…Letters Never Read

Artist: Dori Freeman

Year of Release: 2017

What’s up with the Cover? Dori Freeman swings us an ‘over the shoulder’ for consideration. I hope that tile behind her is kitchen tile, because otherwise this picture was taken in the bathroom. Privacy please!

How I Came To Know It: I loved Freeman’s first album and was excited to hear the follow up. I would not be disappointed.

How It Stacks Up: I have four Dori Freeman albums which I thought was all of them, but in preparing to do this review I discovered she’d released something in 2023. D’oh! I must get this record! However, rules are rules and rules say when I’m done what’s currently in my collection I do a recap. So here it is. I’ll do another after I locate the new record and (hopefully) like it enough to buy it.

1. Self-Titled: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 947)
2. Letters Never Read: 5 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Every Single Star: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1367)
4. Ten Thousand Roses: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1554)

 Rating: 5 stars

 Apparently no one told Dori Freeman about the sophomore slump, because her second record is just as wonderful as her first. ”Letters Never Read” doesn’t have that “undiscovered talent” thrill of her debut, but it has all the same charm, with an extra shot of confidence to boot.

It all starts with her voice. Her tone is as pure and sweet as anything in my collection, displaying all kinds of range without ever straining. It flows out of her so easy and naturally that you may not even notice how good it is, until you try to sing along and realize you can’t keep up. She can go low or high with equally rich tone, and she can hit a note with a smooth calm, or a trembling quaver with equal ability.

On “Letters Never Read” she has an added element of confidence in her delivery. The songs aren’t as raw as on her debut, but hearing that certainty of purpose gives you another facet to her delivery that makes the new record its own creature, a natural and welcome growth of her talent. You won’t sing along not just because it’s hard, but because you’d just rather hear her do it.

Freeman pairs that vocal prowess with a songwriting talent that is second to none. Lyrically, these songs are filled with simple words and minimal metaphor, but an honesty so deep and fragile that the simple phrasing will sink deep inside you.

Melodically, she writes with a meandering lilt. The songs themselves rarely exceed three minutes, but they feel like a river, undulating through a course that they’ve carved over millennia. The tunes are a perfectly crafted course; over in a hurry and leaving you wanting more, but knowing they said all they had to say in those too-brief moments.

“Letters Never Read” is a who’s who of folk royalty, old and new. Aoife O’Donovan sings harmony, as do Canadian duo Kacy & Clayton. She also enlists the talents of father and son folk heroes Richard and Teddy Thompson.

Most of the songs are originals, but like any good traditional folk record, she’s not afraid to tackle a classic. In this case it is the aforementioned elder Thompson’s 1974 tune with wife Linda, “I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight”. I love the original but if I’m keeping it real, Freeman’s is better.

Heartwarmingly, she also does an acapella performance of a song written by…her grandfather. It is “Ern and Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog” and it tells of two young lovers getting home late from the movies and having to elude the neighbourhood’s ill-mannered dog along the way. It’s a great tune, and a good example of how Freeman is solidly grounded in both the traditions of the genre but also her personal experience.

This combination of traditional and intensely personal make this record as perfect as her debut. A bit lighter, and a bit warmer around the edges, but just as overflowing with inspirational music.

Best tracks: all tracks

CD Odyssey Disc 1715: The Kills

Today I shook off a months-long torpor and got out for a lunchtime run. As a result of listening time while out on the trail and some extra driving time on the weekend, I got through this next record surprisingly fast.

Disc 1715 is…God Games

Artist: The Kills

Year of Release: 2023

What’s up with the Cover? Bullfight!

Is a bullfight a ‘god game’? I would’ve thought gods were more likely to play chess, or maybe wrestling or drinking contests for those Norse gods. Of all the gods, the Norse gods seem to have the best time up there in Valhalla. Except for the daily mortal combat, with all the stabbing and what-not. I think that part would get old. They might want to work a board game night in there once in a while to give everyone a rest.

But I digress.

How I Came To Know It: I’m a Kills fan from way back, and for the second straight time I bought their record when it came out, hoping I’d like it. For the second straight time I was disappointed.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Kills albums, and that’s because I got rid of the sixth, which was 2016’s “Ash & Ice” (reviewed back at Disc 989). “God Games” was better than “Ash & Ice” but not by a lot. I put it in fifth spot.

Rating: 2 stars

The Kills keep taking longer and longer to release new music, but it doesn’t seem to be helping the quality any. It was five years before they released “Ash & Ice” and for “God Games” it was seven more. Neither record benefits from the delay.

That’s a nasty lede, and mostly because I very much love the Kills first four albums and therefore expect more from them. Sure, this makes me that hipster douchebag who prefers a band’s “early work” but it doesn’t make me wrong.

So what is it about this record that didn’t get me there? Well, it starts with the production, which sounds like it has forgotten the mid-range. In my car’s boomin’ system, this caused the doors to vibrate with bass. Yes, my car has more oomph than it has acoustic design to accommodate it, but even so, too many things were rattling and some of those things were my vertebrae.

OK, not all albums are meant for the car, but clever readers will recall I ALSO listened to this record while out running, which is an earbud/Walkman arrangement. That is an environment that is overall very kind to all production decisions. Here the thump was gone, but everything felt tinny. Again, no mid-range. I admit I’m a bit of a mid-range junkie, but not usually to the point that I’m spewing 200 words over it.

Structurally, the songs are a mix of blues riffs and experimental percussion. Lots of reverb, and thump. Many feel like a few disparate ideas artfully connected to one another. I say artfully, because the Kills are very good at what they do, and it would do them a disservice to say the result is noise. It is very deliberate in what it is doing. I admired it frequently through my listens, but in the end, I still landed short of the emotional investment I needed.

So what is good about the record? Plenty of things. Firstly those clever syncopated connections of different sounds is cool and when held together with a bit of melody like on “103” the result is both beautiful and groovy. “My Girls My Girls” is another winner, with an almost sixties pop vibe, that features hand claps and some church choir vibes near the end.

The other compelling thing about this record (and all Kills records) is Alison Mosshart’s voice. It is best showcased on the stripped-down heartbreaker, “Blank” but good on every tune, even the lesser ones. Tough as nails and riding an emotional torque so tight you think she’s going to snap the axel, she never does. Mosshart sings like a 1968 Camaro – fast, reckless and undeniably beautiful.

Alas, while those good things earn this record a solid couple of stars, and likely a deserving home in someone’s music collection, that music collection won’t be mine. There’re just too many other great Kills records elbowing each other for space on the shelves already. So I will reluctantly part company with “God Games” and, having been twice bitten, vow to listen to the next Kills album before I decide if I’m going to buy it.

Best tracks: 103, My Girls My Girls, Blank

CD Odyssey Disc 1714: The Chambers Brothers

For a short work week it felt like a long one, but I’ve made it to Saturday, and ready for another music review. Are you also ready for another music review? Well if so, please read on!

Disc 1714 is…The Time Has Come

Artist: The Chambers Brothers

Year of Release: 1967

What’s up with the Cover? Some sort of nature shot. The tree on the right looks to have been previously struck by lightning. To the left we have a bloom of calla lilies.

In the middle the Chambers Brothers, sporting a wide assortment of striped pants. These are some great clothes but not ideal for whatever amount of hiking takes you to this woodland location. I hope they at least wore sensible shoes. Actually, who am I kidding? I’ve never had much time for sensible shoes. I hope they’re wearing shoes as dope as their pants.

How I Came To Know It: You know that Fatboy Slim song, “Weapon of Choice”? The one with the dope bassline, and the video with Christopher Walken dancing?

I loved that bassline and went on a journey to find out where Mr. Slim had sampled it from. Turns out, it was from the Chambers Brothers song “All Strung Out Over You”. That, plus knowing a few other tracks on the album and I was inclined to a deeper dive. And here we are.

How It Stacks Up: The Chambers Brothers released six studio albums, but this is my only one, and so it can’t stack up.

Rating: 4 stars

Half of the songs on the Chambers Brothers debut “The Time Has Come” are covers of other people’s tunes, but it is easy to forget that when you are immersed in the record’s magic. These lads put their own twist on every song, whether it is an original or a timeless classic.

The first song – and the record’s best – is one of the originals. As I noted earlier, “All Strung Out Over You” has a bassline that is so Goddamned groovy it carries the load for two totally different songs. The Chambers Brothers original is offset with hand claps, and some first-rate soul singing with the boys adlibbing off one another in a way that makes you wish it would never end.

“All Strung Out Over You” is also our first taste of the interesting mix of styles this record explores. The Chambers Brothers are one third gospel, one third soul and one third flower power. All that stuff was front and centre in 1967 but blending it all into a single sound is what makes this record stand out amongst its contemporaries.

After the original, we get into a cover tune. “People Get Ready” is a remake of the Impressions’ devotional released two years’ prior. The Chambers Brothers version is chunkier and more grounded (hard to ground the Impressions with the airy vocals of Curtis Mayfield). The remake also feels decidedly more…hippy. You can imagine hearing the original in church, but the Chambers Brothers version is more at home at a sit-down campus protest.

A similar treatment is later applied to Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”. Is it as good as Pickett’s original? Reader, it is not, but is still awesome and puts a fresh twist on the song and lets the Brothers briefly call it their own.

Which brings us back to the album’s other original masterpiece, “Time Has Come Today”. With its signature guitar bit, and a sound that will make your soul be psychadelized” this is one of the great “restless youth” tunes of a generation.

And yet the Chambers Brothers manage to wreck it with a lot of excess noodling. The first three and a half minutes, pure gold. The next eight (yes, the song is 11 minutes long) a mix of distortion fueled stoner guitar and unfocused drumming. Yuck. I held hope for the fact that my CD copy had a bonus track of the song that was only 3:52 and called “radio edit”. Surely this would be the song minus the noodle!

Reader, it was not. It was the radio promo for the album, so you get the song in snippets with some sixties dude talking over it to exhort you to buy the album, “now available on Columbia records.” Barf.

Fortunately I have a five-minute version on the Crooklyn soundtrack, so I’m set. But since that version doesn’t feature on this record, it can’t help the ranking. Sorry - not sorry, Chambers Brothers.

Best tracks: All Strung Out Over You, People Get Ready, I Can’t Stand It, Romeo and Juliet, In the Midnight Hour, 1/3 of Time Has Come Today (up to the moment they start noodling incessantly)

CD Odyssey Disc 1713: Gillian Welch

It’s been a long and stress-filled day, but it’s been a lovely evening. I’m tired, but ‘ere I let Morpheus take me I’ll squeeze in a mid-week music review.

Disc 1713 is…The Harrow & the Harvest

Artist: Gillian Welch

Year of Release: 2011

What’s up with the Cover? Gillian makes like an old school tarot card sorceress here, summoning fireballs with a wave of her hand. Beside her, a handsome gentleman (likely long-time partner and collaborator David Rawlings) whispers secrets in her ear. On David’s shoulder we have an owl.

The whole cover has the look of one of those Doodle Art posters from the seventies that you coloured in with felt pens. I’m tempted to colour this one in, but I was never great at Doodle Art and would probably just wreck it.

How I Came To Know It: For many years I resisted this relatively late effort in Welch’s career, but when I saw a cheap used copy for sale in the record store last year, I finally succumbed. I wish I’d succumbed years ago.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Gillian Welch albums. “The Harrow & the Harvest” is amazing, but so are all the other ones, and I must reluctantly place it in…fifth place.

Rating: 4 stars

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are a one-two punch that inspire folk artists today and will be inspiring them hundreds of years from now just as much. They are timeless talents that cook up a witchy brew of traditional musical forms and make them hyper-present. Folk that confronts and challenges the listener.

This is old timey music that never sounds staid or dated. It is imminent and emotionally dangerous. You don’t put this record on to square dance in your hoop skirt, my friends. You put this record on to strip all the way down to your silk slip and sway barefoot in the moonlight.

It all starts with the voice. Gillian Welch has a generational voice. Sweet when she wants to be, but it is a thorny sweet. It is the kind of voice it hurts to fall in love with, because you know you can’t listen without feeling the feels. There is plenty of power as well, pushing out notes that curl around your soul and squeeze, sometimes reassuringly, and sometimes a bit too tight.

Enter David Rawlings on guitar, with his sprung rhythm doing the seemingly impossible by adding even greater emotional complexity and depth to Gillian’s verses. They are a perfect match, twining around one another, the lyrics dancing in your ears like a cobra, dangerous and beautiful.

Both are at their best on “The Way it Goes” a blues-adjacent number that digs into a half dozen vignettes of tragedy, starting with the stark:

“Becky Johnson bought the farm, put a needle in her arm
That's the way that it goes, that's the way
And her brother laid her down in the cold Kentucky ground
That's the way that it goes, that's the way”

It gets darker from there. Folks are thrown down wells, and others are getting buried with their pistols, and all of them feel loosely connected in a grim human tragedy. As the listener we only catch the shadowy remnants of this rogue’s gallery of characters, but the shadows alone are terrifying and tragic.

There are plenty more where that comes from. When Gillian Welch tells you she is having a “dark turn of mind” you don’t hear about how dark it gets, you feel it sinking into your bones. Darkness is a state of being, and Welch knows how to draw it out, and let it envelop you.

It’s not all darkness though, on “Hard Times” Welch finds joyful rhythms and a soaring melody. Things are still tragic, but buoyed by the sweetness of the vocals, you are left assured things will turn out just fine:

“So come, all you Asheville boys
And turn up your old-time noise
And kick 'til the dust comes up from the cracks in the floor
Singing, "Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind, brother
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more"”

Damn right, they’re not.

“The Harrow & the Harvest” isn’t an easy listen, it’s a heavy meal. It takes time to digest, but if you give it the time, it will fill your heart with love and yearning in equal measure. No empty calories on this journey, though – you’ll earn every step of the journey, never wishing it could be any other way.

Best tracks: Scarlet Town, Dark Turn of Mind, The Way it Goes, Down Along the Dixie Line, Hard Times

CD Odyssey Disc 1712: Bob Dylan

Back from the stressful experience of taking the cat to the vet for a check up. Stressful for him and me both but over now, and ready to write a review. The last album in the Bob Dylan collection – at least for now. It is…

Disc 1712 is…The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Artist: Bob Dylan

Year of Release: 1963

What’s up with the Cover? Bob and a lady (artist and then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo) walkin’ in the snow. As you can see from the way Bob is hunched over, his jacket is not sufficient for a New York winter. Layers, Bob, layers!

How I Came To Know It: I don’t recall. I’ve always liked Bob Dylan and I would’ve bought this remastered copy of the record on CD back in 2003 when it was released.

How It Stacks Up: I have 19 Bob Dylan albums, which is around half of them. Of those 19, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” comes in at #2. Yes, second best in a list of amazing records. This is the last of my Bob Dylan’s awaiting review, so here’s the full accounting:

1. Blood on the Tracks: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 233)
2. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan: 5 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Highway 61 Revisited: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 367)
4. The Times They Are A-Changin’: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 399)
5. Oh Mercy: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 843)
6. Blonde on Blonde: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 306)
7. Another Side of Bob Dylan: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 414)
8. Infidels: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 908)
9. Slow Train Coming: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1480)
10. Bringing it All Back Home: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 159)
11. Time Out of Mind: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 334)
12. Desire: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1495)
13. Nashville Skyline: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1521)
14. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 681)
15. Self-Titled: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 653)
16. John Wesley Harding: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 650)
17. Planet Waves: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 69)
18. Together Through Life: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 404)
19. Tempest: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 793)

Wow – six 5-star reviews, but this is Bob Dylan we’re talking about, people. There’s Bob, and there’s everyone else.

Rating: 5 stars

In 1962 Bob Dylan released his first record. It was a lovely collection of old blues and folk favourites. Solid, but hardly revolutionary. One year later the artist that would change music forever with a run of six iconic albums that to this day are some of the greatest collections of songs ever written or recorded. That run starts with “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”.

There isn’t much to be said about this record that hasn’t been said before. The Wikipedia page alone is practically a book (I did not read it, because I prefer to confront the art directly).

In the case of Bob Dylan it is the art that confronts you, with difficult ideas and hard questions, structured into thoughtful lyrics that will put a quiver in your bones. The record starts with “Blowin’ In the Wind” a song that speaks to a better future simply through a recurring expression of uncertainty. Bob doesn’t always have all the answers, but he often has the right questions to set you on a journey to get there.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” and its sister in protest philosophy, “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” doesn’t lead you to a single place, but to a constellation of ideas. On both, Dylan treats us to some brilliant imagery. Consider these lines from “Hard Rain”

“I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard”

That’s just plumb perfect.

For all of Dylan’s serious messages, “Freewheelin’” also uses humour to make its points. My favourite on the record is “Talkin World War III Blues” where the protagonist dreams World War Three happens, and he staggers through a post-holocaust world. Turns out, other people are having the same dream, each seeing themselves as the sole survivor. Bob’s humorous, but on-point message at the end is simple, “You can be in my dream, if I can be in yours”. Current world, or post-apocalyptic horror-scape, one thing is certain. We’re all in this together. Dylan turns that reality into an invitation to understanding.

The song will make you laugh, but you’ll also nod and appreciate the message of sharing and mutual love for humanity that cuts a consistent line through Dylan’s music. Even when he’s angry (none more so than on the anti-war song “Masters of War”)  his anger comes from a place of optimism, and the desire to make the world a better place.

Throughout its perfect 50 minutes of music, “Freewheelin’” takes us through personal heartbreak, societal ills, efforts to connect with one another and to a world that can sometimes feel vast and emotionally distant. Dylan consistently connects us through those wild and empty spaces of the heart and mind. Listening to this record will make you pine for a better world, and at the same time show you that you’re already living in it, if you’ll just make it that way.

Best tracks: all tracks 

CD Odyssey Disc 1711: The Mountain Goats

With the passing of the Super Bowl another NFL season comes to a close. I now enter a time where I am excited to have all that time back when I would be watching football, and can instead read and listen to music. It takes about six weeks for me to be jonesing for some football again, but for now, I’m glad to have a few quiet Sundays.

Disc 1711 is…Jenny from Thebes

Artist: The Mountain Goats

Year of Release: 2023

What’s up with the Cover? Ode to a Grecian Disc. Here we have a woman (presumably Jenny, from Thebes) leading a hoplite (to be named later) toward some adventure.

As ancient Greek city states go, Thebes is pretty cool. It’s no Athens, obviously, but pretty cool all the same.

How I Came To Know It: I’m an avowed Mountain Goats fan, so this was just me buying the latest record when it came out.

How It Stacks Up: I have 13 Mountain Goats albums (I’m kind of a fan). The ratings jump around because as I add more, they need to slot in. Of the 13 I have, “Jenny From Thebes” comes in at #10. Previously, “Dark in Here” was #10, but it has been bumped. Change is inevitable.

Rating: 3 stars

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats is a prolific writer, prone to taking a theme and running with it. His folk tinged pop will always make you think, but you won’t always know exactly what is going on.

That was the case for me and “Jenny from Thebes” which, according to the internet, is a sequel to the Mountain Goats’ 2002 record, “All Hail West Texas”. The problem? I don’t care for that record, and don’t own it, making it a certainty that I would not know what was going on. Some sort of hard scrabble crime drama, likely featuring some murder here and there and after that…it loses me.

This is not a problem, though, because the Mountain Goats write such delightful melodies, and Darnielle’s phrasing makes everything compelling and dramatic. I knew something transformative and important was happening to the characters, and I didn’t know much else for sure, but the songs were great all the same.

I should note that this is true even with short teasers for every song that aimed to further explain (example: Song: “Only One Way”. Teaser: “They consider one another in the often harsh light of how the world is.”). If not knowing exactly how this teaser applies – even after listening to the song – is going to bother you, then the Mountain Goats may not be for you.

The album has a restless energy, with Darnielle squeezing a lot of words into each bar. You can hear it all crystal clear, however, with Darnielle delivering it all with the precision of a hip hop master, minus the hip hop.

Imagery, there is a lot to pick from, but in honour of the recently concluded Super Bowl, I’ll go with this football related bit from “Same as Cash”:

“Striking a bargain with the imp in your brain
Prepared to take another knock for the short gain
But you can ask any veteran running back
Eventually your joints complain.”

True in football and as a metaphor, true for life as well.

There are times when the Mountain Goats can get a little jazzy, which is not my favourite side of them, and there are other times when they employ the sounds of six or seven instruments when four would do, but it is hard to fault them. They cram a lot of ideas – musical and lyrical – into every song, and there is bound to be some spillage when you load the plate that full.

In terms of topics, you got me. There are floor level rentals, motorcycles, and at one point a body disposed of in a water tower. Which is, you know, gross, but makes for a good image.

Who is Jenny from Thebes, and how does she relate to West Texas? I’m afraid I don’t know, or as Darnielle sings on “Jenny III”:

“Nobody will ever know for certain
The names of all the secrets she held back behind the curtain”

Does it bothers me that there are hard core Mountain Goats fans out there in on these and many other secrets, while I listen in the dark? Sure, maybe a little, but it didn’t bother me enough to wreck the music, which is wonderful, creative, and thoughtfully constructed.

Best tracks: Clean Slate, Cleaning Crew, Same as Cash, Water Tower, Jenny III

CD Odyssey Disc 1710: The Scorpions

I’m a bit tired and it’s a bit late, but sometimes on the CD Odyssey you have to row when there ain’t enough wind to sail. This is one of those times. I’ll put my back into it, and we’ll see what results.

Disc 1710 is…Taken By Force

Artist: Scorpions

Year of Release: 1977

What’s up with the Cover? Once again we get a sanitized Scorpions album cover, after their original design was censored for being too…something. In this case the something was too violent, with the original depicting two kids shooting each other in a mass cemetery. If you’d like to see that, the internet is replete with options.

My copy is this mostly black version, with the band members across the top. It’s not worthy of a clever comment, and I’m not in the mood to be serious about why we have this cover in the first place and so…on to the next category.

How I Came To Know It: At some point a number of years ago my friend Spence got me digging through early Scorpions albums. I don’t like everything they did in the early days, but I do like a lot of it including “Taken by Force”.

How It Stacks Up: The Scorpions have 19 studio albums, but at this point I only have six of them. I don’t have plans to get more, but never say never. I had originally saved slot #3 for “Taken by Force” but the truth is, it couldn’t beat out “Lovedrive” and so it lands at #4. Here’s the full (now amended – for those readers of the “Lovedrive” review) list:

1. Blackout: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 290)
2. Animal Magnetism: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1194)
3. Lovedrive: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1527)
4. Taken by Force: 3 stars (reviewed right here)
5. Love at First Sting: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 309)
6. Crazy World: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 702)

Rating: 3 stars

Early Scorpions can feel a bit weird to the uninitiated, and while “Taken By Force” isn’t the weirdest record, it does branch out into places musically that those who limit their knowledge to “Rock You Like a Hurricane” will feel surprising.

This record did not start auspiciously for me, with two of the first three tunes (“Steamrock Fever”, “I’ve Got To Be Free”) featuring a kind of garage rock vibe that I found a bit jarring. The Scorpions always have a metallic taste to their sound, but these tunes landed more on the tinny side of metal. The song wedged between, “We’ll Burn the Sky” was an improvement, mostly because of all the cowbell. Who doesn’t love cowbell?

I started thinking that I might have made a mistake, and hoping that this was the album with “The Sails of Charon” on it. Readers, my hopes were not in vain. More on that in a moment.

Track Four is “Riot of Your Time”, which gets the Scorpions going in the first of what would become a number of surprising directions. The tune is one third folk guitar strum jangle, one third driving metal riffs you know and love as the Scorpions, and one third Queen getting theatrical. In sum, it is a lot. It is overblown to the point of excess, but hard not to love, and better after repeat listens.

The song had me musing that maybe, on balance, I liked this record after all. And then “The Sails of Charon” kicked in. “Sails of Charon” is one of rock and roll’s great songs. Killer riffs, killer solos, killer riffs played at the same time as killer solos, and an irrepressible driving fury. A wave of guitar that invites you to ride across some sort of lyrically questionable storyline. Don’t worry what it is about – it is all window dressing for the power chord overkill and an anthemic what-the-hell quality that would make Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow salivate. At four and half minutes, the only beef I have with “Sails of Charon” is that it isn’t twice as long.

Remember, though, I promised many musical turns. After fully hooking me on a bit of traditional seventies rock/metal, the Scorpions hit you with “Your Light” a song that mixes their rock roots with a funky groove. Thin Lizzy meets Nile Rodgers. It is funky as hell but still tuff. ‘ere the end, there is a metal guitar solo somehow dumped on top of all that groove. A lot of sharp turns of style in this song, but every one works. This song is like a cabby that takes you down eight side streets during rush hour, avoids three stop lights and gets you home five minutes early.

A Scorpions album wouldn’t feel right without an overwrought ballad with an awkward title. On “Taken by Force” that song is “Born to Touch Your Feelings”. The first half is like a sixties folk tune, and the bridge is like a hard rock Oktoberfest. There’s some spoken word confessional stuff overlaid in the last third for good measure. I’m not sure it works as well as they think it does, but they go all in to sell it, and for a song like this, that’s enough.

Throughout it all, the musicianship of the Scorpions shines through. In fact, “Taken By Force” is their most technically interested record in my collection. The number of musical styles they incorporate is impressive, but more impressive is how they make them all work so well together, often within a single song. It takes great composition and even better playing to make that work, but they deliver time and again.

Best tracks: Riot of Your Time, The Sails of Charon, Your Light

CD Odyssey Disc 1709: Lori McKenna

Apologies for my comparatively long absence, gentle readers. I’ve had a very busy work week and right when I thought I’d squirrelled away some down time, went and got myself sick. The worst part of it all, is I had occasion to go out in public dressed as a pirate and had to bow out. The number of times one gets the opportunity to dress up as a pirate in life are limited, and missing even one stings.

Back to music. My last review was released in 1988. This record is called 1988 but came out last year. Coincidence…or conspiracy? You decide.

Disc 1709 is…1988

Artist: Lori McKenna

Year of Release: 2023

What’s up with the Cover? Our artist, ‘guitaring’ away at an undisclosed location. That window looks like any number of small interior town airport windows I’ve stared out of, but your guess is good as mine if this is in a small town, or even at an airport for that matter.

There’s also a logo of some cherub leaning on the year 1988. I’m not sure how this aligns with ‘possible airport window’ particularly since cherubs don’t need to take public transport to fly somewhere.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve been a fan of Lori McKenna for quite some time, dating back to discovering her through her 2016 album “The Bird & the Rifle”. Despite the gratuitous and unnecessary use of an ampersand in the album title, I was smitten with her sound and have been buying up her records ever since. “1988” was just the latest release.

How It Stacks Up: I have six Lori McKenna albums. I’d like to have eight, but 2013’s “Massachusetts” and 2014’s “Numbered Doors” are inexplicably hard to find. Like, it’s killin’ me. Anyway, of the six I have, something had to be last and 1988 is it. There’s no shame in it. Lori McKenna makes consistently great records, and competition is fierce.

Rating: 3 stars

Some artists get criticism along the lines of “all their albums sound the same”. This seems like a foolish thing to complain about. Some artists change their sound, some don’t, and for those who don’t, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. ACDC is a good example of this phenomenon. Alestorm is another. There are plenty, and holding down the role in the country genre is today’s focus, Lori McKenna.

Lori McKenna doesn’t break any new ground on 1988, and anything you hear on this record is going to remind you of her previous seven records. Homespun small-town wisdom is her stock and trade. Her vocals have a high quaver to them, but never feel breathy. They match wonderfully with her easy guitar strumming and clear, thoughtful lyrics. This is three chords and the truth, distilled down to its purest form.

When you listen to Cypress Hill, you can expect to hear a lot of songs about smoking dope and shootin’ folks. Lori McKenna is similarly consistent thematically, albeit with slightly more sedate subject matter. McKenna likes to sing about the nostalgia of youth, love and loyalty and more than few songs about what it is to age gracefully. Her songs have a small town common sense, and the wisdom of how to quiet the heart, and find joy even in hard times.

The album starts with ground zero for McKenna. “The Old Woman in Me” is an anthem for middle-age, and how to celebrate it. The lines all have a delightful caesura in them that makes everything that comes in the second half of the bar have an even deeper gravitas. It’s an old trick but a good one:

“The old woman in me thinks I look good in these jeans
She remembers what her body did, carrying all those kids
She's narrowed down the truth, she don't even dye her roots
She's proud of the life she lived, says it made her the woman she is”

McKenna has five kids and talks about being a mom a LOT and you get the impression she is, like, the BEST mom ever. Apart from also having an awesome mom, I have no deeper frame of reference for what the experience of being one is like, but McKenna gets me part way there every time she sings one of these tunes.

For all the upbeat tunes McKenna sings – and she does this a lot – she’s perfectly capable of exploring the sadness of ordinary folks as much as she does their victories. The best example on 1988 is “Letting People Down”, which this gem of a quatrain:

“You get up for work every day, you drag yourself right out of bed
The arms of those angels are wrapped around the dreams you left
I look the other way, pretending not to notice
I don't know how it died, but I know where the ghost is”

This is McKenna at her best, pulling your heart strings through the agony of ordinary lives, and the unending complexity that is the human condition.

Because of her subject matter, there is always the danger for McKenna to slide into the trite, and it does happen from time to time on 1988. “Happy Children” is one of those ‘wish good things on you’ type songs with a list of stuff that doesn’t always land. Or maybe I’m just grumpy because McKenna seems to think the happiest thing to wish on someone is that they have happy children. Thanks, but I’ll pass.  

For the most part, though, McKenna delivers authenticity without descent into the maudlin. 1988 isn’t her best collection of songs, but it is still solid entry and head and shoulders above what you might hear on mainstream country radio.

Best tracks: The Old Woman in Me, The Town in Your Heart, The Tunnel