CD Odyssey Disc 1970: Paul Kelly and the Messengers

Happy Halloween, and welcome back to the CD Odyssey! Before our review I will share four of my favourite albums from the year corresponding with the review number – 1970!

• Black Sabbath x2, “Self-Titled” (Disc 105) and “Paranoid” (Disc 194)
• Simon and Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” (Disc 351)
• Allman Brothers, “Idlewild South” (Disc 940)

I’m falling behind in my listening to new albums right now, as my wallet is turning out to work faster than my ears. This next album is one of the reasons why – an impulse buy that led me to several more of the same.

Disc 1970 is…Comedy

Artist: Paul Kelly and the Messengers

Year of Release: 1991

What’s up with the Cover? A dingy comedy club awaits its next hopeful fool. The time lapsed photography blurs some of the patrons and lends an air of listlessness. Every night in this place is the same –uneven performers and tired jokes.

On the plus side, cheap drinks and no cover!

How I Came To Know It: My friend Casey introduced me to Paul Kelly when he bought me Kelly’s 1989 album “So Much Water, So Close to Home” for my birthday one year (thanks, Casey!). Years later I saw “Comedy” and a couple other albums sitting in the local record store at discount prices. I took a chance on all three and here we are.

How It Stacks Up: Paul Kelly has an impressive 28 studio albums across his career, but I only have four of them. Of those four, I put “Comedy” in at #1.

Ratings: 4 stars

Going for a double album is a delicate decision. For every “London Calling” and “The Wall” out there, there is another double record in desperate need of a trim. Paul Kelly’s “Comedy” lands somewhere in the middle. Could I have cut a few tracks and squeezed it into a single LP? Probably, yes, but the quality of the songs would have made the task difficult. So while I initially chafed at the length of this record, I still found myself sinking into a lot of timeless gems from one of Australia’s finest singer-songwriters.

In 1991 Paul Kelly was walking that folk/rock line that would later morph into what the kids now call “Indie” but back in the day we called it “College Rock”. Terms change, but this particular mix of lyric-forward delivery and jangly guitar will be well familiar to any fans of R.E.M., Uncle Tupelo and countless other bands doing similar stuff across the Pacific and International Date Line. Slap a helping of the Pogues in there, and you’ll have the idea.

If you like that jangly, sometimes dark approach to storytelling, then this record will not disappoint. Yes, the sound and production is a bit light on the low end, but its by design, not accident, and once you settle in and acclimate you can appreciate how that slightly diffuse sound brings exactly the kind of uncertainty that these songs need to help you think deep thoughts.

The album opens with “Don’t Start Me Talking” which for an album called “Comedy” is a pretty good (if unintended) inside joke. The song isn’t about the fact that a double album and 17 more songs await you, but it was hard not to feel Paul was winking at me.

Kelly is a masterful songwriter, and he knows how to take a small event or image and blossom it into a broader theme that explores the complicated trials of the human heart.

“Wintercoat” is a fine example, which in just three and a half minutes walks us through the start of a relationship, its collapse and the stark cold that you’re left with. Our narrator clutches his coat about him against the winter air, but the song leaves an unstated certainty that the chill is coming from within, and the coat’s value is in its memory, not its warmth.

“Leaving Her for the Last Time” is a good example of a song where just the refrain can tell you more than the narrator is willing to say out loud. Anyone who is leaving their problematic relationship “for the last time” already has an established track record of not following through.

Kelly is a master of language to match his musical themes. “I Won’t Be Your Dog Anymore” is full of minor key menace, and a plaintive chorus that cries defiance. The lyrics are some of the best on the record and match the tone. A couple of great snippets:

“I’ve been drinking muddy water
And it tastes like turpentine
I’ve been leaving muddy footprints
Up and down the Morgan line”

And later…

“Now the mangrove sun is sinking
And the moon is bloody red
Every gun is clean and loaded
Lying by a feather bed”

That is some dark and brilliant shit.

At the end of our epic journey, Kelly returns to his comedy theme with, “Little Boy Don’t Lose Your Balls”. It’s a funny time and a good image to giggle to, but like “Don’t Start Me Talking” it isn’t just for laughs, as Kelly works in deeper messages. On “Don’t Start Me Talking” Kelly warns that if you invite him to share his deepest thoughts he’ll do just that, and the record that unfolds explores individual tragedy, as well as social justice themes, inequity and a host of complex human emotion.

“Little Boy Don’t Lose Your Balls” bookends our journey through comedy that’s not. It’s a reminder that wealth and recognition don’t mean a thing if you lose your integrity along the way. Wise words to live by.

Could this record shave four or five of its 18 songs and be slightly better? Absolutely, but even with the bloat it is still one of Paul Kelly’s best.

Best tracks: Don’t Start Me Talking, Wintercoat, Leaving Her For the Last Time, I Won’t Be Your Dog Anymore, Take Your Time, Sydney from a 727,  Little Boy Don’t Lose Your Balls

CD Odyssey Disc 1962: Neil Young

I made the mistake of trying to listen to this on my MP3 player after sorting for “album name” and got a mix of songs from Neil Young and the Offspring for my troubles. The CD in the car was far more reliable.

Disc 1962 is…Americana

Artist: Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Year of Release: 2012

What’s up with the Cover? What you see here is not the cover, but an artist’s rendering of turn of the century America on the inside fold of the CD jacket.

For the actual cover, Neil took a 1905 photo of Geronimo and some other First Nations and superimposed the faces of the band over top of them. Opinions no doubt vary on what Neil was intending here, but at minimum it could be triggering, and I’ve chosen to go in another direction. Forewarned, you can look it up elsewhere on the internet.

How I Came To Know It: This was just me giving Neil a chance based on previous positive experiences. I was learning around this time to be more discerning with which Neil Young albums were worth my time.

How It Stacks Up: Neil Young has released 45 albums over his long and illustrious career, but I don’t have all of ‘em and I don’t like all of ‘em. I have at one time or another owned (and reviewed) 23 albums. This is the last one left, and I rank it…21^st. So, not good.

Ratings: 2 stars

As this is the final Neil Young record in my collection, here is the full and exhaustive recap of all 23 (read them all here). Enjoy and/or seethe with disagreement as the mood strikes you:

1. Harvest: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 1877)
2. Rust Never Sleeps: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 664)
3. On the Beach: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 579)
4. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 497)
5. After the Gold Rush: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1450)
6. Hawks & Doves: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 188)
7. Prairie Wind: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 160)
8. Le Noise: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 403)
9. Hitchhiker: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1158)
10. Chrome Dreams II: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1196)
11. Harvest Moon: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 257)
12. Comes a Time*: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 883)
13. Homegrown: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1604)
14. Freedom: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1750)
15. Sleeps With Angels: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 20)
16. Ragged Glory: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 730)
17. Tonight’s the Night: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 422)
18. Self-Titled: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 435)
19. Everybody’s Rockin’: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 914)
20. America Stars ‘n’ Bars: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 855)
21. Americana: 2 stars (reviewed right here)
22. Colorado: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 1809)
23. A Letter Home: 1 star (reviewed at Disc 850)

·         *I was probably a bit harsh on “Comes a Time” at three stars, and it likely should be higher on the list, but a star laid is a star played…

Before we launch into “Americana” let the record above show that I’m not one of those “I only like his early stuff” jerks, and there have been plenty of records (well, five) that Neil put out after 2005 that are solid records.

But it is also true that later Neil has doubled down on doing whatever the hell he wants. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. On “Americana” it doesn’t.

“Americana” sees the return of Neil’s backing band Crazy Horse, whose presence is almost guaranteed to make a record grimier. When these folks get together with Neil everything tends to get drawn out a bit longer with a lot more reverb on the guitar.

Given that this record is a collection of re-imagined old classic American folk songs, I was hopeful that this would mean that some of the “lost” lyrics of standards like “Clementine” and “Oh Susannah” would make an appearance. Some of those lyrics make these old songs even darker and creepier than they already are. To some degree, this hope was rewarded, particularly on these two tracks.

However, Crazy Horse mostly used the extra time to “explore the space” with a lot of not very inventive jam-session style grooves that were equal parts self-indulgent and unimaginative.

The further I went into the record the more irritating this long, drawn-out “go nowhere” vibe became. If the song is going to be five plus minutes long, I want most of that time exploring the various lost stanzas of these classics, not a bunch of hot-boxed, blue haze studio wankery.

Whether you’re covering a song from two, twenty, or two hundred years ago, the unspoken rule of the exercise is well understood: make it original and do it well.

For most of this record, Neil and Crazy Horse only manage the first half of that social contract. Yes, these sound original, but they are mostly deliberately messy dive-bar renditions. If that’s what you want with your timeless folk classics, you might like – even love – this record. I thought it was just a lot of doubling down on an idea that was good for a couple of songs (both of which I’ve already mentioned) but not for a whole record that approaches a full hour of playing time.

“Tom Dula” is a particularly good example of the excess, with eight full minutes that go nowhere special and travel there in the loudest manner possible. The song features plenty of Neil Young’s exceptional guitar playing, but I kept waiting for the song to have a purpose, and it never did. Instead all the layers of improvisation just caked an otherwise interesting tale with a thick layer of sonic mud.

Half-way through the record you get a listless version of “Get a Job,” lurching like Frankenstein’s Monster through a song designed to be lively and full of jump. I found myself wishing this song had instead appeared on Neil’s 1983 rockabilly record “Everybody’s Rockin’.

As a fan of folk music history, there was a part of me that was just happy to have all these old songs, but then I realized that over the years I had many of them by other artists. A quick search of my music catalogue revealed many a gem (“Oh Susannah” – the Be Good Tanyas and the Byrds; “Gallow’s Pole” – Led Zeppelin; “This Land Is Your Land” – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings; “Wayfarin’ Stranger” – Emmylou Harris; and “God Save the Queen” – Queen).

Young’s version of “Wayfarin’ Stranger” (where he finally tones it down) is pretty solid but he’s no Emmylou…

At the end of the otherwise brilliant version of “Clementine” you can hear a member of the band say, “I thought we shoulda gone back to the F sharp minor”. It’s the kind of conversation you might have with your buddies while jamming, but it isn’t something worth recording.

Which, sadly, is how I felt about large chunks of this record.

Best tracks: Oh Susannah, Clementine, Wayfarin’ Stranger

CD Odyssey Disc 1953: The Brothers Comatose

A friend remarked to me last night that I tend to review a lot of obscure albums. That may be true, but I’ve got nothing against mainstream artists and have many in my collection. On the other hand, my tastes are wide and varied, and the fickle dice I roll to determine what I’ll explore next care not for the considerations of fame nor notoriety.

Today, the dice gods have decided to stick with the obscure.

Disc 1953 is…Turning Up the Ground

Artist: The Brothers Comatose

Year of Release: 2022

What’s up with the Cover? It’s a funky graphic that – like the album title – explores two kinds of ground, one musical and one agricultural.

I like some of the specific choices depicted here. Snail shell or moth? Banjo case full of mushrooms or guitar case full of flowers?

Best of all, you can choose between a shovel with a vine wrapped around it or a shovel with a snake wrapped around it? On first blush, I think vine-over-snake is the obvious and safer bet, but if you’re shoveling snow out of a driveway, you’re really going to need the flat blade on that snake shovel. Just, you know, wear thick gloves.

How I Came To Know It: Another album I found through an album review.

How It Stacks Up: I went on to explore the Brothers Comatose’s discography (they have seven albums) but so far this is the only one that’s landed in my collection, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

After a few days with prog rock band Moon Tooth my ear was ready for something free and easy, and the Dice Gods obliged with the folk/bluegrass stylings of the Brothers Comatose.

If you are expecting creative time signatures and outré chord progressions I would refer you back to Moon Tooth (or better still, just listen to Rush or Tool) but if you enjoy songs you can slap your knee to and harmonies that you can sing along to in confidence after the first couple of verses, this is the band for you.

For some, this simple approach to music might be misinterpreted as meaning the band isn’t good, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The simpler the arrangements to a song, the more important it is the band plays with coordinated skill. That alchemy of quiet individual confidence, and a constant ear to where your bandmates are sitting in the pocket, is what separates good bands from mediocre ones.

On this front, the Brothers Comatose have their artistry down pat. Their songs have a softness to them that relies heavily on casting their spell of relaxation on the listener. Playing light and a bit slow is often much harder than just forcing in as many flourishes as can be squeezed between notes.

That isn’t to say the Brothers Comatose just play by the numbers. “Turning Up the Ground” has just the right amount of small touches of fiddle, mandolin and guitar in space. These aren’t there for technical excellence, but more like a light ripple of wind across tall grass – almost unnoticed but critical to drawing you closer to the natural movement of the whole.

Many of the songs on “Turning Up the Ground” have a transitional feel to them, with explorations of shifting from one thing to another. Sometimes choosing your art over a day job (“Working for Somebody Else”) sometimes the end of a relationship (“That Shit Ain’t Funny”), or maybe just a plea for connection in a time of uncertainty (“When It All Falls Apart”). These songs tend to bring out the best in the band, creative tension being one of the keys to great songwriting.

The tracks are well-ordered, and the best song comes midway with the break-up tune, “That Shit Ain’t Funny”. The song relies heavily on the restless rise and fall of the melody, and while a lot of the chorus climbs through the scale the first thing you hear is a low guitar walk down. This lets the listen know you’re starting from somewhere low, also evidenced by the song’s first line, “I can see through you like paper”. Yeah – things ain’t going well here…

The song also has some first-rate decisions in the arrangement category, starting sparsely with just guitar strum and then slowly building as we add in each member of the band, culminating in a lovely call-and-answer between fiddle and guitar at the bridge. The whole effect captures that sense of determination when you’re at the “pack the car” stage of a break-up, both resolute and also filled with regret.

On my first couple of listens I told myself that this record was nothing special, but on repeat listens its soft and gentle beauty sunk into my bones. My only complaint is that I had intended to just have a “one and done” relationship with this band, and now I realize I’m going to have to explore their entire discography. If the other records are as good as this, I’ll be well-contented, which is exactly the headspace “Turning Up the Ground” will put you in if you give it a chance.

Best tracks: Working for Somebody Else, Soft and Blue, That Shit Ain’t Funny, When it All Falls Apart

CD Odyssey Disc 1948: Carpenter, Fowlis, and Polwart

Welcome back to the Odyssey, where today we celebrate my favourite kind of supergroup – the obscure supergroup! Can you be obscure and still be a supergroup? Well, here on the CD Odyssey we say emphatically – yes!

In other news this is the fifth album of the last seven to be released in 2025, so if the thread you’re looking for is a common one – there you have it.

Disc 1948 is…Looking for the Thread

Artist: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart

Year of Release: 2025

What’s up with the Cover? At first I thought this cover was a bunch of stars, but Sheila tells me these are birds, and I am inclined to agree.

How I Came To Know It: I am Mary Chapin Carpenter fan and I always give any new album from her a chance. This doesn’t always land like it used to, and I have only bought four of her last 11 records.

Enter, “Looking for the Thread” into this uncertain atmosphere, with a couple of additional musicians sharing the bill just to complicate matters further. How will it all pan out? Read on!

How It Stacks Up: I have nine Mary Chapin Carpenter albums, but this is a Carpenter/Fowlis/Polwart album. I’ve only got one of those, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

I don’t know what inspired Mary Chapin Carpenter to share two thirds of her record with a couple of Scottish folk singers, but it breathes new life into her work almost forty years removed from her first record and brought two other talented singer-songwriters to my attention in the process.

Listening to Carpenter add Scots Gaelic inspiration to her work felt like a full circle moment for me. My first love of folk music came in the late eighties through the experience of Irish and Scottish folk artists. I ate up everything Clannad and Capercaillie could put out back then, as I weaned myself (temporarily as it turned out) from my heavy metal youth.

Carpenter was an early influence on me to expand my horizons westward, showing me that Americana folk music was equally compelling and worth my time and attention. All these years later, Carpenter returns me to my first love and infuses a new sound and approach into her own music in the process. Suffice it to say I was primed to like this record.

Things begin with Julie Fowlis putting new music to the traditional folk song, “Gradh Geal Mo Chridhe”. Stylistically, this song was an immediate trip down memory lane, with Fowlis’s voice pealing out into the night air (n.b. I listened during the day but the song has a “hear it at night” kind of vibe).

The low hum in the production, and the slow adding of instruments in the arrangement gives the song a building majesty that was everything I loved about Scottish music back in the day. It was like a lost lover returned from across the sea to serenade me. The whole tune is in Gaelic but you don’t need to understand the lyrics word for word for Fowlis to make you feel the feels. This song has romance in its bones.

The tune features a very resonant sounding fiddle, which I was to learn (via liner notes and a Youtube video) is Caomhin O’Raghallaigh playing an instrument called the ‘hardanger d’amore’. This is basically a big fiddle with some extra stings under the bridge that pick up the vibrations above and add extra oomph. I’d never heard of this thing before, but I was instantly enthralled with its haunting resonance.

After Fowlis lands a big moment in the record's opening notes, Mary Chapin Carpenter then joins the fray. “A Heart That Never Closes” features a list of domestic imagery all held together by the most powerful glue society ever concocted: the open heart. Fowlis (I think) comes in late with some well-placed whistle (the instrument, not the pursed lips) to add gravitas and colour in the edges.

Rounding out the record’s exceptional opening is Karine Polwart’s “Rebecca”, a song that takes on a bit of darkness, as the titular character is invited by her lover thusly:

“Trace your fingers along the scars
Where the cold steel tried to cut me down
They will never truly heal.”

The song never explains where these wounds came from, or what was sacrificed or won in the gaining of them. Maybe an old fighter home from the wars, maybe the result of a duel preserving Rebecca’s honour. It’s never said, but you can tell from the way Polwart’s light but deliberate Scottish lilt delivers them, it is one hell of a story.

The vocals of Fowlis, Polwart and Carpenter are all equally rich, each in its own way. Fowlis pure and high, Carpenter’s throaty low notes and Polwart with the sharpest edge – both vocally and in subject matter.

While the rest of the record never hits the same 1-2-3 punch of the opener, there is still plenty to recommend. A late favourite is Carpenter’s “Satellite” which is about some sort of space exploration device launched in ‘78. My poorly informed research suggests it could be the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe, the International Cometary Explorer, or some made up mission in the future where ’78 is short for 2078. My bet is on the International Cometary Explorer, but that’s not what’s important.

What is important is that deep space scientific probes aren’t the sort of thing that populate your average folk song. Not only does Carpenter sell you on the adventure, by the end she has you rooting hard for the damn thing like it’s a person.

Each of these artists has had a long career, and each clearly inspires the other two to make great music. The result is a fine bit of collaboration that not only has me happily returning to Mary Chapin Carpenter but also discovering two artists that it is my great shame to not have known sooner. I’m excited to explore further now that I’ve found the thread.

Best tracks: Gradh Geal Mo Chridhe, A Heart That Never Closes, Rebecca, Hold Everything, Satellite, Buidheann Mo Chridhe Clann Ualraig

CD Odyssey Disc 1945: Ketch Secor

This is the third review in the last four that came out in 2025. While I select albums randomly every time, it does show I bought plenty of music in 2025. And every other year.

Disc 1945 is…Story the Crow Told Me

Artist: Ketch Secor

Year of Release: 2025

What’s up with the Cover? Ketch Secor channels the Fonz.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve been a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show for a long time, and Secor is the singer and key songwriter for that band, so when he released a solo record, I figured it was worth a listen.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only solo record by Secor, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

Ketch Secor’s “Story the Crow Told Me” is part love letter to all the music that influenced him, and part thank you to everyone who helped him along the way. It’s a grateful and gracious record that tickles your ears and warms your heart.

Secor has plenty of material to draw on for such a retrospective, having navigated the highways of the world for 25 years as part of Old Crow Medicine Show. In lesser hands such a journey could feel self-indulgent, but this record is authentic and heartfelt throughout.

From the personal, Secor digs deep into his early experiences, busking his way across Canada and America, playing various holes in the wall (there is even a song called “Holes in the Wall” that honours them by name).

The songs have all the jump and energy that you’d expect on a full-blown OCMS album, supported by his OCMS band mates in several places, as well as additional star power of Molly Tuttle on harmony and even an appearance by the legendary Marty Stuart. The energy of the record is infectious, with hand-claps and sing-a-long choruses that make you feel like you’re part of the band, or at least in the front row of the show.

There isn’t anything particularly innovative on this record – it is the mélange of sounds typical of OCMS, mixing bluegrass, Americana, and country, but what it lacks in creativity it makes up for with veteran songwriting that delivers banger after banger.

Secor has assembled a band that is as tight and talented as they come, mostly settling down in the front of the pocket bluegrass style. It creates a jump and energy that makes it impossible to sit still. Matching the subject matter of the songs, the music is celebratory and lively.

Secor’s vocals are sneaky good. These songs don’t require a huge vocal range but they do call for elite timing and phrasing, and Secor delivers throughout. The effect is one of an expert storyteller, knowing how to lean in or out, complete with micropauses to emphasize punchlines and emotional notes when the moment demands. He’s so smooth at this that you’re liable to not notice, but it is worth the extra focus to appreciate his uncanny sense of timing.

In addition to revisiting his own personal journey through music, the record is also replete with music history. If you’re a fan of the history of Americana, folk and country music, there are Easter Eggs aplenty here. On “On the Wall” Secor celebrates getting your picture up on the wall alongside Hank Williams and Little Jimmy Dickens. The song is a mix of pride and humility as Secor reflects on the mark he too has made on music.

The album’s last song, “What Nashville Was” is the only negative moment on the record, as Secor laments the decline of Nashville’s music scene from a centre of creative excellence to the empty calories of new country that emerged in the nineties. Secor artfully blends in sections of Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country”, plus samples of Johnny Cash, all mixed in with his own quick-witted perfectly timed message.

While the song takes more than a few shots at Nashville’s creative decline, ultimately this too is a love letter to not only what Nashville was, but that the idea of Nashville endures, or as Secor puts it, “still running in our blood”. Having been to Nashville, I can understand the dichotomy. Sure the Honky Tonk Highway can be a drunken mess of broken dreams, but just off the strip there are still plenty of artists working away making great music, and the heart of the town still beats today as strong as ever.

“Story the Crow Told Me” is a thoughtful journey through all the great music that paved the way in Secor’s journey, paired with all the people that contributed to his success along the way. It’s also a toe-tapping good time that just gets better and better on each listen.

Best tracks: Busker’s Spell, Talkin’ Doc Blues, Old Man River, Catch Me If You Can, Thanks Again, What Nashville Was

CD Odyssey Disc 1944: Courtney Marie Andrews

It’s another fine day as we look to an artist that I saw live just three months ago. This time we go back over ten years to early in her career.

Disc 1944 is…On My Page

Artist: Courtney Marie Andrews

Year of Release: 2013

What’s up with the Cover? A wistful looking lass (Andrews) decides if it is time to untie those heavy curtains. Probably depends on whether the light is hitting the TV funny.

At least that’s what determines curtain use at our place.

How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Andrews for about ten years now. “On My Page” is a re-release of an album even earlier than that, which I snapped up when I saw it in the record store.

How It Stacks Up: I have seven Courtney Marie Andrews records. “On My Page” is solidly in the middle. I’ll rank it #4

Ratings: 3 stars

Soft, understated, and emotionally powerful, “On My Page” is a record of a young Courtney Marie Andrews finding her voice. This is the flower of Andrews’ talent in the dawning light: a little fragile but full of beauty and promise.

With later records like “Loose Future” (2022) and “Valentine” (2026) (Disc 1915) you’ll hear me throw some occasional shade on all the production elements going on. Given how good those records are, you’d be justified to ask just what my problem is.

The answer is no problem at all, except that early records like “On My Page” have spoiled me with the pure Andrews experience - the undiluted stuff.

I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of singers that could break your heart with just their quaver, and Courtney Marie Andrews is one of them. Her vocals rise up through the arrangement with effortless power but yet always present as soft and vulnerable.

The opening track, “Woman of Many Colors” shows how aware Andrews is at using her instrument. The song starts at the highest point in the melody. It is sneaky hard to do what she does here and not come off pitchy, but it allows the song to immediately generate a restlessness. The lyrics double down on the effect with a clever turn on a coat of many colours, Andrews instead makes herself the patchwork of experience – living art.

In this early stage we have very limited arrangements, and while “Woman of Many Colors” has guitar, piano, some sort of shaker and (I think) a bass, it is all very subdued – more of a delivery system for the bird song of her voice as she shows you the artful joy of flitting from place to place and thought to thought.

This song is followed up by “This Time” which has more of a traditional anthem quality. Because of the nature of Andrews’ singing style she doesn’t need to belt it out to make you feel the feels. If anything, that slight hurt in the back of her throat is what makes you know how well she’s earned it as she delivers a refrain of “I ain’t goin’ back…this time.”

The songwriting on the album shows early and intense talent, and Andrews’ propensity for making private moments reflect as universal is already well developed, despite her still being in her early twenties when this record was recorded.

If there was a quibble, it would be that one of the records great assets – its quietness – can sometimes make it a bit harder to access. You get less hooks in the melodies and the instruments are often there more as a delivery vehicle for the poetry. This isn’t a bad thing, but it means to love the record that way it deserves to be loved requires you to bend your full attention to it and let the quiet moments slip into you.

There is also a similarity between the songs that later in the record can lead your mind to wander. A few years later, Andrews will have added just that extra amount of range and songwriting chops that take the concepts she’s trying out here and convert them into the masterpiece that is 2016’s “An Honest Life” (reviewed at Disc 1081). “On My Page” isn’t quite at that level, but all the ingredients are there, vibrant and on the verge of full bloom. It’s a prequel that is well worth the listen.

Best tracks: Woman of Many Colors, This Time, It Keeps Going, 500 Nights

CD Odyssey Disc 1926: Clem Snide

I was a bit nervous about squeezing in two reviews this week with a late start after a long weekend. Fortunately, fate intervened with that shortest of listens…an EP. More on this later.

Disc 1926 is…A Beautiful EP

Artist: Clem Snide

Year of Release: 2003

What’s up with the Cover? A woman lifts her skirt in a playful but modest manner. Perhaps she’s dancing, or maybe just showing off her fancy shoes in anticipation of dancing.

How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Clem Snide since 2020 when they released “Forever Just Beyond”, but to my chagrin realized they’d already been around twenty years before I ever “discovered” them.

Even worse, a lot of their early albums which I now covet are very hard to find, and as a result I have lurked the “miscellaneous C” section of local record stores for years hoping for a score.

I’ve managed to land two more through this hunt and peck strategy (1999’s “Your Favourite Music” and 2009’s “Hungry Bird”) but five more LPs still elude me.

So when I saw this EP there I decided to buy it even though it wasn’t on my wish-list, all the while hoping it would overcome the EP curse.

How It Stacks Up: I have three Clem Snide albums, but this is an EP and therefore a different animal. As it is my only EP by the band, it cannot stack up.

Ratings: 2 stars

Not long after I got through my second of many listens of “A Beautiful EP” I realized two things. First, that it is objectively a solid record by a band I enjoy. Second, that much of what constitutes an EP tends to annoy me.

EPs can be great, but they are often dodgy by their very nature. They usually have half or fewer the number of songs from an LP, but they’re rarely half the price. Those songs tend to take a few well-worn turns best left unexplored, and “A Beautiful EP” is no exception.

First off, EPs love their cover songs. Sometimes you can get some real gems in the process – things the band might not put on a full record because it doesn’t suit the vibe or theme, but can work on an EP. Ghost covering the Eurythmics “Missionary Man” or Soundgarden doing the Ohio Players’ “Fopp” are two great examples. Bonus points if the band later combines a couple EPs into an album you can buy as a full length (as Soundgarden did this on “Screaming Life/Fopp”).

Clem Snide goes for a cover of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” which is…solid. It isn’t as good as the Ghost and Soundgarden songs I noted above, but I don’t like the original as much, so it had less to work with. Anyway, I liked it, and Clem Snide indie pop it up with solid success. Lead singer Eef Barzelay can’t hold a candle to Aguilera’s vocal gymnastics, but he doesn’t go for that, sticking to a punk adjacent approach that lacks depth, but retains enough edge to see it through.

The band also does a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” which is, again, passable but not a “must have” by any stretch. I prefer the original, as the cover drags just a bit.

EPs also like to recycle old songs with very similar new versions. Again, “A Beautiful EP” has two of these. “Nick Drake Tape” from their 1998 debut and “All Green” from “Soft Spot” (released earlier the same year). Argh. Both songs are OK, but knowing they’re recycled from earlier records is irritating. Despite it being many years later, I felt the echo of irritation of hard core fans having to buy these songs twice just to get the two covers.

This leaves us with only a single song that is 100% new and original material – “Mike Kalinsky” at Track 3. This song, about a high school outcast who doesn’t “do sports”, or score with girls but later goes on to be a successful musician is fine as narrative arcs go. However, the switch in styles from the slow folk pop of the main tune into a – surprise! – jump to Kalinsky’s punk rock styling at the end wore thin after multiple listens (which with an 18-minute EP you are going to get plenty of).

For all this, there aren’t any terrible songs on the record, and absent Aguilera’s powerhouse vocals I realized that “Beautiful” is a much stronger song structurally than I had ever given it credit for as a pop ballad. “All Green” is a lovely pastoral tune that makes you think of lazy summer days and iced tea.

But at the end of the day, I don’t need a bunch of re-releases, live versions and covers. If I wanted that experience, I’d buy a boxed set. So I’m going to part company with this record and do what I should have done in the first place: wait for the LPs that are actually on my list to show up in the record store and buy those instead.

Best tracks: Beautiful, All Green

CD Odyssey Disc 1924: The Devil Makes Three

This next album has been in my collection a long time, and yet I’ve never rolled it through my random selection process. Or maybe I did once and mistakenly thought, “I’ve already reviewed that one” and moved on without checking. If that has ever happened, I apologize to whatever Gods of Chaos might take offence at such an uncharacteristic rejection of the arbitrary.

Disc 1924 is…Do Wrong Right

Artist: The Devil Makes Three

Year of Release: 2009

What’s up with the Cover? A drawing of an old man.

Minus context I will assume from this man is adept at ‘doing wrong right’, and he’s been doing it that way for a long time. You could ask for details, but I sense from that settled scowl in his expression that this feller would see the question rising to your lips and slap it away before you uttered it.

Better to just mosey along and save yourself a fat lip.

How I Came To Know It: I don’t remember. It was either a) reviewed in a folk magazine I used to buy occasionally (maybe Penguin Eggs or American Songwriter) or b) from a list of “best obscure folk albums you’ve never heard of” or somesuch. I’m a sucker for a list as much as the next online surfer.

How It Stacks Up: The Devil Makes Three has made quite a few records over the past twenty plus years or so, but this is my only one, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

A mix of old timey bluegrass, folk, and Dixieland, with a side of sin and damnation – that’s “Do Wrong Right”. This trio does up traditional music with a side of nasty.

The first thing that comes across with these guys is how raw their sound is. It feels like they’ve walked in off the back forty, dirt still under their fingernails and laid down a record for $30, a sandwich and a six pack of beer.

The production is so sparse you’ll think at times it was recorded in mono, but you don’t want it any other way. It gives the whole record a “sitting on the porch” vibe that is perfect for songs about regular folks living regular lives.

You won’t find lead singer and principal songwriter Pete Bernhard belting out an aria at La Scala, but his rusty saw of a vocal style is exactly what you want for this kind of music. Bernhard has the kind of voice that is welcoming enough that you’ll sing along with him when the spirit moves you, which is exactly what his two bandmates (Cooper McBean and Lucia Turino) do on many occasions. The effect is to generate a party atmosphere, even though most of the songs are about being poor, drunk, and maybe even ugly. Everyone’s welcome on this porch, but most of the guests stay too late.

There’s a Devil’s Carnival quality to these songs that give them a lascivious sway that reminded me of Tom Waits or the Bridge City Sinners. All those artists are partial to hard lives and bad choices, and the Devil Makes Three are no exception. The record is rife with songs of booze and poverty. Both themes coming together with self-destructive delight on “Gracefully Facedown” which celebrates such unwelcome but natural partners as bottom-shelf bourbon and blackout drunks.

“For Good Again” revisits what it’s like to be starving artists, couch surfing and trying to get ahead. Devil Makes Three’s old school musical approach reminds you this an occupational hazard of the artist as old as civilization itself, even while throwing in modern takes on sin with lines like:

“You’ll never understand the things my friend Aaron put us through
He had this power point presentation about this girl he wanted to do”

Yes, the album’s title is a recurring theme.

The record ends strong with “Car Wreck,” the story of a man who is born restless, cursed to always leave something good in the hopes of finding something better. One day he leaves the love of his life, but the decision haunts him and years later, drawn by the memory of the one thing he can’t shake, he races home to her. Except he dies in a car wreck on the way. The song is tragic and heart-wrenching and full of bad choices (case in point: he’s so drunk when he crashes that car that “whiskey soaks his bones”. One more bad choice transformed into immortality through the power of song.

Through it all, “Do Wrong Right” maintains a frantic energy, careening from one poor soul to another, and making every cautionary tale a toe-tapper of a time. You wouldn’t want to be these folks, but the Devil Makes Three will make you want to hear their stories.

Best tracks: All Hail, Do Wrong Right, Gracefully Facedown, For Good Again, Help Yourself, Working Man’s Blues, Car Wreck

CD Odyssey Disc 1921: Benjamin Tod

I buy a lot of music by a lot of artists, but every now and then something new comes along that I fall for at another level. That’s how it is with this next artist.

Disc 1921 is…I Will Rise

Artist: Benjamin Tod

Year of Release: 2017

What’s up with the Cover? Benjamin Tod walks on the wrong side of the tracks, or at least the wrong side of that fence with a sign that reads, “Keep Out of Rail Yard – No Admittance”.

How I Came To Know It: I discovered Benjamin Tod in 2024 through his album “Shooting Star” (reviewed back at Disc 1789) and I’ve been digging backward through his discography ever since.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Benjamin Tod albums (including his latest, bought earlier today). “I Will Rise” comes in right in the middle at #3.

Ratings: 4 stars

Authenticity is a rare gift, and never more important than in folk and country music. On his first solo album away from the Lost Dog Street Band, singer-songwriter Benjamin Tod is as authentic as it comes.

“I Will Rise” is ten songs that wring every drop of heartache, regret, and anguish of out Tod’s hard-lived experience. While you listen you will both feel connected viscerally to these stories, and at the same time unworthy of them. Yes in one way we live through Tod’s artistry but in another it is only a shadowy reflection on the cave wall of the true event.

Take “Using Again”, where Tod describes falling off the wagon and the miserable self-loathing that emerges from it. Opening with:

“I'm living low down and I am using again
I'm hating my name cause I am cursed like my kin
And if I should see you before I am condemned
I hope you're deceived by the webs that I spin

“I wish I was who I appear
'Cause I despise the man in the mirror”

The song offers no respite from beginning to end, its final chorus a recognition that death approaches, and hell soon thereafter – its final notes an unresolved melody offering no surcease.

Without Tod’s authentic delivery songs like “Using Again” wouldn’t work, but his tortured warble that peals out of Tod like he’s been cursed by the gods to be chained to a rock and forced to shout his doubts and sins into the wind.

The arrangements could not be simpler, with nothing but Tod’s exceptional vocals and a single steel-stringed guitar, played with a heavy pick that twangs and twists through the song’s chord progression. Tod plays like he sings, with a deliberate and profound honesty.

On “I Will Never Be Around” Tod doubles down on hopeless, noting that he “would pick a shallow grave over an empty cell”. Yeesh, and the way he sings it makes you feel like either or both outcomes are imminent. Great stuff, but not exactly Gilmore Girls.

On a record like this, you take your joy where you can find it. There are plenty of songs where Tod’s romantic side comes out. Yes, even here he often comes at his subject matter from a dark place, (“Hungry For You Blues”, “Busted Love” and the classic road-trip argument, “Gasoline”) but at least we find an opportunity to explore the parts of our heart that hurt in a good way.

The record’s final track, “I Will Rise” is an anthem to the downtrodden, and while continuing to pull no punches, the record’s final salvo is one of hope and endurance. Here, Tod brings it all together. He sings of lost love and heartache, of hands shaking from alcohol withdrawal and the weariness of burning the candle at both ends; I expect a nod to the “all-in” approach to his songwriting, which leaves no stone in his troubled soul unturned.

And yet, at each admission of struggle, or depression, almost every other line is the refrain of “but I will rise.” This song is just as dark as any on the record, but we are left with a mantra of stubborn resilience, a call to rise above challenges, no matter how profound. If – like me – you like your messages of hope to be unvarnished and maybe even a little negatively motivated, then this song – and this album – are for you.

Best tracks: Using Again, Out of Babylon, Who I Am Ain’t Who I’ve Been, I Will Never Be Around, I Will Rise

CD Odyssey Disc 1919: Annahstasia

Today was my first day playing Ultimate this year and, well, I’m not as young as I used to be, but it was fun. Music is also fun so having recovered physically (following a two-hour nap) I’m ready to recover spiritually with one of the best records of 2025.

Disc 1919 is…Tether

Artist: Annahstasia

Year of Release: 2025

What’s up with the Cover? Annahstasia channels early Prince with this sultry and shirtless situation.

How I Came To Know It: The boring way – I read a review, checked it out and liked it.

How It Stacks Up: This is Annahstasia’s first and so far only LP and (not coincidentally) the only one I have. All of which is to say that there will be no stacking up.

Ratings: 4 stars

Some folk music is full of jump and jangle and some folk music is about deep thoughts and deeper feelings. Annahstasia’s “Tether” is the second variety, so if you decide to dive into the submerged caverns of her mind, be warned that you’ll likely emerge contemplative and maybe even a little sad.

If I’m going to be subjected to a wallow, I like it to be a good one and “Tether” is a worthy journey. Annahstasia writes with a simple and very subtle melodic style, saturated with rounded notes and layers of sound that make you feel like you’re floating underwater.

Against this backdrop her vocals emerge, breaking the surface tension of the mix with a layered and vibrant sound.

Her voice is low and breathy but full of power, leaving you to wonder how she doesn’t run out of oomph halfway through the bar (she never does). The delivery is husky and full of emotion that is overwrought, but in a well-planned and executed way. These songs could easily turn to maudlin, but because of the strength of her voice that never happens.

I am a big fan of Grace Cummings, and Annahstasia has a similar mix of otherworldly keen and ghostly whisper. In place of the tortured warble that Cummings employs, Annahstasia opts for a more direct lounge quality. She doesn’t equal Cummings’ brilliance, but that is a very high mountain to climb, with no shame in coming second.

The record opens with “Be Kind” which is indicative of the record. It is filled with heavily emotional moments, often pleading with both lover and listener for openness, understanding and above all, kindness.

From here we just dive lower. Light touches of piano, string and the brush-strum of guitar all serve to sink you deeper into the headspace where Annahstasia is waiting for you.

There are places where the musical choices edged a bit too close to jazz flourishes for my tastes, but they always pull away at just the right time. It is more of a deliberate brush with one or two arcane and unexpected notes that pinch you enough to bring you out of deep reverie, but not so hard to wake you from the spell.

On “Overflow” Annahstasia forgoes her whisper fur a full-throated vocal show-off moment. Consider me impressed as her tone warbles and bellows its way through the album’s most triumphant composition.

Even though “Overflow” is a celebration of refilling our cup, Annahstasia can’t resist a twist of saturated poetry that pushes you to a place of uncertainty. Case in point, these fine lines:

“Everybody wants to know
The child prodigy
But who's saving space
For the goldfish in her cage?”

She loses me a bit after this with the spoken word piece “All Is. Will Be. As It Was.” This bit has good poetry and a recurring use of alliteration that would make a Viking skald proud, but the work would be better without the guitar and piano flourishes that take it from basement beat poet joy and into lounge.

Fortunately, things immediately recover with the record’s best song, “Silk and Velvet”. Starting with “lately I’ve been tired/with all this running around” you sigh in relief and welcome the coming sink back into Annahstasia’s unique blend of the wise and the unsettled. Best line, the recurring:

“Maybe I'm an analyst, an antisocial bitch
Who sells her dreams for money
To buy hеr silk and velvet”

I love when a great poet won’t let themselves off their own hook, and here Annahstasia explores the very motives that bring her to create. Personally, I think she’s being way too hard on herself. Yes, all that creativity comes with doubt, but rarely was doubt expressed with such grace and beauty as it is on “Tether”. Quite simply, one of 2025’s best records.

Best tracks: Be Kind, Villain, Silk and Velvet, Overflow, Believer