Showing posts with label staple singers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label staple singers. Show all posts
Monday, 27 May 2019
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
Top 10 2016
A bit later than usual and in no particular order, these are the albums I've most enjoyed listening to in 2016:
'You Want It Darker could be addressed to fans pining for a return to [Leonard] Cohen’s bleakest songwriting; or a lover, or a higher power. As befits a lifelong spiritual seeker, born into a storied Jewish family, but well versed in scripture and Buddhism, the love songs have religious overtones, and the spiritual passages pack a lover’s passion.'
'Featuring production by M. Ward and boasting songwriting credits from Nick Cave, Neko Case, Justin Vernon, and others, Mavis Staples' Livin' on a High Note is a happy record. Its beneficent energy is refreshing after the cloistered prayer of last year’s Your Good Fortune and two thoughtful Jeff Tweedy-produced records.'
Coulson, Dean, McGuiness, Flint - Lo and Behold: 'Cynical ("Open the Door Homer") and idealistic ("The Death of Emmett Till"), self-pitying ("Sign on the Cross") and self-reliant ("Let Me Die in My Footsteps"), but always tough and intelligent. And let us not forget funny.'
Violent Femmes - We Can Do Anything: 'This is an instantly familiar mix of anti-folk, post-punk, phantasmagorical country and alternative rock, delivered via an equally recognisable blend of raw acoustic guitars, thrumming acoustic bass and rattling snare, garnished with Gano’s petulant whine ... It’s classic Gano – simultaneously funny, transgressive and deeply unsettling.'
Gregory Porter - 'Take Me to the Alley sounds fantastic, but that’s down to the warm spontaneity of an album that seems to have been recorded in six days. His own compositions proudly display his gospel roots – not the first genre you’d think of flaunting were you desperate for mainstream success. The title track offers up a parable about the second coming of Christ, its sternness at odds with the pacific piano playing and Alicia Olatuja’s pillowy backing vocals; In Heaven undercuts the small hours loveliness of its muted trumpet with a lyric by Porter’s cousin about death and redemption.'
Van Morrison: 'In his 70th year, the singer has created an album that’s not only one of his most gorgeous, but also one of his most humble. Keep Me Singing glows with soft, quiet ballads, kissed by strings and lilting with keyboards. Hard blues, soul and R&B take a back seat to pop tunes with an elegant turn. Some of the lyrics may deal with the pain of pining but they’re delivered with unfiltered vulnerability.'
Low - Ones & Sixes: 'The spectre of apocalypse has often lingered on the fringes of Low’s music. Their 11th record sounds as if the cataclysm has finally been, leaving a reeling dystopia in its wake. “Gentle” opens with frayed industrial drums and profoundly deep synthetic bass, the effect conjuring an army trudging across a snowy wilderness. You’d imagine Trent Reznor or Tim Hecker to have produced. Similarly, “The Innocents” shudders gravely as Parker intones, “All you innocents better run for it.” Throughout, she and Sparhawk seem to turn their regrets and sacrifices into warnings for those who can still run.'
Michael McDermott - Willow Springs: 'It opens with the autobiographical and confessional six minute plus title track, McDermott in full alliteration-heavy early Dylan mode, before moving on to the uptempo strum, gospel handclaps and tumbling chords of These Last Few Days, an acknowledgement of his self-destructive past that manages to namecheck Judas, Godot and Sisyphus as he sings about having “a tourniquet around my heart to keep it from falling apart.”'
Deacon Blue - Believers: '[Ricky] Ross says, “This album is about the journey we all take into the dark. You come to that point in your life where – whatever you’ve been told, whatever the evidence you’ve been presented with – you just don’t know what the answer is. At which point you can only rely on instincts of your heart. You either take the leap or you don’t.”'
George Harrison - 'The heart of All Things Must Pass resides in its songs of spiritual acceptance. The title was thought to refer, among other things, to Harrison's former band, the likely subject also of the elegiac "Isn't It a Pity." The haunting "Beware of Darkness" suggests the inner fears -- "The hopelessness around you in the dead of night" -- that Harrison's religious searching was meant to calm. And "Awaiting on You All," the title track and "My Sweet Lord" (for which Harrison was successfully sued for "subconsciously" plagiarizing the Chiffons' "He's So Fine") capture the sweet satisfactions of faith.'
'You Want It Darker could be addressed to fans pining for a return to [Leonard] Cohen’s bleakest songwriting; or a lover, or a higher power. As befits a lifelong spiritual seeker, born into a storied Jewish family, but well versed in scripture and Buddhism, the love songs have religious overtones, and the spiritual passages pack a lover’s passion.'
'Featuring production by M. Ward and boasting songwriting credits from Nick Cave, Neko Case, Justin Vernon, and others, Mavis Staples' Livin' on a High Note is a happy record. Its beneficent energy is refreshing after the cloistered prayer of last year’s Your Good Fortune and two thoughtful Jeff Tweedy-produced records.'
Coulson, Dean, McGuiness, Flint - Lo and Behold: 'Cynical ("Open the Door Homer") and idealistic ("The Death of Emmett Till"), self-pitying ("Sign on the Cross") and self-reliant ("Let Me Die in My Footsteps"), but always tough and intelligent. And let us not forget funny.'
Violent Femmes - We Can Do Anything: 'This is an instantly familiar mix of anti-folk, post-punk, phantasmagorical country and alternative rock, delivered via an equally recognisable blend of raw acoustic guitars, thrumming acoustic bass and rattling snare, garnished with Gano’s petulant whine ... It’s classic Gano – simultaneously funny, transgressive and deeply unsettling.'
Gregory Porter - 'Take Me to the Alley sounds fantastic, but that’s down to the warm spontaneity of an album that seems to have been recorded in six days. His own compositions proudly display his gospel roots – not the first genre you’d think of flaunting were you desperate for mainstream success. The title track offers up a parable about the second coming of Christ, its sternness at odds with the pacific piano playing and Alicia Olatuja’s pillowy backing vocals; In Heaven undercuts the small hours loveliness of its muted trumpet with a lyric by Porter’s cousin about death and redemption.'
Van Morrison: 'In his 70th year, the singer has created an album that’s not only one of his most gorgeous, but also one of his most humble. Keep Me Singing glows with soft, quiet ballads, kissed by strings and lilting with keyboards. Hard blues, soul and R&B take a back seat to pop tunes with an elegant turn. Some of the lyrics may deal with the pain of pining but they’re delivered with unfiltered vulnerability.'
Low - Ones & Sixes: 'The spectre of apocalypse has often lingered on the fringes of Low’s music. Their 11th record sounds as if the cataclysm has finally been, leaving a reeling dystopia in its wake. “Gentle” opens with frayed industrial drums and profoundly deep synthetic bass, the effect conjuring an army trudging across a snowy wilderness. You’d imagine Trent Reznor or Tim Hecker to have produced. Similarly, “The Innocents” shudders gravely as Parker intones, “All you innocents better run for it.” Throughout, she and Sparhawk seem to turn their regrets and sacrifices into warnings for those who can still run.'
Michael McDermott - Willow Springs: 'It opens with the autobiographical and confessional six minute plus title track, McDermott in full alliteration-heavy early Dylan mode, before moving on to the uptempo strum, gospel handclaps and tumbling chords of These Last Few Days, an acknowledgement of his self-destructive past that manages to namecheck Judas, Godot and Sisyphus as he sings about having “a tourniquet around my heart to keep it from falling apart.”'
Deacon Blue - Believers: '[Ricky] Ross says, “This album is about the journey we all take into the dark. You come to that point in your life where – whatever you’ve been told, whatever the evidence you’ve been presented with – you just don’t know what the answer is. At which point you can only rely on instincts of your heart. You either take the leap or you don’t.”'
George Harrison - 'The heart of All Things Must Pass resides in its songs of spiritual acceptance. The title was thought to refer, among other things, to Harrison's former band, the likely subject also of the elegiac "Isn't It a Pity." The haunting "Beware of Darkness" suggests the inner fears -- "The hopelessness around you in the dead of night" -- that Harrison's religious searching was meant to calm. And "Awaiting on You All," the title track and "My Sweet Lord" (for which Harrison was successfully sued for "subconsciously" plagiarizing the Chiffons' "He's So Fine") capture the sweet satisfactions of faith.'
And here are the books I've most enjoyed reading:
The Blind Man with the Lamp, originally published in Greek in 1983, is the first English translation of a complete collection of poetry by [Tasos] Leivaditis. A pioneering book of prose-poems, Leivaditis here gives powerful voice to a post-war generation divested of ideologies and illusions, imbued with the pain of loss and mourning, while endlessly questing for something wholly other, indeed for the holy Other.
Born in the heart of Cornwall’s China Clay Country poet, Jack Clemo (1916-94) was one of the most extraordinary poets of the twentieth century. Luke Thompson has published the first full length biography of Jack Clemo, entitled Clay Phoenix. Luke’s biography reveals Clemo’s life and writing in a new light, showing how Clemo used the china clay mining country as a metaphor for his faith and his disease.
The Third Inkling by Grevel Lindop offers a fascinating and completely new view of the shadowy figure of poet, theologian, magician and, fantasy-writer Charles Williams. Charles Williams—novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru—was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the Inklings.
A vibrant critical exchange between contemporary art and Christianity is being increasingly prompted by an expanding programme of art installations and commissions for ecclesiastical spaces. Rather than 'religious art' reflecting Christian ideology, current practices frequently initiate projects that question the values and traditions of the host space, or present objects and events that challenge its visual conventions. In the light of these developments, Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace Ecclesiastical Encounters with Contemporary Art by Jonathan Koestlé-Cate asks what conditions are favourable to enhancing and expanding the possibilities of church-based art, and how can these conditions be addressed?
Merton and Friends: A Joint Biography of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax and Edward Rice by James Harford. Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice were college buddies who became life-long friends, literary innovators, and spiritual iconoclasts. Their friendship and collaboration began at Columbia College in the 1930s and reached its climax in the widely acclaimed magazine, which ran from 1953 to 1967, a year before Merton's death.
Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax tells the story of Merton's best friend and early spiritual inspiration. Written by a close friend of Lax, Pure Act gives an intimate view of a friendship and a life that affected Merton in profound ways. It was Lax, a daringly original poet himself, who encouraged Merton to begin writing poetry and Lax who told him he should desire to be a saint rather than just a Catholic. To the end of Merton's life, Lax was his spiritual touchstone and closest friend.
The Courage for Truth: The Letters of Thomas Merton - Famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton corresponded with an extraordinary range of writers, among them Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller, Jacques Maritain, Walker Percy and William Carlos Williams. He spoke out boldly against political oppression, social injustice, racism and nuclear weapons, and expressed solidarity with Boris Pasternak, Czeslaw Milosz and James Baldwin. His letters to Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal and to Argentine feminist Victoria Ocampo reflect his deep love of Latin American culture. Spanning the years from 1948 to Merton's death in 1968, this fourth volume of his correspondence shows the crystallization of his belief that speaking the truth is an obligation which ultimately brings persons of integrity into confrontation with power structures and vested interests.
In Modern Art and the Life of Culture Anderson and Dyrness bring their different backgrounds together to argue that modernist art is underwritten by deeply religious concerns. They assert that there were actually strong religious impulses that positively shaped modern visual art. Instead of affirming a pattern of decline and growing antipathy towards faith, the authors contend that theological engagement and inquiry can be perceived across a wide range of modern art and through particular works by artists such as Gauguin, Picasso, David Jones, Caspar David Friedrich, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others.
An engaging, moving, and surprisingly light-hearted account of a life that had its share of sorrow, Lucky to Be an Artist by Unity Spencer is an account of an unconventional family and the birth of an artist, as well as the tale of a woman who refused to be held back by early trauma and insisted on forging her own artistic path.
I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era by Greg Kot is the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples—lead singer of the Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. One of the most enduring artists of popular music, Mavis and her talented family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a soundtrack to the civil rights movement—inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.
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Violent Femmes - Holy Ghost.
The Blind Man with the Lamp, originally published in Greek in 1983, is the first English translation of a complete collection of poetry by [Tasos] Leivaditis. A pioneering book of prose-poems, Leivaditis here gives powerful voice to a post-war generation divested of ideologies and illusions, imbued with the pain of loss and mourning, while endlessly questing for something wholly other, indeed for the holy Other.
Born in the heart of Cornwall’s China Clay Country poet, Jack Clemo (1916-94) was one of the most extraordinary poets of the twentieth century. Luke Thompson has published the first full length biography of Jack Clemo, entitled Clay Phoenix. Luke’s biography reveals Clemo’s life and writing in a new light, showing how Clemo used the china clay mining country as a metaphor for his faith and his disease.
The Third Inkling by Grevel Lindop offers a fascinating and completely new view of the shadowy figure of poet, theologian, magician and, fantasy-writer Charles Williams. Charles Williams—novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru—was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the Inklings.
A vibrant critical exchange between contemporary art and Christianity is being increasingly prompted by an expanding programme of art installations and commissions for ecclesiastical spaces. Rather than 'religious art' reflecting Christian ideology, current practices frequently initiate projects that question the values and traditions of the host space, or present objects and events that challenge its visual conventions. In the light of these developments, Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace Ecclesiastical Encounters with Contemporary Art by Jonathan Koestlé-Cate asks what conditions are favourable to enhancing and expanding the possibilities of church-based art, and how can these conditions be addressed?
Merton and Friends: A Joint Biography of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax and Edward Rice by James Harford. Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice were college buddies who became life-long friends, literary innovators, and spiritual iconoclasts. Their friendship and collaboration began at Columbia College in the 1930s and reached its climax in the widely acclaimed magazine, which ran from 1953 to 1967, a year before Merton's death.
Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax tells the story of Merton's best friend and early spiritual inspiration. Written by a close friend of Lax, Pure Act gives an intimate view of a friendship and a life that affected Merton in profound ways. It was Lax, a daringly original poet himself, who encouraged Merton to begin writing poetry and Lax who told him he should desire to be a saint rather than just a Catholic. To the end of Merton's life, Lax was his spiritual touchstone and closest friend.
The Courage for Truth: The Letters of Thomas Merton - Famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton corresponded with an extraordinary range of writers, among them Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller, Jacques Maritain, Walker Percy and William Carlos Williams. He spoke out boldly against political oppression, social injustice, racism and nuclear weapons, and expressed solidarity with Boris Pasternak, Czeslaw Milosz and James Baldwin. His letters to Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal and to Argentine feminist Victoria Ocampo reflect his deep love of Latin American culture. Spanning the years from 1948 to Merton's death in 1968, this fourth volume of his correspondence shows the crystallization of his belief that speaking the truth is an obligation which ultimately brings persons of integrity into confrontation with power structures and vested interests.
In Modern Art and the Life of Culture Anderson and Dyrness bring their different backgrounds together to argue that modernist art is underwritten by deeply religious concerns. They assert that there were actually strong religious impulses that positively shaped modern visual art. Instead of affirming a pattern of decline and growing antipathy towards faith, the authors contend that theological engagement and inquiry can be perceived across a wide range of modern art and through particular works by artists such as Gauguin, Picasso, David Jones, Caspar David Friedrich, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others.
An engaging, moving, and surprisingly light-hearted account of a life that had its share of sorrow, Lucky to Be an Artist by Unity Spencer is an account of an unconventional family and the birth of an artist, as well as the tale of a woman who refused to be held back by early trauma and insisted on forging her own artistic path.
I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era by Greg Kot is the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples—lead singer of the Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. One of the most enduring artists of popular music, Mavis and her talented family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a soundtrack to the civil rights movement—inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.
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Violent Femmes - Holy Ghost.
Friday, 15 April 2016
Mavis! merging spirituality and social comment
COURTESY OF MIIKKA SKAFFARI/FILM FIRST CO
In the latest edition of Church Times I have a review of Mavis! the first feature documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, Mavis! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey.
In the review, I say: "Jennifer Edwards’s documentary is an emotional tale and trip combining elation in the gospel with defiance of discrimination, as the group crosses boundaries — first, by combining blues, country, and gospel to create their unique sound, and then by merging spirituality and social comment at civil-rights marches and the Newport Folk Festival, before re-sacralising soul as Stax stars in the Black Power period characterised by the Wattstax Festival of 1972, a benefit after the Watts Riots in 1965."
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The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There.
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Mavis! Her message of love and equality is needed now more than ever
Mavis! is the first feature documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. From the freedom songs of the ’60s and hits like I’ll Take You There in the ’70s, to funked-up collaborations with Prince and her recent albums with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Mavis has stayed true to her roots, kept her family close, and inspired millions along the way.
Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, MAVIS! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey. At 75, she's making the most vital music of her career, winning Grammy awards, and reaching a new generation of fans. Her message of love and equality is needed now more than ever.
As she sings on her new album Livin' On A High Note:
Can't find what you're looking for even when it's looking for you
The judge and criminal, the sinner and the priest
Got something in common, bring em all to their knees
Do what you can, do what you must
Everybody's trying to find the love and trust
I walk the line, I walk it for us
See me out here tryin' to find some love and trust"
"Chicago wasn't always easy
But love made the windy city breezy
I've got friends and I've got family
I've got help from all the people who love me
I got friends and I got
I got family
I got help from all the people who love me"
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Wednesday, 23 December 2015
The 10 albums that I enjoyed most in 2015
Here are the 10 albums (in no particular order) that I've got hold of and enjoyed the most in 2015:
Sid Griffin, writing on 'The Importance of The Basement Tapes,' describes in Biblical terms how the 'beat poetics' of Dylan's political and urban songs 'morphed into whimsy or Biblical-like prophecies'; 'songs derived from old sea shanties, melodic reflections about life's absudities, hard-rockin' and often hilarious fictitious character sketches, musical tributes to past heroes which bordered on pastiche, musical pastiches so authentic they bordered on being tributes, devout spirituals, C&W laments, a new take on blues balladry, and, yes, love in all its guises'
To mark the 50th anniversary of the freedom marches as well as the Staple Singers’ performance at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, their concert has been remastered and restored to its original setlist and runtime. Pops Staples, patriarch, bandleader and musical visionary, had written a song about the freedom marchers called ‘Freedom Highway’ which was debuted at this concert and which became the family’s biggest hit to that date, a pivotal record, connecting gospel music with the struggle for civil rights, that inched them toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing their gospel message for a secular audience.
'The Staple Singers have left an imprint of soulful voices, social activism, religious conviction and danceable “message music.”' 'Pops and the family were rooted in gospel, blues, and "message music" traditions. He sang about darkness, and he sang about light. He's done it again [on 'Somebody Was Watching' from Don't Lose This], and while the song's arrival might be belated by over 15 years, it's a total gift to hear one of the greats completely owning his lane.'
Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.
Carrie and Lowell is a meditation on grief observed that channels the emotional honesty of C. S. Lewis' reflection on his time in the shadowlands. 'I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams.'
Carleen Anderson said in an interview for Huffington Post: 'the spiritual element in my life comes from miracles, in the form of love, like my child being born, or the way my grandparents raised me. It's emotional rescue. Love is a miracle, and from that music is made, as is all art.' 'The one piece of music I'm most proud of is probably a gospel song I wrote called 'Salvation Is Free' [Soul Providence, 2005]. It's about how I feel when everything in life is going wrong; it's about finding peace within all that.'
'Look Out Machines! is ... probably [Duke Special's] best, most complete work for a good while ... it’s broad enough to encompass the big issues. ‘Son Of The Left Hand’ is religious guilt with a dash of William Gibson. The title track is big enough to call down the apocalypse, with the help of Shakespeare and Betjeman: “What’s done is done, so drop the bomb”.' ‘God In A Dive’ is the best song I’ve heard for ages, about religious acceptance of one’s own kind. 'In A Dive', he says, concerns 'my living in Belfast and finding beautiful and profound qualities in people in the most unlikely of places.'
'On The Life Pursuit [by Belle & Sebastian], [Stuart] Murdoch treats church almost as a matter of course – yes, he goes to church, doesn’t everybody?! The references are simply there; they don’t attract attention themselves. Christianity (and church) is portrayed as an almost unspoken factor in the everyday lives of real people, one that is in turns pathetic and profound, but a factor nonetheless. In other words, his references ring true.'
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices is the second album by The Welcome Wagon, the musical duo of Vito and Monique Aiuto, a Presbyterian pastor and his wife. 'Vito explains: “This album has a somewhat liturgical structure, ordered loosely like a worship service. It begins with the existential and cosmic dread of ‘I’m Not Fine,’ immediately followed by ‘My God, My God, Parts 1 & 2,’ a prayer that rails against God’s seeming absence from this world and our lives. The words are adapted from the prayer of Jesus while he hung on the cross."'
'"Banga" ... opens with the first of two songs about Europeans’ discovery of the New World. Piano and strings drive the rhapsodic, epistolary "Amerigo." On this and other tracks, [Patti] Smith sings with more depth, timbre and richness than perhaps she ever has ... Writing and art-making are recurrent themes on "Banga." On "Constantine’s Dream," the second track about voyages to America, Smith tackles the very nature of art - and the art of nature. Halfway through the 10-minute opus, painter Piero della Francesca shouts this "Horses"-worthy Patti war cry: "Oh lord let me die on the back of adventure/ With a brush and an eye full of light." ... "Banga" is both a return to form and her best album in many years.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carleen Anderson - Salvation Is Free.
Sid Griffin, writing on 'The Importance of The Basement Tapes,' describes in Biblical terms how the 'beat poetics' of Dylan's political and urban songs 'morphed into whimsy or Biblical-like prophecies'; 'songs derived from old sea shanties, melodic reflections about life's absudities, hard-rockin' and often hilarious fictitious character sketches, musical tributes to past heroes which bordered on pastiche, musical pastiches so authentic they bordered on being tributes, devout spirituals, C&W laments, a new take on blues balladry, and, yes, love in all its guises'
To mark the 50th anniversary of the freedom marches as well as the Staple Singers’ performance at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, their concert has been remastered and restored to its original setlist and runtime. Pops Staples, patriarch, bandleader and musical visionary, had written a song about the freedom marchers called ‘Freedom Highway’ which was debuted at this concert and which became the family’s biggest hit to that date, a pivotal record, connecting gospel music with the struggle for civil rights, that inched them toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing their gospel message for a secular audience.
'The Staple Singers have left an imprint of soulful voices, social activism, religious conviction and danceable “message music.”' 'Pops and the family were rooted in gospel, blues, and "message music" traditions. He sang about darkness, and he sang about light. He's done it again [on 'Somebody Was Watching' from Don't Lose This], and while the song's arrival might be belated by over 15 years, it's a total gift to hear one of the greats completely owning his lane.'
Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.
Carrie and Lowell is a meditation on grief observed that channels the emotional honesty of C. S. Lewis' reflection on his time in the shadowlands. 'I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams.'
Carleen Anderson said in an interview for Huffington Post: 'the spiritual element in my life comes from miracles, in the form of love, like my child being born, or the way my grandparents raised me. It's emotional rescue. Love is a miracle, and from that music is made, as is all art.' 'The one piece of music I'm most proud of is probably a gospel song I wrote called 'Salvation Is Free' [Soul Providence, 2005]. It's about how I feel when everything in life is going wrong; it's about finding peace within all that.'
'Look Out Machines! is ... probably [Duke Special's] best, most complete work for a good while ... it’s broad enough to encompass the big issues. ‘Son Of The Left Hand’ is religious guilt with a dash of William Gibson. The title track is big enough to call down the apocalypse, with the help of Shakespeare and Betjeman: “What’s done is done, so drop the bomb”.' ‘God In A Dive’ is the best song I’ve heard for ages, about religious acceptance of one’s own kind. 'In A Dive', he says, concerns 'my living in Belfast and finding beautiful and profound qualities in people in the most unlikely of places.'
'On The Life Pursuit [by Belle & Sebastian], [Stuart] Murdoch treats church almost as a matter of course – yes, he goes to church, doesn’t everybody?! The references are simply there; they don’t attract attention themselves. Christianity (and church) is portrayed as an almost unspoken factor in the everyday lives of real people, one that is in turns pathetic and profound, but a factor nonetheless. In other words, his references ring true.'
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices is the second album by The Welcome Wagon, the musical duo of Vito and Monique Aiuto, a Presbyterian pastor and his wife. 'Vito explains: “This album has a somewhat liturgical structure, ordered loosely like a worship service. It begins with the existential and cosmic dread of ‘I’m Not Fine,’ immediately followed by ‘My God, My God, Parts 1 & 2,’ a prayer that rails against God’s seeming absence from this world and our lives. The words are adapted from the prayer of Jesus while he hung on the cross."'
'"Banga" ... opens with the first of two songs about Europeans’ discovery of the New World. Piano and strings drive the rhapsodic, epistolary "Amerigo." On this and other tracks, [Patti] Smith sings with more depth, timbre and richness than perhaps she ever has ... Writing and art-making are recurrent themes on "Banga." On "Constantine’s Dream," the second track about voyages to America, Smith tackles the very nature of art - and the art of nature. Halfway through the 10-minute opus, painter Piero della Francesca shouts this "Horses"-worthy Patti war cry: "Oh lord let me die on the back of adventure/ With a brush and an eye full of light." ... "Banga" is both a return to form and her best album in many years.'
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Carleen Anderson - Salvation Is Free.
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