Album reviews: Liam Gallagher - As You Were, John Lee Hooker - King Of The Boogie, Jon Boden - Afterglow

Also JD McPherson - Undivided Heart & Soul, Melanie De Biasio - Lilies, The Pretty Things - Greatest Hits

Liam Gallagher, As You Were

★★★☆☆

Download: Wall Of Glass; Bold; Paper Crown; For What It’s Worth; Universal Gleam

It’s the kind of title that makes you wonder whether Liam Gallagher might be harbouring previously unglimpsed reserves of ironic self-deprecation – not a character trait for which he’s best known, admittedly. Apparently named after his Twitter sign-off, As You Were could serve as the mission statement for Liam’s entire musical enterprise, which remains firmly rooted in Sixties modes. ’Twas ever thus, of course, for both Gallagher brothers, though Liam’s scope here is narrower than Noel’s, rarely acknowledging anything beyond the strictly Beatlesque.

Which is, admittedly, not a bad limitation to work within, if you have to choose – and so skilled has he become at the requisite Fab sounds and styles that the better tracks here fizz with a genuine pop charm. Opening with the folksy simplicity of acoustic guitar and vocal, “Paper Crown”, for instance, builds poignant pop momentum as Liam sketches his portrait of abandonment, advising “Better if you don’t look down/At the pages of your paper crown”. “Bold” likewise expands from acoustic strummage, with mellotron shading his uncharacteristically thoughtful reflection on old problems and apparent acceptance of irreconcilable differences. Hmmm... so who do you suppose they might be about?

Gallagher’s undoubtedly helped by his canny choice of producers, with Dan Grech-Marguerat’s broad pop and rock experience on the majority of tracks complemented by the Midas touch of Greg Kurstin on the rest. It’s the latter, playing virtually everything but drums, who enables the album to open with the welter of wailing bluesharp and brash, wiry guitar that is “Wall Of Glass”, the brusque arrangement expertly embodying the aggression in Liam’s eager anticipation of karmic retribution: “one day you’ll shatter like a wall of glass”.

Grech-Marguerat, likewise, brings chugging, bluesy elan to the kiss’n’tell complaint “Greedy Soul” (“She got her 666/I got a crucifix”), while the string arrangement of “For What It’s Worth” enigmatically captures the song’s mixed emotions of grudge and apology. Between them, Kurstin and Grech-Marguerat bring a solidity and polish to Gallagher’s Beatle-ish notions that hoists some of them above mere homage or pastiche.

It’s not completely successful, of course. The chippy, confrontational “You Better Run” has swagger aplenty, but while it brazenly rhymes “gimme shelter” with “helter skelter”, it lacks the punch and idiosyncratic manner of either; and the line in “Chinatown” about “happiness is still a warm gun” lands with a thud as dull as its plodding beat. Other tracks, like “I Get By” and “When I’m In Need”, are just drably repetitive, insistent but irritating expressions of personal traits to which Grech-Marguerat has applied perhaps a touch too much attention: they simply postpone the welcome arrival, late on, of the mellotronic epiphany of “Universal Gleam”.

But following the largely insipid twinklings of his Beady Eye, As You Were suggests that, given the right conditions and appropriate collaborators, Liam Gallagher could become a more potent force than expected – especially if he could broaden his musical outlook beyond such predictable parameters.

John Lee Hooker, King Of The Boogie

★★★★★

Download: Boogie Chillen; Dimples; Boom Boom; No More Doggin’; Crawlin’ King Snake

It’s a rare artist whose name becomes synonymous with their style, as does John Lee Hooker’s with boogie. Tracing Hooker’s output from his 1948 breakthrough single “Boogie Chillen” through hits such as “Dimples” and “Boom Boom”, to the Indian Summer of his guest-laden Nineties comeback albums, this 5CD set depicts an artist who knew, early on, that he had tapped into something transcendent, and kept plugging away at it until the world shifted to hear things his way.

Hooker’s blues was tarry black and sticky, his foot tapping out its mesmeric tattoo behind those rhythmic guitar slashes, grasping the listener whilst his saturnine, predatory voice stalked like a crawlin’ king snake sizing up its prey. Even when required to accommodate passing trends like mambo or funk, Hooker’s blues simply bent a little, but never broke. Its atavistic power, he knew, resided in its hypnotic grip, which effectively crystallised rock’n’roll years before the style was recognised, and which reflected, more keenly than any of his peers’ work, its African roots.

JD McPherson, Undivided Heart & Soul

★★★★☆

Download: Desperate Love; Crying’s Just A Thing You Do; Style (Is A Losing Game); Bloodhound Rock; Lucky Penny

JD McPherson’s Let The Good Times Roll was one of the most joyously unvarnished rock’n’roll delights of recent times, and this follow-up continues that album’s ingenious blending of heritage and modernity, sometimes recalling The Black Keys’ reliable way with chunky groove and quirky hook. “Bloodhound Rock”, for instance, is simply a great natural boogie jive, while the addition of marimba to a Kinks-style garage-rock riff for “Style (Is A Losing Game)” sounds so natural you wonder why nobody’s done it before.

Elsewhere, the line “it hit me on the lips” irresistibly summons memories of Goffin & King’s questionable “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)”. It’s surely no accident, given McPherson’s sly, deceptive lyricism: check the nonchalant verbosity of his put-down of a manipulative partner, “Crying’s Just A Thing You Do”, built from dry asides like “you’re sipping your Darjeeling, staring at the ceiling”. The bittersweet tang to his delivery, meanwhile, brings a dark chocolate bite to the sweet pop charm of opener “Desperate Love”.

Jon Boden, Afterglow

★★☆☆☆

Download: Moths In The Gaslight; All The Stars Are Coming Out Tonight

Jon Boden’s first solo album since calling time on Bellowhead, a concept album about post-apocalyptic life in a regressed future where “the fog is clinging to the wasteland where the broken factories die”, is something of a disappointment. That line comes from “All The Stars Are Coming Out Tonight”, one of the better tracks, where springy fingerpicking and rolling drums convey the thrill of an anarchic street celebration, apparently inspired by the bonfires and burning tar-barrels of Lewes’ annual celebrations.

The problem is that nothing much happens. The interrupted romance which comprises the core of the story, with would-be lovers temporarily losing each other in the crowd, halts the narrative in its tracks, as Boden reiterates the situation in song after song: it’s more a tableau than a tale. Musically it’s pleasant enough, with string and wind flourishes either emboldening or offering solace from the folk-rock arrangements; but it’s all a bit samey, and after a while, rather dull.

Melanie De Biasio, Lilies

★★★★☆

Download: Your Freedom Is The End Of Me; Let Me Love You; Sitting On The Stairwell; And My Heart Goes On

Following the extraordinary spontaneous magic of last year’s 25-minute improvisation “Blackened Cities”, Belgian jazz singer/flautist Melanie De Biasio reverts to shorter-form songs for Lilies, with the quiet assurance of her delivery lending a weightless, sensual drift to romantic material like “Let Me Love You”, “All My Worlds” and “And My Heart Goes On”.

The focus throughout is on the beguiling intimacy of her voice, murmurously occupying the sparsest of atmospheric tints – sometimes merely her flute and a dry percussive scrape, or a simple organ motif, or, in “Sitting On The Stairwell”, just claves and background humming setting the chain-gang tempo for her aftershock tableau, with “roses on the sidewalk, and blood upon the ground”. Only the opener “Your Freedom Is The End Of Me” involves serious development, its initial drizzle of iridescent piano acquiring a languid funk undercarriage when the drums kick in; from there on, one’s gently lured into a miasmic mist of emotion that’s infinitely more persuasive than crude expressions of “soul”.

The Pretty Things, Greatest Hits

★★★★☆

Download: Rosalyn; Don’t Bring Me Down; Midnight To Six Man; Come See Me; Defecting Grey; SF Sorrow Is Born

The title stretches a point somewhat, The Pretty Things never having been a hit machine like some of their Sixties peers – partly because their knack for anticipating musical trends was equalled only by their genius for self-sabotage. But their unique mix of rowdy antipathy and starry-eyed psychedelia transcends such setbacks: the skinny R&B of early singles like “Rosalyn” and “Don’t Bring Me Down” is the razor-sharp equal of the young Stones (the earlier group co-founded by Pretties’ guitarist Dick Taylor), while the ambitious SF Sorrow – the world’s first ever rock opera – holds up at least as well as Tommy.

The jewel in their crown, though, is the single “Defecting Grey”, the extraordinary multi-sectioned, sitar-drenched extravaganza which remains one of the most absurdly ambitious examples of questing early psychedelia. Unlike most of their peers, they’ve stuck at it despite the lack of serious remuneration or acclaim, and as the accompanying CD of a 2010 show demonstrates, they remain a vital live experience.

Various Artists, The Vietnam War: The Soundtrack

★★★★★

Download: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; Are You Experienced?; Bad Moon Rising; Ohio; Gimme Shelter; What’s Going On

Having dealt comprehensively with the American Civil War, documentarist Ken Burns has now turned his attention to the Vietnam War, with his TV series bolstered by these two audio accompaniments. The Soundtrack is a 38-track assemblage of contemporary music, opening with the harbinger of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and proceeding in diversely expressive manner to the dubious “closure” of “What’s Going On” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. It’s about as comprehensive a survey of the era’s sonic backdrop as exists. The Original Score is the latest of Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s harrowing film works, a grimly expressionist evocation of the era’s moods and tensions: opening with little more than limpid piano and ambient wind noise, its early stages expertly capture a situation poised on a precipice, as peace gradually slides into war. Later on, as the conflict deepens, driving rhythms and distorted guitar shards bring scarier, more urgent modes, shifting the mood from haunting to harrowing.