Brett Manning's Singing Success

Nicky Higginbottom departed Paul Brett's Sage after the release of the band's eponymous debut album, and with her went the haunting flute that gave much of the album such a rich, pastoral sound. But the band was already moving in a new direction, exploring rock's roots and the genre's many permutations. Jubilation Foundry welds Sage's varied influences onto their sleeves, from "Cottage Made for Two," an homage to the Everly Brothers, to the gospel fired "Help Me Jesus" and the Stax inspired "Hold My Hand Mother." There are tributes to Southern blues and Southern rock, nods to singer/songwriters Cat Stevens and Harry Nilsson, and even a tip of the hat to the Beatles. With the group here sporting rich harmonies, the emphasis is on great songs in a variety of musical veins and moods, with singalong choruses, memorable melodies, and flashy musicianship evident throughout the album.

Killer first official Live disc by this amazing, bad-ass axeripper from San Diego. Includes 13 tracks (73 minutes) of mega-awesome, brain-damaging, retro-sonic, over-the-top, blues-based, heavy guitar power trio riffage/mojo that will kick your ass and rock your world into the next guitar rockin' musical dimension. Captured live & loud without a net, we are transformed from the norm and experience "Total Guitar Rock Fury" of the highest order from this phenomenal, supreme guitarist. Brett Ellis is a true modern day guitar hero who speaks the same musical language as the guitar greats. The man is a veritable + powerful six string hurricane on the instrument, an awesome beyond belief heavy guitar rock force to be reckoned with.

Brett Dean is not shy about revealing what his music is ‘about’. Whether inspired by certain individuals (as in Epitaphs), or by an ecological or human disaster (as in his String Quartet No. 1, on the now all too topical plight of refugees), Dean’s works are usually – perhaps invariably – driven by extra-musical narratives. Rather than tease out any innate structural puzzles or tensions, his music typically falls into short little dramatic narratives – no movement on this disc lasts as long as eight minutes, many of them rather less than five. The most obviously successful work here is Quartet No. 2, ‘And once I played Ophelia’, effectively a dramatic scena. Its soprano soloist is no mere extra voice (as in Schoenberg’s Second Quartet) but the leading protagonist. Allison Bell’s genuinely affecting performance is backed by the Doric Quartet’s expressionist scampering and sustained harmonies, the strings occasionally coming to the fore in the manner of a Schumann-style song postlude.

In 2018 under the MelodicRock Records banner, a 6-Disc retrospective of singer/songwriter Brett Walker's career was released. With only 500 units pressed, it quickly sold out. The set featured all unreleased material from Brett's DAT archives, plus for the first time, the much sought after Person To Person demos. There has been some demand for a truncated version of the box set, as well as a stand-alone release of the Person To Person tracks, so it is with great pleasure that MelodicRock Classics has gone to work on two exclusive new releases, Person To Person - 'The Complete Recordings' (2CD Set) and Brett Walker - 'Highlights From The Last Parade' (2CD Set). That's 4 discs of Brett Walker and Person To Person magic. The original purchase of the box set came with some 50+ bonus tracks in MP3 download - songs which we didn't have room for on the original set, so several of those songs have been curated to appear as bonus tracks on each release - exclusively on CD for the first time.