Maple Soft

Live At Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada, 11 March 1973.

One of the leading singer/songwriters of the 1960s and '70s, Gordon Lightfoot was Canada's most successful contemporary folk artist, establishing himself as an important songwriter in the mid-'60s and going on to become a major international recording star in the following decade. Lightfoot's songs are literate but down to earth, and deal with personal matters as well as global issues in a manner that's poetic yet accessible, and his rich, strong voice is a superb vehicle for his material, though his songs are versatile enough that many artists have enjoyed success with his tunes.

Gordon Lightfoot is a genre unto himself. Neither pop nor folk nor country nor rock, his music is unvarnished, direct, a statement from one heart to another (as Lightfoot has stated, “I like to keep things simple. I don’t like to make them complicated”). And this uncompromising stance has not only made him a legend (particularly in his native Canada, where he is a full-fledged icon), but also, somewhat paradoxically, brought him huge commercial success (which, ironically, has in turn caused some to discount his prodigious songwriting talent). For Gordon Lightfoot never set out to be a “popular” singer-songwriter. When he signed with Warner Bros. and began working with producer Lenny Waronker, Lightfoot thought of himself as an album artist, and, indeed, the Lightfoot-Waronker songwriter-producer partnership (with a brief period with Joe Wissert as producer) yielded nine charting albums—and that’s not even counting the compilations—highlighted by a #1 slot for 1974’s Sundown.

On her last album of the '60s, Shaw proved that she was hipper than a lot of people would have suspected. Moving away from the usual light pop and MOR, she chose a set of covers heavy on material by the likes of Bob Dylan, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Rolling Stones ("Sympathy for the Devil"!), Led Zeppelin's "Your Time Is Gonna Come" (double exclamation point!), Donovan, Dr. John, and the Bee Gees. Which doesn't mean it's a great album. It's thoughtfully arranged and energetically delivered, but Shaw's slight, wispy voice is as ill-suited for some of the material as a nun is for the mosh pit.

John Lodge: Live From Birmingham – The 10,000 Light Years Tour features Lodge’s final performance on his first-ever solo tour for his album 10,000 Light Years Ago, which took place in his hometown of Birmingham in 2016. Roger Dean created the artwork for this project, some 40 years after he created the artwork for Lodge’s first solo album, Natural Avenue.

It’s always a quandary when reviewing whether comparing your subject to other acts is a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes you just end up listing a load of the artist’s obvious influences rather than actually writing; sometimes it’s essential to name check other well-known acts in order to help the reader fully grasp what it is you can hear. It is a problem trying to turn sound into words without some kind of special, futuristic machine invented by Doc Brown in the year 2055 and brought back to the present in a Delorean. Oh, how we wish had one of those machines at Americana UK Towers.

UK box-set compiles, for the first time, all the British vocalist's single (A & B-sides), rarities, CD debuts, & 19 previously unreleased tracks. The 64-page booklet is lavishly illustrated with photographs & memorabilia from Sandie's own archive. EMI. 2004. Nothing Comes Easy Review by Bruce Eder
Four CDs and 101 songs may seem like more Sandie Shaw than most listeners would want to own, much less hear – that's what this reviewer thought, until he started going song by song through this set, and damned if there was not one song in this collection, covering her complete single A- and B-sides from 1964 through 1988, that wasn't worth hearing. Indeed, there are revelations throughout, starting with the superb sound and the use of proper first-generation masters on everything here, and the digital production to back it up with a warm, rich sound that's quietly intoxicating and seductive. The evolution of Shaw's style and approach to singing is so gradual that it catches you unaware when she shifts from one style to another – her 1980s sides may be far removed from the British Invasion sides in style, but you hardly notice the incremental moves, from being surrounded by electric rhythm guitars to accompanied by synthesized drums, and she's pretty powerful in either mode. The sound is amazingly crisp throughout, making up for a multitude of sins evident in past compilations of Shaw's work. The fourth disc is made up of rare tracks that, for a change, can be taken as simply more good music by the casual listener, as much as savored by the true fan. The accompanying booklet would also make a pretty good core for a serious hardcover book on Shaw.

In one sense, it’s easy for artists—songwriters, specifically—to express their feelings in their work. After all, that’s what the lyrics are for! But it’s much harder to convey emotional energy in how you play, slash at the guitar, and the structure of the music itself. That’s precisely why Girl and Girl’s Sub Pop debut, Call A Doctor, feels like such a vital, electrifying shock to the senses. Not since the early work of Car Seat Headrest or Conor Oberst’s widescreen emotional brutality as Bright Eyes has indie rock managed to come across as this intimate and grandiose, as the Australian quartet led by Kai James lay a lifetime’s worth of woes—mental health, the human race’s planned obsolescence if you’ve been living on this cursed rock you know what we’re getting at—across a canvas of indie rock that feels both timeless and in-the-moment.