Album reviews: Paul Weller – A Kind Revolution, Afghan Whigs – In Spades, Vieux Farka Toure – Samba, and more

Paul Weller, A Kind Revolution

★★★★☆

Download: Nova; She Moves With The Fayre; The Cranes Are Back; The Impossible Idea

Almost exactly 40 years on from his teenage debut with The Jam’s In The City, Paul Weller remains as energetically engaged as ever with music: hard on the heels of his recent soundtrack to the boxing film Jawbone comes A Kind Revolution, the latest instalment in the Indian summer that started with 22 Dreams.

Like that album, it’s a mature mix of reflection and assertion – albeit corralled this time into just ten tracks – in which Weller’s musings on life, love and society are channelled through a diverse series of musical modes, most of them constantly seeking to seep into other styles. “She Moves With The Fayre”, for instance, is not the old folk song, but an airy jazz-pop paean to a lover. With Robert Wyatt contributing a brief vocal and a trumpet break, it sounds like something The Young Rascals might have come up with if Curtis Mayfield was their producer. “Nova”, by contrast, is more in the neo-psychedelic style of Saturn’s Patterns, a sort of sci-fi expression of ambition and alienation in which Weller’s expressive urges (“My mind is a running stream”) require transport to another planet, via bleeping synths and an oozing backward guitar solo from The Strypes’ Josh McClorey.

At one time, Weller’s more mod-ish fans might have balked at following such sudden tangents, but these days they’re meat and drink to a career profile that can swing from the lollopy charm of a jazzy tribute to painter Edward Hopper, who “dreams in muted symphonies”, to the romantic celebration of a “crystal kiss” in “New York”, atmospherically conjured by the traffic noise and the subtle Latin undertow to the scudding groove. Taken together, the two tracks seem to constitute a tentative love letter to America from a quintessentially British artist steeped in American culture. More homegrown, by contrast, is “One Tear”, which harnesses social complaint to old-school house groove, with Boy George joining Weller in pleasingly harmonious choruses.

Elsewhere, the pop-soul swagger of opener “Woo Se Mama” finds PP Arnold and Madeleine Bell lured into New Orleans R&B gumbo, while the standout track “The Cranes Are Back” shifts skilfully from reflective piano intro to a sort of psychedelic gospel climax, with no untoward grinding of gears. It’s a punning expression of hope: in some cultures, the reappearance of these elegant birds is regarded as a positive sign, which Weller analogises here in the urban sprout of industrial cranes as representing renewed economic possibilities. Well, maybe. But at least he’s staying observant, and engaged. That, surely, is the message of album closer “The Impossible Idea”, a languid, waltz-time affair of jazzy mien which finds him musing about the power of ideas, the way that huge changes can be triggered by a single thought. You remember thoughts: it’s what we had before social media.

Chris Stapleton, From A Room: Vol. 1

★★★★☆

Download: Either Way; Up To No Good Livin’; I Was Wrong; Death Row

The first of two albums planned for 2017, From A Room: Vol. 1 builds on the success of Chris Stapleton’s Grammy-winning debut Traveller, through a similar blend of country songwriting smarts and soulful engagement. The latter element comes through most strongly in Stapleton’s voice, a scorched drawl which flares into a blazing howl of pain on the chorus of “Either Way”, an instant country classic confronting the inevitable end of a crumbling relationship. When he dials his delivery down a touch, it brings an empathic weariness to “Up To No Good Livin’”, the apologetic plaint of a reformed outlaw spirit – “the Picasso of painting the town” – whose partner still won’t trust “that someone I was is somebody I ain’t”. Musically, it’s a diverse set ranging from the sturdily chugging country-rock of “Second One To Know” to the Southern soul stylings of “I Was Wrong” and the portents of “Death Row”, a dark anticipation of doom with a brooding atmosphere straight from the Tony Joe White playbook.

Afghan Whigs, In Spades

★★☆☆☆

Download: Arabian Heights; Birdland

Afghan Whigs’ mainman Greg Dulli is packed with party spirit on In Spades. How else, other than laughter, is one to respond to lines like “Love is a lie/Like a hole in the sky/Then you die”? The way the last phrase comes crashing down bluntly is simply hilarious – though the rest of “Arabian Heights”, with its hints of suicidal sacrifice and its strident, jackbooted take on late-period Zep, suggests Dulli has more serious intentions. Afghan Whigs are the closest the USA gets to prog/goth crossover, their dense, gloomily chugging riffs packed with portents such as the “apocalypse in thrall” heralded in “Copernicus”, and all the tarot and seance stuff bundled into “Oriole”. Dulli mostly writes in discrete phrases, stabbing lyrics home instead of unfolding narratives: which is fine, except that allied to the ponderous piano arpeggios, grinding guitar riffs, Kodo-style drum tattoos and burring horns, it makes for a music entirely focused on declamation. The results are spiritually exhausting. Then you die.

Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Betty’s Blends, Vol. 3: Self-Rising, Southern Blends

★★★★☆

Download: I Ain’t Hiding; Clear Blue Sky; Get Out Of My Life Woman; Tales Of Thunder Teeth

As adherents of Cosmic American Music in the free-flowing vein of The Grateful Dead, it’s a coup for the Chris Robinson Brotherhood to have secured the soundboard services of Betty Cantor-Jackson, for years the Dead’s live mix genius. They’re a perfect fit: these performances offer compelling confirmation that the CRB are one of the great live bands of their era, realised in original pieces like the sprawling 14-minute “Ride” and “Clear Blue Sky”, where country-rock and wheedling synth meet in the ancient/modern manner of Barefoot Jerry; and relaxed, funky psychedelic makeovers of R&B classics like “Got Love If You Want It” – all snaky slide guitar and bluesharp – and “Get Out Of My Life Woman”, where they effortlessly adapt Allen Toussaint’s signature slinky tight/loose groove. The Dead comparisons are best borne out in Neal Casal’s dazzling solo on “I Ain’t Hiding”, which has the lucid, exploratory fluidity of Jerry Garcia; although the Dead never had a singer with the soulful smokiness of Chris Robinson.

Vieux Farka Toure, Samba

★★★★☆

Download: Bonheur; Ba Kaitere; Samba Si Kaire; Homafu Wawa

In the Songhai language, “Samba” means “second born” – which, contrary to most cultures, is the favoured offspring in that culture, and considered fortunate. That’s certainly the case with Ali Farka Toure’s second son Vieux, whose dazzling guitar prowess has earned him the sobriquet “the Hendrix of the Sahara”. Recorded “live” for the Woodstock Sessions series, Samba is a wide-ranging set which takes in the deep reggae groove of “Ouaga” and the more flamenco-like complexity of “Samba Si Kaire”, a graceful song about the guitarist’s parents. Mostly, though, Toure employs fast, cyclical lines whisked along on subtle percussion, as on “Ba Kaitere” and “Bonheur”, where the tingling timbre of his guitar is paired with ngoni lute and Tim Keiper’s infectious combination of shakers and unusual scraping sounds played on the kourignans. The griot tribute-songs extend from close family to his extended cultural family, specifically fellow musicians persecuted by jihadist invaders in Northern Mali, their suffering acknowledged in the blizzard of skirling guitar that illuminates “Homafu Wawa”.

Dan Tuffy, Songs From Dan

★★★☆☆

Download: The Biggest Bastard Who Ever Rode The West; Shake It Loose; Belinda

Well, someone had to say it. “Musicians are all bastards, and so are all their friends,” admits Dan Tuffy; “they’re a law unto themselves, and their hunger never ends.” Tuffy’s analysis comes in “The Biggest Bastard Who Ever Rode The West”, the mea culpa of a self-proclaimed “liar and charlatan” whose life of poverty, degradation and deceit is tracked to his first joining a band back in 1983. It’s a brilliant performance, built around the dark, expressive twang of his country-noir guitar and the creepy organ that hangs around it like a mocking sidekick. “Shake It Loose” continues the self-deprecating tone, scudding along like a thread of nagging anxiety as Tuffy damns himself – “haunted by ambition, light hearted and content, satisfied by simple things” – while elsewhere the mandolin waltz “Belinda” (playfully rhymed with “never rescind her”) and pedal-steel laced romance “Stay True” suggest a warmer disposition closer to his heart.

Diagrams, Dorothy

★★★★☆

Download: Under The Graphite Sky; It’s Only Light; I Tell Myself; Everything

The Dorothy in question here is Dorothy Trogdon, a 90-year-old poetess based on an island near Seattle, whose poems bridged gulfs of age and location to capture the imagination of Sheffield-based former Tunng frontman Sam Genders, aka Diagrams. Together, they’ve wrought a beautiful celebration of the natural world, wreathed in images of rain and light, of “Crimson Leaves” and “Wild Grasses” that “cushion every step”. Genders’ broad northern tones lend an apt rootedness to ethereal observations like “There’s a truth behind illusion, shining there – it’s only light”; and his subtle, detailed arrangements likewise form the most natural bed for them, as with the delicate tracery of guitar arpeggios, flute and mellotron that glistens around “Under The Graphite Sky” like dewdropped webs at dawn. There’s a particular affinity here for cold and rain, as in the “lovely shards of sky and light” reflected in one of several wet pavements; but as they note in “Everything”, “everything is on its way to being something else”.