POP / Albums: That was, and is, the man that Was

ROLLING STONES

Voodoo Lounge

(Virgin CDV 2750)

HE'S SOME kind of genius, that Don Was: equally at ease helming the Rhythm Country & Blues project and organising both an ur-Beatles garage band and a cool jazz combo for the Backbeat soundtrack, here he takes on perhaps the most difficult task of all. And such is his incisive grasp of fortysomething rock dynamics - and perhaps more importantly, such is his taste - that he can even lick that ramshackle old jalopy the Stones into shape, albeit as a kind of custom-car reminder of former glories, a magnificent anachronism cruising all the more proudly down the street.

Was's gift is his ability to identify the most valuable characteristics of an artist's classic work and then apply them rigorously to the artist's new material. In a way, he's more faithful to the artist's essence than the artist is, and as a rule they respond well to his dedication to their original ideals. On Voodoo Lounge, Was has managed to blend the wasted, open-ended riffing of Exile on Main Street with the raw blues soul of Let It Bleed and the accomplished variety of Sticky Fingers, resulting in a work of greater swagger and diversity than we have a right to expect from the Stones at this stage of their career.

Sometimes the references are too baldly applied - 'Mean Disposition' is a tidy little rocker that wouldn't have been out of place on Aftermath, and surely that's my sweet Lady Jane tripping with courtly gait through the harpsichord of 'New Faces'? - but on the whole this is the most satisfying the Stones have been for some time, even when a track like 'Moon Is Up' performs a startling short-circuit of influence and ends up sounding like World Party imitating the Stones. Even Keef's now obligatory couple of vocals are more bearable than usual: 'Thru and Thru' finds him in weary, melodramatic mode, furnishing - rather embarrassedly, as it happens - the swearing which earns Voodoo Lounge its warning sticker about 'language some may find offensive'. Though it's funny, I don't hear any Welsh here at all.

As you'd expect, substantial portions of the album are taken up with riffs of varying effectiveness, from the bluesy single 'Love Is Strong' to the rather dutiful raunch-a-rama of 'Sparks Will Fly' (they don't) and 'Baby Break It Down'. And the album isn't without its complement of questionable choices - notably the why-oh-why terrorism lament 'Blinded by Rainbows', on which objectionable imagery of Semtex and 'limbs all torn off' is shamelessly directed in inquisitional, second-person manner, presumably at bomb-wielding Stones fans. But such mistakes are well compensated for by gems like 'Out of Tears', a slowie built upon a haunting Randy Newman-style piano figure, which accurately depicts heartache being cauterised by numbness. As usual these days, it's a track or two too long, but Voodoo Lounge is, by a clean pair of lizard-skin cowboy- boot heels, the best Stones album in a couple of decades.

ASWAD

Rise and Shine

(Bubblin' BUBB CD 1)

KEITH HUDSON

Pick a Dub

(Blood and Fire BAFCD 003)

A LITTLE bit of sunshine, and reggae is again all over the charts, from Big Mountain's ersatz UB40 stylings to Dawn Penn's chilling 'No, No, No', and Ace of Base's limp cover of Aswad's 'Don't Turn Around' to Aswad's own, more sprightly 'Shine', a song so instantly familiar I was convinced it was a cover of an old standard until I saw their writers' credit. The accompanying album marks a return to the group's traditional strengths after the ill-judged attempt at dancehall crossover that was Too Wicked: instead of guest producers like Gussie Clarke and Steely & Clevie, the group are back at the helm themselves, militantly stepping out on tracks like 'Warriors Charging', and indulging themselves experimentally on tracks like 'Fever', on which a little Latin spice tugs at the reggae groove.

The overall theme of Rise and Shine is of uplift and perseverance, the classic roots-reggae consciousness recipe applied here to less positive times. But while acknowledging the tougher contemporary climate in 'World of Confusion', they refuse to accommodate defeatism, making perky calls to self-determinism like that in 'Pickin' Up' (as in the slack in one's life). Which is all very well, though the combination of reggae and super-seasonal sunshine leans more towards hedonism than discipline in my experience - in which case the reissue of Keith Hudson's Pick a Dub ought to find a more widespread audience this summer than on its initial 1974 release.

One of the original dub classics, this features the original Wailers rhythm section of Aston and Carlton Barrett on bass and drums respectively and Earl Smith on the crispest of guitar licks, with Augustus Pablo chipping in his inimitable melodica here and there. The real star, though, is producer Hudson himself, working up diamond-hard versions of his own productions such as 'Ace 90 Skank', the track with which he hoisted Big Youth to stardom (here dubbed as the title- track), and roots classics like the Abyssinians' 'Satta Massa Ganna' riff, relaxed here almost beyond the point of recognition. There's also a nice line in Animals' covers, with 'Michael Talbot Affair' being a sax instrumental based on the 'House of the Rising Sun' progression, and 'Blood Brother' putting a slow skank into the step of 'Baby Let Me Take You Home'. Rooted in playfully-echoed bass and drum work, with the minimum of distractions, Pick a Dub is one of the core works of Seventies dub development. Now can we have Augustus Pablo's Ital Dub reissued, please?

JULIAN COPE

Autogeddon

(Echo ECHCD 1)

MILLENNIAL crankery comes in many forms these days, there being a wider range of beliefs to choose from, one suspects, than in previous centuries. The anti-vehicular Autogeddon, for instance, is the third part of the trilogy with which Julian Cope has effectively re-cast himself as Kap'n Krusty, defender of the travelling hippie faith in its most millennial form. It's certainly an improvement on Rite, his mail-order

album of formless 'meditational' jams, being a more serviceable mixture of psychedelic guitar freak-outs (the 11-minute 'Starcar'), folk blues (the Dylanesque 'Autogeddon Blues') and avant-rock ('Ain't No Gettin' Round Gettin' Round', which starts as a gloss on Pere Ubu's 'My Dark Ages' and ends up a chunky Velvet Underground thrash).

Busked live, it's claimed, the three-part opus 'Paranormal in the West Country' moves from crusty campfire singalong through an ode to dangerously slow driving to a heavily flanged spot of riffing, and shows Cope to be turning into Edgar Broughton before our very ears. What else is one to make of a sleeve- note seeking to impart a cosmic coincidence to the fact that his car spontaneously exploded in his driveway at home in England, at the very moment he was in New York watching a Cheech & Chong movie called - really] - Up in Smoke? Heavy, or what? And what did the insurance company make of it?

(Photographs omitted)