Irma Thomas "Simply Grand" (4*)

There are some things that are best kept simple.

When, for example, I have the opportunity to open a really good bottle of red wine I’m inclined to line it up beside a sizeable chunk of Tasmanian eye fillet or rib on the bone, thoroughly sealed on both sides and finished in the oven. When that’s done, deglaze the pan juices with water and a tad of the red (I’m not in the habit of overdoing the sauce when I’m looking at a $50 plus Halliday 95 or 96 pointer) and serve with some mashed potato and steamed broccoli or zucchini. It’s something that allows you to enjoy the complexities of the wine and the fall apart tenderness of the beef without having too many other factors getting in the way.

Given Irma Thomas’ status as arguably the greatest of the female R&B and soul voices to come out of New Orleans you might be tempted to surround her with upbeat fonk, heavy on the horns and it would probably come out OK. Thomas, however, always comes across as a little understated, medium rare as opposed to well done to continue the steak analogy, and those vocal tones work best, for mine, over a minimalist, uncluttered backing.

Here, the concept is straightforward. Take Irma, give her some ballads and set her beside a piano, bass and drums trio and let things run their course. This could have worked pretty well with any one of the ivory-tinklers on display here, but rather than sticking with one player they’ve recruited the pick of the New Orleans piano practitioners (Henry Butler, Dr. John, Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott, David Egan, Ellis Marsalis, Davell Crawford and Marcia Ball) and a couple of notable ring-ins (Norah Jones, John Medeski, Randy Newman) and only one notable absence (Allen Toussaint).

John Fogerty’s River Is Waiting with Henry Butler on piano and a gospel trio in the background is straight out of church, which the following track, If I Had Any Sense I'd Go Back Home, a Louis Jordan cover, isn’t as Irma and Dr John give the lyric a resigned reading. Jon Cleary’s the guest pianist on Too Much Thinking as Irma addresses the problems you have when you’re too busy to worry about minor considerations like rent, bills and all those other things you can’t do anything about.

It’s back to Louis Jordan territory for Early in the Morning with Tom McDermott looking after the accompaniment on a track that lacks the fire of some other readings. It’s one that may be getting the shuffle treatment when it turns up by itself a a little further down the track. I’m not entirely convinced by the Burt Bacharach co-write What Can I Do either.

Lil' Band O' Gold‘s David Egan provides Underground Stream and looks after the keyboard duties on a gospel call for regeneration, complete with choir, and the combination works better than the two tracks that preceded it. One that’ll work its way into myTop 1500, and if I was still doing the radio bit it’d be getting a regular spot on the airwaves.

Norah Jones takes over the keyboard for Thinking About You, which is a little restrained after the preceding track. Better, and more assertive is Dr John’s contribution to Be You, a track he co-wrote with the great Doc Pomus, originally intended for Etta James. Dr. John played on Irma’s first recording session (You Can Have My Husband But Don't Mess with My Man) back in 1959 and his work here delivers a playfully funky counterpoint to a playful shimmying vocal.

This Bitter Earth was a hit for Dinah Washington some fifty-plus years ago, and gets a smoky nightclub style treatment here with elegant but quite restrained backing from Ellis Marsalis and delicate upright bass and hi-hat action on the drums, and it’s a similar story when David Torkanowsky returns for Cold Rain (he’d provided the piano part for the Bacharach number) the combination works much better than it did earlier as Irma meditates on the cleansing that follows a storm.

Allen Toussaint wrote Somebody Told You and Irma recorded it way back in 1962, but this time it’s John Medeski rather than Toussaint providing the backing while Thomas testifies. Overrated features Davell Crawford on an R&B ballad that’s rather soft around the edges and in danger of attracting smart-arsed references to the title. Along with What Can I Do, it’s one of the weaker tracks on an album that’s pretty consistent otherwise. There’s a more spartan turn around the eighty-eights from Marcia Ball on Don Nix’s Same Old Blues, though there’s a gospelly twist there that definitely ain’t the same old barrelhouse variety.

But the album’s highlight comes when Randy Newman slips onto the stool in front of the keyboard for I Think It's Going to Rain Today. Newman’s bleak vision, with hope and desolation presented as opposite sides of the same coin makes for a moving meditation in the aftermath of a disaster, and Thomas’ understated vocal delivers a poignant combination of heartbreak and vulnerable dignity. Stunning.

And, when you look at the title, the title says it all. Simple, slightly modified to fit grammatical requirements and grand, as in piano, and also as in the dictionary definitions.

Take your pick from:
magnificent and imposing in appearance, size, or style
of high rank and with an appearance and manner appropriate to it
used … to suggest size or splendour
of the highest rank
very good or enjoyable; excellent
all of which are taken from the Dictionary app on my Mac (which, in turn, is taken from the New Oxford American Dictionary, so we're talking authoritative here, folks.

Authoritative. That's another descriptor that fits like a glove...

Scrapomatic "Sidewalk Caesars" (4.5*)

The more things change, it is said, the more they stay the same. With two albums under their belt, both supervised by veteran producer John Snyder, the production credit on Scrapomatic’s third album goes to singer Mike Mattison and engineer/mixer Jeff Bakos. There’s also a change in the instrumental roster, with Mattison and guitarist/vocalist Paul Olsen joined by their regular road band (Dave Yoke on guitar, Ted Pecchio on bass and vocals and drummer Tyler Greenwell).

Apart from that it’s pretty much a case of business as usual. Olsen and Mattison continue to draw their inspiration from acoustic blues, throwing solid chunks of rustic folk, country, Southern rock, R&B and soul, swamp pop, gospel and even a dash of 80s punk into a musical stew that blends American musical traditions with twenty-first century overtones. Eclectic but focussed, diverse but almost seamlessly integrated, still based around Mattison’s gruff growl and Olsen’s guitar, but with added oomph from a regular road band.

There’s a bit of veering between the sacred and the profane hereabouts, from the spiritual overtones that set up He Called My Name which comes with a sanctified strut as Paul Olsen's guitar plays off Derek Trucks' understated slide through the good time down home two tempo ode to the Drink House to Killing Yourself On Purpose, a bluesy examination of the consequences of (over)consumption.

We’re talking blues roots filtered through a literary sensibility here, folks, with Mattison's grizzled vocal echoing some of the greats of the genre, veering over towards gospel territory for I Want the Truth, with uncharacteristically understated Derek Trucks slide back into the mix. There are hearty helpings of organic home cooked soul on Remember This Day and Long Gone and a more country feel atop a Stax-style groove as Olsen takes the vocal lead on Hook, Line and Sinker.

There’s a jaunty, peppy start to The Fire Next Time, with the old spiritual line about a bit less water next time around, and The Old Whiskey Show waltzes through three minutes of meditation on distillery-based philosophising, a theme that continues through Skip James’ Drunken Spree, fingerpicked and cakewalked into a jaunty bit of medicine show hokum.

Long-Haired State works heartfelt ballad territory, revisiting themes that Mattison and Olsen have been developing throughout the album, and I Just Wanna Hang Around With You, a Robert Hazard cover choogles through three minutes of punk-pop before Olsen winds things up with a warm scrapomatic "Sidewalk Caesars (4.5*)with subtle fretwork delivering an understated conclusion that may or may not be in keeping with the overall vibe that has run through everything that precedes it.

That final track is enough to point out that Olsen’s a substantial talent in his own right, and his guitar work throughout is solid (as is Dave Yoke’s) but it is, I think, inevitable that Mattison almost invariably ends up dominating the Scrapomatic landscape, and that’s not a bad thing. There’s something quite distinctive about his vocal chords, a malleable instrument with a remarkable range from a keening falsetto to a subterranean growl that can swoop effortlessly in either direction, and it’s not just range. The man manages to invoke a variety of tones and flavours that add light and shade to material that’s occasionally obtuse, veers between innocence and  feverish intensity, and blends disparate elements into an inimitable gumbo that draws on the spirit of the Delta blues and to focus on timeless themes.

While Mattison will inevitably cop the kudos it wouldn’t be the same without Olsen’s contribution to a classy expanded duo carving themselves a firm niche in what looks to be a very viable market in and around the Tedeschi-Trucks axis.

Dr John "City That Care Forgot" (4*)

There are some artists you naturally associate with a particular city, venue or other environment, but I can’t think of any that spring to mind as naturally as Dr John and New Orleans. As a teenage session muso in the late 50s, Mac Rebennack was an integral part of a scene he had to get out of due to issues with the law in the mid-60s and when he needed an avenue to provide a gig for assorted transplanted Crescent City music identities based in Los Angeles in the late sixties, the city and its traditions provided the basis for the Dr John persona that has provided him with an ongoing forty-plus year career.

Over that time he hasn’t always lived there, but he’s maintained a constant liaison with the city and its music, even when venturing off onto tangents involving Duke Ellington or Johnny Mercer. Given those ongoing links you wouldn’t be surprised by the tone of 2008’s City That Care Forgot.

Looking back over an extensive discography that’s dominated by Louisiana fonk, even the most ardent fan would have to agree that he’s been hit and miss and the average fan’s mileage is likely to vary with the amount of perceived effort that’s gone into the session. There’s almost invariably something of interest somewhere on a Dr John album, but the strongest material tends to come when he’s got a particular bee in his bonnet (Gumbo, Goin’ Back to New Orleans) or a particularly strong collaborator (In the Right Place). The City That Care Forgot delivers both.

Given the events that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, of course, it’d be difficult not to have a bee in your bonnet, but from the start of Keep On Goin' to the end of Save Our Wetlands there’s a strong slow-burning anger that delivers what is arguably his strongest collection of original material.

As anyone who’s been through a natural disaster would know, as you set about trying to get over the destruction, there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s to Keep On Goin' and the album kicks off with a low key funky starter in a situation where you could well be tempted to come out swinging right from the start.

He doesn’t, however, take too long to focus on his targets. It’s not the destruction itself that’s got him riled, it’s the lack of environmental concern and responsibility and a need for corporations and government be held to account, and Time For A Change makes no bones about it over a rolling R&B groove with crisp horns and guitar work from Eric Clapton to underline the message.

And when you’re looking for those responsible, head straight to the top of the tree. The road to the White House is paved with lies is the first line in Promises, Promises as the Doctor and Willie Nelson take alternate verses attacking the administration and the cronies who lined their pockets in the wake of disaster.

Life is a near-death experience is the opening line of You Might Be Surprised, just under four minutes of ballad in an R&B vein that espouses the power of positive thinking. All you gotta do is want it bad enough and you just might be able to take action and the repetitive cycle of disaster and corruption that characterises the history of the Crescent City.

The five minutes of Dream Warrior rails against the injustices that followed in the wake of Katrina and the hypocrisy that meant the city was still more or less in ruins three years after the storm. It’s the same passion that burns through the first two series of Treme, and the reason for the continued neglect comes through in Black Gold, a denunciation of the Iraq War and America's dependence on oil and the coverup that followed the Gulf oil spill.


The state of post-storm New Orleans is again the theme in We Gettin' There, with moody trumpet from Terence Blanchard, and if it seems everything’s hunky dory down there, the chorus sets things rather straighter. And if ya wonder how we doin', short version is we gettin' there, and if you wonder how we doin', is we gettin' mad.

What was there before and who was responsible for its disappearance delivers the theme for the next three tracks. Stripped Away tackles the cleansing role of the floods that washed away the rot and decay of the old city and that will, hopefully, be reborn eventually, but Say Whut? balances the picture. It’s a four and a half minute demand that somebody be held to account for the crime, tragedy and devastation that should have been avoided, and speaking of things that need fixing My People Need A Second Line looks at the traditional New Orleans funeral procession that’s being regulated and harassed out of existence as the new wave of carpetbaggers look to profit from the city's culture while doing away with the influences that shaped it.

That, of course, is all part of the Land Grab, with Terence Blanchard’s trumpet featuring again as the Doctor’s vocals nail the issues involved with disappearing neighbourhoods, and opportunistic developers looking for a quick buck through gentrification. An Ani DiFranco backing vocal underpins City That Care Forgot while the lead vocal's gruff denunciation enumerates his disillusion with the fact that an area where music and laughter once filled the air has been drastically changed by politicians and profiteers. The album concludes with environmental pleas to Save Our Wetlands and protect Mother Earth, themes that don’t just apply to New Orleans.

He mightn’t have been there when Katrina struck, but given the fact that the disaster has provided plenty to become agitated about it’s hardly surprising to find the Doctor inclined to rant about mistreatment and failure to deliver.

Overtly political? Possibly, but given the magnitude of the issues and the dissatisfaction produced anything less than fervent vitriol and pointed comment really isn’t going to cut it.

File under: Trademark New Orleans musical gumbo seasoned with righteous indignation.

Stephen Cummings "Happiest Man Alive" (4*)

Having spotted The Sports Fair Game EP when it appeared as NME's Record Of The Week in 1977 I've been watching Stephen Cummings' career over the intervening thirty-five years with considerable interest. While The Sports attained a reasonably high profile, after the band broke up in 1981 Cummings went, more or less into stealth mode, releasing albums at regular intervals and maintaining an increasingly lower profile.

Sure, he had a habit of turning up on Channel Nine's Sunday program when there was a new album out, and there was, at one point, a social media presence that provided interesting reading as Cummings mused on various matters but that went belly up a while back (though he was back blogging at http://www.spiritualbum.blogspot.com.au/ earlier this year), and I only learned of his most recent album (Reverse Psychology) in a passing reference.

Situations like that produce a visit to iTunes, and while you're there you tend to have a look at what else is there with a view to filling in any gaps in the collection, which is how I ended up catching Happiest Man Alive which had slipped by undetected or forgotten in 2008.

As his fourteenth collection of new material since 1984's Senso, Happiest Man Alive sees Cummings in what I'm inclined to refer to as cottage industry mode, cutting the tracks more or less on the fly over two days with long-term associates Bill McDonald and Billy Miller (The Ferrets) with a third day devoted to mixing the ten tracks.

There’s the usual Cummings acoustic philosophy on Love Is Space And Time, This Song Can Save You and What A Joy It Is To Dance And Sing (with the latter doing a bit of Brazilian samba) and Oh To Be Loved, a bit of a cynical snarl about the decline in political and economic integrity on Sick Comedian (What’s that? A television for a head) and You Know It All By Heart (But you don’t have a heart), the requisite literary references (Raymond Chandler and Edward Hopper, The Ballad Of Henry Miller) and by Straight To Your Arms and Don't You Ever Listen To Me? long term listeners will be in totally familiar territory. Lowlights and Trick Mirrors sounds like a reasonably upbeat way to wind things up until you take a listen to the words and come to the conclusion that it’s Cummings operating in his regular territory.

Acoustic guitar throughout, handclaps rather than drums (what was that line about everything sounding better with ‘em?) delivers a natural feel, as if you’ve got the outfit in the living room, and there’s a warmth to the performance that underlines Cummings’ standing as one of the better songsmiths out there.

Live performance, from what I can ascertain from third party sources, might be hit and miss, but whack him in a studio with a sheaf of material and a couple of players who know the way he works and in a day or two you’ve got  an intuitive observation of the world he meanders through.

Cummings is inclined towards regular announcements that his current recording will be the last (he followed this with Reverse Psychology, so I’m not suggesting he did so with this one four years back) and while that’s eventually going to come true, as long as he’s recording I’ll be queueing up to buy the results.

Provided, of course, I find out the latest one’s out there.