Talking Heads "Little Creatures" (4.5*)

By rights I should be heading back to Talking Heads 1977 to begin a re-examination of a band that largely passed by without my paying a great deal of attention, but $8.99 for the sixth album by Talking Heads is one of those things that tend to throw logical sequencing out of whack.

Eight years on and five albums under their belt, David Byrne and associates appear to have had enough of living the edge and turned their heads towards a poppier sound rather than another excursion into the quirks of the avant-garde. The result was, by all accounts, the band's best-selling studio effort, with over two million copies sold in the US and enough tracks that gained some sort of exposure to have someone who wasn’t paying much attention to the mainstream media nodding his head in vaguely remembered recognition on the first couple of runs through the album.

What I ended up with is the 2005 re-release, remastered with the seemingly obligatory bonus tracks (early versions of Road To Nowhere and And She Was, extended mix of Television Man) where the core Talking Heads quartet (David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison on keyboards and Tina Weymouth) get some assistance from session players, but it’s a stripped back, skeletal Heads without the Brian Eno production and the likes of Adrian Belew and Bernie Worrell beefing up the instrumental quotient.

Where preceding albums had been exploring the fringes, incorporating avant-garde ethnomusicological flourishes, this time around Byrne has retreated to as close to ordinary pop structures as he was ever likely to get, something that’s obvious from the bouncy beginning to And She Was, three and a half minutes of boppy R&B-inflected nonsense. Probably deep and meaningless, but there’s a catchy melody and a great chorus that’ll get everyone bar the most reluctant tapping the toes.

There’s some tight ensemble work on the group-written Give Me Back My Name, which sounds remarkably like The Go-Betweens, while Creatures of Love celebrates simple pleasures, concluding that sex is all right since It makes those little creatures come to life. What’s more he seems like he means it, rather than offering some sort of wry facetious observation.

The Lady Don't Mind and Perfect World continue that vibe, and if the babysitter or whoever’s the protagonist in Stay Up Late wants to make him stay up all night, that’s a reaction to cuteness and charm rather than a quest for revenge. Walk It Down funks itself along quite happily, while Television Man plonks Byrne down in the living room with the idiot box operating, though we’re just good friends and the jungle call and response bit suggests things may not quite be the way they seem.

But they’ve saved the best till last. If Television Man delivers an impression of suburban normality (that’s how the story ends) Road to Nowhere delivers an assessment that’s best summed up in one of the early lines in the song (the future is certain/we just need to work it out) and if we’re not actually bound for anywhere significant don’t worry too much because at least we’ll have company along the way and may well be able to amuse ourselves along the way.

With the benefit of close to thirty years worth of hindsight you could possibly argue that the album represents a deliberate retreat from avant-garde eccentricity, attempting to grab a piece of the action in the mainstream after the experimentation that established the band’s reputation, but that, I think, is creating a rather elaborate construction out of something that seems to have a rather straightforward explanation.

You can only work with the material you have to hand, and you clothe it in the most appropriate apparel. Byrne, for whatever reason, started writing material that was more straightforward and the result might seem like a straightforward catchy pop album, but it’s the work of people who knew what they were doing and the main point is that, quite simply, it works.

And from here, I guess, it’s back to ‘77...

Derek Trucks Band "The Derek Trucks Band" (4.5*)

Hearing The Derek Trucks Band was recorded in 1996, when the leader was all of seventeen, you mightn't be expecting something this impressive but Derek had, by that time, been playing professionally and semi-professionally for six years. He'd had bassist Todd Smallie on board since '94, drummer Yonrico Scott since '95 and singer/keyboards player Bill McKay had been around for a while as well, so we're talking a debut recording by a seasoned outfit, regardless of the leader's relative youth.

Recorded around a year before the album's release in October 1997 the album certainly isn't lacking as far as aspiration is concerned. Out of a dozen tracks, eight might be original compositions but there are also a couple of fairly ambitious covers in the form of John Coltrane's Mr. P.C. and Naima, Miles Davis' So What and Wayne Shorter's Footprints.

Thirty-five seconds of Sarod (Trucks playing the Indian instrument) leads straight into a blistering, turn on a pin reading of Mr. P.C. that’ll be familiar territory to anyone familiar with Derek’s later work. Suffice it to say he had his chops more or less down back this far and has spent the intervening period honing and polishing. Gary Gazaway contributes a horn part to 555 Lake that punctuates a warm vocal (in fact the album’s only vocal) from Bill McKay and there’s some fine ensemble playing on D Minor Blues and #6 Dance.

Things get ambitious with the covers of Footprints, Naima and So What with the group composition Out of Madness (Scott/Smallie/Trucks) thrown in between the first two to break things up and, impressively those ambitious covers come across as pretty much of a piece with what had preceded them, as well as the Evil Clown and Egg 15 that follow. Forty-one seconds of Sarod Outro brings a rather remarkable debut to a close.

Whether or not Derek Trucks is (as has been hypothesised by, among others Gregg Allman) the reincarnation of Duane Allman there’s no doubt he was, right from the very earliest stages of his career, ploughing a row very similar to the one Duane might well have chosen himself, aided by a flawless rhythm section capable of turn on a pinhead precision. Given the time lapse since the album came out, and given exposure to subsequent work, your jaw mightn’t drop quite as far as it would have if you’d heard this back in the day, but it’s a classic recording that’s thoroughly worth investigating.

Neil Young with Crazy Horse "Psychedelic Pill" (4.5*)

There's a pair of chicken and the egg statements that spring to mind when you're looking at something like the Neil Young with Crazy Horse album they've decided to label Psychedelic Pill.

Which came first?

Did consumers stop listening to albums all the way through in sequence because artists have stopped making grand artistic statements that hang together seamlessly?

Or did artists stop making grand artistic statements that hang together seamlessly because listeners stopped listening to albums all the way through?

Anyone who's read Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace will have no doubt about where Neil stands on the matter. We're supposed to listen all the way through, which is fine up to a point, and that point comes when you decide there are things hereabouts that justify employing the old shuffle button.

Actually, when it comes to recent Neil activities you probably need to link Waging Heavy Peace, Americana and Psychedelic Pill because they're all part of the same process. Different aspects of that process, but they're definitely interlinked. The book, of course, came first, and we've already had a look at Americana here, but now it's time to look at Psychedelic Pill and we need to think about the links a bit.

Looking at Americana, I remarked: Regardless of how prolific you are, sitting down to write a book (Waging Heavy Peace, apparently semi-autobiographical, due out later this year) the effort’s possibly going to steer you away from writing songs and while you’re thinking about the past you’re going to remember things you were doing back when you were starting out in the early sixties.

There's an additional factor revealed in the pages of Waging Heavy Peace which appears to have some bearing on Psychedelic Pill. The book, Americana and the new album are all the work of a clean and sober Young who's eschewed the use of marijuana and alcohol, apparently on medical advice.

You might be inclined to question whether this matters at all, and for most of us it probably doesn't. As far as Neil's concerned it probably doesn't either, but where these things are mentioned in the book he's not sure about song writing without the altered consciousness or chemical enhancement because it's been a while since he's written a song.

So we seem to have a book in the process, and the process had reached a point where he could switch his focus towards different projects, which seems to have been the point where he started thinking in terms of Crazy Horse again. With the Horse back in the stable they need something new to play, and the WHP manuscript has had Neil thinking back to his days on the road across the prairies with his early band (The Squires). You're thinking about that stuff, you need something to work on with the Horse, so you head back to that material. Fine. There's a certain amount of logic there.

With Americana in the can the songs apparently start to flow, and that delivered most of the material here. Given the fact that Neil had a number of matters that were occupying his attention you're hardly going to be surprised to see them turn up again.

We're talking about a man who'll wander away from his tour bus, as described at the beginning of Nick Kent's article Neil Young and the Haphazard Highway, leaving instructions to the driver to pick him up a few miles down the road, visualise something that fits the vibe of the landscape he's walking through and turn it into something anthemic in the genre that has currently caught his attention.


The problem, of course, lies in Neil's tendency to channel whatever vibe he's into, and proceed without the intervention of an editing force. That means if you’re into concise statements you’ll be steering clear of the opening Driftin' Back here.

Actually, if you’re into concise statements you’ll be steering clear of Waging Heavy Peace as well.

Driftin' Back is, to a large extent, symptomatic of the whole of the sprawling double CD statement, and your reaction to the track will probably define your attitude to what follows the twenty-seven and a half minutes. For a start the Hey now now, hey now now chorus makes for a substantial, and quite effective ear-worm.

I’ve been trying to get the thing out of my head for days, but, on the other hand, the grumpy old man trying to find inner tranquility while everything around him needles his consciousness gets your goat after two or three hearings. Having read WHP you know where he stands on his new format for high quality digital music and the rest of his critique of spirituality, MTV, contemporary listening habits, the degradation of sound quality in recorded music (when you hear my song you only get 5 percent, you used to get it all) and the reduction of Picasso’s art to digital wallpaper hardly comes as a surprise.

The band speeds up and slows down, ebbs and flows, locks together and drifts apart as Young scatters verses across the landscape, filling the rest of the terrain with swathes of guitar like you haven’t heard since, well, the previous NY/CH recoding.

There are two takes on Psychedelic Pill, which comes across as daughter of Cinnamon Girl, the first phased to within an inch of its life, and the second, more straightforward reading closes the double album. Apart from the CG Revisited bit, there’s a healthy serve of Dirty Old Man in there as well. Strangely, given the time differential between its 3:28 and 3:13, it doesn’t work nearly as well as the preceding half hour of Drifting Back, though the phasing definitely brings back memories...

But the marathons resume with close to seventeen minutes of roughhewn guitar on Ramada Inn, a clear-eyed and coherent not quite eulogy for a long-term relationship now that the kids have grown up and flown the nest. It’s Greendale-style storytelling, uncharacteristically focussed as Young looks at the sacrifices it takes to keep things afloat, more than a quarter of an hour of shimmering sentiment and melancholy analysis conducted in the temporary shelter of a motel room against an alcoholic background. Gut wrenching, epic, and arguably as good as anything he’s done in forty-plus years.

Born In Ontario closes the first disk with a trip down memory lane, cousin of Homegrown in much the same way that the title track reflects past glories. It’s a paean to his birthplace and his Canadian heritage while acknowledging the good fortune he’s experienced since leaving the prairies behind. It rocks along nicely, offering much needed light and shade after Ramada Inn, and if there’s a track hereabouts that’s suited to high rotation on the radio this, rather than the title track, is it.

Or maybe it’s Twisted Road‘s recount of Young’s early encounters with the music his heroes—Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and the Grateful Dead—produced in their heyday, with Dylan’s lyrics rollin' off his tongue/Like Hank Williams chewin' bubble gum. Let’s just leave it at lightweight, shall we?

She's Always Dancing repeats Driftin’ Back’s acapella intro > thudding Horse jam treatment and seems to reprise the title track’s pill-popping bopper for around eight and a half minutes of riffing between vocal choruses. Tight harmonies, trademark Neil guitar, it’s pleasant enough, but on an album that includes something like Ramada Inn most other tracks are going to pale by comparison.

Continuing a long held Neil tradition, For The Love Of Man brings out a song that’s been around for years (as in Silver and Gold, Ordinary People and Hitchhiker) and provides a welcome change of pace with a comforting ballad and a lyric that pays tribute to Young’s severely handicapped son Ben.


Which brings us to the album’s other major set piece, the monstrous (and I use the term deliberately) Walk Like A Giant. According to film maker Johnathan Demme the central used to feel like a giant, and now I feel like a leaf floating in the stream image stems from Neil’s 2005 aneurysm, and the rest of the lyrics fit comfortably into that retrospective feel that pervades the rest of the double album, but there’s an interesting contrast between the jaunty whistled hook and Young’s raging reflection on his (sorry, our) generation’s failure to change the world, which was what we thought we were out to do some forty-five years ago.

Around ten minutes in, Young lets the giant out of the box in savage swathes of white noise lashing the landscape much, you imagine, as a deranged Tyrannosaurus Rex might have done back in the days when there were, literally, giants walking the earth, savage squalls of noise stomping across a landscape that’s 100% Crazy Horse territory.

After that, I guess, anything’s going to be a let down, so perhaps one shouldn’t be too harsh as far as Psychedelic Pill (Alternate Mix) is concerned, but if its sister seemed inconsequential wedged between Driftin’ Back and Ramada Inn, the alternate version definitely comes across as lightweight after Walk Like a Giant.

And if you do the stats, eight tracks (nine if you count the alternate mix as a separate entity) with three definite keepers (two and a half if you’re not totally besotted by the whole of Driftin’ Back) that occupy two-thirds of the ninety-odd minutes is a much better strike rate than you might have anticipated looking back over some of Neil’s recent first thought is best thought efforts.

Very much in the whatever’s occupying Neil’s mind tradition of Fork in the Road, but with added Horse.

Various Artists "Tumbélé! Biguine, Afro and Latin Sounds From the French Caribbean, 1963-1974" (4.5*)

Sling the words Caribbean, West Indies and music together and your thoughts will, more than likely, head straight towards the reggae end of the spectrum, maybe with a passing thought of Cuba, Latin rhythms and the Buena Vista Social Club and possibly crossing to the shores of South America and Trinidadian calypso.

I guess that’s a natural reaction in the English-speaking world, where West Indian equates to reggae, calypso, cricket and rum, but we tend to forget there were other European nationalities that headed across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and it might come as some surprise to learn how diverse the islands are, at least in terms of colonial dominance.

We think English and Spanish, possibly French, but we tend to ignore or forget the presence of the Dutch and the fact that the Virgin Islands were, at one time Danish and Norwegian colonies (the Danes sold them to the United States in 1916). That interest dates back to the middle of the seventeenth century, a time when the Swedes had North American colonies in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Caribbean interests. The Swedes also controlled the island of Saint Barthélemy in the Leeward Islands between 1784 and 1878.

Geographically (and there’s a point to all this rambling, don’t panic) the West Indian islands can be divided into two main groups, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, with a couple of extra groups covering the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands (the Lucayan archipelago) and the Leeward Antilles, Dutch colonies off the coast of Venezuela.

The Greater Antilles covers the big islands, namely Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti, the Dominican Republic), Jamaica and Puerto Rico with the Cayman islands just thrown in to confuse matters. Think standard forms of Caribbean music and that’s largely where it comes from. Figures. Big islands tend to have big populations and get the chance to develop their own music industry with their own individual styles, which is more or less what happened with ska, bluebeat and reggae in Jamaica.

Things are much more confused, and subsequently diverse in the smaller islands of the Lesser Antilles, covering the Leeward Islands (assorted United States, British, French and Dutch possessions and a couple of independent former British colonies) east of the Greater Antilles and the Windward Islands (largely independent former British colonies and the French island of Martinique) stretching down to Trinidad just off the South American coast.

What we’re looking at here comes from Guadeloupe (at the eastern end of the Leewards) and Martinique (Windwards). They’re not all that far apart, separated by the former British colony of Dominica. Interestingly, the two islands are overseas departements of France, first colonised by France in 1635 and literally, as a part of France, members of the EU that use the Euro. Put that way and it all sounds a bit white bread, but given the Caribbean confluence you’re in for African and Latin influences on Haitian, Congolese and Puerto Rican rhythms and the local biguine style that ruled the airwaves and dance floors of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the 1960s thrown into the mix.

Listing those elements you can start from gwo ka and bélé, the drum and vocal call-and-response traditional styles of Guadeloupe and Martinique, reflecting the islands' history of slavery and forced migration. The lilting biguine is more urbane, a synthesis of bélé rhythms and brass-led polka from Martinique with ties to le hot jazz from Paris. Throw in some Congolese rumba, Cuban and Haitian rhythms, Trinidadian calypso, American and French hot jazz, and you’ve got an imaginative combination that makes for interesting listening.


Not that you’re going to hear anything that’s too familiar, or recognize names like Barel Coppet et Mister Lof, whose Jeunesse Vauclin gets things off to a lively start, followed by Haiti's Les Loups Noirs’ Jet Biguine, complete with psych-out jet effects. Apart from recording in Martinique Les Loups Noirs apparently spent much of their time travelling between Haitian communities in, among other places, New York and Toronto, as well as throughout the Caribbean.

You could probably come up with equally intriguing stories if you delved deep enough, and spend any amount of time trying to figure out the influences on tracks like Abel Zéno’s Pas O Soué  La, Raphaël Zachille’s Manzé Mona or the Robert Mavounsy Quartet’s Henri Te Vlé Mayé but in an environment where Hughesy’s vaguely-remembered High School French isn’t enough to translate the titles I’m inclined to sit back and enjoy the grooves instead.

La Vie Critique by L’Orchestre Jeunesse de Paul-Emile Haliar might translate as The Critical Life, but doesn’t sound like a nitpicker in action, while Orchestre Combo Zombi et Michel Yéyé’s Mussieu A Têt’a Poisson La has something to do with fish, though I’m not sure about the shape or form.

I was tempted to come up with equally vague remarks about the rest of the album’s diverse array of styles and buoyant bounce but, in the long run, decided Tumbélé is something to be enjoyed rather than analysed.

That’s my excuse, anyway.

The sounds on this particular album sit on the fringes of familiarity, but there’s an exoticism that suggests a flow of people, cultures and traditions, backwards and forwards between metropolitan France, the Caribbean colonies and their neighbours and the African sources that drove so much of the music that came out of the Americas.  Forget classifications and generic definitions, this exotic concoction of French, African, Calypso, Latin and assorted local flavours is bound to add more than a desh of interest to a playlist, and I’m definitely looking for more.

I have a sneaky feeling I'll be taking a good long look at the catalogue over at Soundway Records. The difficult part is going to lie in deciding where to start.


Track listing:

Jeunesse Vauclin – Barel Coppet et Mister Lof

Jet Biguine – Les Loups Noirs D’Haïti

Pas O Soué  La – Abel Zénon

Manzé Mona – Raphaël Zachille

Henri Te Vlé Mayé – Robert Mavounsy Quartet

La Vie Critique – L’Orchestre Jeunesse de Paul-Emile Haliar

Mussieu A Têt’a Poisson La – Orchestre Combo Zombi et Michel Yéyé

Oriza – Les Kings

Colas-la – Claude Rolcin et Le West Indian Combo

Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam’ – Anzala, Dolor, Vélo

D’Leau Coco – Les Leopards

Jojo – Ensemble La Perfecta

Dima Bolane – Le Ry-co Jazz

Edamise Oh! – Lola Martin

Chombo Meringue – Les Aiglons de Basse Terre

Son Tambou La – Les Gentlemens

Chonga – L’Ensemble Abricot

Fileo – Francisco

Panty – Monsieur Dolor et Les Guitar Boys

Jean Fouillé, Pie Fouillé – Robert Loison

Townes van Zandt "Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas" (4.5*)

First released in 1977, and intermittently in and out of print thereafter, Live at the Old Quarter delivers twenty-six of Townes van Zandt’s best songs, drawn from a five-night solo residency in July 1973 at a tiny Texas venue that could comfortably seat sixty, though according to legend over a hundred jammed into the room on the nights these recordings were made.

Judging by the introduction, we’re talking the last night of the run in a two-storey building (everything, it seems, is upstairs) that apparently drew a mixed clientele of skid row bums, hippies, and tidy professional people, a neighbourhood bar where you’d reckon the ambient noise would kill any chance of a decent recording. They were, after all close to double the notional/legal capacity of the bar.

The result, however, is almost crystal clear, with just enough happening on the edges to remind you that, yes, this is a live recording and underlining the apparent fact that a man and a guitar, a set of mostly immaculately written songs and a joke or two in between can hold an audience spellbound.

You might look at it and figure the bloke’s got rocks in his head to lead off with what’s arguably his best-known song (Pancho and Lefty) and following it with Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold but from that opening one-two punch he doesn’t let it slip.

On the other hand, to the average listener, Poncho might be about the only track they’d be likely to recognise, apart from the cover of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? so it’s sort of a case of that’s a damn fine song and these are damn fine songs too.

Lyrically, the songs are pretty dense, hardly the epitome of verbal economy, but there’s a precision there as well. Yes, they’re wordy, but they’re only as wordy as they need to be, and they’re delivered in a manner that commands your attention, which is obviously what happened in a crowded two-storey building close to forty years ago.

I was pointed towards this album by a discussion about great songwriters over on the not entirely Neil Young-centric Rust mailing list, where a comment from a bloke who seemed to have reasonable taste suggested this was either the best of Townes’ albums, or the pick of the live ones.

As a relative newbie I’m not in a position to comment on either suggestion, but can’t help thinking the man’s better in a live setting than stuck away in a studio. The writing is excellent, it’s relatively early in his career, so issues with alcohol and drugs haven’t kicked in to the extent they did later on (that much seems obvious from the performances here aligned against the man’s legend) and there’s a crisp clarity to the recording that gives you the I’m right there feeling.

There may be better Townes van Zandt live albums, and if there are I want to hear them. In the meantime this will do very nicely, thank you.

Jenny & Johnny "I’m Having Fun Now" (4*)

As someone who spent his teenage years living through the sixties heyday of AM pop radio, I’ve always reckoned I could spot a classy piece of pop music, and to me the best part of the late seventies New Wave/Punk Rock era was the surge of Power Pop that brought us the likes of Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds.

That’s why I’m a sucker for something like this effort from ex-Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis and boyfriend Johnathon Rice. From the jangly garage rock banter of Scissor Runner  through three and a half minutes of to and fro accusations and professional jealousy in My Pet Snakes the two voices trade lines, weave in and out of each other and generally sound like the album title is an accurate description of the contents.

Things slow down slightly for Switchblade, though the luscious harmonies stay right where they’ve been to date, and when the tempo lifts again Big Wave might sound like we’re talking California surf, but it’s actually about the state’s (and, I guess, the world’s) economic crisis (We’re spending what we haven’t made). Not the sort of topic you’d associate with surging choruses and chiming surf-derived guitar.

Following straight on, While Men Are Dreaming isn’t quite a lullaby, but resides in a nearby postcode and drops the tempo rather sharply, while Animal  lifts things back into bop along territory, and there’s a feel good singalong feel to Just Like Zeus and New Yorker Cartoon (not, you’d have thought, a topic that’d fit in with the Jenny & Johnny generation).

From there, it’s more or less a case of keeping things going along the same lines. Straight Edge of the Blade bops along nicely, the tempo drops for Slavedriver though the elements that have been on display throughout turn up again.

Things kick up nicely for Committed, and while you might hesitate before affirming your allegiance For God and for Country / For Michael Jackson’s Monkey it’s a catchy end to an album that contains its share of wisecracks and lyrical quirks. It’s largely upbeat, casts a backward glance towards folk-rock and California pop and definitely lives up to the title.

It’s not all sweetness and light when you dig under the sunny and exuberant surface, but as an exercise in retro lo-fi pop, it works very nicely.

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.