CD REVIEWS: The power and the passion

It has been an interesting music year for the Otago Daily Times reviewers. Today, Mark Orton shares his top albums for 2011 and one to watch.

Adele. 21

It's shipped more units than any other digital album, broken almost any record set for topping album charts and given Adele debilitating throat issues ... and it's pretty damn good.

Sometimes it's hard to find creative worth in something so commercially successful, so it's refreshing to see an album so unabashedly real strike such a chord with the great unwashed.

No auto-tune, Barbie-doll physique or "meat" dress; just one mighty set of tonsils and a set of songs that hark back to a nostalgic interpretation of classic R & B.

Partially inspired by a traumatic break-up, 21 shifts seamlessly between up-tempo pop groovers and lighter waving ballads. Produced with a Midas touch by Rick Rubin, there are still a few too many uneven mid-tempo fillers to be rated as a truly epic album, but it's close.

Black Country Communion. Black Country Communion 2

Strangely, one of the albums of the year is also the least contemporary.

Hastily cobbled together after the success of Communion 1, the classic rock barrage synonymous with '70s flare-powered grooves is back. Knocking on 60, Glenn Hughes has lost none of his fire, or audacious posturing.

Still marketing himself as the voice of rock, I'm hard-pressed to disagree on the strength of this.

What with blues baddass Joe Bonamassa's tasty licks and Jason Bonham's powerful exploits on the skins, it's Dream Theatre's Derek Sherinian who ties the whole mèlange together with a very Jon Lord-like keyboard display.

On the first few spins, Communion 2 sounds a little derivative, but this is totally deceptive. From the raw bombast of opener "The Outsider" through to the folk-tinged Zeppelin-esque "Hadrian's Wall", the album closes with "Cold", seven minutes of Glenn Hughes at his soulful best.

Peter Murphy. Ninth

Old goths don't fade away, they just release albums that are better than anything released back in their heyday. Peter Murphy, the aptly titled Godfather of Goth and Bauhaus frontman, has aged disgracefully well.

Sounding disarmingly like Bowie, Murphy's brilliance lies in a distinctive use of his baritone and the unrefined vitality of the musicians with whom he surrounds himself.

"Spitting Roses" one minute and then crooning through the jazz breakdown of "Crème de la Crème" the next, it's Murphy's menacing storytelling in "The Prince and Old Lady Shade" that really nails the dramatic excellence on Ninth.

Swaggering bass, effervescent guitars and that mesmerising voice deeper than a northern English coal mine, Ninth is inspired proof Murphy still has his finger on the pulse.

ONE TO WATCH
The Horrible Crowes

If Brian Fallon's mates in the Gaslight Anthem aren't worried about his moonlighting in this side project, they should be.

Freed of the Anthem's cranked-up bombast, Fallon's lighter soulful side really shines. Paired up with roadie-cum-guitar guy Ian Perkins, Fallon stretches the sound in directions that fans of his Clash-meets-Springsteen rock might never figure.

With a string of failed relationships as his muse, Fallon's raw emotion swings effortlessly from chiming kaleidoscope highs to gravely downtrodden lows.

"Elsie" is a beguiling mix of rock, gospel and folk that owes as much to Fallon's emotive vocals and subtle addition of strings as it does to Perkins' haunting open-chord phrasing and slide embellishments.

 

 

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