Brian Eno combines ambient textures with droning vocals and a sterling cover of a Lou Reed tune on “The Ship,” a powerfully challenging and gloomy recording that ends in bright revelation.
Eno draws from what he sees as similar historical events, the sinking of the Titanic and World War I, and his idea that “the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we’re permanently and increasingly under threat.”
The album’s 21-minute title cut reflects the soundscape of the ocean’s depth before Eno, singing like a Byzantine choir of foghorns, delivers the eulogy. Later, ghostly voices depict the aftermath, how it is now just “wave, after wave, after wave, after wave.”
The second track, “Fickle Sun,” has three sections. The transition from “The Ship” is initially smooth, the tragedy on the sea also enveloping the battlefields. Eno’s register rises, his voice skimming the land where “all the boys are going down, falling over one by one” and humans are “turning back to clay.” Distortion and sound blasts evoke the combat and a horrified survivor repeatedly recounts “When I was a young soldier …”
At the close, a bright light shines through the ocean and across the front — a sumptuous, harmony-drenched version of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Set Free.” It’s about release, but it has a catch — “I’m set free to find a new illusion.”
Rufus Wainwright appears in many guises on “Take All My Loves,” composing, producing, arranging and, least of all, singing.
He presents nine of the Bard of Avon’s sonnets as individual or combined performances by singers like sister Martha Wainwright and Florence Welch (without The Machine) and thespians like Helena-Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher and William Shatner.
Nearly all the poems are recited and sung, sometimes within the same track. Five arias by coloratura soprano Anna Prohaska alternate with five shades of pop songs. The contrasts can be jarring, but the recitations act as buffers.
In a take both sensuous and tender, Wainwright has only one genuine solo spot, reprising “A Woman’s Face (Sonnet 20)” from an earlier album.
Welch sings splendidly on “When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes (Sonnet 29),” which has a waltz-like feel, if not the ¾ time, while Wainwright and Marius De Vries turn “Take All My Loves (Sonnet 40)” into a percussive music box.
Two sonnets are in German. On “All Dessen Mud (Sonnet 66),” Wainwright, actor Jurgen Holtz and countertenor Christopher Nell stage a performance worthy of a Weimar cabaret.
Wainwright outdoes himself on “Take All My Loves,” partnering with an incomparable lyricist and producing a movable feast of an album, both exceeding and confounding expectations.
THIS PATH TONIGHT
Graham Nash
Blue Castle Label/ADA; $21.98
In the cover photo for “This Path Tonight,”Graham Nash stands at the beginning of a wooded trail receding into the distance. It would have been more fitting if he had been further down the path.
That’s because Nash’s new record is an inward-looking but not particularly insightful reflection on a legendary career. Mostly Nash is thinking about where he’s been.
“And the question haunting me,” he sings vulnerably on “Myself at Last,” one of the album’s better songs, “is my future just my past?”
Examining the past can be risky, even for a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Nash’s musings here aren’t groundbreaking — and some are uncharacteristically trite.
“But nowadays it seems that we all need to care,” Nash sings on “Golden Days,” a song that seems to acknowledge that his heyday is behind him. “And follow all our dreams, and answer all our prayers. What happened to ‘all you need is love’?”
You get the idea.
Despite the cliches, the playing is first-rate and Nash’s voice, still one of the most expressive of the Woodstock generation, sounds familiar and fine. There’s plenty here to remind listeners that Nash is a capable front man, but the net effect is to send you running for the old stuff.
Paging Jayhawks fans: The Americana band of renown has returned with a timeless gem that belongs among the best of the group and its loose, expansive genre.
“Paging Mr. Proust” kicks off with a one-two punch that’s a good guide for the rest of the collection. The leadoff, “Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces,” shimmers with a beauty and familiarity that wouldn’t have been out of place on the band’s “Tomorrow the Green Grass” or “Rainy Day Music.” It’s followed by “Lost The Summer,” which equally rocks but the jangle is replaced with a slightly less common funky syncopation and distortion.
Gary Louris, who leads a band that’s cohesive despite the at-times acrimonious comings and goings of absent co-founder Mark Olson and others, revels in musical dichotomy: For every song that’s straightforward and clean (the first track and “Isabel’s Daughter”), there’s something more crooked and cacophonous (“Pretty Roses in Your Hair” and “Ace”).
That mostly works. “Ace” might be the only track that doesn’t totally land — it’s groovy, smoky and swampy, yet seems more like an opportunity to let off some steam before embarking on the rest of the musical journey. If so, it paid off, because the next song soars: “The Devil Is in Her Eyes” is a ruggedly exquisite rocker with heartbreaking harmonies.
There’s plenty of polishing of the Americana apple here. But now in their fourth decade, The Jayhawks also want to expand the frontier, as REM did for 31 years before hanging it up. Appropriately, the album is co-produced by former REM guitarist Peter Buck and features musical appearances by Buck, his ex-bandmate Mike Mills and other REM associates.
“Paging Mr. Proust” finds a band supremely confident of where it’s been, where it is and, one hopes, will be.