So, what are you listening to these days?

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This music truly gives me hope for this f***ed up world. To listen to this is reason enough to wake up in the morning and keep going. This is pure talent...a gift from an astral plane somewhere else, that I would call God.

Such amazing music spilling out of that little apartment bedroom. I would really enjoy being their neighbour. She was in Vancouver...played in Stanley Park...oh I miss Vancouver.

 
I've been working my way through Sara Bareilles' catalogue. While I've listened to her a lot on Youtube and such and love her music and singing, I've never really listened to her albums as such. She really is one of the great songwriting talents of her generation and I'm very much looking forward to her finally getting a new studio album of new material out, expected by the end of the year. Her last full album was reworked versions of the songs she wrote for the musical Waitress (a show which she got a string of nominations for and also appeared in for two runs) so she hasn't had an album of new material out since The Blessed Unrest in 2013, which earned her a Grammy nomination for best album.
 
We just had a music festival in our community on the weekend. I had the great pleasure of listening to Michael Franti. He was pretty amazing. The workshop stage came alive with this one:


I'll be downloading some of his music!
 
Two new albums on Google Play Music:

Lightsleeper - Neil & Liam Finn

Neil Finn is best known as the front man of Crowded House but also co-founded Split Enz (with his brother Tim) and has toured both solo and with his brother. Liam is Neil's son and has performed with Crowded House on its more recent tours, as well as touring with such rock luminaries as Eddie Vedder, Vedder's band Pearl Jam, and The Black Keys. He's the second generation of this prolific and talented Kiwi musical family and the musical DNA is quite in evidence. Father and son have produced a nice alt-pop album. Nothing that blows me away, but some good solid songwriting and musicianship.

Anthem - Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux has been a vocal powerhouse in the jazz world for over twenty years and her latest album continues that tradition. The title song is a cover of the Leonard Cohen song "Anthem" though her arrangement is so different from Cohen's I didn't even recognize it until late in the first verse when the lyrics clicked in my brain.
 
From the albums above:

The Finns performing live with Liam on vocals and guitar and Neil on keys:


And the official video for a song from Peyroux's new album:

 
Discovered what Frank Turner is up to these days. Turns out, trying not to get shot in San Antonio:


Official music video:
Better sound, but not as much fun as the live show.
 
Tony Bennett is still going strong at (holy s__t!) 92. His voice isn't what it used to be but it's still light years better than mine ever has been or ever will be. And he just released a new album in collaboration with the great Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall. And I've been listening to it. Between their voices and Diana's skill on the ivories, it's a wonderful album. Musically, it's the usual suspects (ie. standards, many of which they have both recorded before) but the performances are terrific, even if Tony does sound a bit rusty at times. I'd love to see Tony release an album on his 100th birthday, but that might be hoping for too much.

BTW, Tony Bennett's first studio album came out in 1952, so he's well into the seventh decade of his recording career, and he began singing while serving in the US Army during WWII meaning he's been at this for 70+ years.
 
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Bennett & Krall in action:



Interestingly, Diana's not on piano. I had assumed she was given her background.

Also, I finally picked up that this album is a Gershwin tribute. Completely missed that just listening to it though I knew a lot of the songs were by George and Ira.

And, damn, I hope I look that good at 92.
 
I was listening to Josh Groban's latest album (nice, nothing unexpected) and the deluxe version ends with a cover of "She's Always a Woman" by Billy Joel. And I found myself quite unsatisfied with it. Josh's singing was fine, but the piano work left something to be desired given who wrote and performed it originally. Joel is easily one of the best pop-rock piano/keyboard players of my lifetime.

So, I checked Google Play Music (1 month left on my free sub) and found they had a very complete collection of Billy Joel. So, I grabbed three of his best albums (the original versions, not the "extended" ones) and put them in a playlist. And it is wonderful. The albums chosen are "The Stranger", "52nd Street", and "Glass Houses". Between them, there's a raft of Joel hits and many good album tracks. His eclectic mix of influences, from rock and roll to R&B to jazz, is on display throughout. Billy Joel is basically retired from writing and recording now, though he still plays concerts (both closing the Nassau Coliseum in 2015 and re-opening it after renovations were completed in 2017). His legacy should live on for a long time. He's simply one of the best songwriters of his generation.

Billy live from 1978 with the song that started off this post:

 
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Now on to Joel's 1983 album An Innocent Man. Dang, I had forgotten what a brilliant album this is. Takes all the influences that he's shown throughout the preceding albums and wears them on its sleeve. There's doo-wop, rock and roll, R&B, and even ... ready for it ... Ludwig van Beethoven (he nicks the tune for the chorus of "This Night" from the Pathetique sonata).

The title track is possibly one of his all-time best. A simple, evocative piece musically with a marvellous lyric. Joel may lack the poetic facility of a Cohen, but he's great at cutting deep into the emotion of a story. This performance of the song is from Tokyo, Japan in 2006, hence the Japanese subtitles.


I find it a bit sad that we only hear Joel singing his hits nowadays due to his retirement from songwriting, but I also appreciate someone deciding they've said all they need to say and shifting into cruise control rather than ending on a sour note with new songs that are sad echoes of their classics.
 
And then there's the big hits from the album, songs you can really rock out to.


Yes, that's then-popular supermodel Christie Brinkley in the video, who was also Mrs. Billy Joel from 1985 to 1994 and had a daughter with Joel, Alexa Ray Joel. Alexa is now a singer-songwriter herself and has also followed in her mother's modelling footsteps at times as well (apparently more to promote her music than because she wanted to be a model).

 
Since I mentioned Alexa Ray Joel above, here she is singing one of her Dad's best. She handles it beautifully.


And some of her own:



I note that her music videos are all fairly old so I suspect she's probably focussed more on modelling or something in recent years? Her voice has an odd tone to it but if those songs are representative, she's definitely got Billy's knack for melody.

One more, this time a recent live appearance with her father.


The song was originally a duet with Billy and one of his idols, the late Ray Charles. Interestingly, the description points out that Alexa takes Billy's parts from the original and Billy takes the parts sung by Charles.
 
And while enjoying videos by the Joel family, I came across this from 2009. Two artists renowned for their connections to the New York area (Bruce Springsteen from New Jersey and Billy Joel from Long Island) since a song about the city. It's old Joel classic from his 1976 album Turnstiles.


Billy's voice isn't quite what it used to be but, man, he can still play that piano.
 
Among the new releases on Google Play Music this week was MassEducation by St. Vincent. It's basically the songs from her 2017 album Masseduction redone with just piano accompaniment. The minimalist accompaniment really highlights the lyrics and her wonderful voice. It took me a bit to warm up to this alternative singer-songwriter but she's now a favorite.


An audio-only post for Slow Disco, one of my favorite St. Vincent songs


Interestingly, I looked at the credits in the video description and apparently the director of the video is comedian-actor Bobcat Goldthwait.
 
Back with Haley Reinhart. Her 2017 album "What's that Sound?" is a terrific collection of covers of songs from the late sixties. For the most part, she gets the sound of the era right with just enough of her own spin to make it work. There are some that are, perhaps, a little too reverently faithful to the original ("White Rabbit" doesn't sound much different from the Jefferson Airplane original save for her voice in place of Grace Slick). Given that Haley wasn't born until these songs were 20+ years old and already classics, she does them justice for the most part.

Footnote: And after typing most of this, I read the Wiki on it and it all makes sense now. Apparently it was the idea of her record company and she went along because her parents had played in a sixties cover band called Midnight. In fact, her parents joined her on the album, with her Dad on guitar and her Mom on backing vocals. Other guests include Scott Bradlee, founder, arranger, and keyboard player of Postmodern Jukebox, and bassist-singer Casey Abrams, who Haley first met on American Idol and with whom she has worked many times since. He, like Haley, is also a regular guest artist with PMJ.
 
A track off "What's that sound?" This song, originally done by the Shirelles and covered by The Beatles among others is perfect for Haley.

 
So, my Google Play Music trial is over and I am back to borrowing albums from Hoopla. And, as I was looking for something to listen to, I found not one, but two, recent albums from Nova Scotia rocker Matt Mays. Once Upon A Hell of a Time came out last year and is classic Matt Mays; driving, rhythmic guitar-based rock. Like this:


But this year, he released Twice Upon a Hell of a Time. It takes the same track list, but does the songs in an acoustic folk-rock style. Here's the same song from the new album.


Cool to hear how these play out in different styles. Both are terrific albums and Matt really shines in either style. A Canadian musician and songwriter who really deserves more attention than he seems to get.
 
Julia Westlin has been coming in my YouTube recommendations for a while now. For some reason, I never listened to her until tonight. Big mistake. She has a lovely voice and I am enjoying both her originals and her covers. I will start with some originals.

From her 2014 album Alive:



And a new one that just dropped today, which is what prompted me to finally check her out.

 
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