Latest releases reviewed
JOAN BAEZ Bowery Songs Proper ***
You have to hand it to Joan Baez. In a career spanning more than four decades she has never really lost her plot. Listen to those spine-tingling duets with the young Dylan and then travel in time to this live collection and marvel at how, at 65, Baez has retained the beguiling beauty of that distinctive and passionate voice. Older she may be, but the left-wing flame still burns in her heart, her singing and her song selection. The venerable Joe Hill is marched out to good effect, as is Deportee, still distressingly relevant today. There are a few fumbles - notably a convoluted Carrickfergus - but Baez mines the past and present (as in Steve Earle's stirring Christmas in Washington) with impressive confidence. www.joanbaez.com
Joe Breen
EEF BARZELAY Bitter Honey Fargo ***
The main man of the ever intriguing and frequently wonderful Clem Snide sends the lads away and picks up the acoustic for a 31-minute trawl through his dark, ruminative, occasionally funny pages. It is, as his promo material puts it succinctly, an invitation to cuddle in a cold, unfinished room. Lovers of the band will not hesitate to join him such is his distinctive way with lyric and melody, but innocents may find his introspective trawl through the alleyways of his romances and his past a little too dark for comfort, although tracks such as the wry I Wasn't Really Drunk provide light relief. Barzelay ends with a typically miserabilist Joy to the World, which just about sums up Eef's world. www.clemsnide.com
Joe Breen
VARIOUS The Wildlife Album Market Square ***
A gracious undertaking, this Wildlife Album is part of a double header, accompanied by Live in Hope: The Wildlife Album 2, the dreamchild of Colin Harper, librarian, music journalist and dreamer of a better world. Both fundraisers for the World Wildlife Fund and the Ulster Wildlife Trust, they're a mixed bag of folk rock, traditional, jazz, classical and blues contributions, with Harper's stamp firmly imprinted on a handful. A few standouts startle (Cara Dillon, Catherine Harper/Ensemble de Lassus, The Dennison Quartet and Colin Reid), but overblown synthetic concoctions from Jan Akkerman and bloated, dated musings from Leafhound sully the air unforgiveably. With 40 tracks packed into two albums, less would unquestionably have been so much more. www.thewildlifealbum.com.
Siobhán Long
