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Liam Carey reviews

AMAZING GRACE There's plenty to get through in this week's column, as the Liner Notes expand their horizons beyond just a few notable releases to accommodate the usual pre-Christmas avalanche, but it would be remiss to overlook some of the best albums that have appeared recently. Emmylou Harris is a living Country Music legend, with 30 years in the business and an extensive back-catalogue. Yet she has been enjoying a second wind of late, ever since 1996's Grammy-winning Wrecking Ball teamed her with uber-producer Daniel Lanois. The follow-up, 2000's Red Dirt Girl, repeated Wrecking Ball's artistic and commercial success. Now comes Stumble Into Grace, already touted as one of the year’s outstanding records. Lanois takes a slightly less prominent role this time around, but his esoterically beautiful stamp is nonetheless all over the album. The sound goes beyond the confines of Country music - new or old - with a stunning collection of evocative songs, which in contrast to her previous work are often written or co-written by Harris.

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT In a similar vein, Sweet Liberty by Cara Dillon makes its own claim to be one of the most alluring and downright beautiful albums of 2003. The petite singer-songwriter won an Irish Music award in 2002 for her self-titled debut, which took a batch of traditional Irish folk songs and injected fresh life into them with her minimalistic but sympathetic approach. If anything, Sweet Liberty exceeds the achievements of that first album, once again framing Dillon's lovely vocals with low-key arrangements but adding a more contemporary edge than before. Fans of Sarah McLachlan, still awaiting her follow-up to 1998's Surfacing, could do worse than check out Sweet Liberty.

BRIGHTMAN AND A THOUSAND STARS Looking for something more exotic? How about Harem, the new Eastern-flavoured release from Sarah Brightman. Another themed effort, to follow the aquatic Dive (1993) and the nocturnal La Luna (2001), Harem naturally looks to the land of belly-dancers and camels for its inspiration. Once again it's a superbly crafted and lushly produced affair; anyone who enjoyed Mike Oldfield's last album Tr3s Lunas would be advised to investigate this record. The limited edition 2-disc set includes a bonus DVD with a full-length "Making The Album" documentary, plus music videos and picture galleries.

THE DEVIL'S OWN Occasionally, an act with huge popularity in America never manages to convert that status over on this side of the pond. So it seems to be for Dave Matthews, now sans band but still on the RCA/BMG label. After a string of multi-platinum monsters in the late 90s (including 1998's Before These Crowded Streets and the magnificent Everyday in 2001), Matthews has gone it alone for Some Devil, which appeared in the UK at the end of September to very little fanfare. The melancholic, almost Peter Gabriel-esque attributes of his most affecting work are pushed to the fore on his first solo outing.

WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION Will the same lack of US/UK crossover success afflict John Mayer, the latest unit-shifting phenomenon to hit the American charts, one wonders. Ploughing a not-too-dissimilar path to the likes of Dave Matthews or Hootie & The Blowfish, the youthful and (perhaps crucially) good-looking Mayer is all about the music. Solid songwriting, tight arrangements, and a husky voice all help to create an appealing if hardly groundbreaking whole. His previous album Room For Squares found a small audience in this country when belatedly issued at the turn of the year, its 13 melodic musings on life and love coming on rather like a male Dido. Heavier Things turns up the amp a little, best evidenced on the fine single Bigger Than My Body; the video for which is gaining some exposure on the pop-oriented digital music TV channels.

NEWMAN, NEW LABEL, OLD SONGS From dancing bears to cartoon monsters via short people. That's one way of summarising the career of the great Randy Newman, but it fails to tell anything like the whole story, let alone give an idea of the big fella's enduring ability. Few, if any, of his contemporaries from the late 60s and early 70s have ever matched Newman for acidic satire and acute observations of the screwed-up side of existence (the late Warren Zevon comes closest), and certainly fewer still of today's songwriters have earned the right to bear comparison to the 61 year-old master. Since film work began to occupy the lion's share of his recording output in the mid-80s, there have been just two regular Randy Newman albums; the Mark Knopfler-produced Land Of Dreams in 1988, and the poorly-promoted Bad Love some 11 years later. So poorly-promoted, in fact, that the artist's relations with the Dreamworks label were terminally soured and Bad Love remained the only product of their brief liaison. Now reunited with the vast Warner Brothers empire after signing with WB offshoot Nonesuch, Randy Newman has elected to revisit his esteemed catalogue for his first release under the deal. Songbook Vol.1 features fresh recordings of his compositions, often linked by short musical interludes, which strip away the glossy production which characterised his output from 1977 onwards. For the most part, it's just a man and his piano. The album is unlikely to sell beyond his modest core audience, but that's been the case for the best part of 25 years (since the misunderstood and maligned Short People's #2 success in America sent his album sales soaring) and thankfully there is still a place for what David Geffen once termed "prestige acts" within today's industry.

RELEASE ROUND-UP: SUEDE have their greatest hits issued this week on Singles, a 21-track collection of every A-side by the band since 1992's memorable debut 45 The Drowners. Latest Top 20 chart entry Attitude is featured along with another new track, but sadly not its AA-side Golden Gun, by far the most impressive Suede track in many a year. Singles marks the first appearance of 1994's Top 3 smash Stay Together on an album. Other retrospectives just out include The Very Best of SHERYL CROW, a 17-track distillation that somehow manages to omit last year's feisty hit Steve McQueen. To add to the mystery, there are no fewer than three different editions of the album available on-line, all with unique tracklistings; the US version does have Steve McQueen, but loses some of the UK-only selections. Hmm. One of the trio of new recordings (and a single as of this week) is The First Cut Is The Deepest, originally written and recorded by CAT STEVENS in 1968. Universal Music (formerly Polygram) have unleashed yet another Stevens compilation; the umpteenth since 1990's Top 5 Best Of. The 2003 model is a 24-track anthology complete with a DVD of classic TV performances and an offbeat Spike Milligan-voiced animation for Steven's song Teaser & The Firecat, and The Very Best Of has already hit the UK Top 10. The First Cut Is The Deepest was famously covered by ROD STEWART in the mid-70s, reaching the top 5. Rod also has yet another Best Of issued this week by one of his old labels; Changing Faces : The Very Best Of Rod Stewart & The Faces - The Definitive Collection 1969-1974. The 2 disc collection is only slightly longer than its title. The timing could be viewed as somewhat cynical, since Stewart justhappens to have a brand new album out on the very same day through Clive Davis' J imprint, whose other high-profile act is Alicia Keys. Entitled As Time Goes By : The Great American Songbook Vol.2, it's the follow-up to last year's surprise big-seller It Had To Be You, wherein Rod stopped trying to keep pace with contemporary pop and rock music and crooned a few well-known oldies. The EAGLES are no strangers to the "reissue, repackage" syndrome, having seen nearly half-a-dozen Greatest Hits sets in their first spell of existence between 1971 and 1980, and at least four more since 1985. We've had Greatest Hits 71-75 (America's biggest-selling album of all-time until Thriller), Greatest Hits Vol.2, The Best Of, The Very Best Of, an expanded/re-promoted Very Best Of, and now The Complete Greatest Hits. The newest cash-in - sorry, celebration - is a double album with an obligatory unreleased recording. On this occasion, said new song Hole In The World isn't really up to much; Don Henley's classy vocals elevate a bland anthem for peace and understanding into something half-decent but it hardly deserves to share disc space with Hotel California, Life In The Fast Lane, Desperado, One Of These Nights or any of their past work for that matter. ERASURE, by contrast, are fairly new to the compilation scene - Hits! is only their second such release. Sadly, their days of chart domination have long since passed, a state of affairs confirmed by the track selection for this successor to Pop! The First 20 Hits, which sold by the million almost exactly 11 years ago. Rather than faithfully catalogue the duo's releases post-Pop! (15 singles, plus the latest remix of Oh L'Amour), they've hedged their bets by including more than half the singles from the first Greatest Hits - although the choices defy logic; The Circus (#6) is absent, but lesser hits make the cut - while adding on some mildly popular 90s ditties such as Run To The Sun, I Love Saturday, Freedom and the surprisingly good cover of Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill from earlier this year. The now-commonplace bonus CD offers the dubious pleasure of an 18-track Erasure megamix. Remarkably, there happens to be some completely new music released this week as well. TEXAS return after a three-year hiatus with their sixth studio set Careful What You Wish For. The dancehall-influenced Carnival Girl single split fans much in the way their teaming up with Wu-Tang Clan did in 1998 for Say What You Want (All Day Every Day). It's either a mismatch of car-crash proportions or a stroke of genius. A second single is already being lined up for an assault on the Christmas No.1 spot. There's a third album from BASEMENT JAXX in the shops from October 20th, too. Kish Kash promises more wildly diverse delights, with Siouxsie Sioux guesting on the title track. Hear'Say might be dead and buried (stop that cheering at the back), but the highly-strung MYLEENE KLASS is not. Rather than go the predictable pop-babe route (see fellow band-member Kym Marsh's tiresome solo efforts), Klass has come out all guns blazing with a record that takes her back to her pre-fame Classical music roots. There could be a gap in the lucrative Vanessa Mae/Bond market this autumn which the album can take advantage of. Singles-wise, it's been a much healthier time of late after one of the most dismally barren summers for music in living memory. EMMA BUNTON has managed to recover from the woeful Free Me with the marvellous 60s-tastic bossanova rush of Maybe. Had it been by Geri Halliwell, the result might have had even more sparkle, since Bunton is not the most charismatic vocalist in the world. Charting one place below Maybe in the UK Top 10, Mixed Up World by SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR is a distinctly Pet Shop Boys-flavoured confection. Strong verses are almost let down by the chorus, but it improves with repeated exposure. Her second solo album, Shoot From The Hip, is out next week. Also out that day will be the new AQUALUNG long-player, Still Life. Last year's debut was promising enough but slightly one-dimensional at times, so it remains to be seen if the excellent new single Brighter Than Sunshine is representative of Still Life's overall quality. Meanwhile, DANIEL BEDDINGFIELD's album Gotta Get Thru This continues to provide yet more chart hits; Friday is the sixth single to be lifted from the album. It's a frenetic but insistent techno workout with raga leanings, Beddingfield sounding not unlike a youthful Message In A Bottle-era Sting. LIBERTY X however, having gained some brownie points for their superbly clinical Richard X-helmed Being Nobody, go and blow it all by tediously ripping off Jumpin' Jumpin' by Destiny's Child with absolutely no guile whatsoever on their new single Jumpin'.

FUTURE SOUNDS The best music on the horizon: MARK OWEN - IN YOUR OWN TIME: Fresh from the career-revitalising Top 5 smash Four Minute Warning, Owen offers up a whole album of new material next month including the new single Alone Without You (out on October 27th). His first solo record, 1996's Green Man, is re-issued this week by RCA with a selection of extra tracks.

Page Content copyright © Liam Carey, 2003.

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The following is a list of Liam's Liner Notes online :

Volume 22: December 17th 2003
Volume 21: December 3rd 2003
Volume 20: November 5th 2003
Volume 19: October 22nd 2003
Volume 18: October 8th 2003
Volume 17: September 24th 2003
Volume 16: September 10th 2003
Volume 15: August 27th 2003
Volume 14: August 13th 2003
Volume 13: July 30th 2003
Volume 12: July 9th 2003
Volume 11: June 25th 2003
Volume 10: June 11th 2003
Volume 9: May 28th 2003
Volume 8: May 14th 2003
Volume 7: April 30th 2003
Volume 6: April 16th 2003
Volume 5: April 2nd 2003
Volume 4: March 19th 2003
Volume 3: March 5th 2003
Volume 2: February 19th 2003
Volume 1: February 5th 2003

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: