Oh, is it my turn for the albums?  Ok, these five stood out way above the rest and they’re a pretty mixed bunch but I think that’s what Music Riot is all about.  Have a listen to these if you can because there’s a lot of really good music here.

“Home” – Aynsley Lister

HomeWhen you’ve listened to a lot of blues and blues/rock (and believe me I have over the years), you understand how easy it is for even very good players and writers to slip into the blues clichés, lyrically and musically.  Some writers understand that not every song has to be a twelve-bar blues with lyrics about bad booze and wanton women, and Aynsley Lister is one of those writers.  His songs on “Home” are recognisably blues/rock but with a recognition that the genre has to move on lyrically and musically.  On “Home”, there are songs about the state of the music business today, an elegy to an old friend, a couple of brilliant covers and a tribute to Gene Hunt.  What more do you want?  This is one of those albums that grabs you from the first listen and doesn’t let go.

“Wrote a Song for Everyone” – John Fogerty

Wrote a Song for EveryoneOk, I’m going to admit to a slight bias here; I’ve been a fan of John Fogerty for much longer than I care to admit to.  The first time I strapped on a guitar and played (badly) in front of an audience, the song the band played was the Creedence Clearwater Revival single, “Up Around the Bend”.  I’m pleased to say that John Fogerty’s career as a performer has been much longer and more successful than mine.

There are a couple of ways of looking at this album; you can see it as a cynical rehash of old material for a few quick bucks or you can see it as an opportunity to work with kindred spirits to put a twenty-first century polish on some classic twentieth century songs. You can probably guess which way I’m leaning on this one.  If you only listen to one song on this album, listen to “Hot Rod Heart”; John Fogerty is joined by guitarist Brad Paisley and the final minute and a half of the song is the joyous and totally self-indulgent sound of two superb players having a great time trading guitar licks.  If this doesn’t make you smile, you don’t like music.  And that’s before we get on to the reworkings of the classic Creedence songs “Lodi”, “Long as I can see the Light”, “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and the less well-known “Wrote a Song for Everyone”.  Oh, nearly forgot, “Proud Mary”.  Superb from start to finish.

“The Dirt Tracks” – The Dirt Tracks

The Dirt TracksIf you’re really into music, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve heard, you still love it when you hear something original and fresh (and I’ll be completely honest and say something that no-one else has written about yet).  My epiphany this year was an invitation to see Spanish indie band The Dirt Tracks in central London.  The audience was four people, and that included me and the band’s manager.  It didn’t bother the band because they pulled out a storming set.  I was given a copy of the band’s debut album and I promised to review it.  When I listened to it, I was hooked.

It’s heavily influenced by British indie, but there are elements of late ‘60s psychedelia in there as well as samples and a huge guitar attack.  As if that wasn’t enough, the album includes the experimental single “Kaleidoscope” which combines two similar stand-alone songs across the stereo spectrum to create a third song.  It’s quite a disorientating effect designed to demonstrate the difference between left- and right-brain processing and it’s even more impressive when you know that it’s written (like the rest of the album) in writer Santiago Coma’s second language.  Very impressive debut album.

“Radio (in my) Head” – Various

RIMHThis one deserves a special mention for overcoming logistical difficulties; there are artists from 14 different countries on this collection of reworkings of Radiohead songs.  There’s absolutely no filler on this album and there are a few absolute corkers.  Some of the versions stay reasonably close to the Radiohead template, while The Stoneface Travellers and Yoya put their own stamp on “My Iron Lung” and “Wolf at the Door” respectively.  The project was initiated by John O’Sullivan, MD of Bandhouse Records and pulled in contributions from his contemporaries at the London College of Contemporary Music (including  Amy Hannam and Beth Mills, who you may have seen on X Factor)and and a few others picked up on the journey.  Anyway, it’s a bostin’ album and you should all give it a listen.

“Pale Green Ghosts” – John Grant

Pale Green GhostsOur contributors at MusicRiot all have their own musical preferences and areas of expertise, but we’re all passionate about music and our paths tend to intersect fairly often; this is one of those cases.  John Preston raved about this album several months before 6 Music latched on to John Grant and he was absolutely right; this is a great album.  John Grant took a lot of flak over moving from acoustic instruments to electronic on this album (a nod to Dylan’s “Judas” moment there), but it’s still a classic singer-songwriter album.  There are moments of humour, sneering, viciousness and painful emotional honesty on subjects as difficult as an HIV diagnosis.  When it’s funny, it’s very funny, when it’s vicious, it’s very vicious and when it’s about honesty, it will make you cry.  Even the remixes are worth a listen.

If you want to learn a bit more about these albums, you can search for the reviews on the site.  Or you could give them a listen.

Wrote a Song for EveryoneSo, what’s this all about then?  John Fogerty, former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman and highly respected solo artist has decided to revisit some of his back catalogue with a few collaborators and throw in a brace of new songs for good measure.  It’s not a new idea and it can be either a cynical attempt to cash in on a few good, old songs or a chance to invite fellow musicians to put their stamp on your songs.  I’m really pleased to say that “Wrote a Song for Everyone” is a fascinating look at the heritage of one of the great rock songwriters and performers.  You have to approach this with an open mind; some of the songs, in their original incarnations, were massive teenage favourites of mine through happy and sad times but there are some radically different interpretations here.  The conventional view is that Eagles popularised the country-rock genre, but you could make the same case for Creedence if you take your country influences from New Orleans rather than Bakersfield; just a thought.

The album opens with “Fortunate Son”, which is amped-up by the Foo Fighters to a full-on rocker (no surprise there) before Keith Urban delivers a banjo-led country-rock version of “Almost Saturday Night” which takes the song back to its lyrical roots and “Lodi” (probably my favourite John Fogerty song) gets the Status Quo “Rocking All Over the World” treatment with John’s two sons Shane and Tyler Fogerty.  Incidentally, this is the only collaboration that Fogerty arranged, pulling rank with his two sons when he didn’t like their country-rock arrangement.  “Mystic Highway” is one of the new songs and breaks down into 3 sections, the main song, an instrumental section and an a capella breakdown with a strong feel of the Doobie Brothers “Black Water”.  “Wrote a Song for Everyone” features a Miranda Lambert vocal and some exceptional  guitar work from Tom Morello; so far so good.

The Zac Brown Band reworking of “Bad Moon Rising” in a Cajun style works less well for me, losing the brooding menace of the original version.  “Long as I can See the Light” with My Morning Jacket sticks fairly close to the original, retaining the organ riff which characterises that version and is followed by Kid Rock’s take on “Born on the Bayou”.  Apparently it’s now a violation of several federal statutes to record a collaboration album without including a Kid Rock track.  The album’s second new song “Train of Fools” follows, exploring similar territory to Springsteen’s recent “Land of Hope and Dreams”.  It’s obvious that John Fogerty can still write a good song and the new songs sit very comfortably alongside his earlier work on this album.

“Someday Never Comes” with Dawes has Taylor Goldsmith singing the verses about the things we tell kids (and adults) to shut them up while Fogerty takes the choruses as the gruff old bad guy who tells us that it’s all lies.  Bob Seger delivers the Woodstock song “Who’ll Stop the Rain” very much in the style of his 1976 classic “Night Moves”, which works very well.  If any singles are to be released from the album, “Hot Rod Heart” should be top of the list.  It’s a great driving song (maybe it’s time we had an alternative to the lazy radio programming of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” every time the sun shines for more than five minutes) and the last couple of minutes consists of Fogerty and Brad Paisley trading superb guitar solos and generally having a good time.  I bet Paddy McAloon wouldn’t like it.

“Have You Ever Seen the Rain” with Alan Jackson works perfectly with a pure country arrangement with banjo, fiddle and steel guitar filling out the sound and leads us into the last track of the album.  I’ve heard many versions of “Proud Mary”, but nothing quite like this.  The first verse and chorus are pure gospel with Jennifer Hudson backed by a gospel choir and the wonderful Allen Toussaint before speeding up to a Cajun boogie with the full band and accordion and horns for good measure.  I used to think the Ike & Tina Turner version was over the top, but they only used one kitchen sink and  I think there’s about three here.  It’s a glorious way to end a great album.

John Fogerty has survived in the music business for a long time with all of the usual peaks and troughs that anyone big in the sixties and seventies went through including the publishing disputes, particularly the publishing disputes.  The reason he’s still around is that he loves what he does and he’s very good at it.  “Wrote a Song for Everyone” is a very, very good album.

Out now on Vanguard (88765487152).