Rick’s rolling on
Rick Astley Beautiful Life BMG
RICK Astley rickrolled the world two years ago when he resurfaced with a very good album, his first new music in 23 years. The man who had become a jokey Internet meme proved a master crafter of pop songs. Now he’s proved that wasn’t a fluke.
The soulful Englishman with the bouffant hair who sang Never Gonna Give You Up in the 1980s delivers again on another dozen tracks of his uptempo, easygoingdown mix of blueeyed soul, gospel and dance.
Like 50 in 2016, Astley wrote and produced Beautiful Life all alone and performs all the instruments. There’s only one other person who is all over the new album: That would be Lene Bausager, Astley’s wife. Virtually every song celebrates their love. (If that’s not who he’s singing about, he’s in some serious trouble at home.)
Astley just wants to boogie on Chance To Dance and wants to be kissed hard on Last Night On Earth. His lover gives him a “fear of wanting you too much” on Every Corner, “gives me light” on She Makes Me and prompts him to “want to run down to the edge of the river singing” on Shivers, which has an Imagine Dragons feel.
Astley does eventually step outside his love nest on I Need The Light, which nods approvingly at the new generation. “I believe this storm will break/The youth will triumph/Yes they’ll make mistakes/ But I know they’ll win.”
It’s back to love songs with the souldisco Better Together ,the fauxcountry ballad Empty Heart and the subdued Rise Up .On Try, Astley offers a torch song for all the middleaged strivers out there: “I don’t know if I can make it/But just watch me try, watch me try.”
The album ends with The Good Old Days, which is studded with sly references to other bands – “A super tramp will sing for me/A full beggar’s banquet” – as Astley celebrates the tunes he was raised on.
“Someone saved my life every single night/When the words and the music played/When the records took me away,” he sings. It’s a fitting song for this 52yearold pop survivor to conclude with, namely, a clever valentine to music itself. – Mark Kennedy/AP
John Coltrane
Both Directions At Once: The Lost Tapes Impulse!/Verve
ON March 6, 1963, at Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio, saxophonist John Coltrane — quickly moving forward from the sharp harmonies of his immediate past to a deeper, spiritualised sense of unbound improvisation — recorded an album capturing his richly incendiary, live quartet dynamic; the intuitive force he shared with bassist Jimmy Garrison, drummer Elvin Jones, and Philly pianist McCoy Tyner.
Then, everyone put away, and forgot about the tapes. Until now.
The release of The Lost Tapes — which just gave Coltrane his highestever Billboard Top 200 Album Chart position at No. 21 — is more than historic, eraappropriate (fits handsomely between the equally vivid Coltrane of 1962 and 1964’s Crescent), or representational of Trane’s transitions.
It’s fresh and alive — a frenetic, moody set of seven modern fullfledged compositions (with seven additional takes on a deluxe edition) that casts new fiery light on the Coltrane canon. Most potent within those Tapes is the frisky bop of Nature Boy, the sensualist swing of Untitled Original 11386, and the snakecharming invocation Slow Blues, and its pulsing, improvisational flow.
Most thought provoking, however, is the Impressions ,of both standard and deluxe editions, with its eversoslightly varied versions. Like naturalist, unscripted dialogues among its chatty, competitive players, each take ticks the tempo and the testiness levels higher and livelier into an epiphany of laughs and tears.
With the impeccability of Lost Tapes, here’s hoping Coltrane’s crew digs for additional treasure. — A.D. Amorosi/The Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service