MUSIC REVIEWS
David Crosby, “Here If You
Listen” (BMG)
Crosby, Stevens, Willis & League doesn’t have the ring or reputation of David Crosby’s other multi-named band with Stills, Nash & Young, but “Here If You Listen” makes it wonderfully clear that the 77-year-old’s association with Becca Stevens, Michelle Willis and Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League is also a rich partnership of harmonies and creativity.
The collaborators also appeared on Crosby’s 2016 album “Lighthouse,” and while Crosby’s name is featured first and most prominently on the album cover, it’s the enhanced teamwork makes the songs work as well as they do.
Built on mostly acoustic frames, the tunes are full of vocal harmonies and exquisite details, as songwriting and instrumental duties are shared in varied combinations.
A pair of Crosby demo fragments from decades ago—“1967” and “1974”—are expanded and completed, with today’s Crosby harmonizing with yesterday’s, while Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” a CSN&Y hit, gets a plush yet controlled reading emphasizing its spirituality.
Other highlights include the haunting doomsday scenarios of “Vagrants of Venice,” ”I Am No Artist”—with a Mitchelllike melody by Stevens and lyrics from the late poet and author Jane Tyson Clement— and the soulful “Janet,” written by Willis.
Crosby shows great taste and artistic smarts in giving The Lighthouse Band, as the collective is known, a more prominent presence on “Here If You Listen.” Judging by the outcome, his generosity has been amply rewarded.—Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press
Lukas Graham, “3 (The Purple
Album)” (Warner Bros.)
The new Lukas Graham album opens with the band attending funerals of their friends and the lead singer offering this hope for survivors: “I pray you won’t reach for that rope.” Things don’t get much happier from there for the Danish band.
Frontman Lukas Forchhammer, whose optimistic “7 Years” was a huge hit in 2016, has crafted an album of regret and moodiness with the 10-track “3 (The Purple Album),” a record also largely shorn of the upbeat tempos and hip-hop elements that made his last album so successful. This is a truly melancholy Dane.
Many of the tracks are simple piano-driven sentimental ballads that employ religious imagery and extend his love for leaning on gospel. They might be well-constructed but none are overly exciting. It turns out that fun songs like “Mama Said” from the last album masked a sensitive balladeer.
Much has changed in Forchhammer’s life in the past few years—his father’s death, the birth of a daughter and Grammy nominations— and all that is baked into the album. He’s looking back a lot—and not always happily. One song is even titled “Unhappy.” It’s one of the most upbeat, seriously.
On “Everything That Isn’t Me”—a swelling, orchestral-backed ballad that’s designed to get us to wave our lighters in the air—Forchhammer, in his trademark rap-like cadence, apologizes for not being a better brother, son and lover. “I could apologize forever,” he sings. Elsewhere, Forchhammer often laments being away on the lonely road—“Is it worth it when daddy can’t dry your tears?” he sings in “Lullaby.”
When he looks up, Forchhammer doesn’t see humanity doing much better, with the band suggesting that “If life’s another game of chess/We lost a couple pieces” on “You’re Not the Only One (Redemption Song),” which mourns Bob Marley and John Lennon.
Even the album’s name and purple-painted cover—a nude woman surrounded by open bottles—seems to indicate a cool, glum bent from the band this time.
Forchhammer is clearly working out a lot of personal stuff on “3,” but it’s an album that largely leaves the listener, well, bummed out.—Mark
Ty Segall, “Fudge Sandwich”
(In the Red)
Some people make playlists of their favorite songs, some folks’ closets are full of mixtapes and some still make compilations on CD for themselves or their friends. But not the prolific Ty Segall, who takes a much more hands-on approach and has used his music collection as inspiration to record “Fudge Sandwich,” gathering a handful of tracks from the late ’60s to early ’70s that have influenced him over the years.
It all starts with a menacing version of “Low Rider,” War’s hot-rod anthem, sounding straight out of a post-apocalyptic car movie, followed by an accurate though not reverential take on the Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man.” On John Lennon’s “Isolation,” one of his soul-baring “us vs. them” songs, Segall substitutes rancid-sounding guitars for the original’s piano parts and makes full use of his vocal similarities with the Liverpudlian. That same Lennon-like vocal, added to even more distorted guitars, makes Funkadelic’s “Hit It and Quit It” even more agonizing.
Segall’s guitar tones get much praise and there’s a whole catalog of them on hand, but it’s his drumming that really stands out here, expertly shifting from rock to prog to punk and back again.
Rudimentary Peni’s “Rotten to the Core” from 1983 is the “newest” song on the album, the London band’s diatribe against Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer and a warning to fans that “rock stars deal in money not truth,” while Segall turns The Dils’ frantic “Class War” into passionate power-pop.
Segall says “Fudge Sandwich” was made just for fun and that’s exactly what you’ll have listening to it.—Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press