Rag ’n’ Bone Man is still singin’ the blues
He went to Nashville (and hired Eminem’s co-writer) to try to change his tune. But...
RAG’N’BONE MAN: Life By Misadventure (Columbia) Verdict: Second album growing pains ★★★✩✩
WEEZER: Van Weezer (Atlantic) Verdict: Full metal racket ★★★★✩
VAN MORRISON: Latest Record Project: Volume 1 (Exile) Verdict: Needs an edit ★★★✩✩
KEEN to avoid the sophomore slump that afflicts so many artists on that tricky second album, Rag’n’Bone Man flew to Nashville in a bid to step away from the blues and soul of 2017’s Human, a polished debut that topped the charts and turned him into a major star.
A change of scenery has certainly had an impact on the imposing singer from Uckfield in East Sussex, who uses Life By Misadventure to try his hand at acoustic folk, Coldplay-like balladry and guitar-driven numbers with a country-rock feel. Such an eclectic approach can sometimes work a treat, but the effect here is merely scattergun.
The singer, 36, made the album in the Tennessee studio of co-producer Mike Elizondo, co-writer of Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady, and the material is imbued with an agreeably loose, live feel. Rag’n’Bone Man’s regular bassist, keyboardist and backing vocalist all contribute, while Jack White’s drummer Daru Jones and Prince’s guitarist Wendy Melvoin add deft flourishes.
He’s at pains to point out that this isn’t a break-up record — ‘it’s such an overdone subject’ — but it was written in the aftermath of a painful split from his wife (mother of his young son Rouben), and the mood is decidedly downbeat. The singer, born Rory Graham, might hop randomly between different genres, but beneath it all, he’s still singing the blues.
The album takes a while to get going. It opens, on Fireflies, with the sound of birdsong and a strummed guitar. The track is a series of fatherly tips for Rouben (‘don’t let fear be a thorn in your side’) and the low-key mood extends into the understated Breath In Me.
The singer’s marital split is addressed on Talking To Myself, which finds him drowning his sorrows.
It isn’t until the barnstorming Anywhere Away From Here, five songs in, that he begins to make the most of his bruised baritone. A marquee collaboration with a tremulous P!nk, it’s the album’s big duet, and it sounds superb on the radio.
HE GETS another chance to shine on the rockorientated numbers. Built around a piano hook and pounding drums, Crossfire was inspired by a dream about the last two people left on Earth, but it could just as easily be a pandemic anthem: ‘Lights out on every street, it’s like God turned the switch on us.’
He also gives his voice full rein on the Queen-like Party’s Over and All You Ever Wanted , a comment on homogeneous gentrification that features choppy rhythm guitars and a train horn.
Hearing him let rip as a bluesy rocker, you wish he’d try it more often.
MAYBE Rag’n’ Bone Man should take a leaf out of Weezer’s book. Instead of trying to cover too many bases on a single record, the
Los Angeles band specialise in albums with specific themes. They began 2021 with OK Human, a collection of baroque piano numbers beefed up by an orchestra. Now their gaze is fixed firmly on hard rock. Van Weezer is named in honour of the band fronted by guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who died last October in California, and it is Weezer’s affectionate homage to the heavy metal of the 1970s and 1980s. There are nods to Iron Maiden, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne and Blue Öyster Cult, with Weezer’s fondness for a searing pop hook steering them away from pastiche.
It’s not the first time the quartet have gone down this route. Their 2002 LP Maladroit was a hard rock record, and they covered Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on The Teal Album. Their live show features crunching riffs and dazzling pyrotechnics.
But Van Weezer, made with producer Suzy Shinn, turns their love of big guitars into a fullyfledged concept.
The first part of the record is a hybrid of heavy metal and pop. The End Of The Game opens with a noodling riff that owes something to Eddie Van Halen before it develops into a typical power-pop singalong. I Need Some Of That finds singer Rivers Cuomo harking back to a childhood spent listening to Aerosmith and playing guitar through a Marshall amp.
‘Watch us brush off the dust, in heavy metal we trust,’ he adds on Beginning Of The End. From there on, hard rock influences dominate, with Blue Dream recycling the riff from Ozzy’s debut solo single Crazy Train.
The album ends with the acoustic Precious Metal Girl, a tongue-in-cheek portrait of Cuomo’s ideal woman, who turns out to be a Spandex-clad, peroxide blonde rock fan who could pass as a member of the 1980s metal band Faster Pussycat. It’s a touching, and funny, finale to a ten-track album that makes its point in 31 punchy minutes. n THERE’S a lot to digest on Van Morrison’s 42nd album. A vocal opponent of a lockdown that stopped him from touring, the singer has spent the past year completing a 28-track triple album that stretches out across two hours of languid blues and jazz.
He’s in fine voice, but there are times when you wish he’d reach for the edit button. He rails against politicians, the music business, the media. And in terms of pop poetry, Why Are You On Facebook? is a far cry from Have I Told You Lately That I Love You.
On the plus side, there’s an homage to his Irish roots on Up County Down and two tracks cowritten with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lyricist Don Black. Here’s hoping Volume 2 is more upbeat.