BEST OF THE REST
Andy Gill checks out a fine Nina Simone collection plus new releases from Chris Smither and Courtney Marie Andrews
Nina Simone, The Colpix Singles ★★★★☆ Download: Willow Weep For Me; Summertime; Work Song; Blackbird
Nina Simone’s early success with “I Loves Ya, Porgy” earned her a contract with Colpix Records – who promptly ignored her unique blend of jazz, gospel, classical and blues influences by releasing the cantering country-pop oddity “Chilly Winds Don’t Blow” as her label debut. A delicious pairing of the gospel standard “Children Go Where I Send You” with an oozingly soulful “Willow Weep For Me” quickly
restored Simone’s direction; but her vocals were of such richness that arrangers were often tempted to swaddle them in lush orchestrations.
As the live album Nina Simone At Town Hall demonstrated in songs like “Summertime”, she was better served by a striking concert reverb, with the simple walking bass and brushed snare better suiting her extempore piano style. Covers of “Work Song” and “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” further cemented her reputation as a bluesy interpreter, but the pared-down talking-drum, handclaps and vocal arrangement of this 2CD set’s closing “Blackbird” reflects Simone’s expanding artistic maturity in the early Sixties.
Chris Smither, Call Me Lucky Download: Blame’s On Me; Maybellene; Nobody Home; Everything On Top; Lower The Humble
Chris Smither may be Americana’s most underrated talent, offering acute observations about life’s bitter ironies in a baritone drawl as worn as antique leather, its weary tone belied by the sprightliness of his fingerstyle guitar. The sardonic album title is reflected in the wry, mordant humour of tracks like “Blame’s On Me” and “Lower The Humble”, where he advises that “the lower the humble, the shorter the fall” – a precariousness further addressed in the carousel metaphor of “Everything On Top”, with time constantly carrying us above and below – although, as he notes with a twist of bitterness, “everything on top is what we once called the underground”.
A cover of “Maybellene” relocates Chuck Berry’s breakthrough hit in the country-blues tradition, bowling along nimbly amidst subtle harbingers of violin; while elsewhere Smither’s band proves endlessly flexible on the jaunty jugband stomp “Change Your Mind” and shuffling folk-rocker “Nobody Home”, which brings echoes of “Maggie’s Farm” to his cogent commentary on the lack of true communication in the age of social media.
Courtney Marie Andrews, May Your Kindness Remain
Download: May Your Kindness Remain; Lift The Lonely From My Heart; Rough Around The Edges; Kindness Of Strangers
Courtney Marie Andrews takes depression as the general theme of May Your Kindness Remain, citing the widespread human fallout caused by failure to fulfill the fanciful promises of the American Dream.
The characters in songs such as “Kindness Of Strangers” and “Rough Around The Edges” are paralysed by isolation, social ineptitude and the lingering wounds of failure: “the past was cruel, and it caught up with me,” as she notes over the miasma of ambient guitar drones and piano skilfully assembled by producer Mark Howard, who brings a similarly weather-beaten tone to that applied on albums by Dylan, Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams.
Elsewhere, big vibrato guitar chords haunt “Lift The Lonely From My Heart”, an expression of how loneliness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy whilst one is “pining, mining for a feeling I’m not finding”.
Though hobbled by the occasional cliche, it’s an album with its heart in the right place, most articulately presented in Andrews’ passionate delivery of the title-track, a testament to empathy as the true riches of life.