In good company: Dion releases Blues with Friends LISTEN UP/OPINION
ADion Blues with Friends Keeping the Blues Alive Records
Blues with Friends sets up rock ’n’ roll pioneer Dion with a distinguished set of guitarists, from Joe Bonamassa to Bruce Springsteen, on an album teeming with talent and great tunes.
Dion, who rose to fame in the late 1950s as part of Dion and the Belmonts (“A Teenager in Love,” “Where or When,” “In the Still of the Night”), began a very successful solo career in the early ’60s with hits that included “Ruby Baby,” “The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue” and “Abraham, Martin and John.” Dion, who also has recorded gospel music, has been putting out blues records for years now and he tints some of these 14 originals with shades of rock, pop and country.
Jeff Beck’s typically lyrical playing complements the torment on “Can’t Start Over Again,” which Dion describes as a return to Memphis and has the makings of a standard, while Joe Louis Walker’s licks light a fire on “I Got Nothin’” under Dion and Van Morrison’s vocals.
Fellow New Yorker Brian Setzer struts on the six strings all over “Uptown Number 7” and Sonny Landreth elevates the good times on “I Got the Cure.”
“Song for Sam Cooke (Here In America),” a touching tune Dion started writing years ago based on his own Southern experiences with Cooke and revived after seeing Green Book, gets vocal support from Paul Simon.
Slide guitars from John Hammond and Rory Block, who also sings, underpin the drama of “Told You Once in August,” a story of infidelity that’s unlikely to end happily.
Other guitar guests include Billy Gibbons, Samantha Fish, Jimmy Vivino, Joe Menza and Steve Van Zandt.
There are two remakes — “Kickin’ Child,” the title track of Dion’s “lost album” recorded in 1965 but released in 2017, and “Hymn to Him,” from his 1986 gospel record
Velvet & Steel. The latter has eerie backing vocals from Patti Scialfa and a guitar solo by her husband.
Sounding as soulful as ever at age 80, Dion’s talents on Blues with Friends are still running strong and in great company.
Hot tracks: all
— PABLO GORONDI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
B+Carly Rae Jepsen Dedicated Side B (604/Schoolboy/ Interscope)
“For fans only” is a cheeky term — who else would be listening? Jepsen might as well be Marshall Crenshaw now because A) she’s unlikely to storm the airwaves again, and B) she still writes perfect pop song after perfect pop song as if they’re journal entries. After 2012’s undervalued
Kiss and the overcompensating accolades for 2015’s
Emotion, last year’s Dedicated was more or less correctly received as good, adding “Want You in My Room” and “The Sound” to the canon.
But “fans” know all about her shadow discography because Emotion Side B and the loosie Cut to the Feeling and now Dedicated Side B rival and often best her “proper” albums.
Culled from a purported 200 tunes, this new release opens with the candy rush of “This Love Isn’t Crazy” — an immediate improvement on
Dedicated. “Window” and the showstopping “Heartbeat” reveal an increasing knack for utilizing negative space.
The new-wave drums and glockenspiel that propel “Let’s Sort the Whole Thing Out” make you wish she’d do a whole rock album. Time for Jepsen to release the other 173.
Hot tracks: “This Love Isn’t Crazy,” “Heartbeat,” “Let’s Sort the Whole Thing Out”
— DAN WEISS
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER (TNS)