The Best of Sam & Dave - Sam & Dave

Track list:

1. A Place Nobody Can Find
2. Good Night Baby
3. I Take What I Want
4. Sweet Home
5. You Don't Know Like I Know
6. Hold On, I'm Comin'
7. Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody
8. You Got Me Hummin'
9. When Something Is Wrong With My Baby
10. Small Portion Of Your Love
11. Soothe Me
12. Soul Man
13. May I Baby
14. I Thank You
15. Wrap It Up
16. Still Is The Night
17. You Don't Know What You Mean To Me
18. This Is Your World
19. Can't You Find Another Way (Of Doing It)
20. Soul Sister, Brown Sugar
21. Come On In

Running time: 56 minutes
Released: 1969

Old school now, going back to a decade before I was born when Rhythm and Blues was still a meaningful term. I grew up watching the Blues Brothers regularly, and my favourite piece of music from that film - Peter Gunn theme aside - was not on the soundtrack (here). It is, of course, Hold On, I'm Comin', leading up to the drive-through destruction of a shopping mall. I think its fair to credit my appreciation for this era and genre of music to my youthful exposure to that film.

Whilst close to an hour, this album is made up of a lot of shorter songs and I expect it to fly by. In that it is a product of its time - its funny how the attitude of broadcasters to song length changed, gradual creep in tolerance to now. Pity decisions can't just be taken on the basis of taste/quality rather than a secondary characteristic like duration, but still. That paragraph has taken pretty much all of the first song, one I don't know well. To be honest it was nothing special, and I expect that to be a trend here through the lesser known tracks. That said unless something really bad stands out I am not even going to consider cuts here. As a change up from my normal fare these tunes are welcome even if I am not loving each and every one. Aesthetically they are a world apart from much of my library and they are appreciated on that level for the change of tone and mood. There is a relaxed air associated with listening to these tunes in the modern world, at least for me.

That seems odd in that they are packing quite a bit into a short runtime, but they speak of a much different life. The pressures for people back in the 60s, particularly African Americans, are a world apart from the pressures of anyone in the first world in the 2010s and this was how they wound down and enjoyed themselves. In some ways I long for that sort of detachment from this world... this electronic milieu we find ourselves in, and the sheer pace of day-to-day life in the internet age.

It really doesn't hurt that the harmonies are so good, voices complementing each other so well that you are drawn to that and almost ignore the often very simple and repetitive arrangements. I love the fact that they can get away with calling themselves simply Sam & Dave - that would never fly in 2015. I can't think of a duo so concisely named since the awful Mel and Kim in the 80s (but I am sure there are plenty in scenes that I am not aware of). When the backing picks up, with a bit more energy, volume or other additions to the arrangement, the quality soars. You Don't Know Like I Know is the first tune on the album that I really fall into digging, and it is followed immediately by my favourite. The hook that opens the track and forms the chorus just kills me, and the staccato behind the vocal in the verse is almost as good. Hold On is just sheer cool and it can't help but make me smile. The end of the weekend is almost upon me, but with a long drink to hand and music like this to enjoy it feels like it will last a long while yet.

The simplicity of the formula is remarkable. Now and again it gets more involved, but as a base it really is limited. The short length of the tracks is a real boon in that sense, each on ending before the patterns are fully internalised and dissected as too repetitive. The downside is that most of the songs, if not all, end on an annoying fade out, denying proper closure. Ah, Humming. There is a certainty to this track, a purpose, driven by that bass. It's easy to say with a detached air, separated by 50 (!) years, but this one of the the essences of cool.

I am less enamoured by the more ballad-like When Something Is Wrong With My Baby, also the longest number on this listen at 3.18. It just seems to lack something in comparison. Perhaps with my slightly alcohol-addled brain I need a bit more pace, a bit more bass, and a little more groove. I think it is just a bit too sparse, as the following track immediately appeals more despite some similarities in the vocal approach. It is that touch faster and the arrangement a bit more interesting. Still a fairly significant drop in perceived quality from the high points of Hold On and Humming. Soul Man still to come should reach those heights again though, as does Soothe Me. The opening is underwhelming but once it gets into the swing, there is just something essential about it. I find putting words to what appeals here difficult - there is just something magic in the combinations that make the song significantly greater than the sum of its parts. Pretty repetitive, uninspired lyrics and simple arrangement shouldn't necessarily make for a classic but they do here.

The opening refrain from Soul Man is a classic, and this song is up there with my all time favourites, the chorus sax just magic, the lyrics relate-able the groove innate. I have The Blues Brothers version of the song, which probably resonates more for me for familiarity's sake but the song itself is so amazing and the difference between the versions small. The preference is simply exposure. I am always associating the song with Otis Redding for some reason, but I have no version from Redding, and no idea if his performing it is figment of my imagination or not.

I Thank You is another classic that I only recognise by music, not by name. The insistence of the bass really working here. Oh, man - a bit more modernism injected later on through some sort of organ and a guitar line that sounds fresher and the song is lifted to another level. I love finding little things that I don't recall when going through these listens. I also just love finding myself compelled to listen to things that I would normally overlook. The horn section on Wrap It Up is like Hold On... all over again and the song is just so darn cool, but it is not one I was at all familiar with at all. Finding a real gem only to lose it in the depth of my library again is a little disappointing but at the same time the sheer joy of the pleasant surprise of finding it in the first place is hard to exaggerate.

Generally the faster tracks resonate more than the slower ones. Ballads prey on my loneliness a bit, speak to companionship I don't have, relationships I don't understand on a visceral level but simply end up envying. I think there's more to the difference than that - the harmony maybe doesn't work so well with a slower, sparser support too - but it is hard to look too far past the colour my situation brings to the interpretation. I'm not complaining though, to go by the ballads, being able to relate may not always be a good thing!

The life and love in these pieces is a cut above the John Lee Hooker numbers I listened to yesterday. Even though there are similarities with regards to how formulaic the output can be, Sam & Dave's material has something more vital, a little more pep that makes it that much more accessible, more desirable and more immediately lovable. For all that this disc is just a best of, it is a little gold nugget that I really should polish and show off more often. It is so hard to feel sorry for yourself or negative in any way when you hear music as vital as this. It may be almost half a decade old (and some of these songs no doubt more than that) but it still feels young and relevant to me - I reckon a lot of modern musicians could do a lot worse than hark back to this sound, and harking back has been a big thing recently.

Coming to the end now, and I suspect it might be quite a crash back to reality. Listening to this has transported me away from my sofa for an hour, wrapped me in a blanket that felt like social company. A little injection of joy, pumped out by horn section. More of this, please!

I can't help but hear "light sabre" instead of "life saver" on Come On In though, which ends the listen on a farcical note. Oh well.

The Best of Polish Jazz 2005 - Various Artists

Track list:

2. Jazz is Cool - Pink Freud
10. Conversations With a Life Jacket - Pink Freud

Running time: 10 minutes
Released: 2005

This is random. Two tracks that must have been freebies, both from Pink Freud - which truly is inspired as a band name. I guess I have this as a result of getting into Skalpel and then finding download links somewhere. The full album itself was 18 tracks and included other artists, but I never picked it up, so I am left with a short stub to examine.

The 10 minutes here is actually closer to 11 and breaks down into 7 and more than 3 1/2 in the order listed. Why WMP doesn't round up is beyond me. Jazz is Cool is definitely of modern sensibility, all programming around a solid drumming and Scandinavian trumpet - think Molvær. As the track gets going the influence of the DJ increases, samples and/or scratching added to the mix. The feel is a little kitchen sink in some ways, busy for busy's sake. Some of the less organic sounds are not exactly ear-friendly and yet, the structure of the track creates a laid back overall mood with a little bit of progression.

I think it does a bit too much though, really - it might have been better shorter, or with more clearly defined boundaries. Still, a reasonable track. Conversations With a Life Jacket is very different, a glassy, fragile sound opening it up into a softer, late night track; at mid-morning, this is probably not the ideal listening hour. This is much more melodic, less concerned with being on it, more considered listening. There are hints of programming here and there, an influence that grows over the course of the number, but it is in essence a neat bassy loop with the trumpet leading the melody. I am quite taken with it.

Both tracks offer something, and whilst I think the first strives too hard to deliver it, that does not stop me liking it. All in all a good little interlude, and what I heard streaming when searching for the origins of this disc suggests that the wider album is possibly worth picking up.

The Best of Friends - John Lee Hooker

Track list:

1. Boogie Chillen
2. This Is Hip
3. The Healer
4. I Cover The Waterfront
5. Boom Boom
6. I'm In The Mood
7. Burnin' Hell
8. Tupelo
9. Baby Lee
10. Dimples
11. Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)
12. Big Legs Tight Skirt
13. Don't Look Back

Released: 1998
Running time: 63 minutes

It's another long one, darn it.

Basil Brush must have liked this guy, Shahid Afridi too. Other famous names associated with Boom Boom out of the way in crappy uninspired fashion (see I know I am bad at this writing lark), John Lee Hooker's classic track figures here, but not on the 6 discs of the eponymous Big Box I have coming up far too soon for my liking. Not sure why I have so much of Hooker. Whilst iconic, my impression is one of conservatism and staid music, if backed up by good vocal. Still we'll see how misguided I am, or not, here.

This album has Hooker playing with others; I don't remember who, and though Carlos Santana is listed as composer in some of the track data I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of that (and I suspect I wouldn't recognise his style to confirm it later). Whilst I have the disc somewhere, I don't find myself motivated to check.

A whole month's rain fell in a summer's day yesterday, today is brighter, but it comes at the end of a week that felt long, with two cancelled social events and work that picked up towards Friday afternoon rather than winding down into the weekend. That last weekend I did not get enough sleep to catch up on the prior week leaves me feeling washed out. Boogie Chillen is actually fairly upbeat, pacier than I would have expected, so helps to shake off the reticence with which I approached starting this hour-long blues fest. This is Hip feels formulaic, slower by a touch, but falling into repetition fairly early with a hook that does little to inspire me. To be fair, whilst the rhythm of the piece stays rutted fairly well there is more variation around it over the course of the track and it is never an unpleasant experience, just never a particularly engaging one either.

OK, I was wrong, Santana is easy to pick out. Just think M&S food ad. I actually find this sort of overwrought virtuousity tedious, high pitch, minimal accompaniment because the guitar has to be the star. It lends itself to boring situations, and therefore ends up boring me right back even as the stage light is shining on the lead. It feels to me almost as if this particularly masturbatory playing comes with a derision for musicians playing other parts. I know that can't truly reflect any of the masters of this craft, and that actually it says more about my preferences and prejudices than anything else but... yeah. Not a fan.

So why, you might ask, if I have had two nights of social engagements fall through, did I not get to this during the week rather than wait for the weekend? The answer in two words: Rocket League. The most fun game I thought I wouldn't like I can imagine, and one of the free PSN freebies for July. Both cancelled evenings turned into RL nights. Confused, is that Van Morrison? Sounds like him, and now I am motivated to get the disc to check... yes it is. Saw a couple of other recognisable names whilst I was at it but I am not clear what it might mean for my enjoyment of the album. I Cover the Waterfront is very VM in tone musically as well. This does not feel like Hooker's blues. I find it soothing, soothing enough that it has reminded me just how tired I was immediately before starting this post.

Ah, there is Afridi. It is impossible not to like this track. Hard to love it, but impossible not to like it. Classics are generally considered classic for a reason. This recording has a busy arrangement, much more going on than my memory typically associates with the song, and a sort of swampy air to the main guitar line, is it deliberately slightly off key? Not sure, but it works well enough, organ blaring as we get into the denouement, the song closing off before it can get old.

Old is how In the Mood starts and I would guess how it stays too. It's an age-old song subject but more usually younger and more vitally approached. Works a bit better for being a duet, the female voice (Bonnie Raitt) offsetting Hooker's well. That said, this is precisely the staid and conservative approach to blues that I mentioned in the introduction. Pedestrian-slow, strictly formulaic, and simply arranged. It has its time and place, but for me that time is past. I don't mean that blues like this belongs in the past, just that appreciation of it is behind me now. The track that follows addresses one of the issues I had - the pace is much higher - but despite a more animated guitar style the rigid structure reinforces the impression that even when tracks are being reworked with different players the dominant direction of the effort is keeping things in check. A conservative nature showing through. You would expect that, for all that others are involved his name above the door. The others are just guests in Hooker's house.

Tupelo is stripped right back, and actually here is where the more formulaic approach works better, the gentle riffs and foot-tapping presenting just enough of a stage for the basically spoken vocal. My first impression as the track began was a weary one, but as it progressed I got more into it and it is unquestionably the most enjoyable number heard today. For all the negativity that readers might pick up on here, I don't really dislike anything on this album, and perhaps tellingly I find myself more willing by this point to nod my head along with the patterns of Baby Lee. I wonder, then, how different the first half of this post would be if I were to start the listen afresh. My mood has changed a little, and maybe it is adjusting itself around my environment - the most significant part of which is the music that is now my main focus.

Dimples - I would never have recognised the track by name, but musically and lyrically it is distinctive as another straight up classic. Isn't it funny how through popular culture we can develop intimate familiarity with things without ever knowing them by name? Marketing bods have worked that out, of course - hence jingles like that soddingly annoying hook they play at lots of cricket matches and everyone cheers. Happily I couldn't tell you what it's for. I was happy when, earlier in the summer, I heard Graeme Swann railing against it on Test Match Special and pleading for people not to engage with it.

Back to more Santana-isms. For the record, the change of mood hasn't made this style any more appealing. It just makes me think of delicious looking ice cream and over-priced pre-prepared meals. And hairy old men pleasing themselves in ways I would really rather not think about (and I say that as a hairy soon-to-be-middle-aged,-but-by-outlook-already-old man). Thankfully that is the last of that. For lead out we have two longer numbers. 6 minutes is an awful long time for blues songs that rely on the exact same rhythmic approach for their duration. There are limits to what can be done to alleviate the tapping away that such strongly structured rhythms do to the skull - variation in the treble is massively important, variation in lyrics too. Alas, Big Legs, Tight Skirt has none of the latter and this really kills the track for me as it lets the constants of the composition wear me down. I think my energy for this task is almost used up, but like the cyclists over in France the key is having the tank run empty at the point the stage is broken.

The last number has more of Van Morrison's looser, organ-driven background fodder and laid back vocal. Very different from the tracks more immediately Hooker's but constructed under similarly predictable formulas. In the right mood... anything can be good. It feels like a closer so it is appropriately located and it sways by slowly, waving goodbye as the album slides out of time and into memory.

Time and a place; some of these tracks transcend that, others feel like that is somewhere I might visit on another day. A third set, the casualties of this listen, are either rooted somewhere I cannot see myself going or set off down a path to somewhere I never wanted to go in the first instance. What a convoluted pile-of-tosh sentence that was! Oh well, we've reached the end, the pruning hour and about 50% of tracks are cut loose. Up next... a weird one.

The Best of British Folk [Castle] - Various Artists

Track list:

1. Streets of London - Ralph McTell
2. Colours - Donovan
3. Light Flight (Take Three Girls Theme) - Pentangle
4. Needle of Death - Bert Jansch
5. Her Father Didn't Like Me Anyway - The Humblebums
6. Mirrors - Sally Oldfield
7. Candy Man - John Renbourn
8. The Times They Are A-Changin' - The Ian Campbell Folk Group
9. I'm So Confused - Mick Softly
10. Boadicea - Dave Swarbrick
11. Both Sides Now - The Johnstons
12. The Alchemist and the Pedler - Dransfield
13. Bright Phoebus - Mike and Lal Waterson
14. Timeless and Strange - Keith Christmas
15. Stargazer - Shelagh McDonald
16. Breakdown of the Song - Decameron
17. When I Was on Horseback - Steeleye Span
18. Fiddler's Green - Tim Hart & Maddy Prior
19. Mary Skeffington - Gerry Rafferty
20. Matty Groves - Fairport Convention

Released: 1995
Running time: 79 minutes

What to say about this? It was probably a mistake, a quick unthinking purchase when I first realised I was getting into folk. It certainly feels that 1995 should be more like 1975 in terms of release and that this represents as much of what was wrong with folk music than what is right about it but we'll see. I recognise a few of the performers and a couple of the songs. Will this turn into the rag on cluelessness hour?

We open with Streets of London, a classic of sorts. Actually not a bad song, but I cannot hear it without thinking of a Big Train sketch where McTell is forced to just repeat it over and over as none of his audience know anything else. Video embedded below. That rather makes it a throwaway, pleasant roll that brings a wry amusement. it is not a song that grabs me and demands full attention, promising great reward.

Donovan. The name is synonymous with the less than enlightened folk that the filled wilderness years before the revival of the 00s that persists to date. I have never heard him before other than perhaps on Top of the Pops 2 with some shoddy faux-comedic captioning. I am not impressed. I will state now that I am sure my prejudicial attitude to this material will colour this listen, but I am not going to apologise for that.

The Pentangle track starts as a mess but improves when the vocal joins in, despite its rather airy tone it seems to bind the disparate threads of the music together. There are bits and pieces of interest in the composition but as a whole it falls flat for me. Ah, that is a bit better. Bert Jansch has a (very) little of Nick Drake about him, as much in the intonation as anything else. Not the voice or the delivery as a whole, but the cadence on certain words matches my metal recollection of Drake here and there. Alas it is nowhere near as enduring, and as the song wears on the performance starts to grate a little. The picked guitar is repetitive to a significant degree and the singing voice is harsher than I would like and I find myself happier once it ends.

That is not to say what starts next impresses immediately. It has that same comfortable impression: aiming to, and hitting, a very specific but very bland note. It tries to dispel this thought by the inclusion of brass and/or woodwind - which works to a point - but I find this uninspired TV theme tune music, as if it is aiming for the lowest common denominator of "not disagreeable" rather than shooting to impress.

If it weren't for the sleigh-bells and a horridly warbling vocal, Mirrors might have been interesting. That vocal is worse for the effect of the recording, self-echo or something. The rhythm here is more interesting, a little Latin in places, even, but there is no redeeming the bells. Ugh.

 

 Big Train does Streets of London

Candyman returns to a picked guitar and vocal - it is precisely the kind of blind Dylan-copy I expected to find on this disc. All the same idea, but with none of the craft or genre-defining pioneering, which makes it apt that the next track is a cover of The Times They Are A-Changin' that, by introducing a pretty bad harmony, hand-bells and a depth of accompaniment that overpowers the melody makes for a horrid experience. It is not even that I hold Dylan on a pedestal; I have a little, not much. This though? This is travesty. Of music. How it got on to any "best" anything is beyond me.

Almost half way through in terms of tracks, but alas not close for time. Yes, I am wishing it were over already. My evening plans broke down last minute, which is where I found the time to do this listen, started on impulse when I knew I wouldn't be going out. I have, again, been neglecting my self-imposed workload in favour of simple recovery or being busy. I'm So Confused drifts by almost unnoticed, and then we hit a fiddle tune, Boadicea.  This I like more and could see myself not skipping if it came up in a shuffle. It has enough of a tune that I can excuse the somewhat out-of-place electric bass, the little loopy "pause" being particularly effective for my taste. Glad this hasn't been a total waste of time, then!

It's funny that the "Best of British Folk" involves covers of notable people from across the Atlantic, eh? First Dylan, now Joni Mitchell. I figured this for a cover when I heard it start, but wouldn't have known of whom without Google - though I do apparently have another version of this song on Herbie Hancock's tribute, River. It isn't amongst the couple of Mitchell albums I have though. It breezes by, nothing noteworthy beyond its obvious non-traditional provenance.

We are back to quintessentially English folk-rock blahdom with Dransfield though. Straight out of the inoffensive middle of the road blandness that characterised a decade or two of "folk" on these shores. Twee guitar riff, boring rhythm, darkness-infused vocal that is occasionally used to add dramatic stress (or rather fail to). This is symptomatic of why folk fell out of fashion, obliterated by more energetic and inspiring performances in other fields. Seven and a half minutes of dreary droning, its enough to drive me to drink. Thankfully I picked up some Hoegaarden in my monthly shop on the way home, so that isn't all bad!

With the Watersons I am on more familiar ground, but ground I tread warily. I both recognise their role in preserving British folk traditions and indirectly helping forge the revival and find myself not really liking their work a lot of the time. I have more than a couple of albums by, or inspired by them though so Waterson is a name that will appear again on these pages.

Honestly, what kind of name is Keith Christmas? One associated with blandness and very stereotypical delivery that completely conjures the beardy weirdy freak image of 70s folk, detached from the real world rather than rooted in it, even when spinning tales of the fantastic. If you can't tell, I don't much like Timeless and Strange - the title is the least boring thing about it, and even that is awful. Timeless this isn't; Forgettable and Bland would be a more apt name. Musically, Stargazer is similarly uninspiring. Vocally it is the most interesting thing thus far on the disc and pleasant enough to override my initial detachment with the arrangement. There are echoes of Mitchell, or perhaps some other luminary I cannot place here too in the first half of the track. Alas the second half is completely devoid of interest as the vocal dies out and is replaced by some chanting that is background to the still uninspired tune. I got my hopes up for a second there; lesson learned.

Oh dear, how totally... I have no words. Decameron's effort is a commentary on the music industry, a meta-song. It is also awful; it may be lyrically amusing in its effect but again it just smacks of blandness, lack of craft and turn up bash out musicianship.

Oh now, that's interesting. I am pretty sure I have heard these lyrics before in a different context, because I don't recognise When I Was On Horseback as performed here, or as a title. Steeleye Span, though... the name is very familiar. Memories of my dad's record collection - he's a big Fairport fan too; took my brother and I to Cropredy, along with some Greek guests, almost 20 years back now; a better experience than you might think based on my notes here! Anyhow, I don't think much of this piece, but I found the familiarity of some of the lyrics interesting. Not too surprised though, folk songs are like that - the same song recorded with very different tunes and variable lyrics that overlap but don't mimic.

Nearing the end now, not much more to endure. I fist typed "enjoy" then, but that certainly wouldn't be accurate. I am more relaxed now than when I begun, so the exercise has not been in vain. It is one more album chalked off, and a bad, long one at that. The next disc has to be more promising, right? This ends up, predictably I guess, with Fairport Convention. I should be scathing as they are the epitome of the bland folk rock I despise... but, well. I think there is a mitigation: this whole genre was to some degree others copying them after their success. That said, I don't much like the song, the long lead out in particular. I end with this disc all but wiped out, only Boadicea and Streets of London kept. Onwards to better things I hope.

The Best Kept Secrets: The Best of Lamb 1996-2004 - Lamb

Track list:

1. Cotton Wool
2. God Bless
3. Gold
4. Gorecki
5. Little Things
6. B Line
7. Lullaby
8. Bonfire
9. Heaven
10. One
11. Gabriel
12. Angelica
13. Til The Clouds Clear
14. Wonder
15. Please
16. Stronger

Running time: 71 minutes
Released: 2004

Lamb. Not sure why I have this... probably led to it via other "trip-hoppy" groups. Lamb were never a group I was abreast of when they were current and I have never really listened to this after acquiring it so whilst I have a reasonable idea of what sort of thing this disc contains, I am far from familiar with any of its contents. Depressingly it runs to over an hour, which means it is probably too long since my last post. If not, consider this more evidence of how I prepare the content for this backwater.

...

I wrote the paragraph above as I was setting up this post, immediately on finishing the last one.I predicted a long gap but even I didn't expect a whole month. June was a disaster of small things mounting up, and the early part of July has been dominated by recovering from finally sorting those things out. Hopefully I can establish some kind of rhythm again, though with the Ashes on radio to dominate my listening and a frankly poor run of things to get through before the interesting albums start again I have a degree of self-doubt there. Anyway, enough babbling and whinging, get on with it Graham!

We start with a dingy hook and a light vocal piercing the darkly reverberating space it leaves. I know none of these tracks, so this is a voyage of discovery as well as an attempt to kickstart the stalled project. Structure of electronically produced percussion is added, but the vocal is left to carry the tune on its own for the most part. It's a very odd introduction but not unwelcome. There is something trance-inducing about the percussive edge and darkly swirling sounds melded with it. Not brilliant or inspired, just a bit different and interesting in a way that, say Tricky's Angels With Dirty Faces was not for me. It loses my interest at the end of Cotton Wool by adding fairground-like pipes; ugh. I think the thing this most reminds me of, as God Bless begins, is the tracks that Sinead O'Connor recorded with Massive Attack on 100th Window. Whilst I would not say anything here is as accomplished as Massive Attack at their best, they probably do provide the best touchstone. Lamb are a little more pared back and stripped down though.

My feeling is that these two opening tracks have both been a little too long for their own good, and a glance at the player confirms they are both 5+ minutes, giving plenty of time to get a bit stale despite having reasonably solid core themes and ideas. I particularly like the vocal, much lighter than I was expecting, soft edges rather than a harder tone, and this contrasts the often very stark backing. These tracks are crafted to showcase the vocal component in places and do so effectively. I am not completely sold on the composition and arrangements yet.

Gold continues the trend of being just too long and - frankly - a bit too samey. Now we hit Gorecki, which a quick search indicates is their "signature". Backing of softly applied strings creates a crucible for the singing early on, overworked percussion joining to smear the contrast later. The piece does not work for me... too similar, nothing standing out, same faults at the prior tracks. I feel like I am still on the start line with this listen. The main problem is that whilst the sparse arrangements were interesting up front, there really isn't any long term engagement there, I can find more interesting programming elsewhere. I will say I love the singing but other than that? Patience wearing thin. At least the tracks get a bit shorter from here... hopefully punchier and more memorable too.

Ah, Little Things is familiar - more urgent, a more understandable percussive form to it. Fast, immediate and grungy. As a mood piece, very nice threat and edge to it. Not a comfortable listen but all the better for that. The central section, which drops the voice, is a little bland but without it the skittishness would not be quite the same. The jump into B Line is ugly - the start of the new piece really leaving a lot to be desired and just when I thought it might be getting better it devolves into a sonic mess, a pattern that unfortunately repeats again within the same track.

So far this is not creating a positive impression; I am left with the thought that if this is their best of then what was the main corpus of their work like?!

Lullaby is braver, better. Stepping away from mediocre beats that override as much or more than they support. Instead we have the voice sitting in a well of orchestral strings, the singing bringing the darkness along with a hint of bass line. Maybe this marks a swing in the pieces, as Bonfire seems to be a step in a similar direction, a slight dissonance with the echoing vocal, twice recorded, and atmosphere and tension building. Strings and piano taking over the accompaniment from clicks, whirrs and beats. My complaint, because I have to have one, is that lyrically it is rubbish, losing a lot of the impression that the voice makes to inanity. Shame really, I can see so much that is right in here, but the results seem to be dominated by the bits that are wrong.

I am only half way through. My stamina for this is waning - I have not sat at these keys trying to concertedly type for this long in a while... other than writing up my ongoing Albion game when sessions happen, but that has been as affected by recent events as this blog - not having the mental energy to approach writing up the material amidst a need to keel over after getting in the door. I digress because it feels like Lamb have, too. Heaven sounds like it should have been done by someone else - too light, too floaty - it does not fit with what has been, and does not address my problems with what I have been hearing.

The dark tone comes back with One, and is welcome. I have a fondness for slightly grubby sounds that evoke shady back alley deals, conflicts barely held back and danger in every shadow. I think it appeals to the gamer in me as the dirty darkness is pregnant with potential drama. Alas I am not convinced that there is enough to this to make good use of those themes. Just a little too... repetitive? Maybe. Too derivative? Well what isn't? Hard to put my finger on it. Gabriel, like Heaven ditches that tone and as a result sounds like a thousand and one other songs that I cannot name and have no desire to listen to again. Bland, not bad, everything it does done better somewhere else by someone else.

Is this best of really that bad? Probably not. I think in other circumstances, perhaps in the context of the original albums, I might have had a more positive response to Lamb. Angelica sounds awfully familiar... must be the Debussy sample that has been used elsewhere. Actually I think this track really works, uses the sample well.

The tone definitely seems to have shifted. In place of the darkness and electronica now we have light acoustic ballads? OK then. Musically it is plodding, unpromising to start, but interesting when the thrusting percussion appears unexpectedly... the only constant seems to be the pleasant singing voice. Veering from bland and boring to over-stimulation would work better for me if the two poles were placed slightly closer together. Contrast is good, but this feels more like a bait and switch than a coherent whole.

Wonder reminds me of How Do from Becoming X, so similar is the structure, the lightness and indeed the contrast with most of the rest of the album the song is being consumed with. Its not as good as the Sneaker Pimps track to my mind, and I really don't need both of them. Wonder just feels a little bland somehow.

I am glad to be winding down this listen, less glad to have had my fears for it be proved true. A couple of tracks will be held on to but the majority are for the bin. I really must sort out a better writing position if I am going to keep going with this (and that is still the plan, despite the long hiatus) as my back is aching an hour into this listen. I don't know what to do about that because it's just so convenient having a laptop on my coffee table for general use.

As for the remaining tracks... Please is just dull, bland. Stronger, which will end this post starts promisingly but ultimately does not grow as it could. The electro-funk bass which kicks in for the final third feels like it has warped in from a completely different genre but does at least bring a little more depth and so, maybe, just rescues the song from the precipice of disappointment.

Overall? Yeah, this does not do it for me. Couple of highlights, but mostly chaff. I found the transition in style over the course of the album interesting, suggesting that tracks were arranged chronologically to some degree, and there were good points - be they specific ideas, good use of vocal or whatever - scattered around the various tracks. Overall, though, it just lacks something intangible, never quite up to enough to make it stand out or to raise Lamb to the bar set by their contemporaries or genre neighbours.