Juliana Venter's famous Nail Suit (Pic Andrew Bannister)

Hermit, to Can Temba, a scratchy lament for Sophiatown, Think Lark meets Can, and you’d be getting close to the sound. Except that Mud Ensemble were way looser around the edges, as befits a band whose operating principle appeared to be, do whatever the hell we feel like doing. In truth, some of their experiments might jar your 21st sensibilities now, such as the William Blake mashup of The Bat, with its refrain about ‘kicking/kissing Roman anus’. But overall, this is a document of an extraordinary band, who combined courage, craziness and a sophisticated musical knowledge to produce some of the most memorable performances of the  90s. Nobody who saw them blazing on stage will ever forget.

(read Toast Coetzer’s article on Juliana Venter’s current projects, and a 1996 review by the legendary Charl Blignaut.)

This review first published in Rolling Stone SA, December 2011. Visit their site and follow them on Twitter.

Picture of Juliana Venter by Andrew Bannister, and sourced from this site.

The Mud Ensemble performing.

A more interesting comparison would be John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, circa solo offering John, the Wolf King of L.A. Purkiss’s songs might be embedded in a folksy acoustic-rock genre, but they stray into the more dynamic area of straight rock every now and then.

That’s musically as well as lyrically. With sidemen of the calibre of Ross Campbell (ex-Fetish) and guitar genius Guy Buttery, the sound at times has a rhythmic urgency that adds interesting dimensions to the beautiful melodies. Lyrically, although Purkiss is precisely as sweetly romantic as you’d expect, there’s the odd moment of darkness and troubled introspection.

As this is a rerelease, there are a bunch of extras. The live version of Purkiss’s Monkey’s Wedding adds fire to the impressionist original, but the cover of Dylan’s Positively 4th St leeches all passion out of the original, replacing it with an anodyne and earnest prettiness that does the song no favours at all. On the whole, though, this is an album that will sit comfortably in that section of your music collection that you savour in times of ease and introspection.

FARRYL PURKISS: Fruitbats and Crows Special Edition (Sheer Sound)

(first published in Mail & Guardian)

Oh Brother

You’ll recognise the depth and emotional range of Alison Krauss here and even the lilting playfulness of Edie Brickell. Musically, you could shoehorn Six Winters into that particular brand of new folk that’s both adult contemporary and coolly retro and that manages to sound fresh at the same time as sounding chillingly, inevitably old.

There’s a gorgeous cover of Ring of Fire, the June Carter song made famous by Johnny Cash. Its lyrics could serve as a coda for Six Winters, an album scorched by painful desire and consumed by the conflagration of love: “Love is a burning thing/ and it makes a fiery ring/ bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire.” As a work of art detailing the climb out of that fire, Six Winters is exquisitely realised.

Laurie Levine’s website.

Laurie Levine: Six Winters (Rhythm Records)

(Originally published in the Mail & Guardian.

There’s a moment of true immigrant verisimilitude in the grammatical error that haunts ‘Where’s my shoes’ (sic). It becomes a little painful when it’s built into the chorus, but the song itself is so wonderfully maudlin, you end up seduced by the histrionics.

I’m equally forgiving of ‘Mother Tongue’‘s rickety ‘There are forces of great danger that’s (sic) been driven by anger’, especially since the song is delivered in the camp manner of Freddie Mercury trying to piss off Diamanda Galas. And the chorus cleverly preempts my criticism, anyway: ‘How long before they cut out your mother tongue/my moeder tong’. The song itself does appear to be one of those paranoid ‘they’re coming to kill my culture’ ditties we’re becoming used to, but hey – it’s still a pretty song, and Mr Cat own it.

So It’s all a little ramshackle, but wonderfully appealing. Why would South Africans be making this kind of rootless music? No idea, but who cares. They’re doing it beautifully.

[Mr Cat and the Jackal
Sins and Siren Songs (2011)]

(First published in Mail & Guardian, June 2011)

Taxi Violence: Long Way from Home (Unplugged)

There have been a few snide remarks about the wisdom of doing an unplugged “best of” album when you have only two CDs under your belt. But listen to this album and you will understand its title. Taxi Violence have taken their early material and given us a masterclass in how a band can grow, learn and become best of breed.

These versions of old Taxi favourites such as Untie Yourself and Unholy are light years from when they started out. But at the same time they exist synchronously in a parallel universe distinguished only by a rich patina of rock ‘n roll righteousness and a maturity of expression that comes only with endless hours of performance.

There are three new tracks, all tinged with the biblical bathos that characterises many Taxi Violence songs.

Regular readers of my reviews will know that I cherish, above all, songs that are quintessentially South African but — and this is important — only to a South African. Blue Song is one of those — innocuous lyrics sung with absolute conviction by George van der Spuy, who finally owns his voice. “Must be a rainy season this time of year/ Must be the fall of raindrops/ Must be the smell of fear/ when will it smile on me from sunlit skies?”

With guest appearances by among others that inestimable treasure, Lonesome Dave Ferguson on harmonica, this is a classic album of nuance and passion. I watched Taxi play an unplugged set in the bush of Oppikoppi a few years ago. Then their rawness seduced. Now their polish delivers.

(Read my review of Taxi Violence’s “The Turn”.)

(First published in the Mail & Guardian, June 20, 2011)

Says it all, really.

Mrs B
The Milkshake Revolution

“Your girlfriend is sweet/ your girlfriend likes to go down on me…/ She’s known all over town/ That booty don’t ever back down/ From her knees to her V/ Is that a moose knuckle???”

Why on earth would you send a cd with lyrics like that to the Mail & Guardian to review? Have you ever READ the M&G?

Your lack of judgement might be explained by the fact that your business card claims you’re in ‘Corporate entertainement’ (sic), but it’s more likely because you really, truly have no idea how awful your cd is. Well, that’s a bit unfair. Without the lyrics, it’s just a carbon copy of a thousand other blandly competent bands who think you can rhyme beer with blowjob, and call yourself an artist. Inoffensive, unoriginal, but with some shit you can whistle without thinking.

But your lyrics make my poor brain try and hold its breath so I can DIE, DIE, DIE. Ah, the poignant self-reflection of your song ‘Rockstar.’ Verily, it’s like listening to the Confessions of St Augustine set to a soundtrack by Good Charlotte  ‘So you wanna be a ROCKSTAR?/ So you wanna feel what is like to be a GOD? Are u ready? To become what your not?’ (Sic. Super sic.) You claim to have ‘the stage presence of King Kong’, which I assume means you’re in it for the blonde chick sitting on your hairy hand and the little aeroplanes buzzing around your heads. Those are not real planes, people!

(First appeared in the M&G, 27 May 2011)

(Incredible as it seems, there are critics who disagree with my review of this album. Music Industry Online said:

“One of the most enjoyable, and possibly the best track on the entire album is “Your girlfriend”- a precious song that sees the lead singer bragging about his affair with a beautiful girl. Clocking in at about four minutes, the up-tempo song shows off what the band is cable of. It is professionally done from start to end, and the band delivers very catchy lines throughout the song.”

Yet there can be something appealing about aKing’s relentless mining of stream-of-consciousness phrases and early 1990s riffs, something fanboyish about the way they rock out with their influences out (yep, that’s a nod to local rivals Taxi Violence).

Others might hear more emotion in their execution, but I hear a distancing, hypermodern flatness that says more about the rock landscape in South Africa than any aggressive Fokof anthem or melodious ­Parlotones jingle.

It is not what their fans hear, I assume. As always, there will be a different judgment made by those for whom the product is crafted. aKing are very aware of their audience. They won’t carve out a new market share with this offering, but merely satisfy the converted

aKING: The Red-blooded Years
(Rhythm Records)

(First published in the Mail & Guardian, Friday May 6 2011}

Key to their burgeoning appeal is that the band members write songs that appear to be primarily for themselves, or at least a small, localised audience of friends. There’s no way the incidental listener can understand what a song like It Has Begun is really about. “Dennis was a big machine caught inside his chemistry”? “Tell them now about your plan to marry Anne in India”? Who are these people? It doesn’t ­matter.

As with the Stones’ verse: “I went down to the Chelsea drugstore/To get your prescription filled/I was standing in line with Mr Jimi/And man, did he look pretty ill”, we don’t really need to know who Mr Jimi is. With enough thought, you can read an entire culture off that simple verse and without much thought you can feel that culture.Black Hotels songs work the same magic.

Paradoxically, the intensely personal proves to be the perfect way to express the allusive universal. It’s a trick that all the great songwriting bands have. “Rain clouds on a Sunday/drinking wine in a movie/you put your hands next to mine/When we leave you say you would like to come again” (Rain Clouds). Simple, beautiful, almost Proustian in its reductive elegance.
But does the music match the words? Impeccably.

There’s a rollicking doggedness about the songs and a studied cadence to John Boyd’s vocals. When allied with the sparkling, almost dilettante keyboards of Matthew Fink, and the lilting, Mo Tucker-like voice of Lisa Campbell, you get a sound that gets your heart singing at the same time as it imbues you with a melancholy at one remove.

It’s the fashion, or style if we want to be generous, for young South African bands of a certain ilk to haphazardly reference the 1980s, that lost pseudo-decade of monied exuberance, scattershot styles and tinkly keyboards. But what they’re doing is pastiche, a sort of Reader’s Digest condensed version that loses all the subtlety and complexity of the decade.

The Black Hotels reference the 1980s obliquely, with a keyboard phrase here and a New Order-like beat there.

There are very few wasted moments on a Black Hotels album. Every word means something necessary to the song and every note carries its own silence in which to hear the music. The Black Hotels tell stories, sometimes baldly, sometimes elliptically, but always with a strange, sombre sadness that is inexplicably close to joy.

Key to their burgeoning appeal is that the band members write songs that appear to be primarily for themselves, or at least a small, localised audience of friends. There’s no way the incidental listener can understand what a song like It Has Begun is really about. “Dennis was a big machine caught inside his chemistry”? “Tell them now about your plan to marry Anne in India”? Who are these people? It doesn’t ­matter.

As with the Stones’ verse: “I went down to the Chelsea drugstore/To get your prescription filled/I was standing in line with Mr Jimi/And man, did he look pretty ill”, we don’t really need to know who Mr Jimi is. With enough thought, you can read an entire culture off that simple verse and without much thought you can feel that culture.Black Hotels songs work the same magic.

Paradoxically, the intensely personal proves to be the perfect way to express the allusive universal. It’s a trick that all the great songwriting bands have. “Rain clouds on a Sunday/drinking wine in a movie/you put your hands next to mine/When we leave you say you would like to come again” (Rain Clouds). Simple, beautiful, almost Proustian in its reductive elegance.
But does the music match the words? Impeccably.

There’s a rollicking doggedness about the songs and a studied cadence to John Boyd’s vocals. When allied with the sparkling, almost dilettante keyboards of Matthew Fink, and the lilting, Mo Tucker-like voice of Lisa Campbell, you get a sound that gets your heart singing at the same time as it imbues you with a melancholy at one remove.

It’s the fashion, or style if we want to be generous, for young South African bands of a certain ilk to haphazardly reference the 1980s, that lost pseudo-decade of monied exuberance, scattershot styles and tinkly keyboards. But what they’re doing is pastiche, a sort of Reader’s Digest condensed version that loses all the subtlety and complexity of the decade.

The Black Hotels reference the 1980s obliquely, with a keyboard phrase here and a New Order-like beat there.

The band is not doing homage; it is using a musical device to create a song entirely of the moment.

They also achieve that rare trick of writing songs that conjure a global emotional aesthetic, but are still incredibly redolent of Johannesburg.

Honey Badger is the band’s third offering, after the EP Beautiful Mornings and Films for the Next Century. All three are superb. No critic’s pat one-liner is going to sum up this band, but perhaps their own words hint at the relationship their art has with their fans: “They beamed a song into space and nobody noticed/in 400 years we will know if it burst through the light/and how will we know if it ever got there/it’s all in your hands.”

The band is not doing homage; it is using a musical device to create a song entirely of the moment.

They also achieve that rare trick of writing songs that conjure a global emotional aesthetic, but are still incredibly redolent of Johannesburg.

Honey Badger is the band’s third offering, after the EP Beautiful Mornings and Films for the Next Century. All three are superb. No critic’s pat one-liner is going to sum up this band, but perhaps their own words hint at the relationship their art has with their fans: “They beamed a song into space and nobody noticed/in 400 years we will know if it burst through the light/and how will we know if it ever got there/it’s all in your hands.”

Honey Badger: The Black Hotels (Sovereign Entertainment)
(First published in the Mail & Guardian, April 15 2011)

(John Hiatt,The Open Road, NewWest Records (2010))

Hiatt’s tale is the usual one of musical genius that never quite goes mainstream, at least in the sense of massive sales. His songs have been covered by numerous luminaries, such as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, B.B. King and Willie Nelson, and he’s been nominated for eleven Grammy awards, but he’s still not a household name.

It’s tempting to take the words of “Go down swingin’”, one of the album’s more autobiographical tracks, as a metaphor for where his career is. “I’m gonna go down swingin’, singin’ till the end. I’m wanna go down swingin’, punch drunk to the end.” And he takes his best shot with The Open Road, a collection of bruised tales, wry observations, and pithy vignettes, set to evocative melodies and fine guitar playing. There’s not a country mile between an Iggy Pop and a John Hiatt. I hesitate to use the cliche ‘real’, but there’s just something about honest artistry that makes an album shine – you can’t fake it.

Tongue n’ Cheek

A raucous bunch of fun, aptly named Tongue n’ Cheek. As Mr Rascal sings, “Some people think I’m bonkers, but I just think I’m free.” Winning a Mercury Prize in 2003 for his debut album, Dizzee Rascal has just kept on trucking, proving the adage, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the grime.

So you’ll find all the crunchy beats, wildly braggadocio lyrics (“You might still catch me kicking back on a luxury cruise/With a freaky model blowing me like a didgeridoo”), and absurd humour (see aforementioned didgeridoo) of early Dizzee, but with a freedom to grow beyond the grime that defined his earlier work.

The Tiesto collab “Bad Behaviour” could have been a lowlight, but Dizzee rises above his Dutch trance partner, or possibly Tiesto steps up to the bassline. Either way, it works.

So the album’s worth a dump to your mobile’s playlist, but it’s not worth discoursing on. Top dance producers, some delightful sampling, beats that bracket chill and thrill, and the kind of lyrical flourishes you need to pump you up on a Saturday night.