REUTERS/Mike Blake
If rock-n-roll or old-school blues rock and its derivatives are your thing, the pickings these days are slim.
Washy synthesizers and ornately produced rap dominate, which is fine. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about St. Vincent’s “Masseduction,” and one of my kids is bringing a lot of contemporary hip-hop into the house, which has actually given me an excuse to revisit the Public Enemy catalog.
But of course I was raised on rock on the 1970s, and at the moment, the authors of that art form are aging toward their final rewards. Presumably. Keith Richards might live forever.
The year 2017 was actually a great one for the dinosaurs. Numerous classic rock Rexes released new albums, and they were all quite good.
Here’s a rundown of my favorites:
The Rolling Stones, “Blue & Lonesome”
Polydor
This might be my favorite Rolling Stones album ever, and I’m a student of their vaunted run of records from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s that featured “Sticky Fingers,” “Exile on Main Street,” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll.”
“Blue & Lonesome” consists entirely of blues covers, so in a sense it’s a true back-to-the-beginning effort from Mick, Keith, Ronnie, and Charlie. The Stones started out as a cover band, determined to preach the gospel of American blues, as Keith once put it.
The Stones’ core garage-band vibe matches up perfectly with heavy, rollicking blues numbers originally composed by Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon. Imagine the young, raw Stones of the early 1960s combined with decades of experience and modern production. The result is just great, but the revelation is Mick Jagger’s skill as a harmonica player.
You don’t really get a lot of high-profile harmonica albums these days, but the instrument is crucial to the authentic Chicago blues sound, and Mick is a master. As Richards said when recounting how the album — recorded in just a few days and released in December of 2016 (I’ve grandfathered it into my 2017 list) — came about, he and Ronnie Wood were working up a few blues cover to get the band back into a groove, and Mick’s “harp” playing inspired them to keep going.
The goal was basically to get Mick playing more harp, Richards said. Was it ever worth it! (And for good measure, Eric Clapton joins in for a few tracks.)
Jeff Beck, “Loud Hailer”
Screenshot via Amazon
Beck was one of the three former Yarbirds guitarists — the other two were Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page — to invent the British blues-rock sound of the 196os. But Beck didn’t stick with vibe, while Clapton refined the form and Page went on to start Led Zeppelin.
Beck moved in a progressive direction and has been relentlessly and restlessly reinventing himself ever since. It’s kept him young, and because he doesn’t sing, he’s open to new vocal talent. Which he found and then some on “Loud Hailer” in Rosie Bones of the eponymous UK group Bones.
Beck’s tone is rich, gruff, scratchy, supple, energized, and virtuosic, usually all at the same time. He has power to burn, and combined with Bones’ fierce, confrontational vocals, he unleashes the incandescence on proggy, punky gut-checks such as “Live in the Dark.”
This is a dark, futuristic album that sounds like the soundtrack to something bad. Beck is trying to get our attention. And at 73, he proves he can do it again and again.
This is the most in-your-face record I’ve listened to from anybody in years. When Beck isn’t blowing your mind with the effects he can extract from a Stratocaster, he’s captivating your imagination with beautiful phrasing and, huge, chunky riffs.
“Scared for the Children” is the ballad, if you could call it that. More like a warning. Heed it.
Robert Plant, “Carry Fire”
Screenshot via Amazon
In his late sixties, Plant — with his group the Sensational Shape Shifters — has been exploring a kind of world-music-meets-The-Band semi-solo career.
Zep is ain’t, but the yowling, yelping, shrieky vocals that made Plant such an icon in the 1970s aren’t really suited to a musician of his stature, as he himself has said many times when asked about a Zep reunion.
Instead, on “Carry Fire,” we get a rumbling, meditative Plant, backed by a versatile, crackerjack lineup. Almost all the songs feature rolling, drone-like structures, evocative of Middle-Eastern music and folk. It’s hypnotic, and for fans of Plant’s post-Zep record with Jimmy Page, an extension of a slightly bluesy take on those traditions, heavy and serious.
What it is, in the end, is classic rock for the thinking person. Standouts are the title track and “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” a simultaneously menacing and uplifting exercise in thrum and feedback that features a guest appearance by Chrissie Hynde.
You can put this one on an endless loop.
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