R2OK!

Cherskiy

Back to normal this week with His Bobship in the chair and featuring an excellent live session from acoustic duo Megson, who I heard on this show a little while back and loved, and whose second album “Smoke of Home” I am intending to obtain shortly. There were some rather interesting choices this week together with old favourites from years gone by – plus a raft of Canadian artists in advance of the “North by North East” festival programme on 9th June. Bob can’t get across to do his usual show because of health reasons but will be linking up with various Canadian artists that night for a special programme with plenty of my own favourite artists, such as Kathleen Edwards, Linda McLean and others. A very enjoyable three hours here, one way or another.

Kicking off any radio programme with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is a good choice in my book, “Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” being lifted here from the 1993 “Greatest Hits” album – this particular song was released thirty years ago this weekend, and featured on their first album.
The new Fountains of Wayne single “Someone To Love” received another airing this week and it has already broken into the mainstream R2 playlist (John Inverdale played it on Monday afternoon). I wasn’t entirely convinced about how good this was on first hearing it, but now the song has grown on me, the band’s trademark harmonies and catchy choruses definitely coming to the fore on repeated listening. The single is released on Monday and the album “Traffic and Weather” will be due out in a few weeks time – one for my Amazon wish list, I think!
“Prayers” from “Passing Strangers” by Scott Matthews started promisingly but I felt seemed to lose its way halfway through. His live session the other week was good but on CD he sounds far too much like Nick Drake for my liking – although he’d earn a living as a tribute singer if there was ever a need for one….
The Coydogs sounded a bit different, though: “Think Twice” is a new release from this three-piece band from New York, who have joined the ranks of bands seeking a bit of free publicity by putting their material up on Myspace. A nice try, but the vocals were all but drowned out by the enthusiastic backing guitars and the end result was simply neither one thing nor another, despite a more raucous end to the song.
Midway State are a Canadian band fronted by Nathan Ferraro, “A Million Fireflies” being taken from their new album “Canadian Blast”. Some promising stuff here, with comparisons to the likes of Coldplay and Maroon 5 not being far off the mark in places.
Jack Johnson and ALO (the “Animal Liberation Orchestra”) contributed a cover of “I Shall Be Released” to the tribute album “Endless Highway: The Music of The Band”. Very pleasant, with Jack Johnson’s laconic vocals sitting nicely on top of the ALO’s sublime backing.
A casualty of the Eurovision Song Contest overrun two weeks ago was Thea Gilmore, but Bob put this to rights this week by including “Lip Reading” from “Songs From The Guitar”. The characteristic strong start to her songs is evident here, plus her equally strong vocals and sharp, incisive and intelligent lyrics – but if you were fortunate to catch her live set on this show a few months back, you’d know that already. Bob said that he couldn’t understand why she wasn’t more successful. I would agree with those sentiments – after hearing a couple of tracks from “Rules For Jokers” a few years back, I was converted straight away.
The second casualty of that show was Forever Like Red’s new single, “What Will You Pay”. This has also broken into daytime R2 airplay, with the soaring harmonies in the chorus being the hook for me. Despite this, though, the rest of the song is a little understated and laidback, possibly too much for demanding ears.
A different slant on “War” came courtesy of J J Grey and Mofro’s “Country Ghetto” album, Bob classing it as ‘super-funk’ but you could call this a mishmash of blues, funk, soul and virtually everything else and you’d be right at least half of the time. Whatever the style, it was extremely engaging and enjoyable.
Another Canadian featured tonight was Feist – as a singer, Leslie Feist has played with several bands in what seems to be an interchangeable relationship between the likes of Broken Social Scene, Kings of Convenience and others. She’s solo here, though – “I Feel It All” is taken from her album “The Reminder” and is No.1 in the Canadian charts at the moment. Lo-fi is the watchword in terms of production here, although the song itself is jaunty and upbeat despite the subject matter on offer. Her vocals are quite distinctive – listen to it yourself to hear why, but they work, surprisingly enough.

Megson are a duo comprising Stu Hanna and Debbie Palmer, and their live set comes in advance of the release of their second full-length album, “Smoke of Home”, which is released at the beginning of July. They hail originally from Teesside (and it’s evident straight away through Debbie’s accent!) but now reside in the south – many of the songs on this album, however – plus the title – relate to the industrial landscape they came from. Debbie’s crystal clear vocals were simply wonderful on “Follow It On”, which is the song that Bob has played in the past. Sung here in a stripped-down version with only Stu’s acoustic guitar, backing vocals and a flute for company, her voice is almost angelic yet quite strong at the same time. In fact, this version doesn’t stray too far from the recorded version, which speaks volumes about their live gigs. They have done shows with the likes of Show of Hands, who have also featured on Bob’s show this year. The duo were really easy-going in conversation, with plenty of gentle humour at each other’s expense. Debbie started as a classically trained singer, whilst Stu was in punk bands, but both ended up loving the music they heard from acoustic bands on open mike nights at clubs they were booked at. “I Lied” comes from Stu’s childhood, when his mother said he’d be good for nothing but lying (!), so he decided to ‘get some mileage out of it’. Megson’s strength (apart from Debbie’s vocals) is the way that both their voices integrate so well, Stu’s accent coming to the fore when he takes centre stage, as with this song, although that’s no bad thing here. Yes, its folk again, but it has pop influences finely entwined among the homespun lyrics – and they must have taken some learning on this particular song. Show of Hands have been very supportive of Megson in the past, and Bob turned the conversation to how the acoustic movement seems to have gathered a lot of momentum in recent years – Stu reckons it is because the music is so intimate, you hear every word and every note, whilst Debbie thinks it is a refreshing change from dance and electronic music. Bob believes the trend for today’s teenager performers to move more and more towards this sort of genre lies in the amount of freedom they have in writing and performing their songs. The duo’s influences lie among Americana and bluegrass music, roots and old-time songs (‘the new punk’!), and even to the likes of Bob Dylan and the Dubliners. A traditional folk song ended the live session, “Butternut Hill” telling the story of how people are left behind when their loved ones go off to war. This was a much more slow-paced song, with Stu providing backing on a mandola, but still very enjoyable all the same. (A mandola is an octave higher than a mandolin.) Their first album, “On the Side”, came out two years ago – Megson are doing a few folk festivals (Cambridge, Sidmouth and others) later this year to coincide with the release of “Smoke of Home”. Finally, Bob closed off this session with the recorded version of “Smoke of Home”, the title track from the new album, a song about someone wanting to go back home to Teesside. A slightly cleaner, more sanitised sound is on display here, obviously, but its not a million miles away from their live output and the harmonies are just as good as anything else they’ve recorded in the past. Bob intends to play more from the duo in the future.

Passenger are a new band from Brighton, and the jaunty start of “Walk You Home” was only slightly marred by the strange ‘popping’ sound in the backing, which thankfully died out before the chorus. Lead singer Mike Rosenberg’s vocals are a little odd themselves but surprisingly likeable and the song itself moves along quite productively, with a pleasant set of bridging lyrics midstream.
“Give a Little Bit” was taken from Supertramp’s “Even in the Quietest Moments”, the band here moving towards the commercial phase that was revealed in their subsequent album “Breakfast in America”.
Jets Overhead release “Seems So Far” in a couple of weeks’ time, the single taken from their debut album, simply entitled “Bridges”. Not a bad song, although it’s also not exactly memorable at the same time – in fact I can’t really think of anything to recommend it, rather bland would be my choice of phrase. It’s free to download from their website, though, so judge for yourself.
Seymour should have been listening to this show – Neil Peart and company featured as Bob played Rush’s “The Larger Bowl” from their latest album “Snakes and Arrows”. I’m not going to review it – Seymour, your turn here, you’d do the song much more justice than I ever could. Truth is, I’ve never really heard much from them before, although they’ve obviously got an impressive back catalogue, which stretches back to March 1974.
I’m still undecided about Rufus Wainwright. On the one hand, he’s got a good set of vocals, slightly laid back and melancholy, whilst on the other hand they can also get a little dreary and tiresome. “Sansoucci”, a track taken from “Release the Stars” didn’t quite get to that particular stage although I could have cheerfully done without the ‘whaa-whaa’ lyrics in the middle. The rest of the song wasn’t too bad, almost enjoyable if it wasn’t for the wayward mid-section. He actually reminds me of k d lang, funnily enough.
Bob urged his audience to listen again to the session that Suzy Bogguss recorded for last week’s Thursday programme (and I’d echo those sentiments!). She gave Bob a copy of her new CD “Sweet Danger” at the recording session, and he played “The Blue Ride” from this. He said it had echoes of Carole King on it, and he wasn’t wrong. This song was everything you’d want to curl up and relax to: perfect vocals, quiet and understated accompaniment, sheer bliss. If the other songs on her album are anything like this, the album should be really successful or there’s something wrong with the world…. Where’s my Amazon wish list?
Joe Bonamassa is another staple of the Bob Harris Saturday Show, his excellent guitar work betraying its blues influences and his hard-edged vocals providing that ‘something extra’. “Miss You, Hate You” comes from his 2005 album “A New Day Yesterday”. Although maybe not quite as hard-boiled as the likes of Aynsley Lister and Justin Rutledge, he’s still got plenty of talent, not surprising for someone who started playing the guitar at four and was asked to open for B B King at the tender age of twelve!
Richard Shindell covered Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street” (from “So”) on his covers album “South of Delia”, the song also featuring long-time collaborator Lucy Kaplansky on backing vocals (Bob – you have to play some of her material again soon!). This was a very good cover, one which did justice to the original song and yet had qualities all of its own, largely down to the quiet and understated vocals.
The final song from this weekend’s programme was the final track on The Cicadas’ eponymously-titled album from 1999. Rodney Crowell’s vocals in “Still Learning How To Fly” were pleasant enough listening. This country-rock band has been together since 1986 although they didn’t apparently officially form until ten years later. Apparently he still includes this song in their live set as Bob keeps playing it on the radio!

Next week’s live session comes courtesy of the Wire Daisies – more good stuff!
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Author: “To the Ends of the Earth: A Snapshot of Aviation in North-Eastern Siberia, Summer 1992”
(Free to read via Kindle Unlimited)