Editorial Reviews
Adam's Apple
Music Review:
Music Review
Choral & Organ Music of Charles Wood
Chabrier: Une éducation manquée / 4 Mélodies
Clubber's Guide to Trance [Import]
Combat Rock [Original recording remastered]
Deep South Playa [Explicit Lyrics]
Brahms: Piano Pieces, Op. 76; Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Fantasies, Op. 116
Amazon.com
English-born singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding spent the better part of a decade variously shaking fervent early comparisons with Elvis Costello and/or singing the major-label blues. Shedding that megacorp sponsorship for indie pastures may not have spurred a burst of creativity (this album comes four long years after 2000's fine The Confessions of St. Ace), but it's inspired Harding to reach a whole new sonic plateau in his recordings, as this superb collection ably attests. His viewpoint and lyrics are as sharp-eyed and wry as ever, ranging from typical romantic foibles to skewerings of hollow generation-gap trappings ("Protest, Protest, Protest," a satire that even encompasses mock electronica flourishes courtesy of track producer Eric Kupper) and sexual license (the hilarious, clumsy hedonism of "Sluts"). But it's Harding's focused attention to melody and pop-perfect songcraft that elevates the whole album into a consistently infectious new realm. Aided by producers Kupper and Julian Raymond (Fastball, Shawn Mullins, Suicide Machines), Harding's guitar/keyboard/drums tack may be elemental, but on tracks like "Nothing at All," "Pull," "It Stays," and the slinky, east-Asian aura of the fable the "Monkey and His Cat" it evokes an accomplished charm that's downright Beatlesque. Adam's Apple is arguably the most satisfying album Harding's recorded since 1989's Here Comes the Groom--and one that might just teach Costello a thing or two about pop economics. --Jerry McCulley
Amazon.com
John Wesley Harding is well into his second decade as a recording artist. As a literate but no longer new voice, he's no longer major-label material. Indeed, the well-traveled Brit who was once heralded as the heir to Elvis Costello has been hopping from indie to indie since he parted ways with Sire in the early '90s. So one wouldn't be shocked if his first new collection in four years felt like an exhausted last breath of a frustrated journeyman. But from the first notes of the cascading... read more