bigcoolguy.com

I caught the tail end of Sophie B. Hawkins' live performance on 26 July 2004 at the House of Blues in Chicago, where she was supporting Chris Isaak. I was very impressed by her passionate performance featuring some rather large vocals - not Joplin-esque screaming but big nevertheless. So I bought Wilderness, which was her current album at that time.

This album turns out to be a very good album. However, much of it is quite poppy and isn't the rocker that I expected when I bought it. Many of the tracks aren't really my thing - there's a little too much loopy drum programming for my liking. Still the performances are all very nice especially considering that Hawkins appears to play most of the instruments on many of the tracks.

For me the highlights of the album are Sweetsexywoman and the closing 3 tracks Angel of Darkness, You Make Me High, Feelin' Good. These are the tracks that are more reminiscent of the live performance I saw. They're a bit jazzier and tend to be a bit heavier than the rest of the album. I really like these songs.

However, the album closes with an "Infinite Space Mix" bonus version of an earlier track Soul Lover. This track doesn't do much for me and I feel it detracts from the nice closure that Feelin' Good gives the album. I think I'll delete this "bonus" track from my various media players. I often do this with classic albums that have no need for a "bonus" - sometimes I put the bonus tracks into a separate "album" in case I do actually want to listen to them.

I think I'd like to hear more of Sophie B. Hawkins... though I'm not sure which albums to look at...

Today was Father's Day. When Mel and Sebastian gave me a card and gifts this morning, I commented that I hadn't really thought about this Father's Day as being about me. For the past 7 months since Sebastian was born, life has been a mad scramble to try to get things done and get enough sleep. That doesn't seem to be what being a parent is about... or maybe it is?

The card included a failed attempt of ours to get Sebastian's handprint for another project. Mel cut it out and had managed to sketch it into an image of an elk. The gifts included some obligatory socks and undies, which Sebastian apparently insisted that Mel buy for me, and a beautiful photo book that I'll treasure forever.

On the day that Sebastian was born, 7 weeks early, I was terrified that we would lose him. Every time I went somewhere in the hospital I would drop by the NICU to make sure he was OK. His crib was visible from the doorway at the entrance to the NICU so I didn't even have to wash my hands and go right in to check on him - a quick glance from the doorway would reassure me. In the late afternoon I went home to feed the dogs and to organise a few things. In the evening I returned to the hospital and took a detour past the NICU on my way to see Mel. I stood in the doorway of the NICU and my heart hit the floor - Sebastian's crib was empty. However, the monitor above it was still doing all of the right things. I squinted to try and get a better view into the semi-darkness but the crib was still empty... and the monitor was still ticking away. I took a step forward to get a wider view and found that they had pushed Mel's bed up into the NICU. Mel was holding Sebastian for the first time and was smiling the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

Sometimes music is about the bits you don't play and the space that you leave, allowing the combination to sound much more impressive than any of the parts. Unless you're used to this you can be dissatisfied because all you can hear is your own limitations. In a similar way, sometimes a celebration is about putting together the pieces that you didn't realise were painting a bigger picture because you were busy worrying about the details. Sometimes you need someone to put those pieces together for you and show you the wider view. This isn't just an endless repetition of some crazy day that we manage to scramble through and keep on coming out the other end of. We've come a long way in the past 7 months and it is simply amazing...

Mel, thanks for showing me "amazing"... and thanks for the socks and undies, I'll wear them with pride.

A short conversation this morning while we were paraphrasing some of the things Sebastian "says":

Hey Elvis!
Yeah, Helga?
Elk needs food badly...

Abbe May is a singer, guitarist and songwriter from Perth, Australia. I first saw her here in Canberra when she was featured in Deborah Conway's Broad Festival in 2007. If you haven't seen or heard Abbe May before there are also a couple of RocKwiz TV performances that are definitely worth watching (these are the solo performances - the duets are also well worth a look). Howl & Moan is Abbe May's debut album released in 2008. It features her band The Rockin' Pneumonia playing a range of roots-based rock tracks, predominantly quite heavy, grunge-inspired blues-rock.

This album opens with the title track Howl & Moan, a very solid blues-rocker that starts the album nicely. This is followed by the rockabilly inspired You Gonna Get It. Neither of these songs hang around for very long. In fact the longest track on the album is a little more than 3:30, with several around 2:30 or less.

We'll Take A Trip Up The Country follows and we hear Abbe May doing slightly heavy, but fairly standard Australian country music - it's extremely well done. This is followed by one of the rockiest 2 songs on the album Costanza, a song of love gone wrong that proclaims "I can't stand ya no more". Yes, the title is a play on a Seinfeld episode. The contrast between these 2 tracks is well done... and this effect is used throughout the album. Half the songs are heavy, with fresh, light songs interspersed between them.

Speaking of which, Ma is a lovely little acoustic guitar and voice interlude that lasts just over a minute and Old River is a short, slow blues featuring both whistle and guitar solos. Many songwriters have tendency to try and turn a good, short snippet into a longer, but weaker, though hopefully more radio-friendly song. Abbe May doesn't suffer from this problem - she recognises that some things are better left simple and often just gives you a minute or 2 of something special...

The stand-out track on this album is A Blackout In Your Town. It starts as a slow acoustic-based blues, introduces drums and dirty guitar, and then just simmers for a few minutes. A great combination of alternating restraint and freight train blues-rock.

Storm has Abbe May playing ukelele in a folk-country setting, and whistling an outro that finishes the song nicely. Sidesteppin' is a sub 2 minute acoustic track, with another whistling solo that meanders to its logical conclusion. You don't hear whistling much in modern music... :-)

Howl & Moan closes aptly with another nice, heavy blues-rocker Lay Me Down.

This album is over before you know it, partly because it is very short (27:27), especially by modern standards, and also because it rocks along at a good pace. That said, I much prefer a good, tight album that one that has been extended out using filler. I've mentioned that many of the tracks are short and I think this a feature, especially because the arrangements are quite simple and, therefore, they might labour in extended studio versions. That said, I could imagine some of these songs turning into extended jams in a live setting.

The title of the album does a good job of describing Abbe May's voice. In the ballads it can be just a plaintive moan and at other times it is like a freight train. While listening to Howl & Moan a couple of weeks ago a friend wondered whether we were listening to Janis Joplin or PJ Harvey. There are similarities with both of these performers, though Abbe May's voice is more locomotive than Joplin's jet engine, and she's more rootsy than Harvey's indie.

This is an excellent album that leaves me wanting to hear much more from Abbe May.