Sturgill Simpson shook up country music and now with "Sound and Fury" it appears he is out to shake up rock music next.
Do not be frustrated by the loud, noisy single “Sing Along.” Listen closely and you can still hear Simpson's tortured drawl and the squeal (mind you, it's treated here) of slide guitar.
"Sound and Fury" is designed to accompany his Netflix anime film (also coming out this week). As the film covers a dystopian future, Simpson thought his music should match. In the grand scheme of things, "Sound and Fury" is yet another unexpected move from an artist who writes without genre's boundaries.
REISSUE OF WEEK:
JOHN COLTRANE
Blue World
(LP/CD)(IMpulse)
Imagine a completely unreleased, never-before-heard album from John Coltrane and his classic quartet. Apparently in 1964 (before his landmark "A Love Supreme"), Coltrane was approached by Canadian filmmaker Gilles Groulx to score his film "Le chat dans le sac." Coltrane agreed and took his band into studios of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., with famed producer Rudy Van Gelder. The band quickly worked out several revised versions of some early Coltrane cuts ("Naima, "Traneing In") and simply rolled tape. Thirty-seven minutes later, it was complete. Upon the film's release in Canada, Groulx used approximately 10 minutes and the tapes disappeared into the archives.
Years later, when the film and its accompanying resources fell into the hands of The Film Board of Canada, they noticed they had stumbled into yet another lost Coltrane recording (like 2018's stellar "Both Directions At Once").
"Blue World" joins "Both Directions" at reassembling the timeline before Coltrane went stratospheric with "A Love Supreme." The cuts here sound loose and spacy with the band vamping mostly on the modal edges of these songs (think "Blue Trai.").
While not as revelatory as parts of "Both Sides" (honestly, it was not meant to be), there are several aspects within that point to the mixture of hard-swinging rhythm section and Coltrane soloing around McCoy Tyner's large block chords.
"Blue World" is another real find in the short history of this seminal artist whose works continues to grow in influence from year-to-year.
The Beatles
Abbey Road
(1LP/PIC DISC/2C/3LP/3CD+BLU-RAY)
(Apple/Capitol)
This is where the road ends. Fifty years since its release and "Abbey Road" continues to grow in stature and its magical abilities. The cover is the stuff of legends. An English crosswalk that everyone wants to visit. The title made the studio Valhalla for artists following in the Beatles' massive wake. Like "Sgt. Pepper" and "The Beatles," Giles Martin carefully reconstructs this masterwork.
Where "Sgt. Pepper" was remixed to better organize and emphasize the tracks, "Abbey Road" pays far more attention to embracing the empty space. "Come Together" has always sounded menacing with Lennon chewing on his consonants ("Coooooo-ca Cola.") The new mix pays attention to Harrison's guitar parts decaying, Starr's cymbals sounding washy (think "Tomorrow Never Knows") and McCartney's bass carrying the track. Elsewhere, Martin's mixes enliven his father's elegant string arrangement and the organ parts on Harrison's "Something."
Both single LP editions present you with the newly remixed version. The Deluxe 2CD version gives you the new remix with a bonus CD of 10 demos and outtakes. The Super Deluxe editions are the real treasure trove. The 3CD+ BluRay version is presented in a 100-page book with a foreword by Paul McCartney. There are two discs of studio anomalies (23 unheard tracks) and the entire "Abbey Road" album is mixed for the first time in 5.1 and the new Dolby Atmos. The 3LP box contains the same 23 newly-discovered cuts, the new Giles Martin mix, all on 3LPs housed in a special lift-top box.
While the new mixes will likely be all the talk for a while, the outtakes look to draw out some real magic. Rumored to be included is the cacophonous, chaotic early long version of "I Want You” (She's So Heavy) that will likely be as raw as the long version of "Helter Skelter" from "The Beatles."
In addition, there are studio cuts of non-"Abbey Road" tracks like "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and even a McCartney demo of "Come and Get It" before he turned it over to both Mary Hopkin and Badfinger.
The Beatles' reissues have been big business of course. Both of the previous re-releases finishing among the top vinyl sellers of their respective years.
"Abbey Road" actually finished its original run of wax at No. 4 for the year 2018. (It was No. 2 in 2017 to "Sgt. Pepper" at No. 1 and a Top 10 seller since vinyl began its comeback in 2008).
"Abbey Road" is that rare album that still sounds best on wax where the "suite" of Side Two was meant to flow together and not be violated with track changes or streaming pauses. All of this material has to first meet the engineers' approval and then receive the blessing of the families themselves.
For "Abbey Road," the audio has been painstaking reassembled, remixed and remastered straight from the original master tapes in the same studios it was recorded 50 years ago. This plethora of Beatles releases is designed to appeal to the longtime fan and the neophyte. After the painful dissolution of "Let It Be," "Abbey Road" was the Beatles humbly leaving us with their finest hour. It is time once again to relive this true classic.
