E-Paper
One track mind
Is the ‘new’ Jimi Hendrix album dated? It’s a valid question not only because all but one of the dozen tracks in this album were recorded in 1969 (one song was recorded in 1967), but also because most of the numbers, in other takes and forms, have been around, scattered in previous releases since the extraordinary guitarist-songwriter-singer’s death in 1970. Indrajit Hazra writes.
Valleys of Neptune
Jimi Hendrix
Sony, Rs 399
Rating: ****
Is the ‘new’ Jimi Hendrix album dated? It’s a valid question not only because all but one of the dozen tracks in this album were recorded in 1969 (one song was recorded in 1967), but also because most of the numbers, in other takes and forms, have been around, scattered in previous releases since the extraordinary guitarist-songwriter-singer’s death in 1970.
You don’t have to be a fricking David Fricke to know that in Hendrix lies the DNA of modern rock music — from the White Stripes to Whitesnake to White Zombie in between. He also forms the mobius strip-bridge between raw blues, melodic rhythms of R&B and the lava flow of jazz. But does such canonical knowledge come in the way of listening with a new set of ears what is essentially Hendrix’s fourth studio album (after the 1968 double album, Electric Ladyland) to be professionally produced under his own supervision? Valleys of Neptune does both — startle us with a few tracks that rise up like quickly solidifying smoke, as well as other numbers that lull Hendrix fans to a sweet state of reassurance that Jimi was a genius.
What makes this album special for me is one reason: the title track. Forget it’s Hendrix — if you can. Forget his reputation, his dying at the height of his powers at 27 etc etc. Just listen to this... thing. Coming out after the all-a-shimmer crawl‘n’highhat intro is the creature. Well, what can I say? ‘Valleys of Neptune’ just mauls you and reassembles you after it’s done.
Voice and guitar merge and unmerge and merge as if you’re hearing some cosmic train tracks, “Lord, I feel the ocean swaying me/washing away all my pains/see where I used to be wounded”, a little chortle is thrown in before “Remember the scar?/ Now you can’t see a thing/ And I don’t feel no pain no no no” followed by the climactic end of the verse, “Singing about the Valleys of Sunrise/ Green and blue canyons too/ I’m singing about Atlantis love songs/ the Valleys of Neptune is rising/ rising/ rising.” The tune — the goddamn melody — is like a hymn and a war cry at the same time. It stays in your brain and burrows. I should think that the song is worth its place alongside the likes of ‘Hey Joe’, ‘Manic Depression’ and ‘Purple Haze’.
Technically, this is an album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience — Hendrix, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell — with old army band buddy and future Band of Gypsies bassist Billy Cox replacing Redding in the first three tracks that include ‘Valleys of Neptune’. The jam-jar lid tightness is palpable in the third track ‘Bleeding Heart’, a cover of legendary slide guitarist Elmore James’ growler.
The old ‘Fire’ gets a treatment in this album, that’s part-shimmy, part-shaman song. The frantic pace and rewiring of Cream’s ‘Sunshine of your live’ (an old Hendrix favourite during concerts) done as an instrumental here is a tad too flashy, while ‘Hear my train a comin’, with its strains of ‘Voodoo Child’, isn’t much different from that excellent 1998-released double-CD collection, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: BBC Sessions (that has many other tracks from this album).
This album is a must have and it’s only because of one reason: a 4-minute force of nature that appears as a song called ‘Valleys of Neptune’.
A very full English
Lungs
Florence + The Machine
Universal, Rs 295
Rating: ***
Florence Welch is an English wench with a voice that’s more Queen Boadicea than Maid Marian. With a Celtic Big Band sound, the Machine booming behind her, the music of Florence+the Machine is Stonehenge Lite. The opening pub rebel-yell, ‘Dog days are over’ in Lungs gives you a fair idea of what I’m talking about. ‘Rabbit heart (Raise it up)’, with its Jefferson Airplane fuel, seems retrofitted for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
There’s a twirling-about-in-bare feet-on-the-grass quality to the album, especially tracks like ‘Howl’, ‘Cosmic love’ (it’s even got a harp!) and ‘You’ve got the love’. More interesting is the concrete poetry-meets-punk ruckus of ‘Kiss with a fist’ (“You hit me once/ I hit you back/ You gave a kick/ I gave a slap/ You smashed a plate/ Over my head/ Then I set fire to our bed.” What’s wholesome about Lungs is that it’s got that unhealthy mix of cabaret and chanson. In ‘Girl with one eye’ you can practically smell the petticoat flung up to an Anglo-Saxon version of the can-can.
Which makes Lungs a bit too ‘arty’ for my dirty taste. But on my watch Miss Welch will remain.
