Strangely, probably the best Dressy Bessy album is the 2003 compilation of singles and odds and ends, Little Music, which covers the period 1997-2002. The songs on Little Music are great, perfect and pure examples of power-pop at its brightest and most enlivening. Tammy Ealom sounds completely thrilled on these records and the songs are simple, sometimes silly, but mostly deftly put together. These are 2 - 3 minute pop glories and although the sound is occasionally a bit muddy, it's a great record and probably the closest of their albums to replicate a sunny day. The next studio album was 2004's self-titled effort. Things do start to go a little awry on Dressy Bessy, the songs aren't as immediate, the sense of abandoned joy is also on the wane. The songs are too densely constructed for simple pop songs and although it's still a real treat to listen to, this time around when it's over virtually nothing has stuck in your head. The killer hooks have been tempered and you get the feeling that possibly ambition has got the better of Ealom's songwriting. It's still great fun, but there's a strange sense of strain in the records which is a sense. The general feeling is that the two albums that followed are really bad and I can sort of imagine and don't want to find out.
Kris Drever is a key figure in the most recent renaissance of traditionally founded folk music, alongside the likes of John McCusker and Kate Rusby. All of them have found a way of making traditional folk sound wholly modern without taking the Cara Dillon approach of turning it into (albeit very respectful and very good) pop-folk. Drever is probably the least modern of the lot, but his records are absolutely without any trace of historical folky corniness (Bellowhead do the folky corniness for everyone else). Mark the Hard Earth (2009) is a really wonderful record, a cool album, but one that is really lovely to listen to, deeply grounded in folk traditions but rendering them into something very personal and emotionally true. There are some great songs, both traditional and original and the interpretations of the traditional tunes are extremely clever. One thing that is interesting about Drever's two albums is that he never shows off what a truly exceptional guitarist he is. We went with my parents to see him perform and both my dad and myself left feeling really glum that we would never be able to play like him no matter how hard we tried. To explain just how well this album works within its genre I'll just say that Zoe hates the English folk tradition with a burning passion and will only just grudgingly accept Sandy Denny and Kate Rusby, but she loves, absolutely loves, the Kris Drever albums.
In 2008 Drever teamed up with contemporary John McCusker and, more unexpectedly, Roddy Woomble from indie-rock also-rans Idlewild. I never got Idlewild, although I know some people who adored them, and it's a surprise to see Woomble reappear as part of a folk act, but it works in a strange sort of way. Before the Ruin (2008) is very different to a traditional folk album, in many ways it's more of a low-key rock album, but McCusker's superb fiddle work and the obligatory accordion mark it as an album of its genre while not really belonging to it. It's all pretty smart and the songs are likewise clever and unexpected, twisting around and shifting without announcement. It's a strange record and it's a difficult one to really get to grips with, but if you don't try to work it out, it's weirdly affecting and surprisingly delicate.
Another one from the endless stream of records from members of the Broken Social Scene, this time Kevin Drew's Spirit If... (2007). Closer in sound and spirit to the early BSS albums than Brendan Canning or Jason Collett's records, Spirit If... is full of the huge, bustling, anthemic indie-rock that we all know and (sometimes) love. It's a slightly more mixed bag, scrappy and occasionally losing concentration, but it's still a big, untameable record, bursting with ideas, good, bad and indifferent. It's that abject disinterest in quality control that's both frustrating and endearing about a lot of the BSS crowd's records and it's demonstrated at its best and worst on Spirit If... There's too much of it for a start, going on for over an hour, and the confused character of the album means that it's hard to keep focussed on it throughout, but when it's good it's excitingly good, overflowing with exuberant enthusiasm and life and wholeheartedly celebratory in its denial of limitation.
The first Drifters album, Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters (1956) was something of an anomoly in that Clyde McPhatter had left the group over a year before the album was released. It's basically all of their single tracks compiled and that goes some way to explaining the superb nature of the album. This is pretty much all gold, template-setting post-doo-wop pop music created for swooning teens, and there's not a dud in amongst this supremely smooth dance music. It's the foundation of R&B as it would become, and it's fantastic stuff. It's strange to listen now with such turbulent times distancing us from the record, knowing that this is absolutely game-changing music, because, of course, it sounds so dreadfully quaint now. But I suppose that's the point, just as Elvis sounds unthreatening, just as so too do the Sex Pistols, time neuters pretty much all culture, but pop music has been particularly susceptible. Anyway, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters may have a ghastly, cloying version of 'White Christmas', but that aside, it's fabulous. And incidentally, it's got probably the best cover of any contemporary music album outside the jazz world to that date.
More of the same for 1958's Rockin' & Driftin', but slightly less so. There's a disjointed feel to Rockin' & Driftin' that is the direct result of its construction. Like Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, this album was compiled of a series of singles released over the preceding two years, during which the group struggled to find a vocal identity following McPhatter's departure. Hence there are different people singing these songs and it gives the album an uncertain feel. The songs aren't as directly strong either, and you wouldn't necessarily peg the Drifters of Rockin' & Driftin' as the same ground-breaking outfit. Nonetheless there are still some fantastic pre-rock n roll songs here ('I Got to Get Myself a Woman', 'Fools Fall in Love' and the heartbreaker ballad that people simply haven't got the skill to write anymore, 'I Know') and it certainly stands up as a grand example of its time.
Finally for today, 1962's Save the Last Dance for Me. By the time the album was released Ben E. King had joined, sung with and left the group over a year before, and it's a compilation of single tracks. Typical arrangement for the band it seems. Anyway, King's contributions are relatively few and it's Rudy Lewis who takes the lead for the most part. Save the Last Dance for Me is a smoother, string-laden affair than anything that preceded it, and saw the Drifters start to participate more fully in the straight pop genre, leaving the doo-wop pretty much behind. This is slick stuff and extremely well put-together, but it lacks the rough edge that had distinguished the band. As ever, there are some fine songs here, but you can almost hear the sound of rustling jackets as the synchronised dancing kicks in.
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