MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Album reviews with Tony Burke: August 7, 2023
Reviews of Starvation Box, A Raven For A Dove and Shake That Thing - The Blues In Britain 1963 - 1973
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Starvation Box
Dale Watson
(Cleopatra Records)
★★★★
THIS stripped-down set from Dale Watson is named after the description Lead Belly’s father gave to his son’s 12 string guitar — a dire warning that playing it would only bring abject poverty.
Watson said: “Living in Marshall, Texas, where Lead Belly lived, led me to a 1957 Stella 12-string guitar just like Lead Belly had. I knew I had to write the song as an ode to him.”
Among the excellent songs are an opus to Elvis’s mechanic Billy Strawn (an honest man who returned a $100 bill dropped by Elvis, with the result that Strawn became Elvis’s full-time car mechanic), a gospel pew burner Ain’t Nobody Everybody Loved, a country duet with Celine Lee on Two Peas In A Pod and a cover of blues singer Percy Mayfield’s Stranger In My Home Town.
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STEVE JOHNSON salutes the mellifluous tones and clear-minded political message of a uniquely relevant Birmingham-born singer-songwriter