It's not often we get an opportunity to talk about 'new' music here at I Like Your Old Stuff, but we embrace it with open ears and expectation, especially when it's coming from bands and artists we've been following for decades.
Here are five albums released in 2017 that we believe are exceptional examples of iconic artists that STILL manage to surprise us with exemplary songcraft. We're not alone, so we have collated some of the best quotes and reviews about these albums from some of our favourite publications that champion great music.
Robert Plant - Carry Fire
The familiar-sounding Carry Fire journeys across the globe in search of those sounds. Once again, he surveys everything from American Appalachian music to Eastern rhythms and textures to populate his songs.
He also makes room for more traditional rock 'n' roll too, pushing against chugging electric guitars and rolling drums on "New World .. " and cooing declarations of love on the acoustic "Season's Song," which wouldn't be out of place on Zeppelin's unplugged third album.
The best songs here contain a little of both worlds: the forward-charging "The May Queen," the stabbing guitars of "Bones of Saints" and the yearning "Bluebirds Over the Mountain," which includes a vocal assist from Chrissie Hynde.
Carry Fire takes the same musical foundations Zeppelin leaned on all those years ago, mainly blues and the Eastern flavors heard on "Kashmir," and positions them into more natural and seasoned settings. Plant, in turn, sounds right at home.
Lindsey Buckingham + Christine McVie - Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie
These two Fleetwood Mac legends have their own kinky chemistry. When McVie jumped back in the game for the Mac's last tour, the songbird regained her hunger to write. And Buckingham remains one of the all-time great rock & roll crackpots, from his obsessively precise guitar to his seething vocals. They bring out something impressively nasty in each other, trading off songs in the mode of 1982's Mirage – California sunshine on the surface, but with a heart of darkness.
Neil Young - Hitchhiker
The session was lost to time, but the songs were not. They were re-recorded and spread across several decades of Neil Young albums, from Comes a Time and Rust Never Sleeps to Hawks & Doves and Le Noise. Presented together for the first time on this new archival release, they play more like a cohesive set of demos than a missing chapter in his story, but that doesn’t make it any less affecting. Hitchhiker, produced by longtime collaborator David Briggs with no overdubs or noticeable effects added, is an intimate snapshot of Neil Young’s creative process, captured at a time when he was crafting music strong enough to last his whole career.
Randy Newman - Dark Matter
Randy Newman decided to omit the song he wrote about Donald Trump’s penis from Dark Matter (drolly explaining “the subject is too sore to get into”), but otherwise the veteran American songwriter-satirist is still putting the boot in where it hurts. Putin (“He can drive his giant tank across a Trans-Siberian plain / He can power a nuclear reactor with the left side of his brain”) is drily rendered as Russian orchestral folk. Eight-minute opener The Great Debate comically pits science against gospel-singing creationists and climate change deniers. And so wonderfully on. The music has some of the symphonic hallmarks of his soundtracks to films such as Toy Story, and careers from trademark piano to opera.
He remains the master of creating ribald, flawed characters, but also the powerful, poignant weepie. Lost With You’s riff on ageing and Wandering Boy’s tale of an anguished father pining for a missing son ensure that there isn’t a dry eye in the house.
Steve Earle & The Dukes - So You Wannabe An Outlaw
Even when Steve Earle dips his toe into bluegrass or indulges a few modern production flourishes, his songwriting always hews close to the sound and spirit of the outlaw country pioneered by Willie and Waylon: tough, straight-talking, occasionally sentimental, adjacent to the rebel spirit of rock n’ roll. Still, So You Wannabe an Outlaw is Earle’s most explicit venture into the idiom since his 1986 debut, Guitar Town. Unsurprisingly, it’s also an album that finds him sounding comfortable in his own skin. There’s an appealingly casual vibe to these songs, which sound like they could’ve been banged out in the space of an afternoon, so thoroughly do they stick to Earle’s wheelhouse.
Aretha Franklin - A Brand New Me
The record pairs Franklin's classic vocal takes with new arrangements from the Royal Philharmonic. On "Think," the Orchestra opens with a punchy blast of horns, strings and piano that builds with a touch of unease before segueing seamlessly into a steady groove. The Royal Philharmonic continues to buoy Franklin's vocals with plenty of grandeur, while singer Patti Austin and her crew of backing vocalists give the song a choral charm.
