Noni Hazlehurst’s Rare TV Appearance Promotes New Project
Australian actress Noni Hazlehurst cut a very different figure when she made a rare TV appearance this week. Noni, 71, is perhaps best known…
BON IVER: Sable, Fable (Jagjaguwar)
Verdict: Lavish
Justin Vernon has spent the past 18 years balancing cult success with spectacular forays into the pop mainstream.
Fronting indie-folk band Bon Iver, he made his 2007 debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, in a remote log cabin in the snowy Wisconsin woods.
His last two LPs – 22, A Million (2016) and i,i (2019) – were characterised by complex musical arrangements and quirky grammatical ticks.
On the other side of the coin, the 43-year-old American has duetted and co-written with superstars Taylor Swift (on Folklore album track Exile) and Charli XCX (on a new version of I Think About It All The Time, from last year’s Brat).
He has a big fan in Adele, who once described his music as ‘the soundtrack to my heart’, and has appeared with Kanye West at Glastonbury and Coachella.
New release Sable, Fable should please fans of his more arty leanings – but it will also delight those who prefer his direct, poppier side.
His first album in six years, it’s split into two sections, beginning with three songs inspired by heartbreak and solitude (the Sable bit) before the mood brightens on nine more optimistic tracks about a burgeoning love affair (Fable).
The Sable tracks, out separately last year as an EP, focus on folky introspection. ‘I would like the feeling gone, ’cause I don’t like the way it’s looking,’ he laments on Things Behind Things Behind Things, while Speyside has a bluegrass feel.
Justin Vernon has spent the past 18 years balancing cult success with spectacular forays into the pop mainstream
Fronting indie-folk band Bon Iver, he made his 2007 debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, in a remote log cabin in the snowy Wisconsin woods.
Country singer Carter Faith adds backing vocals on Awards Season, a ballad that name-checks singer Rickie Lee Jones.
There’s a lusher, more radiant spirit to the Fable part. ‘Damn, if I’m not climbing up a tree right now,’ sings Vernon, in a tender falsetto, on the country-soul number Everything Is Peaceful Love, a portrait of sun-kissed happiness with the feel of a 1980s radio hit and a flowing chorus enhanced by two pedal steel players, Greg Leisz and Ben Lester.
There are flashes of strangeness, such as the stop-start rhythms and distorted vocals of Walk Home. But Sable, Fable is otherwise a lavish song-suite, one punctuated by vocal contributions from R&B singer Dijon, guitarist Jenn Wasner and jazz man Jacob Collier.
Bringing things full circle, there are also two cameos from Haim’s Danielle Haim… who recorded her parts while snowed in with Vernon in a wintry Wisconsin.
DAVE STEWART: Dave Does Dylan (Surfdog)
Out on vinyl for tomorrow’s Record Store Day, and on streaming services from July 18, the Eurythmics co-founder’s 14-song homage to Dylan is a loyal fan’s labour of love rather than a serious tilt at the charts
Out on vinyl for tomorrow’s Record Store Day, and on streaming services from July 18, the Eurythmics co-founder’s 14-song homage to Dylan is a loyal fan’s labour of love rather than a serious tilt at the charts.
Backing himself on guitar, and singing in a voice almost as gruff as Dylan’s, he sticks to Bob’s original arrangements on favourites such as Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and Make You Feel My Love plus deeper cuts, including Spanish Harlem Incident and Emotionally Yours.
VALERIE JUNE: Owls, Omens, And Oracles (Concord)
The American singer adds an old-school rock ’n’ roll edge to her ‘organic moonshine roots music’ on her first batch of new songs since 2021’s The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
The American singer adds an old-school rock ’n’ roll edge to her ‘organic moonshine roots music’ on her first batch of new songs since 2021’s The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers.
Working with Zooey Deschanel’s musical sidekick M. Ward, and singing with a Dolly Parton-like Tennessee twang, she explores doo-wop on All I Really Wanna Do
and brassy blues on Love Me Any Ole Way. Norah Jones joins her on the folky Sweet Things Just For You.
THE WATERBOYS: Life, Death And Dennis Hopper (Sun)
Best known for 1985’s The Whole Of The Moon, The Waterboys are helped out by an array of heavyweight guests for this ambitious – if sprawling – tribute to the Hollywood hell-raiser
Best known for 1985’s The Whole Of The Moon, The Waterboys are helped out by an array of heavyweight guests for this ambitious – if sprawling – tribute to the Hollywood hell-raiser.
Steve Earle sings of Dennis Hopper’s early years in Kansas, and there are nods to the actor’s roles in Rebel Without A Cause and Easy Rider on a record that skips between rock and soul.
The best of the cameos come from Bruce Springsteen, on Ten Years Gone, and Fiona Apple, on Letter From An Unknown Girlfriend.
Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead (Republic)
Verdict: Stylish revamp
Ariana Grande never seemed particularly happy with her seventh album, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine.
Its original release was overshadowed by the approach of Wicked, the Hollywood blockbuster in which she starred (and earned herself an Oscar nomination) alongside Cynthia Erivo.
She didn’t promote the album by touring, and has since tweaked it with one ‘slightly deluxe’ edition and another with alternative takes.
Now she’s revisiting it for a third time, adding six sparkling new tracks and amending the album title to include the phrase Brighter Days Ahead.
Ariana Grande never seemed particularly happy with her seventh album, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine
She didn’t promote the album by touring, and has since tweaked it with one ‘slightly deluxe’ edition and another with alternative takes
Despite one memorable ballad in Imperfect For You and two dance bangers in Yes, And? and We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love), the original LP was patchy.
Written in the aftermath of Grande’s divorce from real estate agent Dalton Gomez and a new relationship with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, it never took flight like 2018’s Sweetener or 2019’s Thank U, Next.
The six new tracks up the standard dramatically. Co-produced by Max Martin and his fellow Swedish musicians Ilya Salmanzadeh and Oscar Görres, it makes the most of Florida-born Ariana’s soft, multi-octave falsetto while addressing recent romantic upheavals with the benefit of greater hindsight.
‘I’m cool on my own, but it’s warmer in your arms,’ she sings on the shimmering pop number Warm, before engaging in some playful innuendo on the jazzy Dandelion.
She admits to her own flaws, too, wondering whether she was ‘just a nightmare’ on the catchy Twilight Zone, and then vowing to put any lingering turmoil behind her on the string ballad Past Life.
But the most intriguing song — certainly for ‘Arianators’ on this side of the pond — is the closing Hampstead, a love song written around the time that Wicked was being filmed near London.
‘I left my heart in a pub in Hampstead,’ she sings, following Taylor Swift (London Boy, The Black Dog and So Long, London) in reinforcing American pop’s continuing fascination with the English capital.
