These Days

Paul Carrack

The best soul songs, blue-eyed and otherwise, use clichés as points of departure. This time ’round, Carrack is using them as ends in themselves. How long wasn’t Rome built in? What kind of weather friends let you down? Where do you put a smile? Only on “Life in a Bubble,” which identifies the accumulation of “First World problems” and a “weary conscience” as root causes of anomie, do the words dig deep enough to make the TLC of the singing and the playing seem worth the trouble.

Paul Simon has named his new album, In the Blue Light (Legacy), after a line from “How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns,” a song from the soundtrack to the dreadful One-Trick Pony, which he wrote and starred in 38 years ago. That the song itself (its title’s dodgy grammar notwithstanding) is not dreadful makes Simon’s decision to re-record it for inclusion on In the Blue Light a welcome one.

Japanese Guitar Music, Vol. 4

Schin-ichi Fukuda & Shigenori Kudo

In the days following her death on Aug. 16 from pancreatic cancer, Aretha Franklin was alternately eulogized as the “Queen of Soul” and upbraided as a self-absorbed diva. (Her funeral occurs today in Detroit.) 

The praise vastly outweighed the excoriation and focused on her indomitable voice, her string of iconic late-’60s hits, and her longevity. (Her final album of original material, Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics, came out in 2014, 58 years after the recording of her first, Songs of Faith.)  

Since the appearance of the last issue’s review addressing new recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, at least two more have been released. And the one by the harpsichordist Wolfgang Rübsam (Naxos Classics) surpasses even those by Diego Ares and Yoshiko Ieki (see “There-and-back-again journeys,” Sept. 1).

Arthur Buck

Arthur Buck

The Arthur is Joseph, the seldom boring singer-songwriter-visual-artist. The Buck is Peter, the guitarist without whom R.E.M. might never have taken the underground overground. And if this collaboration isn’t the strongest musical statement that either has ever made, neither is it anywhere close to their weakest. As the programmed drums seem to emerge from the acoustic-electric-guitar mesh, the lyrics seem to emerge from the hooks. They also resonate on more than one level even when they’re calling for another American revolution.

Gene Clark Sings for You

Gene Clark

The first eight songs come from 1967 demos that the talented but self-sabotaging ex-Byrd circulated in hopes of landing a solo record deal. The last six come from demos that he gave to the one-hit-wonder folk-rock group the Rose Garden. “Down on the Pier” is to Dylan’s “4th Time Around” what “4th Time Around” is to the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman could do a lot worse than to record valedictory versions of all 14. They should start with “Doctor Doctor.”