Just perfect.

Update. Did a Flatlanders themed 8tracks. Them together, solo and Terry Allen's "Gimme a Ride to Heaven" which they do as an encore sometimes. Bunch of other mixes there since last I mentioned it here too.

Another truly troubled troubadour
Writing songs to even up the score
A tune for every single body blow
And I sing them at the sideshow

Mary Gauthier has a new record out which I bought a few weeks ago but hadn't listened to by the time I saw her two nights ago. (My god, trying to watch all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the space of a month has been a ginormous time-suck.) The Foundling is a "song cycle" about her own experiences of being adopted, finding her birth mother at 45. I won't detail the narrative here but you can read all about it in her artist's notes (link is to a word doc). So it's an album more personal than most and also meant to be appreciated as a whole, at least at first, so when I realised the night of the concert was creeping up I decided rather than try to cram in a listening to the CD, I'd wait for the show. Thanks to Cat Politics' review I knew she was doing The Foundling in its entirety in order from beginning to end so I decided to let it hit me everything fresh and new on the night. The set list Anne has provided is essentially the same as the Newtown show. Check out the great photos there too and thelonger version at Nu Country (I know we finish with the same riff about the Hatch Show Print but I thought of mine separately, honest.)

The Foundling was bookended by some of her older songs; "Between The Daylight and the Dark" and from the album of that name "The Last of the Hobo Kings" about Don Draper Steam Train Maury - complete with a very funny spoken word introduction. "I, Drink" put in an appearance of course, which I would have loved hearing anyway but I extra loved her delivery on it. On the album (and other live versions I've heard) it's of course a melancholy number where the total unreliability of the narrator is obvious, this version was delivered with a sincerity and passion which made you think, hey she really is happy. A quite compelling direction to take the song, chilling perhaps but beautiful. This and the intro to "The Last of the Hobo Kings" were also a good in setting the stage for the extra theatricality of the The Foundling songs.

The first thing to say is to allay your understandable fears that such an emotionally weighted autobiographical project will result in songs that can't stand by their own and sacrifice musicality and craft for ripped-from-the headlines literalness. The sound is similar to her last couple of albums on Lost Highway, mixing acoustic songs with some with more dense instrumentation, gently crunching guitars mirroring the emotional crescendos. There is good variety in the songs musically and their emotional pitch. I'll single out for its melody and meaning, "Sideshow", an ironic ode to the singer-songwriter life. The heart of the project I reckon, both emotionally and being sequenced in the middle of the story, is "March 11 1962" a spoken word reconstruction of phoning her birth mother for the first time. I won't "give away" the result but it is in the artist's notes linked above. Suffice to say, wow. And: sniff.

So a really special and genuinely moving show, and a whole new album of favourite songs. I really loved also the stage persona Mary showed us here, released perhaps by the one woman show (although I don't mean to ignore Ed Romanoff who weas a great sideman on guitar) nature of the project. She is an accomplished songwriter and uber-cool presence in her glasses and velvet jackets, but you knew that. She's also very funny with great comic timing and great sense of an audience, I enjoyed finding that out.

I have all her CDs so I bought and got signed a gig poster designed by Hatch Show Print, out of Nashville makers of posters for decades. You'll recognise the style even if you don't know the name. Mary added that they used to make posters for Elvis and Johnny Cash but "the state of country music being what it is is" they now make them for her. She has no reason to be embarrassed by the comparison.

If you have an iPhone and are a music lover you could do a lot worse than drop $2.49 on the TuneIn Radio app, which streams radio stations from ... well, just about everywhere. I've only had it a couple of days and haven't explored beyond the USA but I've heard great things about the African, Caribbean, South American stations you can get. Was just tuning into some bluegrass show on the legendary WSM Nashville and then surfed to Cajun Radio 1290 out of Lafayette. Been very impressed with its reliability on 3G, trundling on the bus down George St didn't even upset it. I'm told the bandwidth usage is very reasonable too, so all in all four hoofs and a tail up for TuneIn Radio.

Marianne Faithfull at the Opera House the other night was a very satisfying affair in front of an engaged and appreciative audience. She went through most of Easy Come, Easy Go plus the old stand-bys "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", "Broken English", "As Tears Go By" and "Why'd You Do It."

The band mostly stayed out of the way and were good without being dazzling; they were a little heavy handed at times but I was in a box on the side so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that that was a function of the always loose acoustics in that room. There was a low musical point (for me) during "Sing Me Back Home" featuring a musical saw. We can finally answer the question, most robustly in the negative, whether a musical saw is any replacement for a pedal or lap steel. It's a party piece, comrades, not a musical instrument.

There's a fragment of "Broken English" here, questionable phone recording quality but evidence the old trooper is still in fine, passionate voice.

So Rogue's Gallery - Hal Wilner's star-studded sea shanties thing - at the Sydney festival is getting bagged from all quarters (lots of unhappy commenters there) which I can't say surprises me. The whole event had "underwhelming" written all over it from the start.

I did mildly enjoy the Leonard Cohen tribute a few years back, a Wilner and friends love-in along the same lines, but the concept does lend itself to self-indulgence and complacency. I thought this event offered all the pitfalls of Came So Far for Beauty (acts not learning the songs, lack of rehearsal etc) but with the added variables of uncertainty about outside acoustics, the weather and ambient noise of one of the country's busiest commuter and tourist hubs. The Opera House forecourt should be left to Australian Idol finales and triathlon finishing lines.

Despite Marianne Faithfull being singled out for a shellacking I'm still very excited about her solo show, it's hard to judge whether I would've felt so hostile to her performance. i don't really mind divas getting drunk and slurring out of tune, really, in fact I quite like it. I'll be sure to let you know Wednesday night.

As any Australian music fan (our kind of music, anyhoo) knows late March and April is always a busy time as we enjoy the spillover of acts brought out for Byron Bay. Sometimes you have to make the choice of two rarely seen (on our shores) highly regarded acts whose only local shows clash with each other.

Not Byron-related but kicking off the season in style is Marianne Faithfull only the week after next. Playing the Concert Hall at the Opera House -- ugh, I have a prejudice against it for popular music -- and I only have a seat at the back of one of the mezzanine boxes but still I can't wait.

"Solitude"

Then, Dan Sultan at the Factory on February 27th -- for a measly $20. For realsm his recent album of late 2009 -- Get Out While You Can -- is a gem of soul, rock and country. For twenty bucks you can't afford not to go.

The above dodgy but illustrative video of Dan was taken by me at the Blue Mountains Music Fest the year before last and that will be my next port of call, in March. As well as seeing two of the Bluesfest drawcards for me Chris Smither and Nanci Griffith, the rest of the line-up is superb. My posts from my previous visit. I'm sure there will be a number of new discoveries but I'm also looking forward to revisiting with the boys from Genticorum, who do fabulous traditional Quebec music.

As for the rest of the Byron folk, well The Flatlanders top the list but they haven't announced any sideshows yet. I'll be there when they do (they have to, right?) I've lined up to see Dr John and the Lower 911 at the Basement; seen him a few times before (but not for yonks) and I might have wavered but the opportunity for a show at a joint that size (real small) cannot be passed up. And ... that might be me tapped out for another year ...

Hat tip Tim. I read about Crazy Heart ages ago but never followed it up, now we have a soundtrack and a trailer. 

Cool. Robert Duvall is mandatory for such a fillum. Sorta glad its fiction though, don't think this old world could cope with "a combination of Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard." Talk about never getting out of this world alive.

Was dubious about Colin Farrell's tracks but he's not half bad -- none of the above but pretty passable for the job.

If I Needed You is IMHO in TVZ's bottom half of songs buts its the most covered go figure.

I beg to differ with the writers of the "Goofs" section of IMDB for it though:

Revealing mistakes: When Tommy and Bad walk out of a restaurant supposedly in Phoenix, cars are shown with Arizona licence plates on their front bumpers. Arizona does not provide licence plates for front bumpers.

Perhaps they don't provide them nor make them mandatory (FREEDOM, Y'ALL!), but my sister lives in Arizona and she has New South Wales plates on the front of her rig -- goof writers need to use more imagination as to how such a car park might exist!

Best Dylan Album -- Equal winners: Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart (I'm with Tom Russell on this gem)

Best Non-Dylan Albums:
I think if you looked at my most played album released in 2009 it would be Leonard Cohen: Live in London but I'm gonna exclude live recordings, reissues and compilations from this ...

1. Easy Come Easy Go - Marianne Faithfull. I got this back in January and here it still is, top of the list.
2. Blood and Candle Smoke - Tom Russell. Typically full-bore TR effort of weaving biography and myth, now with mariachi horns
3. The Bright Mississippi - Allen Toussaint. Refreshing, transfixing, dreamy masterclass
4. Midnight at the Movies - Justin Townes Earle. No sophomore nerves here, proving the first album was not a fluke.
5. Hills and Valleys - The Flatlanders. Slipped a little in list over time but still an album of a grade Americana song to song
6. Traditions in Transition - Quantic and his Combo Barbaro. Genre tinkering with respect and passion, Latin on the wild side
7. One to the Head, One to the Heart - Gretchen Peters. What I said at the time
8. A Friend of a Friend - David Rawlings Machine. Should be higher really, but couldn't drop anything.
9. Mountain Soul II - Patty Loveless. Infectious bluegrassy country, highly polished but full of affection
10. Get Out While You Can - Dan Sultan. Well now, I only got this yesterday so given a few more days it could have really shot up the charts. Brilliant collection of soul, country and blues and heaps more soul. Dan is a star, no doubt.
11. Potato Hole - Booker T From the show in April
12. What Have You Done My Brother? - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens. Preach it, sister
13. Dirt Town City Limits - Mat d and the Profane Saints. See Jim's great review.
14 Today, Tomorrow and Forever - Pete Molinari feat. The Jordanaires. Only an EP, but a perfectly formed one.
15. For the Mission Baby -- Malcolm Holcombe.
16. Ready for the Flood - Gary Louris and Mark Olsen. Was rather "meh" on it for eight of the last nine months but sort of started to grow on me ....
17. Animals in the Dark - William Elliott Whitmore. Should be higher also, what can you do? Lists are stupid. Hat tip Phineas, some very cathartic tracks on here believe me.
18. Cotton - Sam Baker. Also needs more time but exceptional story songs and that kind of creaky Texas voice I love.
19. Lucky One - Raul Malo A little bit country, a little bit croony, very pleasant listening.
20. The Soul of Black John - John Black