Everything about Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City is big, as if the multiracial British quartet consciously decided to avoid the ubiquitous Gang of Four comparisons that accompanied Silent Alarm, its debut. Instead, U2 becomes the reference point, with guitars that are ringing and crunchy rather than jagged and angular, and politics that are more generalized and less overt.
"I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity" are A Weekend's first words, and the album is full of arena-size anthems that ride on important-sounding proclamations, although most concern the escapist desire for entertainment.
"Lord, give me grace and dancing feet and the power to impress," Kele Okeneke sings to begin "The Prayer," and the song grows from a percussive rumble to a synth-laced climax.
Bloc Party's anthems impress, but A Weekend's relentlessly outsize emotions are a bit one-dimensional - even if that dimension is huge.
To Bill Kirchen, the "hammer of the honky-tonk gods" is a Fender Telecaster, and on the title track of his new album he pays tribute to the classic six-string and many of the greats who wielded it, from Buck to the Boss.
Kirchen, of course, has long been a master of the Telecaster himself, and he shows it on such terrific, twang-fueled romps as "Hammer" and "Get a Little Goner." There's also a nicely swinging acoustic tune and an adept R B reworking of "Devil With the Blue Dress." But like Nick Lowe, whom he once accompanied and who returns the favor here, Kirchen has also taken to country-soul.
So, often as not, the tempo slows and the twang gives way to Geraint Watkins' organ and piano on such elegantly open-hearted turns as "Soul Cruisin'" and "Truth Be Told."
Bill Kirchen will perform at 8 p.m.
Friday at the Sellersville Theater. Tickets: $17.50.
It took him four decades, but John Hammond has finally gained the confidence to include his own songs among his masterful interpretations of legendary bluesmen and other American music giants. After putting one original on 2003's Ready for Love and two on 2005's In Your Arms Again, he ups the ante to five on Push Comes to Shove.
That doesn't mean this is the best of the three - that honor still goes to Ready for Love, perhaps his career peak.
But it's testimony to how well Hammond has absorbed his influences that his five numbers here stand up well against songs by Junior Wells, Little Walter, Tom Waits and Dion. Philly's G. Love produced the album, but aside from a brief semi-rap on "I'm Tore Down" (he also wrote one song), the youngster doesn't mess with Hammond's gutbucket stew, which is well-seasoned with his gravelly, smoke-cured voice.
South Philly guitarist Pat Martino was just 22 when he etched this classic 1967 session, reissued this month. Martino's work stands out for the purity of his attack and the way he can reach the fiercest states of hard bop with relative calm.
Martino had worked for many great jazz organists up to this point, from Brother Jack McDuff to Richard "Groove" Holmes.
But his foil here is no hombre at all, but the ebullient, Philly-based organist Trudy Pitts, who keeps this session in percolating form. A cadre of like-minded folk contributes to this hard-driving set of five originals and two standards, including flutist Danny Turner, drummer Mitch Fine, and percussionists Abdu Johnson and Vance Anderson.
A treat is the previously unreleased "Song for My Mother," the set's capper, which is an achingly slow ballad of great depth.
Martino suffered a brain aneurysm in 1980 that erased his ability to play. He relearned by playing his old records, and now at 62, remains a major jazz figure whose most recent Blue Note release lionizes Wes Montgomery. This El Hombre set could certainly have sparked some good memories.
- Karl Stark
This collection from tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart feels like an old Blue Note session from the hard-bop era. The emphasis is on blowing, and Stewart, 35, a Toronto native with a long pedigree of gigs, provides an invigorating whirlwind on the title track. He also knows his way around a ballad, giving a slight goose in tempo to the usual reading of "Theme for Ernie.
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A regular on Tuesday nights at Smalls in New York, Stewart projects a big and satisfying tone that is Sonny Rollins-esque. The session is a bit predictable in its jazz orthodoxy, but Stewart and crew - pianist Tardo Hammer, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Joe Farnsworth - make it high- energy. It's hard to dislike Stewart's stout embrace of "Autumn in New York" or the big buzz he gets out of "If Ever I Would Leave You.
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Stewart and Eric Alexander join the John Swana Quartet at Chris' Jazz Cafe on Friday at 8 10 pm. Admission: $15
Works by Tallis, Byrd
Compline? Is that some newly unearthed composer from the English Renaissance?
Or maybe one of Henry VIII's wives? In fact, Compline is a night prayer service that thrived in Catholic 16th-century England before reforms dictated that Evensong offered enough night music.
This disc is a Compline service consisting of plainchant, motets and hymns by John Sheppard, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and others.
The surprise is how rich and substantial the music is, even in its most spare, functional moments. Much of that quality is due to the performers, a 13-voice group making its recording debut with this disc: This is superb singing that's also blessed - I mean that literally - with profound delicacy and reverence. You sense the group is singing for its own spiritual good, with a combination of relaxed, introspective tempos and inner conviction - but with vastly superior pipes to the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos of Chant fame.
The spatial eloquence of the disc's SACD sound quality couldn't be more appropriate.
Violin Concertos No. 1 and 2
Sergey Khachatryan, violin.
Orchestre National de France, Kurt Masur conducting
Though violinist Sergey Khachatryan looks like Josh Groban in serious need of antidepressants, he's one of the most electrifying and strong-minded musicians of his generation when on the concert platform, and has finally translated a good deal of that quality to compact disc.
Though the market is crowded with recordings of the first Shostakovich concerto, this one more than justifies itself because of Khachatryan's tonal luster and the burning intensity he brings to the music's most spare and introspective moments.
Conductor Kurt Masur's clean, clear textures and untarrying tempos are a major factor in the recording's success.
Also, for those of us who have puzzled over the less-often-heard second violin concerto, there could hardly be a better place to keep puzzling.
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