ALBUM REVIEWS
Way back when, Dylan and the Beatles demonstrated how musicians could evolve dramatically, overhauling their sound on record once or even twice a year. They were hardly alone, but few others shape-shifted during than era like Tim Buckley. By 1968, the L.A.-via-Orange-Country troubadour was moving beyond the keening-balladeer mode of his early work — a mere two years before — and gravitating toward jazz and improvisational music. That exhilarating shift, a key period in his career, is documented in this newly unearthed live tape, recorded that year at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco by the late sonic wizard (and acid impresario) Owsley “Bear” Stanley.
The sense that Buckley was already outgrowing any sort of new-Dylan expectations on him arrives pretty much right away. The album opens with “Buzzin’ Fly,” that musical snuggle blanket that captures the rush of new love, the joy of discovery. Other than stretching out a few words to extra syllables, Buckley sings it much as he would on Happy Sad, which wouldn’t be out for almost another year.
But by the second song, “I Don’t Need It to Rain,” he’s starting to leave conventions behind – and not just in its lyrics, the oblique and borderline kinky tale of an “undercover tinsel queen.” His musicians – bassist John Miller, vibes player David Friedman and percussionist Carter “C.C.” Collins – lock into a folky-improv groove behind him, and Buckley starts flying. Over the course of nine minutes, his voice is howling, moaning, swallowing syllables, and emitting muted yodels, and he’s slamming chords on his 12-string.
The most hypnotic parts of Merry-Go-Round at the Carousel pick up where that command performance leaves off. Buckley drops his voice up and down several octaves on a version of the folk standard “Green Rocky Road,” and he becomes a fervent folk preacher on the newly discovered “Blues, Love.” It’s telling that he dispatches accessible songs like “Happy Time” and “Sing a Song for You” in a few minutes’ time, but then dives headfirst into “Merry-Go-Round” by his hero, Fred Neil. There, Buckley begins with Neil’s words, sung in the voice of a black child in the South — wandering a circus and looking for his own playground there – before shifting to a few verses of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines.” Buckley then pivots to his own ad-libbed lines about women and race, finally wrapping up the song (with some of his own, Miles Davis-inspired “Strange Feelin'”) 11 minutes later. Here and elsewhere, Miller’s upright bass serves as both Buckley’s musical backbone and its partner in improv. As with Phil Lesh in the Grateful Dead, Miller is as much lead guitarist as bass player, and he and Friedman lend a smokey-jazz-club feel to the songs.
Buckley’s devotion to pushing his voice and his art would soon lead to albums like Starsailor, a collection of musical zigzags that, over 50 years later, remains one of the most daunting albums ever made. That journey starts on recordings like these. For any other “folksinger” – a term barely suitable for describing Buckley – it would be anathema to stop a song midway through so that your conga player could take a long, unaccompanied solo. For Buckley, it was just another day at the ballroom.
Way back when, Dylan and the Beatles demonstrated how musicians could evolve dramatically, overhauling their sound on record once or even twice a year. They were hardly alone, but few others shape-shifted during than era like Tim Buckley. By 1968, the L.A.-via-Orange-Country troubadour was moving beyond the keening-balladeer mode of his early work — a mere two years before — and gravitating toward jazz and improvisational music. That exhilarating shift, a key period in his career, is documented in this newly unearthed live tape, recorded that year at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco by the late sonic wizard (and acid impresario) Owsley “Bear” Stanley.
The sense that Buckley was already outgrowing any sort of new-Dylan expectations on him arrives pretty much right away. The album opens with “Buzzin’ Fly,” that musical snuggle blanket that captures the rush of new love, the joy of discovery. Other than stretching out a few words to extra syllables, Buckley sings it much as he would on Happy Sad, which wouldn’t be out for almost another year.
ALBUM REVIEWS
Victoria Canal’s debut album feels deeply. ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ sits with the emotions you stumble upon in your mid-20s, as the Spanish-American, London-based artist told NME in her Cover interview. Whether it’s realising “I’m never gonna have everything figured out”, or the so-called “quarter-life crisis”, Canal’s impressive (and Ivor Novello Award-winning) songwriting looks to her past to reflect on the realities of life: the idea that multiple things can be true at once.
Take the sweet, sharp indie-pop of ‘June Baby’, co-written with The 1975’s Ross MacDonald. Depicting the dizzy rollercoaster of summer romance, Canal candidly draws upon contrary emotions, reflecting on heart-racing early interactions (“Trying my best to/Savour your compliments”) and blurry confusion (“You saw me naked/Totally freaking out”). The brutally self-aware ‘Talk’, meanwhile, reflects on the fizzing honeymoon phase of early relationships when you ignore the red flags you feel in your gut (“Hold your gaze/Hoping that it doesn’t break”). It’s set over soft-rock instrumentals that recall alt-pop heroes like Beabadoobee or Clairo.
On early EPs, 2022’s ‘Elegy’ and 2023’s ‘WELL WELL’, Canal spun stories over lilting piano and stripped-back instrumentals. Sonically, ‘Slowly, It Dawns’ builds upon this existing world: the sweltering ‘Cake’, which depicts late-night debauchery (“Fuck the cake!/Let’s go straight to the vodka”) is filled with sticky basslines and woozy layered vocals, its second verse dusted in UKG beats. ‘California Sober’ is a sultry cut built around salsa rhythms and pulsing synths, while ‘15%’ could have been pulled straight from a noughties romcom with its swooning production, its harmonious melodies and instrumental arrangement evoking KT Tunstall.
There are moments of subdued beauty throughout. The record finishes with the one-two punch of ‘Black Swan’ and its sibling track ‘Swan Song’. The two tracks showcase the power in Canal’s songwriting; the former won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically last year, while the latter is a powerful musing on the fragility of life and forgiveness.
‘Swan Song’ concludes with the poignant question: “Who knows how long we’ve got?/As long as I am breathing, I know it’s not too late to love.” It’s both full of grief and hope, the two knotty emotions filling each other’s gaps in a moving exploration of loss. This duality is a powerful tool in ‘Slowly, It Dawns’: it’s compelling and moving songwriting that manages to depict all of life’s complexities, Canal spinning raw emotion into beautifully crafted songs.
