MUSIC FOR LIVING: Joshua Bell, Yusuf, Wilco, U2, Murray Perahia, Leonard Cohen

 

 

Joshua Bell
At Home with Friends
Sony Classical
www.sonymasterworks.com

This is the kind of album that drives classical music purists nuts, so you know it must have something going for it. Sure, it’s a “crossover” effort, in that violinist Joshua Bell reaches beyond the classical repertoire into classic pop (“My Funny Valentine”), new acoustic music (“Maybe So” with Edgar Meyer and Sam Bush), the Beatles catalog (“Eleanor Rigby”), Indian music, and contemporary chamber pop in a collaboration with new-folk sensation Regina Spektor. Sure, there’s a bit of showing off on Bell’s part to perform along with Anoushka Shankar on one of her father’s ragas one moment before accompanying Sting on a sixteenth-century love song the next. But the man can sure play fiddle, and what it all comes down to is celebrating the joy of sharing music with friends, something even the purists can’t take away from him, or us.

 

 

Yusuf (Cat Stevens)
Roadsinger
YA Music
www.yusufislam.com

The follow-up to Yusuf/Cat Stevens’s terrific comeback album, An Other Cup, is both a step forward and a step back. Fans of Stevens’s early records such as Mona Bona Jakon and Tea for the Tillerman will appreciate the acoustic textures, lyrical narratives, and homespun verities of “Welcome Home,” “Everytime I Dream,” and “Thinking ’Bout You,” on Roadsinger. There’s not as much revisiting of past material here as there was on An Other Cup, although Yusuf finds his way to recycling the piano hook from his hit song, “Sitting.” But what’s missing here is the sense of humor and personal drama that his cover of the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” provided last time out. Still, it’s good to have the Cat back.

 

 

Murray Perahia
Bach Partitas 1, 5 & 6
Sony Classical
www.sonyclassical.com

This is the second recording by pianist Murray Perahia of Bach partitas, pieces originally written for harpsichord, strongly influenced by French dance music, and intended primarily for pedagogical purposes. (Bach, who in his own time was primarily known as Germany’s leading organist, not for his compositions, likely never performed these works.) Perahia approaches these delicate exercises lovingly, with clean articulation and rhythms bespeaking their origins in the dance—you can veritably see the ballerinas practicing their pliés and jetés to the menuets and gigues. A must-have for lovers of solo piano and the Baroque.

 

 

Wilco
Wilco (the album)
Nonesuch
www.nonesuch.com

Wilco (the album) kicks off with “Wilco (the song),” in which singer-bandleader Jeff Tweedy reassures a depressed listener that no matter how bad things get, Wilco will be there to dry her tears and make her feel better. It’s a clever opening gambit—shades of another eclectic effort by a group that once named an album for a band and opened with a song of the same name. This isn’t to say that Tweedy has set out to make his version of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—notwithstanding the overt George Harrison tribute, “You Never Know.” Rather, this time around, Tweedy has succeeded in finding a middle ground between the textural experiments of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the shimmering, upbeat songcraft of Summerteeth. Tweedy puts it all together on Wilco’s latest album, its strongest claim to a place in the rock pantheon, certainly worthy of the best album award at next year’s Grammy ceremony.

 

 

U2
No Line on the Horizon
Interscope
www.interscope.com

Reunited with longtime producers and co-writers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, U2 hasn’t made an album more unabashed in its embrace of pop hooks and grand, anthem-like ambitions since its landmark Joshua Tree. There are traces of the electro-rock soundscapes of Zooropa, but these are used more as accents and to color arena-ready mid-tempo rockers like “Magnificent,” which could have easily been a track from Joshua Tree save for a few of those modern touches. “Unknown Caller” is redolent with Eno’s ambient music preferences, and “Get On Your Boots” channels Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by way of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up.” If not its most cutting-edge or forward-looking album, U2 has made one of its most entertaining.

 

 

Leonard Cohen
Live in London
Columbia
www.columbiarecords.com

Leonard Cohen continues to influence new generations of singer-songwriters (can you imagine a Rufus Wainwright without there having been a Leonard Cohen?), and on this generous, two-CD live recording from 2008, the seventy-five-year-old singer reminds us why, in case we needed reminding. Cohen is the poet of heartbreak, desperate love, and apocalypse, and his burnished vocals only suit his material the older he gets. Cohen didn’t stint on this tour, engaging the services of a nine-piece band, coloring his arrangements with klezmer-like clarinets and mandolins, harmony vocals, and a cosmopolitan sensibility. What comes across loud and clear, however, through the darkness and acerbity, is Cohen’s humanity, equanimity, and, most important, a sense of humor and humility that hasn’t always been apparent on his studio recordings. [NOV/DEC 2009]