Newly arrived this week on CD: Scraps at Midnight by Mark Lanegan (1998) and To Tulsa and Back (2004) by JJ Cale. I’ve written before about the roundabout way I came to be a Lanegan fan. I’d owned an 3-LP compilation of his music for some years before I started picking up some of his individual albums on CD. Scraps at Midnight joins Bubblegum, Field Songs, I'll Take Care Of You and Imitations on my shelves. It’s predominantly a low-key and reflective record, in part a product of the singer’s then on-going struggle with addiction. ‘Last One in the World’, for instance, is a heartfelt number about his friend Layne Staley, whose own addiction and mental-health problems had at that time brought about a retreat into seclusion. Only the closing number Because of This is more uptempo and, perhaps for that reason, it feels a little out of place.
My history with JJ Cale goes back further. I have a 3-CD compilation of his J.J. Cale – Collected on which a couple of his 21st century tracks struck me as particularly good: ‘Stone River’ and ‘The Problem’. The booklet notes informed me that these had both been taken from To Tulsa and Back, so I made a mental note to check out the rest of that record at some point — a time which has at last arrived. It is a fine album: a “late career highlight” in a nutshell. In some of the lyrics there are signs of an environmental & political awareness that had seemed less in evidence in his ‘70s heyday. The subtle rhythms, elegant guitar work and vivid production work, meanwhile, are as good here as they ever were.
The striking cover of Scraps at Midnight comprises some details from ‘Jazz Funeral For Didi’, a 1994 work in stained glass by the artist Judith Shaechter. I recall admiring Schaechter’s art on her web-site over twenty years ago — alas I have still yet to see any of it in person. Checking back on her site for the first time in decades I’m delighted to see she’s still producing marvellous work.
The only book I finished this week was a pre-loved volume of the Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. This was partly a re-read as a few years back I’d obtained a copy of her 1969 Selected Poems. “For me there’s something reminiscent of a fine jeweller’s sharp-eyed precision in the way she fits her words together into elaborate settings as if they were so many semi-precious stones – all to suitably sparkling effect” is what I wrote on that occasion. I found little more that seemed essential in this Complete set over the earlier Selected one, but I nevertheless enjoyed revisiting Moore’s lapidary verse.
Cheese of the week is Spenwood “a well-developed, nutty flavour with elements of sweet and savoury and a supple texture” (says the website) from the makers of the excellent Wigmore, which is also made with sheep’s milk. To me Spenwood seems to fall somewhere interesting between a mellow Manchego and the less piquant sorts of Pecorino.