The reviews

Bring it on Home
Aaron Neville
Burgundy S     ***

Approach Aaron Neville’s Bring it on Home... the Soul Classics with anything but an open heart and you’ve missed the point.
This is a serious CD, at once mournful, humble, and joyous, with no shortage of moments that recall the terribleness of Hurricane Katrina.
One way of processing it is as a cataloguing of classic songs that helped Neville’s fellow New Orleanians soldier through: opener Rainy Night in Georgia with jazzman Chris Botti wrings beauty from soaking-wet despair, Stand By Me turns its heel on pleading in favour of promise-making, and People Get Ready, with David Sanborn and brother Art, is a chill-sending reminder of how unity and perseverance can trump tragedy.
A tossed-together concept album this is not; a reflection of a soul man gifted with the ability to spin epic, unyielding sorrow into grace is more like it.

Metheny/Mehldau
Pat Metheny, Brad Mehldau
Nonesuch     ***

This is a dream pairing: Pat Metheny, the Baby Boomer guitar god whose musical palette embraces everything from Ornette Coleman to contemporary jazz, teams with pianist Brad Mehldau, the brooding Gen X prince of the piano on the verge of becoming himself. After admiring each other for years, they’re now on the same label, and this dynamic duel extends their mutual admiration into a very personal and simpatico release that recalls the intimacy of that 1960s Jim Hall/Bill Evans masterpiece, Undercurrent.
 Save for Mehldau’s bandmates drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier forming a quartet on the bop-mazed Ring of Life, it’s two for the road on the rest of the recording. When you hear selections like Unrequited, Ahmid-6, and Make Peace, you know that this CD is only the start of something big from these two artists.

Sinners Like Me
Eric Church
Capitol       ***

Newcomer Eric Church, the pride of Granite Falls, North Carolina, arrives with his first album — on which he wrote or co-wrote all 12 cuts — as a man worth watching.
Sinners Like Me puts down roots in traditional country, and judging from its first single, Church might seem like a modern-day Charlie Daniels, crowing about blue-collar pride and covering his heart “when they fly that red, white, and blue”.
But several songs show him to be acutely aware of class lines and how the country is divided more into haves and have-nots than red and blue, and Church is no jingoistic redneck.
He doesn’t shy away from controversial subjects and his thoughtful, sensitive, and well-crafted songs, delivered in a hard-bitten baritone, show him to be as much poet as patriot. An impressive debut.

The US vs John Lennon
John Lennon
Capitol           **

The U.S. vs. John Lennon is neither a collection of outtakes like Acoustic nor a career-spanning retrospective like the Imagine: John Lennon soundtrack or one of his many greatest-hits collections.
Instead, it’s an album with a theme: Lennon the idealist, Lennon the peace activist, Lennon the leftist; but also Lennon the disillusioned and Lennon the harrassed — and, of course, Lennon the newly in love with Yoko Ono.
No surprise, then, that most of the songs date from 1969 to 1972, drawing heavily from Plastic Ono Band and Imagine. Don’t look here for primal tracks like Cold Turkey and Mother, smash hits like Whatever Gets You Through the Night, or comeback songs like Watching the Wheels. And the only Beatles track present is, of course, The Ballad of John and Yoko. There isn’t much new here, either— only two of the tracks are unreleased.