Travel notes

I'm currently on the road, working, with not much time for focused writing. Catching up with new releases from some of the old (not always) faithfuls and pondering fuller reviews...

I've already made some sceptical comments about Bob Dylan's Tempest, but I haven't yet given it the concentrated attention it deserves. The problem is that, unlike the curate's egg, it is genuinely good in parts. But the bad bits - instances of plonking rhymes, clumsy lyrics, unengaged vocals which ignore meaning, limited and repetitive melodies, some actively unpleasant sentiments: overall, the screaming need for a dispassionate editor... - keep getting in the way when I try to experience the album as a whole and appreciate the good bits. And there certainly are good bits, with some striking lines, delivered on occasion with both power and guile, where he makes the most of what remains of his voice. The band are strong, tight and utterly dependable.

Van Morrison's Born To Sing: No Plan B is a different sort of mixture. The music is jazz-based, there's fire in the singer's belly and grit in his vocals. The persona Van presents is not very attractive - grumpy, bordering on misanthropic - but that will hardly surprise long term fans. It is both interesting and impressive and deserves closer attention. I'm not being sucked in immediately, though: there is, again, some off-putting clumsiness in the lyrics (such as the repeated line about 'Going down to Monte Carlo, about 25k from Nice' - which one critic has nicely compared to a satnav message - and which is far too obviously there only to set up an easier set of rhymes with 'Nice' than 'Monte Carlo' would offer). And Van's lyric swipe at 'pseudo jazz' feels a little bit risky in this context: the backing is echt jazz, I would say, but very much at the smooth end of the genre, without much honk or harmonic edge.

John Cale marches briskly into his eighth decade with Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood, finding new ways of being distinctly him, with angular arrangements and squelching electronics, weird songs and animated vocals. A fascinating, edgy mixture which will take time properly to absorb.

But where's the time going to come from? It's taking a bit of doing at the moment to keep Neil Young & Crazy Horse's Psychedelic Pill out of my earphones - and there's nearly 90 minutes of that record to get my ears round. It's not going to win any new converts - and people who know what Neil and the Horse sound like will know immediately whether they're interested in a 27 minute opening thrash which ranges through rants about the quality of MP3s (and an accompanying plug for his memoirs)  and the commercial exploitation of Picasso, through to the possibility of the singer acquiring a 'hip hop haircut'. You won't be surprised to hear that I think it is glorious: irresistible musical momentum, squalling guitars - and an intriguing set of conversational gambits from a weird old friend. Somehow, he can get away with clumsy lines more easily than Bob and Van (and the one about Picasso is a real clunker) - partly because the overall persona here is warmer and more attractive, partly because he can still take time to craft and develop a real story-telling lyric when he wants to. 'Ramada Inn' immediately grabbed my attention: a beautifully empathic, 3D portrait of a loving old couple coping with alcoholism. Who else is writing so well about that sort of thing? (Maybe some personal insights in play, given Neil's own widely reported farewell to weed... But, whatever: deftly done.)

Can we have some more listening hours in the day please?

Peter Case in Brighton

The best of Peter Case's songs suck you in to their own little worlds so deftly that you shiver with the final chord, like shaking awake from a dream. You've been there, inside, seeing what he's been seeing...

'Entella Hotel' has a small crowd at Brighton's Latest Bar rapt and, when it's evocation of living the lowlife in San Francisco is over, Case's collaborator tonight, Michael Weston King, speaks for us all:

'That's not just one of my favourite Peter Case songs, it's one of my favourite songs by anyone, ever.'

There are barely thirty people in the room and Case is so good, that's crazy. I shake his hand afterwards and tell him he should be playing to thousands. 'Maybe in another life,' he replies wryly.

He's 58 now and has been making solo albums since his classic self-titled debut in 1986. Prior to that he played in a couple of punky bands the Nerves and the Plimsouls. He's an accomplished guitarist, picking blues licks on an open-tuned acoustic with drive and no little finesse - but it's feel and impact rather than scrupulous technique that he goes for. His voice is distinctive, clear and expressive, with occasional echoes of John Lennon; his look is equally his own - imagine a beatnik Willy Rushton after an all night session...

This is the last night of a short tour with Weston King, a British country singer-songwriter and formerly one of the Good Sons. The set up is like a folkfest workshop: the pair sitting next to each other and trading songs, occasionally joining in to accompany each other. They open with a fine joint reworking of Tom Russell's 'Blue Wing'. Weston King has a decent voice and is friendly and engaging, but Case's songs are in a different league from his and so - like a folkfest workshop - the intensity and energy level in the room tends to fluctuate as the spotlight shifts.

Peter Case likes to tell stories between songs, as well as in them, and we get a long tale of buying in to Bob Dylan's self-mytholigising of running away to hit the road as a child. And, since Case grew up in Buffalo, his route out was Highway 62 - which runs all the way to the Mexican border at El Paso, via the birthplaces of Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly... Cue a splendid take on Dylan's 'Pledging My Time', re-imagined as country blues.

He's ready to mix in some old songs, like 'Put Down The Gun' (drawn, like 'Entella Hotel', from his second album Blue Guitar*) and even responds to a shouted request for the Plimsouls' 'Oldest Story In The World'. But he is clearly ambivalent about crowd-pleasing: he agonises over a request for 'Old Blue Car' and eventually turns in as an alternative, seemingly-improvised blues which he dubs 'New Old Blue Car'.

He also conveniently forgets my bid for the great 'Two Angels'. When I remind him afterwards he tells me that the song has just been featured in a TV show, providing the soundtrack as two vampires make love 'which, amazingly enough, is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote the song...'

My partner and I reflect on the way home on the entirely random way that audience size correlates to talent. OK, someone like Case is always likely to be in the cult hero bracket, rather than a household name. That said, the cult really ought to be a little less exclusive. She points out that Peter is just as a good a singer, songwriter and guitarist as, say, Steve Earle, and of a similar vintage. But Steve is capable of drawing an audience in Brighton about a hundred times the size of tonight's. Go figure.

And go and see Peter Case at the very next opportunity: you won't regret it.

*and if you're not yet familiar with his second album's full title, try this for size: The Man With The Blue Postmodern Fragmented Neo-traditionalist Guitar. Yep, that's about it.

And in other news...

To bring things up to date:

• Dexys played a great show at the Dome on Thursday: more than a little bonkers, but great. They did the whole of the new album, One Day I'm Going To Soar, with various theatrical bits along the way, and then a selection of oldies including 'Come On Eileen' and 'Until I Believe In My Soul'. Strong playing from the band, with Jim Paterson's trombone featuring strongly in the arrangements; Kevin Rowland and Pete Williams striding around the stage like a rap posse one minute and hamming it up in full-on am-dram the next. (If I was going to do a full review, the headline would be 'From Gangsta To Gang Show...')

• serendipitously, one of my all-time favourite songs, Dusty Springfield's version of 'Breakfast In Bed' was played over the PA at the Dome in between the burlesque dancer (don't ask...) and the band's appearance, and then I find that none other than Wussy have recorded it too. Out now, on what I am sure will be a deeply desirable split 7" in a series of tributes to writer Eddie Hinton that is being put out by the estimable Shake It Records, and winging its way from Cincinnati as I type.

• on the subject of desirable records, Eat Lights Become Lights have a new album which should be on the shopping list of all right-thinking vinyl fetishists. You will recall that last year's Autopia hit the heady heights of #8 in the Eden On The Line Records Of The Year. The new release is Heavy Electrics: sounds fine, though maybe not as immediately engrossing as its predecessor, and looks amazing, with a great sleeve and the disc pressed in three colours. Well done, Dom at Great Pop Supplement.

• And finally, my long-awaited (by me, at least) book about Van Morrison is with the printers. Saint Dominic's Flashback will be available next month in paperback and on Kindle. Watch this space for more details.

Wussy Day

'Chuck thinks that if something doesn't sound right you should stomp on a distortion pedal and make it ten times louder,' explains Wussy's Lisa Walker.

'Sometimes it works...' is the response from her partner in crime, Chuck Cleaver.

And he's right. The pair blend gorgeous melodies and great lyrics with a fine propensity for squalling noise. This, for me, is what rock & roll is supposed to be all about: a passionate racket veined with vision and beauty.

I'd turned up at Brixton's Windmill expecting the full five piece line-up of the band but found that only the two singer-songwriters had made the trip from Cincinnati. But that was never going to be a cue for some sort of laidback, acoustic performance...

In fact, it was an advantage in this intimate venue. The sound guys seemed to be having trouble getting the vocals loud enough over the bass and drums of openers Slowgun and then American Werewolf Academy - in the latter's set, even a harmonica blasting into frontman Aaron Thedford's vocal mic was barely audible. I would have hated for Wussy's wondrous words and harmonies to have gone the same way. But I needn't have worried: they come through loud and clear.

The two of them are here promoting a European-only compilation, Buckeye, drawn from four or five releases across the Atlantic over the last seven years, and there is something of a greatest hits feel to their set, with a whole clutch of songs jammed into their hour or so, any one of which would be a career highlight for most other songwriters: 'Airborne', 'Crooked', 'Maglite', 'Grand Champion Steer', 'Pulverized'... Classic songs just keep on coming.

There's a fascinating chemistry between the duo. Walker is keen to emphasise that they're no longer a couple offstage. 'But there's no real hate,' adds Cleaver, prompting the response: 'I'm not so sure...'

Lisa spends the set alternately grimacing at unexpected musical interventions and beaming at some of the many points when the big man undoubtedly pulls it off. The prickly intimacy in the way their voices and guitars entwine is something special and testifies to deep familiarity with each other's approach. 'We formed the band about 10 years ago,' says Walker. 'I was just an embryo; Chuck was already 50.

This isn't supposed to be slick music and when Lisa apologises for something that was rougher than she'd have liked, a guy in the audience shouts 'Remember Neil Young: ragged glory'. That's not a bad analogy: Wussy have a similar inclination to just go for it in performance and see what comes out; and a similar ability to veer between muscle and bruised vulnerability. As well as songs that stand up in that sort of exalted company.

I'm taken again tonight by the subtlety and beauty of many of those songs, alongside the energy and drive. 'Motorcycle' in particular gets its hooks in my brain, drawing on both the physical (small town, humdrum life) and the spiritual (flashes of the Rapture) to build the power of its yearning for escape:

16 motorcycles just today.

And if they offered I would take it:

A free ride out of this place.

And I would sit right on the back

Without a helmet on,

One day you'll see.

There's something very special going on here: do catch the tour if you can, and give the records a try.

Meanwhile, they're clearly thrilled to be in London and relishing some local experiences, though the double decker buses are not entirely suited to Chuck's ample frame... 'and they smell funny,' he added in a disappointed tone. 'They only smell funny,' came the immediate rejoinder, 'because of your bag of curry'.

A non-couple, but joined at the hip.

Wussy Eve

The next installment in a pretty amazing 10 days of live music comes tomorrow with Wussy at the Brixton Windmill (followed by Dexys back in Brighton on Thursday).

Just getting in the mood with a very nice duo-session Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker did for Marc Riley yesterday and available here. Marc is somewhat annoying, but three excellent songs...