![]() ![]() Similarly, “Face of God” is back porch blues built around a high-minded rhetorical question: “Tell me how much more suffering/Before you see the eyes of God?” And on the title track, shrouded in the same misty country-western nostalgia that has preoccupied Bob Dylan of late, Mr. “Old People” recalls Randy Newman’s “Short People,” but with lyrics that lean more poignant than puckish, peeling away to the bitter heart of the joke. Hiatt tries on the guise of a man racked with vices, trying to press them into the service of flattery: “Nothin’ I love is good for me but you,” goes his line. Those lyrics can be philosophically reflective, as in “Long Time Comin’,” or brokenhearted, as in “Come Back Home.” On “Nothin’ I Love,” Mr. Hiatt name-checks John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf in “Baby’s Gonna Kick,” a grudging prowl featuring his own train-whistle harmonica. But these autumnal reflections - “Leaves are fallin’, winter’s on my mind,” goes the opening line in “Here to Stay,” a blues dirge - point toward a familiar species of morbid resilience. His wry, knowing voice as a singer-songwriter rang of experience even when he was a younger man. Hiatt, 61, has had no problem acclimating to the elder-statesman phase of his esteemed troubadour career, in which the blues always cohabited with country, folk and rock ’n’ roll. But it’s a blues sensibility that guides these songs, in feeling if not always in form. Hiatt offers all manner of hangdog sweet talk and yearning entreaty, and even a couple of sworn assurances. Everything else, it seems, is provisional: desire and devotion, good choices and decent luck. There’s just one really steadfast relationship on “Terms of My Surrender,” the new album by John Hiatt, and it’s the one between him and the blues. Tweeddale is happiest when she’s at her snottiest, as on the angsty, gnashing and exuberant “All Dragged Up,” which captures her at the point of just giving up, and trying to enjoy the rupture: But mostly it keeps to its slash-and-burn mission, as on the zippy “Killer Bangs” and “(I’d Rather Be) Anywhere but Here,” both about the fallout from collapsed relationships.Īnd Ms. Honeyblood has a core idea, but it sustains slight expansions of the musical palette, as on the lyrically dim “Fortune Cookie,” which pulses with a rootsy undercurrent. McVicar - more important, like a shouted Greek chorus of disappointment and petulance. Honeyblood is a skeletal outfit, which makes the background vocals - a combination of Ms. But she’s far better when she’s been stung, as on “Super Rat,” on which she declaims, “You are the smartest rat in the sewer,” and sounds unclear whether that’s the least attractive thing possible, or maybe just a little bit intriguing. Tweeddale is the wounder here, like on “No Spare Key,” about letting a lover down and paying the price. ![]() They pair the melancholy guitars of early ’90s shoegaze with surf-rock tempo - the result is energetic, peppy hostility. Tweeddale sings lead and plays guitar, and Shona McVicar plays drums - that specializes in a refreshing contrast of jangle and derision. ![]() On the new album by the Glasgow duo Honeyblood, she is aggrieved and exasperated, falling hard only to be let down harder. In love, at least, Stina Tweeddale can’t catch a break. ![]()
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