dirty linen

Pete Morton is an unflagging optimist. One of England's most distinctive acoustic performers, the man whose signature song reminds us that there's always another train, he clearly finds life to be a journey worth making. There's an unmistakable spiritual dimension to many of his lyrics, and while his music acknowledges that there will be struggles, it also affirms a fundamental hope and a deep faith in a universal goodness that few other contemporary songwriters share.
The sound of English traditional music runs strongly through Morton's songs, many of which are written in ballad form, while the chugging guitar energy of new-wave rock powers his faster numbers. His voice will never be called pretty, but it's filled with manifest emotion. Last time out, on his 1998 album Trespass, he looked back a couple centuries with a collection of traditional British ballads. On Hunting the Heart, his sixth album, the focus is back on contemporary urban life, the one notable exception being the disc's opening track, an unexpected adaptation of 17th-century poet Ben Jonson's "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes."

The title track is a metaphorical masterpiece, a long narrative ballad of a nighttime walk through a modern English city that frames a quest for spiritual understanding with references that span history, flashing from moon worship to Stonehenge to Quaker founder George Fox to a deserted country vicarage. It's a brilliant tale of the journey of a soul or maybe the whole of humanity in search of higher truths, with sharp images that are simple, yet striking. "Constant Motion" is another song of spiritual searching, while "Thanksgiving" is a peaceful, healing benediction, and "Maybe Nothing's Spoken" is a quiet but forceful statement of the power of love.

The music isn't all serious, though. Morton's sense of humor comes through in "Madam or Sir," a good-natured plea for less forced formality in society, and in "The Battle of Trafalgar," a list of the colorful characters who hang out at a friendly pub. Morton and his guitar are backed by Andy Cutting on accordion and Tom McConville on fiddle, with Julie Murphy joining on harmony and duet vocals. Tuneful, thoughtful, and consistently uplifting, Hunting the Heart is a major work. - — Tom Nelligan (Waltham, MA)

As the group's name and the title of its debut album (Pop, tu me parles toujours) on Swallow Records indicated, Balfa Toujours started out as a means of keeping alive the music and spirit of the legendary Dewey Balfa and his brothers. Considering that Dewey Balfa's two daughters were an important part of the group, the goal was understandable, but it didn't take long for the group to establish a strong identity of its own. For its fourth Rounder album the group, now minus Nelda Balfa, chose to tape live at its Sunday afternoon gig at Angelle's Whiskey River Landing. The audience is in an audibly raucous mood, and the strong rapport between band and audience makes for a hot ambiance that carries over to the recording.

Following in her father's legacy, Christine Balfa and the band are deeply immersed in the tradition but write new songs that build on it. The album starts off appropriately enough with "La chandelle est allumée" ("The Candle is Alight"), a song that deals with the winds of change and the fact that there are now people out there capitalizing on Cajun culture, rather than trying to stifle it as in the past. This is followed by "Whiskey River Special," a song extolling the virtues of the venue. "The Tow Truck Blues" is a charming anecdotal song that was also on the Swallow debut, as was "Tu peux cogner mais tu peux pas rentrer" and a few others. A more unusual song is "Keep Your Hands Off of It," a bawdy song attributed to Lawrence Walker.
The empathy and good-time spirit of the audience make it easy to understand why the Cajun expression "Let the good times roll" became so popular. The session is indeed the aural embodiment of that clichéd sentiment. — Paul E. Comeau (Comeauville, NS, Canada)

Start with the Soul is a fine electric blues CD from the talented guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart. Although this music probably does originate with the soul, it ends up moving the listener's feet. The groove is deep. Hart obviously draws from deep in the Delta for inspiration and looks to his contemporaries outside the blues genre, as well. Thank goodness his sound is wholly original.

His cover of "Treat Like a Lady" is tight and a spot-on remake. He also revisits Chuck Berry ("Back to Memphis") and Black Oak Arkansas ("Cryin' Shame"). Among the originals, tops is "Electric Eel," which features slinky guitars that synthesize blues and early surf twang. The processed vocals are a nice touch very much in character with the music. Hart seems to have something to say as a songwriter with modern observations like "it gets so hard to deal/ With folks that [sic] believe wrestlin' is real" ("Fightin' Hard"). He tackles racial profiling, too ("Manos Arriba"). The instrumental "Maxwell Street Jimmy" is a better chance to hear Hart cut loose.

The recording is ably produced by Jim Dickinson, whose credits read like a musical who's who. His progeny are in The North Mississippi All-Stars; Hart appears on the group's recent CD.

This ain't flava-of-the-moment music. Hart has lasting power and this rock-solid CD is obvious testament to that. — Linda Dailey Paulson (Ventura, CA)

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