MUSIC ZONE
Explosions in the Sky —Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Bella Union)
Saurabh & Gaurav

THE most obvious reference point for Explosions in the Sky’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is the band’s arguable career highlight, 2003’s The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. This latest set shares signature chiming and intertwining guitars, as well as its uplifting and life-affirming moods. Chris Hrasky’s sensitivity and understanding makes his drumming the lifeline of the album, both for its aptly-placed near absences as much as its startling presence on Trembling Hands — a track with galloping drums that struggle with gloomy guitars, eventually bursting into joyous melody. The track blends wordless vocals and shimmering sunshine-infused guitar work for a mere three and a half minutes. The introduction of piano on All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone marked the first noticeable move away from their usual guitar singularity, and with Take Care, a smattering of vocal accompaniment and some experimental ambience have both taken up substantial supporting roles. Human Qualities follows with mostly hushed tones. The space they created on the first track takes on its own sound here, framing the echoing sounds instead of giving them room to roam. Epic closer Let Me Back In, with its interplay of staccato chords and lingering riffs, embodies the album’s strengths perfectly. Explosions in the Sky is perhaps the most accessible of their peers: their gorgeous, cresting passages and elegiac multi-part harmonies feel neither under-embellished without vocal/lyrical accompaniment nor as overly ostentatious as many of their post-rock fellows can often sound.

Best track: Trembling Hands

Worst track: Be Comfortable, Creature

Rating **

Ben Drew, aka Plan B, came to prominence in 2006 with his debut album Who Needs Actions When You Got Words — an angst-ridden hip-hop album brimming with controversial lyrics. The album returns with Plan B’s return to his solo music career. The lead single Stay Too Long embraces a gospel choir and swelling Hammond organs and is the story of a raucous night that ends with the all, too, common blunders and outstanding bills. The frantically catchy, toe-tapping The Recluse features a return to more familiar rap territory, alongside blissful strings and makes you want to whisk yourself back to the 1970s and dance the night away. The majority of the album is built upon Plan B’s lovely falsetto singing voice — a vocal that will surprise anyone, who has heard his East London accent or seen him slouching around in his usual street attire. The lively She Said strays into Winehouse territory, with Drew falling back on his even lyrical flow to fill in some of the story’s background details. Banks shines again on Traded In My Cigarettes, a welcome track after a deluge of depressive songs about prison life lodged in the album’s centre. This collection contains all the necessary practices of a hit album; catchy lyrics, beautifully smooth vocals and a hip-hop styled breakdown section.

Best track: Stay Too Long

Worst track: Darkest Place

Rating ***

The Bob Dylan in Concert: Brandeis University 1963 concert tape was discovered recently in the archives of the noted music writer and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleason, where it sat on a shelf for more than 40 years. The college sponsored a folk festival that evening and invited a very young Bob Dylan to perform. The collection has now been issued as a stand-alone album. The sound is remarkably good for a recording of this type as it finds the 21-year-old Dylan performing a seven-song set that clock in at just under 40 minutes. The liner notes are provided by Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. The set is comprises material from the new album including one, Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues, which was originally going to be on the album but pulled off later. Also played is Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues, a constant in his live act at the time yet wouldn’t be released until The Bootleg Series 1-3 in 1991, Ballad Of Hollis Brown which would appear on his third album The Times They Are A-Changin, the well-penned Masters Of War, the catchy Bob Dylan’s Dream and the soulful Talkin’ World War III Blues.

Best track: Masters of War

Misfit: Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Incomplete)

Rating ***