Posts Tagged ‘bobby womack’

Our Essential Listening 2012 series concludes today with The Albums.

From the ‘cohesion through experimentation’ of Tame Impala’s ‘Lonerism, through the ‘muscular power ballads, stirring, keyboard-led harmonies and call-and-response choruses’ that inform The Killers’ return with ‘Battle Born’, to the ‘sheer magnetism and unwavering belief’ which made ‘Blunderbuss’ such a successful solo debut for Jack White, we feel this rundown highlights some of the year’s truly outstanding releases that everyone should make an effort to check out.

And don’t forget, there’s only room for one place each on our Essential Listening Series, so if your favourite artist of the year isn’t included in this particular rundown, make sure you check through our previous lists to see if they’ve made an appearance elsewhere. And after that, if they’re still nowhere to be seen, maybe you should leave a comment below to let us know about it.

Damon Albarn was the special guest of Bobby Womack on yesterday’s (September 21st) Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as the influential multi-instrumentalist showcased a selection of tracks from the excellent ‘Bravest Man In The Universe‘ album. The record’s title-track, as well as ‘Jubilee‘, can be viewed below.

Summer 2012. We’ve just had the wettest June on record, the festival season has been fractured by a series of cancellations, and album sales have fallen in their millions.

And yet, for every music fan, there’ still reasons to be cheerful.

The Stone Roses have just completed – with no major hiccups – the fastest selling weekend of live music in UK history, Blur have deemed us worthy to sample the fruits of their studio labours, some faith in humanity was restored when The Voice had its live tour pulled and, most importantly, for seven months now artists both new and established have been releasing a steady stream of truly impressive albums, proving once again that, if you’re prepared to look hard enough, quality is still out there in abundance.

So, take a look through just some of those releases we’ve pulled together for our latest Essential Listening rundown, and maybe you’ll spot something which will soon occupy a prominent place in your own record collection for the remainder of the year. And when you’ve been through the list, why not do the same for us by leaving a comment below highlighting your own favourites of 2012…so far.

To say that 70’s soul icon and generational journeyman Bobby Womack has earned his status as a rarified legend is a point that is hardly worth mentioning.

The man has been making music for literally half a century, beginning in 1954 with his run as a prepubescent member of Curtis Womack & the Womack Brothers and culminating with a 2009 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

Along the way he played guitar for Aretha Franklin, collaborated with Sly & the Family Stone, penned ballads for Janis Joplin, and still found time to pump out twenty-six studio albums and a slew of chart-topping singles all under his own name.

To say that an artist of Womack’s stature is in need of one last career-affirming record is to entirely miss the point altogether, but that is exactly what Womack himself has managed to do – miss the point, albeit fantastically – with the release of this year’s ‘The Bravest Man In The Universe‘, a remarkably powerful collection of songs that somehow celebrates his storied past by simultaneously pushing himself further from it.