Dwight Yoakam: Last Chance for a Thousand Years (Reprise)
Can it really be time for another Yoakam greatest hits package? It only seems a year or three since the last (Just Looking For A Hit) from this new-country traditionalist, covering the period from 1986 until 1989. This 14-track collection selects from the period since then. If you have the albums, as any self-respecting country fan should, then there are only three good reasons for investment - a serious piece of twang co-written with Rodney Crowell, Thinking About Leaving, a typically doomed Waylon Jenning ballad, I'll Go Back To Her, and a honky-tonk fling with Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love. They are the new recordings to tempt the Yoakam hardcore, but if this modern spirit of Buck Owens has somehow managed to pass you by, then this collection offers a highly entertaining means of catching up.
Joe Breen
Baaba Maal: Live At The Royal Festival Hall (Palm Pictures)
`This wasn't just a great African event, it was one of the shows of the year." So the Guardian reported on this concert which, judging by this remarkable recording, clearly reached enviable heights. Baaba Maal is one of the leading figures in African music, both because of his commanding voice and his ability to create a fascinating fusion between the sounds of his native Senegal and Western styles. This concert also features the Screaming Orphans, the Irish backup singers for Sinead O'Connor (Baaba Maal, interestingly, believes Irish music and African music are very similar) and Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin. Between them they concoct a rhythmic stew full of tasty ingredients, slipping from intense and complex Senegalese grooves into rivet-tight funk, all the time directed by Maal's awesome voice.
Joe Breen
Various Artists: The Rough Guide Music Sampler (World Music Network)
The Rough Guide books have provided travellers with an honest and respectful guide to strange cultures for some time, so the move to providing navigation through the maze of world music is both logical and welcome. This low-priced sampler is a wonderful introduction to the rich sounds that await anybody with the courage to step outside the limits of their own culture. Some of the music will be more familiar than others; most will know of Bessie Smith, and some may know of Zimbabwean Thomas Mapfumo, but the intoxicating salsa of Oscar D'Leon or the gentle Andean dance of Inti-Illimani deserves to heard by an equally wide audience. There are some Celtic sounds - but then we must not forget that that music is also foreign in distant places.
Joe Breen