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David Rhodes: Bittersweet

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: RealWorld Records
Released: 2009
Time:
 45:15
Category: Electronic, Rock
Producer(s): David Rhodes, Richard Evans
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.david-rhodes.uk
Appears with: Peter Gabriel
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Reality Slips (D.Rhodes) - 5:35
[2] Down By The River (D.Rhodes) - 4:32
[3] Just Two People (D.Rhodes) - 5:11
[4] Crazy Jane (D.Rhodes) - 5:28
[5] All I Know (D.Rhodes) - 3:37
[6] If It Could OnIy Be That Easy (D.Rhodes) - 6:06
[7] Monster Monster (D.Rhodes) - 2:29
[8] There's A Fine Line (D.Rhodes) - 3:53
[9] One Touch (D.Rhodes) - 4:43
[10] Bittersweet (D.Rhodes) - 3:59

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


David Rhodes - Guitar, Vocals, Backing Vocals

Dean Brodrick - Keyboards
Charlie Jones - Bass
Ged Lynch - Drums

Madalaine Brodrick - Backing Vocals
Peter Hammill - Backing Vocals
Rosie Doonan - Backing Vocals

Tosca String Quartet - Strings
Stephen Barber - String Arrangements

Richard Evans - Producer
Greg Freeman - Engineer
Richard Evans - Engineer
Adam Daniela - Assistant Engineer
Tchad Blake - Mixing
Adam Ayan - Mastering
York Tillyer - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Until now David’s been more than content to be the supporting artist in the shadows, a few paces back from the main attraction. As well as his lengthy tenure on the shoulder of Peter Gabriel, David’s also been an in-demand session player, his fluid guitar lines adorning the records of Tim Finn, Talk Talk, Paul McCartney, T-Bone Burnett and even Roy Orbison. Then there’s the sizeable soundtrack work he undertakes with musical partner Richard Evans, much of it for documentaries on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. But Bittersweet is the turning of a crisp new page, a fresh chapter whose plot has yet to be written.

petergabriel.com



This month’s album has taken years to come together. It’s not that David Rhodes is a particularly slow worker as much as he’s been very in demand as a session guitarist, primarily for Peter Gabriel but also for the likes of Paul McCartney, T-Bone Burnett and even Roy Orbison. Rhodes started writing the songs which became ‘Bittersweet’ a few years ago and gradually worked on them until he felt they were strong enough to meet the public. Talking about the title, David explained: “There’s always that balance of light and dark that runs through the record. Hopefully there’s enough colour in the music to offset any miserable lyrics!” We were really pleased to enable David to get into the studio and record this album and, as usual, we’d really like to know what members thought.

Copyright © 2015 Bowers & Wilkins



David Rhodes, perhaps best known for his long time collaboration with Peter Gabriel, has released Bittersweet, his first solo album to some well deserved acclaim. The CD features Rhodes singing and playing guitar on ten original compositions. His vocals sparkle with intensity whether he is softly creating a mood or rocking out with passionate verve. Tracks run the gamut from simply orchestrated melodies to avalanches of sound punctuated with pulsating rhythms, often throbbing with multi-cultural echoes. If these songs are any indication of what Rhodes can do, Bittersweet is a debut album long overdue.

In an interview for Performer Magazine Rhodes, telling Will Cady about his composing process, comes off as modestly cavalier: “When I start, I just start fiddling about.” But then he adds that it is the rhythm he generally begins with, and he lets the “sonic structure” grow by parts that suit the sound and the song. It is not strange then that it is the rhythms, their variety and their power, through which his music achieves its force and makes its dominant impression. “If It Could Only Be That Easy,” for example, a song that was featured as a USA Today pick of the week in July, builds up a rhythmic crescendo with a world music vibe reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” and even Ravel’s “Bolero.” It is the kind of music, regardless of the lyrics, that won’t get out of your head.

Even in some of the softer songs, there are passages where the rhythms dominate. In “Down By the River,” there is an intense throbbing beat that seems to echo the song’s description of the pounding of the distraught woman washing clothes in the river water. “Just Two People” uses the vocal repetition of the title phrase as a variation on rhythmic instrumentation. “One Touch” is another tune that uses the lyric to emphasize the beat and the beat to enforce the lyric.

“Bittersweet,” the title song, comes last on the CD. It is a plaintive chant with a sweet background vocal and piano line that plays against the lyrical admonition to make the most of all experience, the painful as well as the pleasurable. It serves as the way to deal with the reality that cracks and breaks and knocks you down described in the album’s first song “Reality Slips.” Like “Crazy Jane” it is important not to settle for the mundane. It is better to burn your hand on a star, than to wear a glove that fits and never to reach for that star. To be crazy like Jane the only way to deal with a life that doesn’t have the tidy endings you find in movies. Bittersweet is not a concept album, but it does offer something of a systematic world view, and it sets that world view to an infectious vibrating beat.

Joined by a band including Ged Lynch on the drums, Charlie Jones on bass, Dean Broderick on keyboards and some backup vocal work by Peter Hammell, David Rhodes has come up with a winner.

Jack Goodstein - September 7, 2010
Copyright © 2015 Blogcritics
 

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