From bluesrockreview.com on What Happens Next:

Every time that I hear a new album by Joe Satriani I’m reminded of why I love the sounds of an electric guitar so much and What Happens Next is no exception. The new release hits the streets on January 12, 2018, the day after he begins his G3 tour in Seattle, Washington. The new album is a power trio, comprised of Satriani, bassist Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple/ Black Country Communion) and drummer Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers). Producer/engineer/mixer Mike Fraser, who Satriani has collaborated with over the past 20 years put it all together.

What Happens Next is Satriani’s 16th studio albums, released on Sony/Legacy, over a career that spans thirty years. Four of those albums went gold and two went platinum to sell over ten million copies and be nominated for fifteen Grammys. Joe grew up in Long Island, New York and worked his way through the piano and drums before he settled on guitar as his instrument of expression. Since Satriani released Surfing With The Alien in 1989 the musical world has gone through a transformation and Joe has transformed with it. His G3 tour started twenty years ago on the premise that music audiences love great guitar players.

What Happens Next follows 2015’s Shockwave Supernova album and involved a conceptual change in its approach. Rather than maintaining the alien persona of the past, Satriani has embraced his earthbound humanity and the songs emanate from the “emotions, dreams, and hopes” found therein. Satriani reunited with longtime friend Glenn Hughe and drummer Chad Smith who was his bandmate in “Chickenfoot,” to hammer out some emotionally driven sonic explorations into the human psyche without the advantage of entheogens.

The album is comprised of twelve cuts: “Energy,” screaming Peter Green “Fleetwood Mac” blues rock, “Catbot,”which has deep bass notes yielding to a plethora of instrumental interpretations. “Thunder High On The Mountain” exudes visions of grandeur and splendor as guitar notes explode into infinity. “Cherry Blossoms” begins with Smith’s dominant drums and soon resonated with clean sounding guitar runs. “Righteous,” has a pure and clean guitar dominant sound that exudes joy. “Smooth Soul” is a Santana inspired guitar excursion behind the third eye. “Headrush” is an Alvin Lee fast fingered frolic in sonic heaven that dives into the depth of the spirit and outward into infinity. “Looper” is a sonic boogie keeping time to an insane excursion into the sound of throbbing, pulsating, screaming instruments, allowing full interplay between. “What Happens Next” is the title song from the album and Satriani explores that question through guitar changes. “Super Funky Badass” has a throbbing beat with a dominant guitar moving up and down the octave scale as the sound is squeezed until it screams. “Invisible” dives into the depths to get a good foothold to ascend into the stratosphere and “Forever and Ever” is a beautiful Hendrixian composition that allows Satriani to play his instrument like it was as natural as breathing.

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From spillmagazine.com on The Ferryman’s Curse:

The Ferryman’s Curse is the first studio album by The Strawbs since 2014’s Prognostic. For the past three years, fans have been waiting for a new studio album, and not only has the wait been worth it, The Strawbs have exceeded all expectations. Quite frankly, this is one of their best albums, ever. The loyal knew they had it in them, and the proof is in this remarkable album.

For this album, the lineup of The Strawbs is their touring band for the past couple of years. Original member Dave Cousins is joined by long standing members Dave Lambert (guitar and vocals) and Chas Cronk (bass/guitar/vocals). Joining the new incarnation are Dave Bainbridge (keyboards) and Tony Fernandez. For the record, Cousins’ voice is in fine form. As good as ever, deeper perhaps, but he sounds fantastic.

For this album Cousins cowrites with every member, as well as writing his own solo songs. He has gone back to what The Strawbs do best– strong melodies, brilliant instrumentation and stunning lyrics. Lambert contributes terrific songs too. The bottom line is that this is a band, not Cousins with a backing band. This is a tight, well oiled band. The years of touring and playing has allowed them to recreate their own sound and produce prog rock like songs. Listen to Bainbridge’s organ solo in “The Nails From The Hands of Christ”. What makes it so great is that he knows when to cut it and go back to the song. A true talent.

Lyrically, this album has a religious overtone, which is nothing new from The Strawbs. Cousins is not forcing his vision of spirituality on the listener, but rather, these are stories with religious overtures. “The Nails From The Hands Of Christ” reminds me, title wise, of one of their early songs “The Man Who Called Himself Jesus”. Both songs are slightly cynical, but “The Nails From The Hands Of Christ” incorporates technology and youth’s understanding of religion.

“The nails were bent and rusty,
 As if to make a point.
She looked them up on Google,
And then she rolled a joint.”

Cousins does not pass judgement, he merely tells the story.

There are other references to religion — “The Ten Commandments” and ”The Song of Infinite Sadness”.  Cousins is grappling with mortality throughout the whole album, not your standard pop fare, but it works, musically and lyrically. If you need any more evidence, listen to the last song on the album, “We Have The Power”. Cousins starts the song off counting blessings but ends with

“Ours is but a short life,
From the moment of our birth,
When our ashes scatter,
To the corners of the earth.”

An interesting and somewhat thought provoking ending. He also name checks an older Strawbs song, “Autumn”, which makes it all the more special.

The Strawbs have been around a long time. Their first album was released in 1968. That is almost 50 years, and as with any band with that kind of history, has their ups and downs. But here they have delivered one of their best albums, and one of the best albums of this year.

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From pastemagazine.com on Versatile:

With a new album just three months after his last release, Roll With The Punches, Sir Van Morrison proves that a rolling Irishman gathers no moss—even when he’s rolling through oft-treaded territory. While Punches featured covers of classic blues and R&B cuts by artists like Little Walter, Sam Cooke, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Versatile—Morrison’s 38th studio LP pays homage to another school of influence: the jazz standards that originally inspired him to sing. Original compositions are mixed in with classics from George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Frank Loesser, songs he surely heard over the old transistor while growing up in postwar Belfast, and eventually found their way into some of the most beloved parts of his catalogue, like “Moondance” and the masterpiece Astral Weeks.

This paying homage to influences seems to be a trend amongst legends of a certain age. Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney have all taken a crack at this era. Morrison has certainly earned the right, but do we really need another version of “I Get A Kick Out Of You”? Similarly, I think we can all agree that the definitive version of “Unchained Melody” was recorded years ago and will never be touched. But to be fair, Morrison diehards will revel in his understated rendition.

Not all of the covers feel unnecessary. On “Makin’ Whoopee,” Morrison’s delivery is suitably mischievous, winking over sleepy sax and velvety guitar comps. “Bye Bye Blackbird,” with its strolling, stand-up bass riff and carefree scatting sees Van the Man having the most fun of the album, gleefully taking a bite out of the familiar melody as he evokes mid-century cool. But it’s the originals that shine the most, a testament to the talent of a songwriter that has written a standard or two of his own.

“Start All Over Again” is as sunny and optimistic as the title, Morrison’s gift for melody and phrasing sonically parting the clouds. “Skye Boat Song,” a Scottish traditional that Morrison transforms with his own, metropolitan arrangement, is another standout. All brushes and elegant saxophone, it’s a buoyant instrumental that mixes folk and jazz in a way that feels like walking down a sun-dappled city street. The highlight of the originals is the sophisticated “I Forgot That Love Existed.” Swinging back and forth back and forth between the two moods that Morrison does best—blue melancholy and bright revelation. The switch is signaled here by a switch to double-time, as Morrison sings, “I forgot that love existed/And then I saw the light.”

His enunciation is a little less crisp—his 72-year-old jowls practically audible on “Let’s Get Lost” and “A Foggy Day”—but the mahogany richness and graceful agility are still there. Backed by a more-than-capable band and deftly produced by Morrison himself, the recordings are stone-hearth warm, a reflection of the nostalgia that’s inherent in every track. Just like the title suggests, the album provides ample support for the argument that Morrison is one of the most versatile musicians of all time. Not that anyone really has any business saying otherwise.

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From consequenceofsound.net on The Visitor:

When you take into account that he’s lived about 50 of his 72 years on US soil, it’s not that odd for people to think of Neil Young as a natural-born American citizen. But in the opening line to his second full-length with Texas country rockers Promise of the Real, he doesn’t waste any time reminding people where he’s from originally.

“I’m Canadian by the way,” he sings on “Already Great”. “And I love the USA.”

It’s not only a reminder of his ancestral roots for the rest of us, but most notably for the current president of these United States, Mr. Donald Trump, whom in the past has considered himself a fan of Neil Young as well as a friend. Chances are incredibly strong however that the Orange One did, in fact, convince himself the Ragged Glory rocker was born on this particular slab of our continent. And in the instances where the two men did cross paths, one can easily imagine Trump shaking Young’s hand in that weird way he does as he hissed, “You’re a great American.”  But rectifying that common misnomer is only a mere few seconds in a song that spans nearly six minutes, the majority of which is spent correcting Mr. Trump’s common assertion that he wants to make America great again. It’s one of the best songs Young’s crafted in the studio with guitarists Lukas and Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormick, drummer Anthony Logerfo, and percussionist Tato Melgar, who are slowly but surely growing to become as fitting a backing band for the 72-year-old as Crazy Horse has been for nearly half a century.

From there, though, The Visitor hits a bit of the same creative turbulence the good majority of Young’s recorded output has suffered these last two decades (albeit with the exception of such straight-up classics as Silver & Gold, Prairie Wind, and Le Noise).  If you go back and relisten to all of the so-so albums he’s released since 2000 — Are You Passionate?, Chrome Dreams II, Fork in the Road, Americana, Storytone, etc. — you may notice certain creative crutches Young tends to lean on when he’s not feeling 100 percent inspired to give it his all. And on The Visitor, he falls into one of his most unfortunate ruts doing that sing-songy protest jingle shit that made records like Greendale and Living with War so darn unlistenable. But the good news is there are only two songs like this on here: “Stand Tall” and “Children of Destiny”. Skip both and thank me later.

However, the remaining eight tracks on The Visitor rank up there with the best stuff Neil Young has released since the turn of the century. There’s a song like “Almost Always”, which is reminiscent of the plaintive nature of his finest political LP, 1980’s Republican-leaning Hawks & Doves, albeit with a little lick nipped from the opening chords to “Unknown Legend”. The 10-minute closing number, “Forever”, sounds like it could have been an atmospheric leftover from the Sleeps with Angels era. On “Fly by Night Deal”, a busted toy piano and what sounds like distorted harmonica punctuate a groove not unlike the kind Pearl Jam laid down on Mirror Ball as Uncle Neil extrapolates upon the grievances he established on last year’s excellent Peace Trail about the Keystone pipeline. Meanwhile, one of the record’s finest cuts is “Carnival”, which finds Young cackling his way through visions of barkers on the midway and Evel Knievel’s great-grandfather as he contemplates “too much time spent in the tent of the strange elephant of enlightenment” over a Latino rock shuffle his old pal Carlos Santana might mistake as one of his own. My personal favorite cut on The Visitor is “When Bad Got Good”, where the singer turns the infamous “Lock her up” chant so ubiquitous at Trump’s campaign rallies on the “Liar in Chief” as he puts it while the band strikes up a swamp stomp boogie for the ages.

Recorded at Rick Rubin’s Malibu studio Shangri La, The Visitor is a huge step up from the endearing but misguided The Monsanto Years, as if the experiences Willie’s boys have enjoyed performing such serious Neil Young chestnuts as “Human Highway”, “Long May You Run”, and “Vampire Blues” these last couple of years have really seeped into the fabric of their creative beings. It will be truly astounding to see what this exciting combination has in store for us now that Old Neil’s hopefully gotten all the protesting out of his system, at least for the moment. Just don’t forget where he comes from.

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From theguardian.com on Songs of Experience:

Last summer U2 toured the world, triumphantly performing 1987’s The Joshua Tree in full for the first time. Bono and the Edge made rather a song and dance about this not being a nostalgic event, but there was little doubt that the shows felt redolent of a lost era, when U2 made their unlikely passage from awkward post-punk also-rans to the biggest band in the world seem weirdly effortless. Of course, hard work was put in along the way, but U2 always gave off the sense that destiny was somehow involved in their ascent, that a grandiose masterplan was working out exactly. That was one of the things about them that seemed to annoy people so much.

Those people can obviously find umpteen other things about the band to annoy them these days, but not that. Of the many charges you could file against U2 in their later years, making it look too easy is not among them. They’ve spent much of the last decade carrying on as if they didn’t really know what they wanted to be, or if they did know – The Biggest Band in the World again – how to go about being it. Cue confused albums – No Line on the Horizon, Songs of Innocence – and ungainly PR disasters: the most polite thing you can say about getting iTunes to automatically distribute Songs of Innocence to its users is that it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you were looking for a symbol of U2’s latterday struggles, then Songs of Experience seems an ideal candidate. Its completion involved nine different producers and 15 engineers: everyone has had a go, from old hand Steve Lillywhite to manufactured pop songwriter Ryan Tedder to Andy Barlow of trip-hoppers Lamb. Its recording was halted, resumed and reconsidered over three years, interrupted by both a period of reflection on the rise of Donald Trump and a mysterious “brush with mortality” faced by Bono. It is filled with self-doubting lyrics, some openly pondering whether U2 have a future any more: “A dinosaur wonders why it still walks the Earth / a meteor promises it’s not going to hurt,” opens The Blackout.

There are clumsy lunges for contemporaneity – Love Is All We Have Left’s Auto-Tuned vocals, an xx-ish guitar interlude on Red Flag Day that recalls the umpteen xx-ish guitar interludes recently scattered across mainstream pop – and moments when you can hear the effort that’s gone into trying to make the songs “bulletproof”, as the Edge recently put it, but somehow had the opposite effect. You’re the Best Thing About Me sounds weirdly disjointed, as if the chorus from one song has been patched on to the verse of another; Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way is so craven in its desire to get stadium audiences’ arms waving in the air, it ends up sounding like Coldplay – not something anyone wants or needs U2 to do.

But despite its flaws, Songs of Experience is an audibly better album than either of its predecessors. For one thing, not all its errors are overwhelming – if the Auto-Tune feels a bit jarring, the song it decorates is still pretty great. And for another, when U2 calm down and allow themselves to be themselves, the results are frequently fantastic, not least Get Out of Your Own Way, which is both utterly beautiful and feels not unlike a long, relieved exhalation of breath. Often it seems as if the moments that deal with the aforementioned brush with mortality are the most natural and enjoyable, as if concerns about their frontman’s potential demise caused everyone to stop worrying about U2’s place within the contemporary scheme of things and focus on the music. Boasting a guitar part atmospheric and understated even by the Edge’s 80s standards, the concluding 13 (There Is a Light) is delicately affecting; Landlady’s extended apology to Bono’s wife, Ali Hewson, gently achieves precisely the kind of emotional uplift Love is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way nearly gives itself a hernia trying to attain; Lights of Home welds distorted slide guitar and a gospel-ish chorus to an entirely fantastic song. The Showman, meanwhile, is playful and authentically funny: a reflection on the contradictions and ridiculousness of the job of rock star that shows infinitely more self-awareness than Bono’s critics would give him credit for.

As for Songs of Experience’s flaws, U2 might understandably counter that there are worse things a band in their position could do than overthink things a little: if you were 40 years into your career and your last three tours had collectively grossed $1bn, you might be inclined not to think at all. But there’s a noticeable difference between trying and trying too hard. When Songs of Experience opts for the former rather than the latter, U2 sound more like the band you suspect they want to be than they have in a decade.

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