Saturday 10th March

I seem to be listening to older voices all the time lately.  It isn’t that I am deliberately choosing older singers like Judy Collins or Leonard Cohen, or rejecting younger ones like Florence Welch or Adele, who are both quite splendid in their way, but I just seem to have taken a particular liking to the older gentler and less harsh tones of mature singers.  Several of my all-time favourite singers seem to be having a quiet renaissance of late, even if like Carly Simon they are mostly re-recording their early hits with a softer production, a quieter reflective backing allowing the voice that was once strident and powerful but is now hushed and lower in range to become more expressive, letting the words come out effortlessly and mellowing into my tired ears too.   And if you don’t have to try so hard to hear the voice over those noisy seventies and eighties productions the meaning comes through clearer now I find.  Or is it that I am just getting older myself, and prefer not to be reminded of my passing youth by hearing the belting tones of a Rihanna or Katey Perry.  I don’t think so, I have always loved those distinctive voices which may be slightly flawed, but are instantly recognizable – Paul Simon, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading and Joni Mitchell, (to name but a few) as soon as they start singing you know it is them, no-one else sounds anything like them.  But I find such a lot of the singers who came after just melt into one another and I cannot tell a Madonna from a Janet Jackson, or Take That from Westlife.  Technically superb they may well be, but they don’t strike a sympathetic note in my ears.  I can remember when one of the boy bands – it might have been Boyzone, recorded their version of Cat Stevens’, as he was then, brilliant song ‘Father and Son’.  It was a big hit, but I kept hearing it and couldn’t believe how dumbed down it sounded.  Whereas Cat had used two distinctively different voices for his duet with himself, the older father weary and placating the exasperation and impatience of the youth, this version was just sung straight out, as if the conflict between the generations wasn’t even there.  But maybe that is just the distance between the younger generation and ours, because when I succeeded in playing the original to some younger listeners they didn’t get it at all, preferring the smooth blandness they knew to the original interpretation.    Anyway, the good thing is that there are more than enough older singers still recording for me to enjoy – the new Springsteen, ‘Wrecking Ball’ is arriving from Amazon soon, and I have yet to unwrap and play ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ from Paul – Joan Armatrading is releasing a new album soon, and we know it won’t be long before Neil Young does the same.  So leave me here soaking up the almost whispered words of Leonard’s ‘Old Ideas’ and I’ll tell you when I am ready to hear some new younger voices.