Lives Outgrown
DOMINO
ALBUM OF THE MONTH
9/10
IN recent times, we have tended to place great faith in late-life albums by revered artists. Johnny Cash’s releases on American Recordings, begun in 1994, perhaps set the course; since then has come, if not an explosion, at least a soft bloom of such records, from David Bowie’s Blackstar to Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, via Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways and even Tom Jones’ run of recordings with Ethan Johns. These are records we covet for their sense of retrospection and accumulated wisdom, for the light they seem to cast on our callow years.
We accord less fanfare to music that, Frank Black’s , Bonnie Raitt’s ; their push away from youth, their sense of recalibration in the face of detour or disappointment, is every bit as compelling as the oak-aged material of the older musician.
