At the local charity shop on Saturday I felt discouraged at just how many of their stock of LPs were ones I’d formerly owned and donated to them over the years that hadn’t yet found a buyer: some have been there for quite some time. Nothing on vinyl caught my eye, but I did pick up three CDs: D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar; Tasty by Kelis; and Duffy’s Rockferry. The total asking price was £2. Brown Sugar joins the copy of Voodoo I bought last year. Tasty meanwhile is aptly described by its title. I’d enjoyed ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Trick Me’ (more especially the latter) when they were new, but such was my blinkered outlook at the time that I never thought of buying the album back then.
It was a case of third time lucky with Rockferry: the other twice I’d ended up with copies that had been pre-enjoyed so much they were in unplayable condition. I’d not heard the album as a whole before and was favourably impressed at first acquaintance. The singles are clear stand-outs among some slightly weaker tracks, but the closing number ‘Distant Dreamer’ was an unfamiliar beauty. If you’d asked me fifteen years ago I’d have predicted Duffy would become a worldwide star and Adele an also-ran. Alas, things have gone very badly for the Welsh singer; as meanwhile the Londoner has gone on to one triumph after another.
In a different vein altogether a recent on-line order brought me new CD copies of John Luther Adams' Sila: the Breath of the World and Nuit Blanche by everyone’s favourite piano + cello + soprano sax + accordion art-music combo the Tarkovsky Quartet.