Continued from 28
Leppard alongside Bowie on saxophone
and Ronson’s soaring guitar melody. The
heart of the 2LP set is a side of Ronson’s
solo material from Just Like This (recorded
in 1976) and his final studio album Heaven
and Hull. Ronson borrows David
Gilmour’s blues during “I’d Give
Anything to See You.” An instrumental
take of Giorgio Moroder’s “Midnight
Love” drips with a languid guitar that
echoes the influence Ronson had on play-
ers like Mark Knopfler. Bowie joins for a
swaggering, cocky cover of Dylan’s “Like
a Rolling Stone.” Def Leppard vocalist Joe
Elliot’s previously unreleased “This Is For
You” is a tribute to a dearly missed col-
league and friend. A bonus track on the
vinyl release is Aladdin Sane pianist Mike
Garson’s “Tribute to Mick Ronson,” an
alternately delicate and dangerous ode to
Ronson’s too-brief but a towering presence
in popular music.
–Jeff Elbel
ing the seven-song, one-hour playtime,
but grooves instead of brutality seem to
take precedence, most evident on
“Honeycomb.” Opener “You Without
End,” sets this tone as a song with a piano
riff backbone amid guest vocalist Nadia
Kury reading passages from a short story
by Oakland author Tom McElravey--pas-
sages that celebrate the ordinary yet sub-
lime moments of life, such as a flock of
geese flying by. The early guitar interplay
on “Canary Yellow” is an audio example
of this seemingly ordinary beauty, with
hardcore metal movements developing
later during the song’s 12-minute play-
time. “Near” is a dreamy, shoe-gazer bal-
lad featuring clean vocal harmonies, and
“Night People” again relies on piano and
female vocals for maximum atmospheric
effects.
– Jason Scales
8
7
DEAFHAVEN
Oridinary Corrupt
Human Love
(Anti)
Deafheaven’s fourth album Ordinary
Corrupt Human Love is the band’s least bru-
tal, the album that more evenly balances
the beautiful guitar harmonies with the
incoherent Banshee wails of singer George
Clarke. Grindcore passages still exist dur-
october
2018
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