Julie Driscoll / Brian Auger & The Trinity - Streetnoise MP3 FLAC

I have several Trinity and Oblivion Express albums, and without a doubt, Streetnoise is by far the finest album Brian Auger had ever done in his career. Like Open, the previous album with Julie Driscoll, she does not sing on every song, Brian Auger and even Dave Ambrose also handles vocal duties, and there are a couple of instrumentals as well. This goes way beyond anything on Open, or Definitely What (without Jools). The horns are dropped, but a more ambitious approach is clearly felt, taking greater chances, combining jazz, soul, blues, prog, gospel, and even folk, which means even if you don't care for everything done on the album you can't help but be still amazed by the performance from all around. "The Tropic of Capricorn" sounds very typical Brian Auger & the Trinity. Auger adopted a more mellow voice here, once he used again on Closer to It and Straight Ahead (both with the Oblivion Express), but he only sings on one other song. Lots of great jazz passages, with a couple of almost ELP-like organ passages (but of course Auger's organ playing would be rooted in jazz, rather than classical, as in Emerson), even though Keith Emerson was still with The Nice (I wouldn't doubt if Auger was an influence on Emerson as well). There's also a Clive Thacker drum solo too. "Czechoslovakia", by Jools, is a rather disturbing piece about the 1968 Soviet invasion of said country. There's even simulated sounds of army tanks. "Take Me to the Water" is a Nina Simone song, and is clearly in gospel territory. Even if gospel isn't my music of choice, there's no getting around how much Jools could be at home as a white soul singer as much as a vocal jazz singer, or (on this album) a folk singer in a similar vein to Sandy Denny. And you get the latter on "A Word About Color", very clearly acoustic folk. Her voice reminds me of the likes of Sandy Denny here, you could almost imagine her in Fairport Convention here, even has a bit of a Fairport thing going on. What also surprised me is she could also play acoustic guitar, which is what she does here. They take on the Doors' "Light My Fire", but it was the Jose Feliciano version they had in mind (the album wrongly credited Jim Morrison, as it was Robbie Krieger who wrote the song). Ritchie Havens' "Indian Rope Man" is done in a very similar manner to Frumpy's version off their 1970 album All Will Be Changed which leads me to believe that Julie Driscoll was a big influence on Inga Rumpf as well as Auger & The Trinity on the rest of the band. "When I was a Young Girl" is a traditional folk song, but instead of acoustic guitar, it's dominated by some rather spooky organ from Auge himself, but with Jools singing. A great piece. A couple songs from Hair appear here, including "The Flesh Failures (Let's The Sunshine In)" and "I've Got Life" are featured here, done as you expect with Jools and Auge & the Trinity, of course it totally depends how much tolerance you would have to the music of Hair as to how much you'll enjoy these, but then again, the mindblowing performances even made me stand up even if I was never a fan of the music of said play. "Ellis Island" is an instrumental piece, with a rather '70s feel to it (mind you this is still 1969), dominated by clavinet and organ, with a bit of a funky feel. Dave Ambrose gives us "In Search of the Sun", and he sings here, although it demonstrates why the major portion of this album was song by Jools herself. He isn't the best of singers out there, but I really dig that psychedelic vibe, which more than makes up for vocal shortcomings. "Looking in the Eye of the World" is the other song Auger takes vocal duties, and is a very calm, piano-oriented jazz piece that I really dig. Some may not take to the slow pace, but it doesn't bother me. "Vaxhall to Lambeth Bridge" is another one of those folky pieces from Jools, proving the amount of surprises this album coughs up! They take on Miles Davis' "All Blues" (originally off his 1959 album A Kind of Blue), but this time they add on vocals from Jools, and much of the horns found on the original replaced by piano. The next piece is "I've Got Life", which was mentioned already. The last one is Laura Nyro's "Save the Country", which is a great version of a song that I thought was great to begin with. This has a rather strong soul influence.Listening to this, I don't doubt this album had a big impact on jazzy/bluesy prog rock bands lead by female vocalists like Tomorrow's Gift, Frumpy, and Affinity, it's pretty obvious upon listening to this music, and those bands simply took off with similar ideas, and perhaps made them even more proggy.Streetnoise may be an album that's too eclectic for its own good, guaranteeing that not everyone will like everything on the album, on the other hand, the quality of material is top-rate, even if not everything is to one's taste (I know "Take me the Water" may not appeal to those not into gospel, and the Hair songs won't appeal to those not into the music to that play), but I was still totally blown away by much of the album. Perhaps the biggest shock is the exploration into folk music, that I never heard on any other Brian Auger album, be it with the Trinity or with the Oblivion express. Even the songs not to my taste I don't feel like removing the tonearm off my turntable and moving it to the next song, because the inspired performances prevent me from doing that. For me, I really loved the risks Auger and the band were taking here and the results were top rate material (even the material not to my tastes), it's very much an album required in your collection.

Oops! I should know the Nina Simone song in question was "Take me the Water", but I kept thinking of the Al Green via Talking Heads song "Take Me to River" when I was typing this. I just corrected it.

"Take me to the Water" not 'river' -which is a very different song.