Alone

This just hit the spot this morning. Judas Priest is most often a go-to, for me, for good, honest, loud fun. Rob Halford rocks. But “Alone” reflects the intelligence it takes to survive in the recording industry for, oh, about an entire generation or so. It’s still got heft, but its elegiac tone is earned. Yep, it’s drama, just like so much music, and just like the best of the cheesiest of metal. But its earnestness isn’t embarrassing, nor arch. It’s a good song.

 

Apologies that this comes with an ad – but the sound quality on this clip is fairly good, and I think the track deserves that. By the way, if you do listen, this is one of those seventies-feeling mixes which is rewarded by heaphones. It actually uses the stereophonic divide really nicely in one of the sweepier bits, with an acoustic guitar. It is, in fact, a really well-crafted piece of work. There are times my many years spent amongst musicians, when I lived in the Midwest and was married to a musician, still deepens and/or can ruin my appreciation for certain performances. Oh, and in the “you might also like” links at the end of the vid, YouTube offers an acoustic version of “Diamonds and Rust” which provides a really nice listen to what Rob Halford’s voice truly sounds like, much closer to undadorned. He’s aged, but taken care of those pipes by far better than most. It ain’t Johnny Cash singing “Hurt”, but it’s a real pleasure to listen to his sound with such clarity, the fine roughness and polish of a voice which has earned its timbre over decades.