Album reviews: February 2014

Pete Clark

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Duo Art: Creating Magic

(ACT Records)

★★★★☆

Anticipating St Valentine’s Day and acting upon the Marvin Gaye dictum that it only takes two to make dreams come true, ACT are proffering this double-disc helping of romantic duets. Highlights - and there are many - include the last recording by US tenorman Eddie Harris, singing and playing a soulful ballad with pianist Gil Goldstein; the fine guitar-tenor sax pairing of Wayne Kranz and Bob Malach, and the all-Scandinavian meeting of trombonist Nils Landgren and late lamented pianist-composer Esbjorn Svensson. Fellow international keyboard stars Iiro Rantala, Danilo Rea, Gwilym Simcock, Emil Viklicky and Michael Wollny are also represented and fans of vocalists Viktoria Tolstoy and Sidsel Endresen, guitarists Philip Catherine and Ulf Wakenius, and Norwegian sax sensation Marius Neset will not be disappointed either.

Jack Massarik

SALSA CELTICA

The Tall Islands

(Discos Leon)

★★★★☆

They do what it says on the tin – extremely well. Salsa Celtica play a compelling fusion of Afro-Cuban music with Scottish and Irish folk. The Scottish-based collective formed in the mid-1990s and now features musicians from Scotland, Cuba, Ireland, Argentina and England, this is their fifth studio album. The opening Descarga Gaélica is probably the first ever salsa track in Gaelic, firing on tumbao beats with a blazing Cuban trumpet. It’s highly danceable, with a couple of slower-paced guajira songs. Alongside pattering Cuban percussion, the instrumental line-up includes a Latin horn section, fiddle, flutes and uilleann pipes. The idioms blend so well now that it sounds totally natural. Salsa Celtica have already wowed them in Havana and Cartagena. They are formidable live and play at Rich Mix March 13.

Simon Broughton

KATY B

Little Red

(Columbia)

★★★★★

For a singer once known by the fluffy moniker Baby Katy, Peckham’s Kathleen Brien has delivered a surprisingly single-minded second album. An underperforming comeback single was expunged from the tracklisting, while the Brit School graduate ditched dubstep for a modish Nineties house sound. Never mind that bleepy throwback, Everything wouldn’t be out of place on a dusty copy of Now That’s What I Call Music! This record is an emotionally textured, dance-pop triumph: Next Thing, 5AM and I Like You already sound like club classics. A couple of luminous ballads reveal the redheaded singer’s knockout vocal, and there’s a winning duet with Jessie Ware on Aaliyah, a reboot of Dolly Parton’s green-eyed anthem Jolene.

Little Red should make Katy B a big star.

Andre Paine

NINA PERSSON

Animal Heart

(Lojinx)

★★★☆☆

Nina Persson’s first proper solo album comes 20 years after her debut as the singer of Swedish pop band The Cardigans. Today the early cutesiness of her voice has been edged out by something more weary and husky – there’s some of the gothic grandeur of Lana Del Rey’s work on the slow-motion ballad Burning Bridges for Fuel. However, there’s also something a bit cosy and Radio 2 about the production, and the almost constant slow pace could do with some zippier songs for balance. The steady Americana of The Grand Destruction Game stands out, as does the gentle twinkle of Forgot to Tell You. Otherwise it drifts along pleasantly enough without producing the killer song to make this a vital comeback.

David Smyth

NEIL FINN

Dizzy Heights

(Lester Records)

★★★★☆

I used to love Neil Finn. Nothing good had come from New Zealand before him except sheep, bits of Split Enz (which Finn was in, with his brother Tim) and a rugby team. Neil Finn was the driving force behind Crowded House, who delivered great, old-fashioned pop songs, one of which (as I suggested years ago) Paul McCartney might have been proud of (Four Seasons in One Day).

This third solo record requires a little time to make its presence felt. Finn is a master of melody but also a bit of a hippy — the opening track, Impressions, is a little dreamy for the modern world. There are also touches of mild psychedelia on the title track and White Lies and Alibis. Synthetic strings and brass abound on such tracks as Better Than TV and Divebomber.

You will like this record after three or more listens, but treat it gently.

Pete Clark

TEMPLES

Sun Structures

(Heavenly)

★★★☆☆

From Kettering, but also from the late-Sixties/early-Seventies, Temples are not so much in thrall to the era’s twangsome, vaguely psychedelic phase, as on a lunatic quest to turn back the hands of time. Each of these 12 echo-laden, reverb-heavy tracks harks to the age of The Byrds’ post-country phase and John Lennon’s #9 Dream. The foursome so loved by Noel Gallagher may lack originality but they’re not without style and conviction. Colours To Life ambles along woozily like the soundtrack to a lava lamp advertisement but Fragment’s Light crackles with manly energy, while The Golden Throne and Shelter Song suggest that songwriting craft is timeless whatever the setting.

Temples’ stubborn refusal to move with the decades may be quixotic but it’s also admirable — and Sun Structures is curiously addictive.

John Aizlewood

OSIAN ROBERTS/STEVE FISHWICK SEXTET

When Night Falls

(Hard Bop Records)

★★★★☆

Not to be confused with some crude branch of the martial arts, Hard Bop is a straight-ahead yet polished jazz style personified by the early groups of drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. Britain’s leading exponents include Welsh tenorist Osian Roberts and the Fishwick twins, trumpeter Steve and drummer Matt, whose group tours the UK this month.

Featured with them on this high-quality album are Italian pianist Albert Sanz and New York baritone-saxman Frank Basile. Sanz’s expressive keyboard touch reflects Cedar Walton and other modern masters, while Basile’s angular lines recall the late Pepper Adams. Steve’s trumpet gives the ensembles brassy authority and Roberts’s warmth and fluency evokes a young Tubby Hayes.

Catch them at the Crypt in Camberwell tonight or Pinner Parish Church tomorrow.

Jack Massarik

AZIZA BRAHIM

Soutak

(Glitterbeat Records)

★★★★☆

The international debut of a fine vocalist from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. Aziza Brahim was brought up in the refugee camps in Algeria but is now based in Barcelona. Through her music, she is trying to re-awaken awareness in this seemingly forgotten conflict. Brahim has a sonorous voice with just a touch of desert grit, accompanied here by an acoustic band of guitars, electric bass, percussion and tabal, the Saharawi hand drum. The latter underpins Julud, a memorable song of resistance dedicated to her mother.

While La Palabra (The Word) sums up what she is trying to do: “Cradled by the wind it left/ it went around the world and returned/ and there beyond the word was heard.”

Hers is certainly a voice worth hearing.

Simon Broughton

BROKEN BELLS

After the Disco

(Columbia)

★★★★☆

Brian Burton, who as Danger Mouse has worked with everyone from Norah Jones to Beck and U2, doesn’t tend to stick with a collaborator for long. However, this is his second album with James Mercer, frontman of The Shins, and it’s a relationship that deserves to last. Burton has also produced Gorillaz, and just as Damon Albarn brightened his sonic palette moving from Blur to that band, so this is a similar shift towards full colour from the restrained indie rock Mercer makes with his other group. There’s an easy groove to Control that sounds fantastic when the horns arrive, and the sci-fi funk of Holding on for Life finds the singer affecting a Bee Gees falsetto that suggests the disco is ongoing.

David Smyth

MAXÏMO PARK

Too Much Information

(Daylighting)

★★★★☆

Rather like the reinforced crotch that Maxïmo Park singer Paul Smith had installed to withstand his on-stage scissor kicks, there’s an impressive sturdiness to the songs on the Sunderland band’s fifth record. Setting out to record a few EP tracks, they ended up with an eclectic album that may be a career best. Headlong guitar anthems, including the opening Give, Get, Take, mingle with bookish indie jangle such as Lydia, the Ink Will Never Dry, a tribute to US author Lydia Davis that’s simultaneously in thrall to The Smiths. Moody synths underpin the paranoia of Brain Cells and there are shades of The National on Drinking Martinis. The majestic Leave This Island might even secure Maxïmo Park the hit that’s eluded them in recent years.

Andre Paine

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

So Long, See You Tomorrow

(Island)

★★★★☆

In 2009, a dull first album, a gimmicky name and some lacklustre live showings suggested Bombay Bicycle Club would not detain us for long. Half a decade later, the Crouch End foursome are seeking their fourth consecutive gold album and they’ve evolved beyond recognition. So Long, See You Later is an ambitious, sprawling song cycle, packed with invention, warmth and grandstanding melodies that suggest Noah & The Whale and Elbow as much as Brian Wilson. There’s an Asian tinge, not least to Feel, and It’s Alright Now’s swirling peaks and valleys form both the album and Bombay Bicycle Club’s peak, but Carry Me and the vocal pyrotechnics and twinkling piano of Whenever Wherever run it close. An unmitigated joy.

John Aizlewood

AUGUSTINES

Augustines

(Votiv/Caroline International)

★★★☆☆

This Brooklyn three–piece thrive on personal turmoil – check the details of their turbulent existence and you will find much darkness, involving suicide and excess. Singer and guitarist Billy McCarthy sounds like a man who has been through hard times and these he would like to share with you. He specialises in keening vocals, tending towards the gruff, with a multi-tracked backing choir and occasional strings and brass courtesy of fellow Augustine Eric Sanderson. Cruel City is an updated sea shanty, Weary Eyes has big keyboards and maybe should have been called Weary Ears. Don’t You Look Back features much guitar and Walkabout takes us back to the keyboards. The problem, or virtue, of Augustines is that they take life and music very seriously indeed – there is not a wink or raised eyebrow to be found. Life is tough. Take it or leave it. I think I’ll take a rain check.

Pete Clark

PAT METHENY UNITY GROUP

Kin (←→)

(Nonesuch)

★★★★☆

For guitarists every new Pat Metheny album is a major event, but the shock-haired American has outdone himself with this one. Self-styled “a lush and more orchestrated concept without sacrificing energy, focus and intensity,” it has an epic feel, with scored sections of up to 35 manuscript pages linking dazzling solos by the touring quartet he calls “the slam band”. Joining drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist Ben Williams and multi-reedman Chris Potter is Giulio Carmassi, an ultra-versatile newcomer who sings, whistles and plays piano, trumpet, trombone, French horn, organ, vibes, cello, flute, clarinet and alto sax. Presumably he charges extra. Mercifully Metheny himself makes no change to his customary cool, high-pitched and slightly woolly sound. Fans should enter “Hammersmith Apollo, Wed June 11” in their diaries.

Jack Massarik

TINARIWEN

Emmaar

(PIAS/Co Op)

★★☆☆☆

Tinariwen are the first and the greatest of the Touareg rockers from the Sahara who’ve become celebrated the world over for their ferocious electric guitar blues and long desert robes. Because of the political instability at home in northern Mali, this album was recorded in the Californian desert. It’s a pretty sombre affair, however. The pace is predominantly slow and the songs lack the drive and subversive energy of their previous records. It’s tempting to link this to the problems back home and the lyrics of the opener Toumast Tincha show a prevailing gloom: “The ideals of the people have been sold cheap, my friends / A peace imposed by force is bound to fail.” This is probably for Tinariwen completists only.

Simon Broughton