Album reviews: The Pretenders | The Streets | Courtney Marie Andrews

The Pretenders: Hate for Sale (BMG) *** The Streets: None of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive (Island) *** Courtney Marie Andrews: Old Flowers (Loose Records) **** Lynnie Carson: Everything In Between (Unicycle Records) *** Rufus Wainwright talked recently about the liberation that comes with being a seasoned voice – this is old news to Chrissie Hynde who always gives the impression that she was born comfortable in her own skin and exuding classic rock’n’roll style.She shoots from the hip on the latest album from The Pretenders. Original powerhouse drummer Martin Chambers is back in the recording fold, while Hynde welcomes a new co-writer playmate in guitarist James Walbourne, a man who knows his rock’n’roll heritage – witness the Bo Diddley beat of Didn’t Want To Be This Lonely – and has already proved an ideal fit in the Pretenders line-up over the past decade. Together, they dispense ten devil-may-care tracks in an economical 30 minutes, roaring out of the traps with the mean, urgent rock’n’roll of the title track, penned in tribute to The Damned but with a rootsier drive. From here, Hynde captures the delicious ache of love as the drug on the sultry purr of The Buzz, leads the punky reggae prowl of the cautionary Lightning Man and seamlessly changes gait again with the garage swagger of Turf Account Daddy. The Pretenders have always given good ballad and the pick here is the tremulous soul petition of the beautifully calibrated You Can’t Hurt a Fool. Hynde is also in yearning mode on the otherwise free-flowing Maybe Love Is In NYC, accompanied by Walbourne’s heroic guitar twang. Having closed off The Streets in 2011 and semi-retired into domesticity, geezer philosopher Mike Skinner reconvened his collaborative project in 2017 for some truly raucous gigs. Now he cements the revival with a new album – or mixtape, in the DIY auteur parlance. None of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive may eschew the conceptual rigour of previous Streets albums but there is nothing scattershot about this offering. Skinner has always worked with hip, soulful singers – on this occasion, he uses a wide variety of vocal foils from rapper Ms Banks to former The Music frontman Rob Harvey to complement his own deliberate, documentary vocal flow, which is more about performance poetry than rapping dexterity. The most distinctive contributions include the breathy reverie of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better and the strident, semi-spoken delivery of Idles’ frontman Joe Talbot on the punky, bassy title track.Elsewhere on this eclectic soundtrack, I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Love Him invokes hands-in-the-air clubby ecstasy, I Know Something You Did delivers shimmering, simmering trip-hop while Take Me As I Am is a blast of the old Streets, with Skinner navigating the nightlife to a drum’n’bass bounce. No offence to the justly lauded Angel Olsen, but California-based Courtney Marie Andrews has just produced an alt.country break-up album to rival All Mirrors. Unlike Olsen’s ravishing orchestration, Andrews keeps it mostly sparse, sage and simple on Old Flowers. “You can’t water old flowers,” she laments on the timeless title track; the poignant flower metaphor also crops up on the exquisitely sorrowful Burlap String. Ramping up the old school Nashville sound, Andrews wonders if she’s done with love on the noble melodrama of Carnival Dream and sounds like a country cousin to Laura Marling against the soulful sigh of pedal steel on the peppy It Must Be Someone Else’s Fault. From one west coast to another…Gourock singer/songwriter Lynnie Carson follows her Scottish Women’s World Cup team anthem We Have Your Back with a contrasting mini-album dealing with themes of addiction and illness, its downbeat sentiments warmly expressed in her refreshing tones and uplifted by Bacharachian brass, melodious country rock guitar and the soothing, cooing backing vocals. CLASSICAL César Franck: Le Chasseur maudit – Psyché – Les Éolides (Naxos) **** César Franck’s music is often unduly dismissed as being mainly organ music, with the addition of a tuneful Symphony in D minor and inspired Violin Sonata. But here is evidence that the Belgian-born composer had a gift for orchestral colour, harmonic boldness and structural coherence. Jean-Luc Tingaud conducts the RSNO in a disc bookended by two significant works: Le Chasseur maudit, a demonic helter-skelter symphonic poem fuelled by Wagnerian impulse; and Les Éolides, featuring music of infinite delicacy, charm, and a sound world owing much to Berlioz. But the jewel here is Psyché, a symphonic poem depicting the Orpheus-like myth of Psyche and Eros, shimmering in luminescent textures, dreamy melodies, proto-Impressionistic colourings, and the ethereal topping of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Voices. Beautifully written, it warrants and receives a top class performance. Ken Walton FOLK TMSA Young Trad Tour 2019 (www.tmsa.scot/tmsa-shop) **** Thanks to Covid-19, the tour is in name only, but the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland’s annual recording of winners and finalists of Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition makes the best of it. It kicks off in breezy pipe and fiddle-led form, with breathless puirt à beul from Skye singer Catherine Tinney who follows up with Ho rò cha eil cadal orm. Winning Glasgow fiddler Benedict Morris plays a vivacious set, accompanied by guitarist Luc McNally who also sings Michael Marra’s affectionately surreal Hamish the Goalie. There’s Cape Breton-accented fiddle work from Cameron Ross, lissom flute playing from Sarah Markey and brisk piping from Ross Miller, while 2018 winner Hannah Rarity makes every poignant note and word count in Go and Leave Me. No doubt further tracks would have let each performer really get into their stride, but also in no doubt of the strength of emerging talent. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: The Pretenders | The Streets | Courtney Marie Andrews | Lynnie Carson