Album reviews: Mariah Carey | Idlewild | Jan Garbarek Group | Shooglenifty | Brahms | Francophonic

Published on Sunday 4 October 2009 20:59

MARIAH CAREY: MEMOIRS OF AN IMPERFECT ANGEL * MERCURY, £12.72

THE dotty diva's 12th album begins hopefully, with current single Obsessed, her musically bland but lyrically scabrous riposte to Eminem's allegations of a relationship.

"You're a mom and pop, I'm a corporation, I'm a press conference, you're a conversation," she trills with a little airbrushing from Auto-Tune. Take that, Shady!

Sadly this does not herald the new feisty Mariah – a track called H.A.T.E.U. turns out to be a thoroughly insipid ballad and the rest of Memoirs only deviates from tepid, twittering R&B territory with soppy piano ballad Languishing and a cover of Foreigner's MOR classic I Want To Know What Love Is.

IDLEWILD: POST ELECTRIC BLUES

***

COOKING VINYL, 11.74

ALTHOUGH there are hints of diverse new territories for Idlewild on Post Electric Blues, the overriding impression is that they have still not found a convincing way of reconciling frontman Roddy Woomble's love of folk with their status as one of Scotland's top rock bands.

Younger Than America could be their most mainstream roots rock effort yet, while Take Me Back To The Islands is almost as sentimental a slice of folk rock as its title suggests. On a more positive note, they appear to have completed their transformation into the Caledonian REM on current single Readers & Writers and the similarly chiming Circles In Stars, while the ambitious Post-Electric is quite an epic, progressing over five minutes from New Wave stylings to a full-on indulgent guitar workout.

JAZZ

JAN GARBAREK GROUP: DRESDEN – IN CONCERT

****

ECM RECORDS, 19.56

SAXOPHONIST Jan Garbarek's first live album as leader in his long association with the Munich-based label ECM was recorded in Dresden's Alte Schlachthof in October 2007. The two-CD set features the long-serving Rainer Brninghaus on piano and keyboards, drummer Manu Katch, and a new recruit at that point, bassist Yuri Daniel, who had replaced the indisposed Eberhard Weber.

Garbarek is in fine form on both soprano and tenor saxophones (he is also heard on flute), and there is an energy and fluid interplay to the music that brings out the best in a saxophonist who has long since established his musical signature. He draws on a wide range of material spanning three decades of diverse projects, and includes several previously unrecorded tunes. A safe bet for Garbarek fans, and a good starting place if you don't know his work.

FOLK

SHOOGLENIFTY: MURMICHAN

***

SHOOGLE RECORDS, 12.72

SHOOGLENIFTY may have surrendered the element of groundbreaking surprise that marked their eruption on the Scottish music scene in the early 1990s, but they have defied a lot of people's expectations with their staying power, and continue to generate crowd-pleasing performances on stage and in the studio.

This new double CD offers a taste of both. The first disc was recorded "live" in the studio with minimal overdubbing, and features a lot of the material they have developed in performance over the past year. The second disc has differently titled experimental studio remixes of tracks from disc one (including two by DJ Dolphin Boy), along with their collaboration with Ensemble Kaboul at Celtic Connections in January, and live recordings of four more new tunes. They tackle all of the music in their usual energised, rhythmically charged and cheerfully eclectic fashion.

CLASSICAL

BRAHMS: LIEDER / SCHUMANN: DICHTERLIEBE

*****

SONY CLASSICAL, 13.70

TWO masters of their art come together in this exquisite Lieder disc of Brahms and Schumann. That could, of course, refer to the composers themselves.

The Brahms songs here are gripping examples of the Romantic genre; Schumann's Dichterliebe cycle – consummate, soul-searching settings of Heinrich Heine – is no less satisfying.

But the true masters here are baritone Simon Keenlyside and pianist Malcolm Martineau, a performing duo of supreme eloquence.

Keenlyside imbues each song with an uncannily rich clarity, combining emotive passion with stylish delicacy.

He knits the Schumann, despite the brevity of many of its numbers, with arresting cohesion. Martineau's inimitable pianism is authoritative and characterful, supportive, of every subtle nuance explored by the singer. Pure genius.

WORLD

FRANCOPHONIC: FRANCO & LE TPOK JAZZ VOL 2

****

STERNS AFRICA, 13.70

WE'RE seeing a heartening sea-change in world music at present. Studio effects and electronica have finally peaked, with the general realisation that they represent a disappearance into the ether: since the technical bods can do anything, the musicians become redundant, while the music itself, cut loose from social moorings, hovers in a void.

Meanwhile, major artists are returning to acoustic music, having at last understood that amplification is the enemy of good art.

People are looking back at how things were done before machines took over: hence the explosion of interest in what was being produced in Central Africa in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Last year I praised the first volume of Sterns's compilation of tracks by Franco, the great Zairean guitarist who was one of the most influential African musicians of the 20th century. As well as leading the continent's best-known dance band, he was also a prolific composer and educator. This second volume takes the story on through his years of fame, still melding Cuban and African influences in the long riffs which he and his band built out of the traditional Zairean pattern of melodiously tumbling repetitions over steady rhythmic grooves.