Album reviews: Ben Kweller | A Camp | Titus Andronicus | William Russell | Jeanette Mason | Martin Green | Isabel Bayrakdarian

Published on Thursday 29 January 2009 18:45

POP

BEN KWELLER: CHANGING HORSES

***

ATO RECORDS, 10.76

ERSTWHILE teenage grunge frontman Ben Kweller has moved in a rootsier direction since going solo, producing acoustic blues and country tunes for an indie audience. His fourth solo album is undemanding, pleasant fare, garnished liberally with the sweet sound of the pedal steel guitar and disarming melodies, including a couple of Gram Parsons-inspired songs about independent girls, one slightly fraught collision between 1970s pop and blues called Sawdust Man and one disposable ditty, Things I Like To Do, about… things he likes to do, such as listening to his favourite music on the bus and playing live, the crazy dude.

A CAMP: COLONIA

***

REVEAL, 10.76

CARDIGANS, frontwoman Nina Persson trades perky pop punchiness for a languid pace and ruminative tone on this second outing for her A Camp ensemble. Her husband Nathan Larson and Sparklehorse mainman Mark Linkous are back on board, while Joan As Policewoman, ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha and Swedish country singer Nicolai Dunger all put in guest appearances. Colonia is a superficially insipid listen, but does reveal layers with repeated listens to the perceptive, at times poetical, lyrics.

TITUS ANDRONICUS: TITUS ANDRONICUS

****

XL RECORDINGS, 11.74

ALEX Kapranos once likened Franz Ferdinand's second album to a sexually excited teenager. Now New Jersey quintet Titus Andronicus are happy to take up that particular mantle with a debut album which is a gleefully unhinged outpouring of adolescent concerns and energies, delivered like a punked-up Bruce Springsteen and encased in titles such as On Viewing Bruegel's Landscape With The Fall of Icarus. Man, we all know how that feels. Hurtling along at full tilt, they slow down in the closing stages, by which point you might have managed to catch your breath.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

WILLIAM RUSSELL: COMPLETE ORGAN VOLUNTARIES

****

DELPHIAN, 29.38

IT IS important that this complete collection of organ voluntaries by the late-18th-century London composer William Russell has been recorded on the newly restored organ at St James's Church Bermondsey. It provides a perfect opportunity to hear Russell's music on an organ more or less contemporary with his own lifetime, which ended in 1813. He was among the first English organ composers to write independently for the pedals, giving these otherwise traditionally shaped voluntaries a fullness of texture that was so often missing from some of his slower-developed contemporaries. John Kitchen performs the music with typical style and elegance.

KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

JEANETTE MASON: ALIEN LEFT HAND

****

FIREBALL RECORDS, 12.72

I DIDN'T hear pianist Jeanette Mason's first album, the splendidly titled Din and Tonic, but this follow-up certainly seems to justify the enthusiastic critical reception it received. Mason has a classical background and a substantial track record across multiple genres, including television and film scores and working with the likes of Oasis and Pulp as well as jazz, and much of that diversity is reflected in her approach here. All but two of the eight tracks are her own compositions, cast in a contemporary idiom that is strong on catchy melodic hooks and rhythmic verve. Her cover of Eurhythmics' Sweet Dreams is pulsating, if a little repetitive. Her playing is attractive and imaginative in equal measure, and she receives strong support from a fine band that features saxophonist Julian Siegel and trumpeter Tom Arthurs, as well as a vocal contribution from Lea Delaria.

FOLK

MARTIN GREEN: THE MARTIN GREEN MACHINE

***

NAVIGATOR RECORDS, 12.72

HAVING been very enthusiastic when I reviewed the live premiere of this project at Celtic Connections 2006, I have to confess to a slight sense of disappointment at this studio recording. It is hard to pinpoint why – perhaps I miss the immediacy of the live situation and the sense of newness and adventure that went with it, or it may be that the vocal and spoken elements seem rather more prominent than in my memory of the original show, but less interesting than the instrumental music. Nonetheless, there is much to like in the accordionist's iconoclastic approach to mashing up genres with a fine disregard for purity of any description. Key co-conspirators include guitarist Tom Cook, trombonist Rick Taylor and drummer Alyn Cosker, with Inge Thomson and Sophie Bancroft sharing the main singing roles.

KENNY MATHIESON

WORLD

ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN: GOMIDAS SONGS

*****

NONESUCH, 12.72

FOLK songs dating back to antiquity, drawn from villages on either side of the present Turkish-Armenian divide. When composer Gomidas Vardabet originally collected them around 1900 that divide did not exist: he was an ethnic Armenian, born in what is now Turkey, and devoted his life to celebrating and preserving the lullabies, laments and work-songs he grew up with. His story reflects the genocide that drove the states apart: as one of the Armenian intellectuals persecuted by the Turks in 1915, he was first incarcerated, then released after the intercession of the American ambassador, but the trauma of seeing his friends murdered and his life's work destroyed drove him to madness. But Gomitas was more than a tragic victim: as one of the world's first ethnomusicologists and a composer of genius, he created a new choral part-song genre out of this bucolic material. What we have here is a series of his songs with classical instrumental arrangements, sung with bewitching power by the Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. The accompaniment – by an ensemble led by Serouj Kradjian – is perfectly apt. But the instrument that steals the show is the duduk, a double-reed flute which has come to represent Armenia's soul.

MICHAEL CHURCH