Album reviews: David Rotheray | The Hoosiers | Classical | Jazz | Folk | World

Published on Sunday 15 August 2010 19:18

POP David Rotheray: The Life Of Birds **** Proper, £12.99

ROTHERAY is best known as guitarist in the Beautiful South though he has also recorded with Sam Brown as Homespun. The Life Of Birds, a loose concept album featuring songs about birds that aren't always about birds, is the first release he has put his own name to but it was recorded with a little help from his friends – each of whom happens to be an accomplished folk singer.

Kathryn Williams sounds more lovely and elegant than she does on her own wispy material, Alasdair Roberts sounds as old as time, Camille O'Sullivan dials it down effectively on the pedal steel-enhanced sway of Sweet Forgetfulness and, best of all, Jim Causley and Jack Lukeman lend their evocative baritones to this unassuming treat.

The Hoosiers: The Illusion Of Safety ***

RCA, 12.99

THE Hoosiers recently made their bid to record the world's longest pop song, with verses supplied by their fans, to be released later in the month.

But if you really want to spend 40 minutes in their company, you might be better off instead with this second album which retains a little of the ELO-influenced power pop trip of their chartbusting debut but also tries out some Muse-lite pomp pop integrated with fashionably unfashionable 80s influences. The trio are generally better at bold overstatement, but the melancholic Devil's In The Detail whirs and chimes like a toybox Radiohead. Not quite so safe after all.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

Chopin: Piano Concerto No 1 & Fantasia on Polish Airs ***

Naxos, 5.99

WHATEVER reservations we might have about Chopin's routinely orchestrated piano concertos, there's no denying the richness of melodic content and exquisite delicacy contained in the piano writing. So, no matter what, the soloist carries the can and is the make-or-break of a successful performance.

Uzbekistan-born Eldar Nebolsin is in the spotlight for this new recording of the Piano Concerto No 1 with Naxos favourites, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, under Antoni Wit's baton. Nebolsin lets the music unfold with natural energy, matching its liquid flamboyance with a neat sense of timing. Wit's brass section occasionally overblows in the long opening, but otherwise the orchestra offers a sensitive underlay to the soloist. Its involvement in the gently colourful Fantasia on Polish Airs is distinguished, and quite extravagant in Krakoviak's boisterous Grand Rondeau de Concert.

KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

Bob Stuckey / Dudu Pukwana: Night Time Is The Right Time ***

Cadillac, 13.99

RECORD producer John Jack has unearthed a small but vibrant slice of British jazz history in this set of trio and quartet recordings, all taped at the predecessor to Ronnie Scott's Firth Street club, the Gerrard Street premises known as the Old Place.

The recordings were made by the artists during various appearances in 1967-8, and are reasonable, although not always consistent and certainly not high fidelity by contemporary standards.

Saxophonist Dudu Pukwana is the main draw, and is heard on the nine quartet tracks (six of them his own tunes) with Hammond organist Bob Stuckey, Phil Lee on guitar and John Marshall on drums. The remaining five tracks feature more routine outings from Stuckey's trio with guitarist Terry Smith and drummer Martin Hart on a selection of standards and the organist's Bob's Hop.

KENNY MATHIESON

FOLK ***

ANDY CUTTING: ANDY CUTTING

LANE RECORDS, 12.99

BUTTON accordionist Andy Cutting's CV is a veritable Who's Who of the English folk scene of the past two decades, yet this album is his first solo recording, a masterful selection of his own and other contemporary trad material and traditional tunes.

He's accompanied sparingly by guitarist Ian Carr, who contributes drive to the insistent Uphill Way while Tim Harries adds ruminative double bass to Still Hearing You and flautist Michael McGoldrick gives an Irish lilt to the jig Atherfield. Cutting brings zest and warmth to Simon Thoumire's Granton Fish Bowl, but my favourites were the gentle musings of Old Light and his measured teasing out of morris tunes Cuckoo's Nest and Old Molly Oxford, in the company of Carr's gently chiming guitar. JIM GILCHRIST

WORLD ***

Tomoko Sugawara: Along the Silk Road

Motemar, 14.99

FOR the uninitiated – which until now included me – the kugo is an angular harp that goes back to Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. It made its way, via Egypt and ancient Greece, to the Silk Road in the Middle Ages, and the reconstruction played here is modelled on a harp found on a reliquary box made in China in the seventh century. Tang-dynasty China valued these "konghou" or "kugo" harps highly.

They disappeared from East Asia around 1100 but remained popular in Iran and the wider Muslim world until the 17th century. Then, according to the liner-note, "they disappeared". But they didn't. In Georgia the changi, still played today, is exactly the same instrument.

Listening blind, I would have said it was the Ukrainian bandura – it has that generously warm and full timbre.

With accompaniment by Robert Dick on the alto flute (a shame it wasn't a shakuhachi, which would have been more appropriate) and by Ozan Aksoy on Persian percussion, this CD is a fascinating piece of musical archaeology, partly thanks to the Tang melodies whose surviving tablature has permitted their transfer into Western notation.

On the other hand, the arrangements of old melodies on show here, some in Persian guise, are of limited interest.

But three new Robert Lombardo compositions, which use the kugo as a base and then take off into delicately elaborated melodic realms, allow Sugawara's artistry to take wing. MICHAEL CHURCH