Album reviews: Joshua Radin | Screaming Trees | Fruit Tree Foundation | Classical | Jazz | World

Published on Sunday 7 August 2011 20:26

Our critics take a look at some of this week's new releases...

POP

Joshua Radin: The Rock and The Tide

14th Floor Records, 12.99 **

DON'T be taken in by the purported move from solo acoustic mimsy to full band rock'n'rollerama on Joshua "Mad Dog" Radin's latest album. He still sounds like a six-stone weakling, one of the few songwriters James Blunt could have in a fight (musically, that is – you wouldn't want to get into a real fight with an ex-soldier). Here We Go is more a resigned shrug than an invitation to large it; elsewhere he parties like daytime Radio 2. It's almost a relief when he gets back to the wet whimsy of Think I'll Go Inside.

Screaming Trees: Last Words: The Final Recordings

sunyata Records, Download Only ***

LIKE many of the Seattle grunge bands in the 1990s, Screaming Trees operated in Nirvana's shade, yet delivered more than generic plaid-clad rock. Last Words is the album they recorded but never released before their split and it's a fine testament to a sophisticated group who were their own worst enemies. Frontman Mark Lanegan dodged the drug casualty list to build an impressive solo career and Last Words, featuring his future Queens of the Stone Age buddy Josh Homme as guest guitarist, showcases his coarse croon on tracks such as the sensitive (by Trees standard) acoustic number Reflections. Eat it up because there will not, apparently, be a reunion.

Fruit Tree Foundation: First Edition

Chemikal Underground ***

FRUIT Tree Foundation is a collaborative project spearheaded by former Delgado Emma Pollock and Idlewild's Rod Jones which has grown out of their involvement with the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. The material on First Edition is the fruit of an intensive writing session in a Perthshire farmhouse with the likes of James Yorkston, Karine Polwart and Frightened Rabbit's Scott Hutchison and covers the indie folk spectrum with, variously, navel-gazing, humorous and haunting results. There's no sign of awkward contrivance; indeed, some of the fluid partnerships could bear further exploration – Jones' burnished guitar work is a fine match for Alasdair Roberts' spindly vocals on the 60s psych folk-influenced The Untrue Womb, for example, while Pollock and Jill O'Sullivan of Sparrow & the Workshop, two of the most evocative singers in the land, provide siren-like backing for Twilight Sad frontman James Graham on the broody, moody Favourite Son.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

William Vincent Wallace: Opera Fantasies and Paraphrases

Naxos, 5.99 ***

NOT to be confused with his two Scots namesakes – the late 19th-century, Greenock-born composer as well as the obvious historical one – Irish composer William Vincent Wallace made his name principally as an opera composer, flitting back and forth between London and New York in a career that ended in premature death in 1865. Two of these operas – Maritana and Lurline – feature among the Liszt-style Opera Fantasies and Paraphrases played here by pianist Rosemary Tuck along with (in the more bullish four-hand arrangements) Richard Bonynge. Other better-known operatic sources include a sparkling set of variations on the Barcarolle from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, plenty of Verdi and a snatch of Bellini – a fantasy on themes from La sonnambula. They're not quite in the same class as Liszt, stronger on simple charm than demonic virtuosity. KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

John Surman: Flashpoint

Cuneiform Records, 22.99 ****

THIS previously unissued treasure contains a fascinating slice of European jazz history. It is a recording made in Hamburg for the NDR Jazz Workshop broadcast series in April 1969, featuring saxophonist John Surman and a group of mainly English musicians who were at the forefront of the emerging European jazz scene of that era, including saxophonists Alan Skidmore and Mike Osborne, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, and Ronnie Scott playing in a freer context than usual. They play five pieces, three by Surman and one each by their German guests, pianist Fritz Pauer and trombonist Erich Kleinschuster. The recording quality is excellent, and the sense of invention, engagement and commitment in the music retains a freshness and excitement that is still palpable four decades on. The package also includes a DVD shot during a segment of the week-long workshop that preceded this concert. KENNY MATHIESON

Bla Fleck & The Flecktones: Rocket Science

Eone, 11.99 ****

FRONT-PORCH hoedown this ain't. Following freewheeling collaborations with the likes of Edgar Meyer and Chick Corea, not to mention safaris in search of the African roots of his instrument, banjo virtuoso Bla Fleck has reunited his Flecktones band after a hiatus of two decades. Fleck, pianist and harmonica player Howard Levy, and the sibling electric bass and percussion duo of Victor and Roy "Futureman" Wooten, generate marvellously unclassifiable music, jazz inflected but embracing elements of bluegrass, African and East European musical cultures. From the exuberant banjo-harmonica sparring of Life In Eleven, over Wooten's athletic electric bass, to the gentle sashaying of Falani, the exhilarating whirl of Sweet Pomegranates to the mellifluous harmonica and delicate banjo pizzicato of Like Water, this is an album that should convert even banjophobes – of whom there are many. The only possible complaint is that they make it all sound so easy. JIM GILCHRIST

WORLD

The Rough Guide to World Lullabies

RGNET1255CD, 8.99 ***

THIS CD of lullabies from around the world makes a very pleasant hour. As compiler Dan Rosenberg rightly claims, lullabies are among the most universal and ancient of art forms. The wishes expressed here are both multifarious and significant: an African mother wants her child to be as strong as a lion, fast as a tiger, and smart as a spider; a Russian wants hers to be a tough peasant who will never know hunger; an East-European Jewish mother wishes her son to succeed as a scholar or merchant and to bring back his estranged father from America; a Turk prays her baby will be safe from the evil eye, and an Armenian hopes her child will be protected from genocide. The latter is by far the most beautiful and haunting. Hasmik Harutyunian trained as an opera singer in Yerevan, but has created her own ensemble with traditional Armenian instruments; she learned her lullabies from elderly women who had received them from grandparents who could remember the 1915 Turkish genocide, which killed hundreds of thousands Armenians. My other favourite comes from Corsica, where Anghjula Potentini sings Ciucciartella, Corsica's best-known lullaby. Vocals such as "little dove" and "little owl", create the most evocative onomatopoeia. Other more familiar pleasures come from old faithfuls of the world music circuit: Omara Portuondo, Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Daibate. The lullaby from Scotland's Talitha Mackenzie – of Mouth Music fame – is exquisite. But why nothing from China or Japan? They sing them there too.MICHAEL CHURCH