Album reviews: Owen Pallett | Erland and the Carnival | Beethoven | Brass Jaw | The Imagined Village | A Filetta

Published on Sunday 17 January 2010 21:00

OWEN PALLETT: HEARTLAND **** DOMINO, £10.99

A CLASSICALLY trained violinist with film scores and operas already under his belt, Pallett is better known in pop circles as a member of Arcade Fire, as well as for his esteemed string arrangements for the likes of Last Shadow Puppets, Grizzly Bear and Beirut, and his own recordings using the name Final Fantasy – a pseudonym he has now retired so as not to aggravate the manufacturers of his favourite video game. On his latest release, he teams his trademark looped violin and pleasingly mournful voice with skittering analogue electronica and an impressively cinematic orchestral score to relate a loose narrative about an "ultra-violent farmer" called Lewis. And, like kindred indie composer Sufjan Stevens, he manages to make this ambitious, offbeat undertaking sound like the most natural expression of his pop vision.

ERLAND AND THE CARNIVAL: ERLAND AND THE CARNIVAL

****

FULL TIME HOBBY, 10.99

THERE'S a touch of both Woodstock and The Wicker Man to this atmospheric new band comprising Verve guitarist Simon Tong, drummer David Nock, who has played in Paul McCartney's band, and young Orcadian vocalist Erland Cooper. Their bewitching debut album is a seamless blend of their own 1960s garage-influenced compositions, psychedelic interpretations of traditional folk songs and words by William Blake and Leonard Cohen and a cover of cult Jackson C Frank track My Name Is Carnival, from which they take their name and fascination for heady revels. The Coral now have some competition in the pastoral psychedelia stakes.

CLASSICAL

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 9

*****

SONY, 13.99

THE days of big, slow-moving performances of Beethoven's Symphony No 9 as standard la Karajan are long gone. Nowadays there is no right approach – only ones that work, be they a cast of a thousand or chamber-sized proportions. Paavo Jrvi adopts the latter dimensions in this bristling new disc by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie of Bremen, and with it wraps every bar in a golden luminescence. Right from the start, the hard-edged timpani, feverishly keen strings and ripe, incisive wind and brass create a hot and exciting energy that never lets up. The scherzo is fiery; the slow movement never wallows, Jrvi placing a magical emphasis on clarity and balance of texture throughout. The ultimate test is in the choral finale, where the matching finery of the Deutsche Kammerchor are joined by A-list solo quartet Christiane Oelze (soprano), Petra Lang (alto), Klaus Florian Vogt (tenor) and Matthias Goerne (bass). Once again, the orchestral performance is brilliantly precise and electrifyingly explosive.

JAZZ

BRASS JAW: DEAL WITH IT!

****

KEYWORK RECORDS, Available from keyworkrecords.co.uk, 10

BRASS Jaw began life as a saxophone quartet, but the introduction of trumpeter Ryan Quigley alongside Paul Towndrow (alto sax), Konrad Wiszniewski (tenor) and Allon Beauvoisin (baritone) gave the Glasgow-based group an even more distinctive signature sound. Their rich interweaving of the single line instruments to striking textural and harmonic effect is beautifully captured here. With no conventional rhythm instruments, the onus falls equally on all four players to provide that essential dimension, and they do so with notable panache. A stylistically diverse set mixes arrangements of classic jazz tunes such as Senor Blues and Bolivia with original compositions from all four players, with Allon Beauvoisin most liberally represented. The combination of imaginative arrangements and excellent performances is a winner, and they even allow us share in the hilarity when an attempted take on Falling In Love All Over Again goes embarrassingly awry.

FOLK

THE IMAGINED VILLAGE: EMPIRE & LOVE

****

ECC, 12.99

THIS second album from Simon Emmerson's marriage of English tradition to 21st-century multiculturalism is at times utterly compelling, with singers Martin and Eliza Carthy and Chris Wood joined by western and eastern instruments and largely effective electronic samples and beats. The overall impression is not one of gimmicky pick'n'mixing, but of a consolidated and inspired entity, reworking such staples as Scarborough Fair, given arresting new life by Chris Wood's grainy intonation over intertwining guitar and Sheema Mukerjhee's sitar.

Sitar also laces through the gripping opener, My Son John, a Napoleonic war song here given chilling relevance to more contemporary conflicts, with Martin Carthy's assured vocals riding driving percussion. Elsewhere, Eliza Carthy and guest Jackie Oates duet beautifully over a dawn shimmer of fiddles and birdsong in The Lark in the Morning, while the two Carthys pull off an improbable transmutation of Cum On Feel the Noize, managing to suffuse the old Slade rocker with near-elegiac melancholy.

WORLD

A FILETTA – INTANTU

****

HARMONIA MUNDI, 13.99

I HAVE never known an ensemble more averse to self-promotion than A Filetta – nor one with more to shout about. If you look at the skimpy Wikipedia entry for this Corsican a capella male-voice group, you will learn that it was founded in 1978 to keep the ancient art of Corsican polyphony alive. You will also learn that they have twice won the Diapason d'Or medal in France, plus other equally impressive gongs; you will also gather that they have been responsible for soundtracks for films made in Egypt and the Himalayas, as well as dance, theatre, and operatic collaborations. You will learn that the word filetta denotes a local Corsican fern.

No CD booklets were ever more uncommunicative than theirs. Most don't have one word of English, and some not even a word of French. Intantu, which they have just re-released, is prefaced by an outburst of impressionistic poetry; French translations of song texts by Marcellu Acquaviva – suggestive rather than explicit – give a vague flavour, with three other songs getting a clearer pointer. A film director invited them to create some music to accompany Seneca's Medea: though the text is in (to me almost impenetrable) Corsican, it's enough, when coupled with the music, to get the most extraordinary whiff of archaic heroism.

But from the moment these seven men open their mouths, I am transfixed by the barbaric beauty of their sound. While the lower voices give an organ-like ground bass, the upper ones weave delicate melismas, generating a passionate intensity. At some moments I think of Monteverdi, at others of Georgian chant; I sense a cognate quality with that of the music of Albanian choirs just over the water. The timbre can be caressingly soft, or hard as a rock. Once heard, never forgotten.