Album reviews: Tony Christie | Tragedy| The Travelling Band | Strauss| Taneyev and Rimsky-Korsakov | Brian Kellock | Catriona Watt | Mariza | Russian Romances

Published on Thursday 6 November 2008 18:51

POP

TONY CHRISTIE: MADE IN SHEFFIELD

****

DECCA, 12.99

MUCH like a British Paul Anka, Tony Christie has discovered that there is an enduring appetite for his easy-listening pop swing. But this graceful Richard Hawley-produced album is leagues away from his cheesy Comic Relief revival of Amarillo. Made In Sheffield is a paean to his home city in the gorgeous, string-soaked style that has been pastiched by Hawley on his own albums. In addition to a number of melodramatic originals, Christie covers songs by fellow Sheffield heroes Arctic Monkeys, Jarvis and The Human League and finally records a lovely version of Coles Corner, which Hawley originally wrote for Christie to sing four years ago.

TRAGEDY: WE ROCK SWEET BALLS AND CAN DO NO WRONG

**

ROUND RECORDS, 13.99

IN THE late 1970s, meathead metal fans burned disco records in an effort to rid the world of such camp theatricality. Did no-one spot the irony? Maybe not then, but in these novelty-culture-clash-friendly times of reggae tributes to Radiohead, Tragedy – "the No 1 heavy metal tribute to the Bee Gees in the Tri-State area" – appreciate metal and disco's shared heritage of jumpsuits, chest hair and singing in a very high voice. This charmingly titled album imbues Stayin' Alive with an Aerosmith riff and a stratospheric falsetto rock wail and kicks off Too Much Heaven with a burst of Led Zeppelin's legendary Kashmir riff.

Elsewhere, their meeting of twains is less entertaining and affectionate – You Should Be Dancing is embellished with a hoary spoken-word interlude that is presumably supposed to be funny but is actually just grotesque. It's probably a hoot live, though.

THE TRAVELLING BAND: UNDER THE PAVEMENT

***

SIDEWAYS SALOON, 10.99

A VERY listenable addition to the current wave of young folk/country-inflected bands who are providing a sonic tonic in the face of so much indie landfill. The Travelling Band, hailing from Manchester, may not be heading in the chart-bound direction of their peers Noah & The Whale, as their debut album shies away from chirpy radio-friendly pop songs. Neither do they have the mournful, haunting edge of Caledonian players such as James Yorkston.

Instead, they offer up gentle melodies, sweet harmonies and warm, organic arrangements to toast beside the fire of a chilly winter evening.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

STRAUSS: SALOME

****

CHANDOS, 15.99

RICHARD Strauss's Salome remains one of the foremost operatic landmarks of the early 20th century, one of the "shockers" that gave the post-Wagnerian art form a sense of direction, where it might have been thought that Wagner had taken it as far as it could go. If its most visibly contentious moment – the sensual Dance of the Seven Veils – had the censors fretting, its music, too, dipping boldly into a new world of gnarling expressionism, gave cause for debate.

On CD, of course, the latter is exclusively on show, and who better to direct it than the ever-active Sir Charles Mackerras, who conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra and a noble cast in this cracking disc, performed in English, from the Chandos record label.

Mackerras's reading of the score, with its intuitive sense of timing and fluidity and its uncanny depiction of colour, captures the myriad of emotions that fills its pages.

He is lucky to have Susan Bullock's exquisite support in the title role, as well as Sally Burgess's crimson Herodias, and John Wegner's powerful performance as John the Baptist. As all good performances of Salome, this one flows from start to finish like an unstoppable tsunami.

TANAYEV AND RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA

***

CHANDOS, 12.99

NEEME Jarvi's renewed acquaintance with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is not only reflected in Chandos' current re-releases of his 1980s recordings of Prokofiev, but also in some new Russian recordings.

The common factor in this warm-blooded pairing of music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Sergey Taneyev is the violinist Lydia Mordkovitch, who brings her alluring musical personality to Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasy on Russian Themes and Tanayev's Suite de Concert in equal measure.

There's a beguiling lyrical quality in both, but whereas it surfaces with delicious elasticity in one, the Tanayev is more confined by its occasional four-squaredness.

KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

BRIAN KELLOCK: THE NINE MILE BURN SESSIONS

****

THICK RECORDS, 13.99

THIS disc from the Edinburgh pianist Brian Kellock is split between six solo piano outings and five duets with saxophonist Julian Argelles, a format he has explored before on disc with Herb Geller and Tommy Smith.

This partnership maintains the high standard set by those earlier collaborations, and allows both players ample scope for invention and responsive interaction in a sparkling version of Lee Konitz's Thingin (based on All The Things You Are) and their take on Dedicated To You, Nancy, They Say It's Wonderful and The Masquerade (Is Over). It is the kind of material in which Kellock revels, allowing him to stretch his melodic and harmonic ingenuity to the full in both these duets and in his solo selections, including Ellington's Don't You Care To Know, Blame It On My Youth and Young & Foolish.

Argelles is less centrally associated with playing standards, but he invariably discovers something fresh and arresting to say about them. This is the first of a projected series of recordings from Cathie Rae's Thick Skinned Productions, and an excellent start to what could be a significant project.

FOLK

CATRIONA WATT: CADAL CUAIN

***

FOOTSTOMPIN' RECORDS, 11.99

ANOTHER illustration of the high standards being achieved by the new generation of Gaelic singers. Catriona Watt from Lewis lifted the Young Traditional Musician of the Year award for 2007, and recorded this belatedly released disc in the summer of that year.

She opens with a solo unaccompanied version of Ailein Duinn that underlines the purity and expressiveness of her singing in that most traditional and unadorned of settings. Thereafter she reverts to instrumental accompaniment (or unaccompanied harmony singing) and a more contemporary feel, but in thoughtful and well-judged fashion.

KENNY MATHIESON

WORLD

MARIZA: TERRA

***

EMI, 12.99

FADO was introduced to British listeners in the early 1990s as Portugal's answer to the blues, and it's now being marketed as the soundtrack to the credit crunch; Mariza, meanwhile, is generally billed as the inheritor of the Fado crown that Amalia Rodrigues for so long wore. Wrong, and wrong again: Lisbon's miserabilism is only one facet of this flexible art form, with Coimbra's being the cheerful antidote.

And as for that crown – well, there are others with equal claim, though they don't benefit from heavyweight industrial backing as Mariza does. But she does possess the classic fado timbre, with its strangulated effects at peaks of emotion, and she has come up in the approved manner, singing (if not exactly for her supper) in Lisbon clubs from the age of five.

This new CD marks a welcome return to her musical roots, after dabbling with syrupy orchestral effects: her forays into new modes have been partly due to her artistic adventurousness, and partly to the commercial impulse to produce something "new". And though two or three of these tracks have a blandly international cast, the essential quality permeating it is pure fado, with the instruments on which that is founded – the silvery-toned Portuguese guitar, and the contrastingly warm Spanish guitar – pre-eminent.

Tears of nostalgia – or of unrequited love – are the keynote, but there are also upbeat moments; the poetry of the lyrics is sometimes arrestingly beautiful. And we get a musical dip into Africa, as befits a woman whose mother hailed from Mozambique, and who wants, in every sense, to come home.

RUSSIAN ROMANCES

**

AIR MAIL, 7.99

IT MAY be a bit of a stretch to call this "world music", given that the accompaniment by the Czechoslovak Radio Orchestra provides Western sonic backdrop, but the singer – Pasha Babakov – has such a gloriously Russian basso-profundo that such criticisms are disarmed. The songs are all folk favourites.

MICHAEL CHURCH