Music Reviews: New Releases

Published on Thursday 31 July 2008 19:33

POP UNKLE: END TITLES… STORIES FOR FILM SURRENDER ALL, £9.99

THE material on this sprawling fifth album from James Lavelle's ongoing collaborative project has, as the title suggests, been "inspired by the moving image". But don't get carried along with any romantic notions – he has included a track written for a BMW advert beside a succession of ambient interludes, brooding electronics and epic, crashing pieces, many of which sound like they were composed by hitting the random film soundtrack generator button.

His favoured singer, Gavin Clark of alt.folk trio Clayhill, can sound world-weary or rock-out as required, while Chemical, recorded with compulsive collaborator Josh Homme is among the meatiest, most arresting tracks in a piecemeal collection. Top for curiosity value is the cameo appearance of director Abel Ferrara, turning in his best blatant Bob Dylan impersonation.

CONOR OBERST: CONOR OBERST

WICHITA, 10.99

WHILE Joe Lean sweats blood to appear hip, prolific prodigy Conor Oberst – a musical veteran at 28 – just packs himself off to Mexico with a bunch of musicians calling themselves The Mystic Valley Band and fires out another charming missive.

Better known in his Bright Eyes incarnation, he hasn't recorded using his own name since his early teenage forays. But, apart from the absence of his Bright Eyes sideman Mike Mogis, there is no massive leap here. The material encompasses breezy, rootsy jams and stark singer/songwriter material, plus the humorous southern boogie of I Don't Want To Die (In The Hospital) and the strident hoedown of NYC – Gone Gone.

CAF DE LOS MAESTROS

WRASSE, 11.99

THIS CD reflects what is a truly extraordinary project. Composer Gustavo Santaolalla (currently best known for his work on Brokeback Mountain) and filmmaker Walter Salles have brought together all the surviving tango greats for a triumphal concert which has been both filmed and recorded. "Youth is gone," sings 84-year-old Alberto Podesta – speaking for all these septuagenarian and octogenarian performers – but what remains is high artistry and an indomitable spirit.

Podesta, whose apogee was in the Forties, does sound his age, but many others splendidly don't. It's almost impossible, for example, to believe that Nelly Omar, who first sang that classic Buenos Aires anthem, Sur, is now 97, so firm is her delivery. For the instrumentalists, time is more forgiving: Carlos Lazzari's bandoneon playing radiates youthful vigour, as does Jose Libertella's.

But the most cheering thing about this double CD is the quality of the youthful band which accompanies these oldsters: tango – "the one thing we don't consult Europe about," as Macedonio Fernandes sarcastically put it – is very much alive and well.

MEXICAN BOLEROS – SONGS OF HEARTBREAKING PASSION AND PAIN 1927-1957

KLANG 10.99

ANOTHER voyage down memory lane, though of a very different kind. The Latin American bolero had nothing to do with what Ravel eternalised in his Bolero: accompanied by guitar, piano, brass, and swooning fiddles, the form originated in the 1880s, and the earliest recordings are to be heard here.

Spanning all classes – from cheap dives to high-society night clubs – this music had, and still has, enormous charm, as these recordings from its golden age testify. The honey-toned Pedro Infante sounds like a precursor of Al Bowlly; film-star Lupita Palomera's Vereda Tropical was such a hit that one newspaper ad seeking a home help stipulated that the winning applicant would "not sing Vereda Tropical all day". Considering their age, the sound quality of these tracks is good.

JAZZ

ALEX HUTTON TRIO: SONGS FROM THE SEVEN HILLS

33 RECORDS, 12.99

THE pianist's second album is a suite inspired by his memories of growing up in Sheffield. It has a pleasing sense of narrative flow as it unfolds, and his use of fragments of repeating melodic and harmonic figures add to that sense of continuity. His approach suggests the influence of Keith Jarrett and McCoy Tyner, and his approach to building and developing melodies from very simple beginnings has already elicited comparisons with the late Esbjrn Svensson.

The music is quite classical in places, evoking the pictorialism of the English pastoral school in the reflective Going Home or Old Roman Road. They dig more openly into energised jazz idioms on Autumn Fires or Seventh Hill. Bassist Michael Janisch (familiar here from his work with Tommy Smith and Paul Towndrow) and drummer Enzo Zirelli make powerful contributions to the shaping of a fine album.

FOLK

JEANA LESLIE & SIOBHAN MILLER: IN A BLEEZE

GREENTRAX, 10.99

A VERY impressive debut. These RSAMD students hail from Orkney and Penicuik respectively, and won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award 2008. In a genre where vocals are often an afterthought, they excel in that department, both in Miller's lovely lead singing and in their beautifully judged harmony vocals.

Their interpretations of traditional songs (including some unusual variants) like Time Wears Awa', Mad Tom of Bedlam (aka Bedlam Boys), Mild Mary (a version of Four Marys) and a north-east take on The Parting Glass (live from the BBC award ceremony) have an appealing freshness and vitality, while the more contemporary material is equally well-chosen. Leslie is a fine fiddler, and the instrumental sets – augmented by a number of session guests – are far from fillers. A likely contender when the album of the year lists are put together.

CLASSICAL

FRANCK / FAUR: STRING QUARTETS

HYPERION, 12.99

LIKE so many organist-composers (let's conveniently ignore Bach, Bruckner and Messiaen for the moment), Cesar Franck got rather bogged down in the musical and time demands of his profession. Thus he gave us fewer non-organ works than we would perhaps like to have seen from such an engaging musical mind, and some of these never quite saw the fruits of gathered experience.

But at the age of 66, he found the inspiration to complete a String Quartet in D that both looks back to the serious intent of Brahms and Beethoven, yet contains fresh (and youthful) language that could so easily take him into the languid modernism of Ravel and Debussy. This performance by the Dante Quartet captures that delicious ambivalence. Faur's soft-spun E minor String Quartet makes a perfect partner work.

ROMANTIC RESIDUES: MUSIC FOR TENOR, HARP AND FLUTE

HYPERION, 12.99

HERE'S a refreshing summer issue. Tenor James Gilchrist, harpist Alison Nicholls and flautist Jaime Martin present a cocktail that has all the cool, clean refreshment of a glass of Pimms. The disc takes its title from the gentle sparkle of Alec Roth's delicious settings of Vikram Seth – his recently-composed Romantic Residues which dominate the opening tracks and prepare the way for further delicacies by Britten, Howard Skempton, Faur, Ravel, Saint-Sans and others.

Roth's music is unmistakably Brittenesque in its sensitivity to the texts and the associations this particular scoring has with Britten's own collaborations with tenor Peter Pears and harpist Ossian Ellis. Gilchrist's plaintive tenor possesses a similar leanness to Pears, so when it comes to Britten's folksong arrangements, the chemistry is instant, the results subliminal.

If Skempton's Three Songs for Jennie lack the same natural subtlety, their curtness is instantly dispelled by the mellifluous delights of Faur's instrumental duo, Morceau de Concours. Best of all, this disc contains Ravel's Cinq melodies populaires grecques, whose final brief Tout gai! issues a warm, seasonal frisson.