Album review: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
POP
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Mute, £12.99
* * * * *
It is a world away from the grease and grit of Cave’s Grinderman project, his voice rich and smooth on graffiti titles such as We Real Cool. Pride of place goes to Jubilee Street, one very colourful thoroughfare.
CS
Download this: Jubilee Street, Higgs Boson Blues
Richard Thompson - Electric
Proper, £12.99
* * * *
The voice and guitar remain the impressive forces which have flown the folk flag above the English rock rampart for decades, but never make the mistake of dismissing Thompson for some folk rock relic. His electric guitar playing is distinctive with incredible touch and feel – listen to the twisting and turning solo on Stony Ground – and the songwriting is fresh and zingy. His genius extends well beyond the traditional, with My Enemy a stunning example of an emotionally fraught ballad. Thompson really is the best of British, and impressively international at the same time.
CS
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JAZZ
Tessa Souter - Beyond The Blue
Motema MTM 87, £12.99
* * * *
American journalist-turned-jazz vocalist Tessa Souter translates her writing talents into song lyrics on this imaginative album, which features nine classical melodies adapted for a jazz group, plus three classically inspired standards.
Souter has a pleasing, easy-on-the-ear voice, but it’s the poetic lyrics and how they’re delivered which mesmerise here, along with the clever way in which she has reworked familiar themes by Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms and suchlike. The star-studded band includes pianist Steve Kuhn’s trio, plus the likes of vibraphone player Joe Locke.
Alison Kerr
Download this: Prelude To The Sun, En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor
FOLK
Ivan Drever, Frankie McGuire, Richard Young - Gifts
Orcadian Records ORCCD006, £14.99
* * * *
Ivan Drever, once guitarist and singer in Celtic folk rockers Wolfstone, has formed a new trio with Lyra Celtica percussionist Frankie McGuire, and multi-instrumentalist Richard Young. An acoustic album with one instrumental track among 11 Drever songs, their debut is a cleanly performed pot-pourri of song styles that eschews Scots traditional music in favour of an overreaching soft folk’n’roll, bluesy Americana and country balladeering. Easy on the ear, it remains light and simple.
Norman Chalmers
Download this: Candle In The Storm
CLASSICAL
Hélène Grimaud, Sol Gabetta - Duo
Deutsche Grammophon, £13.99
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The Menuhin Festival was founded by the violinist in the Swiss town of Gstaad after his move there in the 1950s. This year, one of the returning artists to the seven-week festival will be the cellist Sol Gabetta, who two years ago teamed up with pianist Hélène Grimaud for a highly successful festival concert whose works have now been recorded.
The music chosen, by Schumann, Brahms, Debussy and Shostakovich, demonstrates a distinct variety in the way different composers bring the two instruments together. In writing his Cello Sonata No 1, Brahms insisted that “the piano should under no circumstances assume a purely accompanying role”, an unlikely outcome given that Brahms played the piano at somewhat turbulent private performances.
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Hide AdThere are no such storm clouds in this recording by these two highly talented performers: just a solidly enjoyable album.
Alexander Bryce
Download this: Shostakovich, Sonata for Cello and Piano, Allegro