Album reviews: Celeste | Viva Marina

Celeste: Woman of Faces (Polydor) ★★★

Various Artists: Viva Marina (Marina Records) ★★★★

Tone and power: the singer’s two great weapons. One or the other is usually enough to make an impact. Celeste has already demonstrated she has the former, with her instantly recognizable vocal style, sitting somewhere between soul, pop and jazz. But on her second album, Woman of Faces, she demonstrates a degree of the latter too, diving right in with the theatrical flourish of On With the Show. Her normally sultry voice cracks with the sheer drama of it all as she wallows in the slow death of a relationship.

Celeste | Erika Kamano

Next, this woman of voices inhabits an ingenue breathiness, not unlike the young Marianne Faithfull, accompanied by tremulous strings and finger-picked acoustic guitar on sultry torch song Keep Smiling, before delving further back to classic jazz torch song territory on the title track. She seems content to inhabit a retro musical world; there are no Raye-style modern flourishes on show here.

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Like Raye, she has criticized her label, Polydor, for not supporting her album as she would have liked, as well as calling out the pressure on and treatment of female artists. Reading her remarks, it is hard not to hear Could Be A Machine in that context. It is also the only track on the album which reaches full throttle, propelled by rock drumming and anthemic strings.

Ballads remain her calling card, whether bare piano pieces or lavished in strings, but she does break out again towards the end of the album. The stomping soul of Angel Like You is more declamatory than danceable while she hits a curveball on the closing Carmen’s Song, an anthemic Andean pan pipes march.

David Scott | Stefan Kassel

Viva Marina marks the 100th release on Marina Records, a labour of love indie label based in Hamburg but with strong Scottish connections, particularly with the Glaswegian indie pop fraternity. Nestled among this compilation of airy easy listening retro pop confections, the likes of Pearlfisher Davie Scott, Teenage Fanclub frontman Norman Blake and Orange Juice alumni James Kirk and Malcolm Ross all share their love of the three Bs – The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach – which has defined the label over the last 30-plus years.

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Kirk pays tribute to the soul greats on the indie croon of Iron Star with new musical partner Warren McIntyre, as well as collaborating with Hipsway’s Skin and Del Amitri’s Andy Alston as Fascinator on the southern soul-influenced Mississippi Mud. In contrast, the Colin Steele Quartet contribute lovely wintry instrumental The Vampires of Camelon.

CLASSICAL

Poema – Terra Nova: Strauss & Cusson (Analekta) ★★★★

This is the second album in which conductor Andrew Shelley and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra pair a Richard Strauss tone poem with a newly commissioned partner work. In Poema: Terra Nova the contemporary response to Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra is Canadian composer Ian Cusson’s 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna. Against the Nietzschean philosophical turmoil of the Strauss, Cusson’s fast-moving symphonic drama, based on the multiple realities explored by Haruki Murakami in his novel 1Q84, forms a crisp, concise counterpoint. Shelley’s Ottawa-based orchestra tackle both with illuminating honesty and coruscating expressiveness. Cusson’s score, with its rosy fanfare opening, overriding ebullience, exquisitely tender episodes, and an organically-charged Stravinsky-inspired ending, is powered by dynamic, crystalline precision. In the Strauss, there’s no holding back. The famously awe-inspiring Prologue is as it should be, the start of a euphoric, heart-stopping, emotional rollercoaster ride. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Tommy Smith & Gwilym Simcock: Eternal Light (Bandcamp) ★★★★★

Released as a download just weeks after this performance – which Smith, after a troubled past few months, has said will be his last in Scotland – was recorded live at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, Eternal Light emerges as a superbly balanced duet performance with pianist Gwilym Simcock. The pair generate a potent combination of improvisational freedom and melodic lyricism, whether sparring or leaving each other space for solo excursions. There’s exuberant keyboard ranging from Simcock, matched by jubilant blowing from Smith, in numbers such as Weathered and the quirky peregrination of Old Husband’s Tale. The empathy between the two is evident, not least as delicately glittering opening piano and long, swooping tenor sax notes prefigure the gorgeously haunting title track. There’s a distinct Scots melodic accent to Smith’s quirkily titled Body or Soul, while the pair romp energetically though the bluesy rollicking of the closing El Nino. Jim Gilchrist