Music critic

Published 27th Feb 2025, 19:28 BST

Doves: Constellations For the Lonely (EMI North) ★★★★

Constant Follower: The Smile You Send Out Returns to You (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★

Red Sky July: Misty Morning (Shadowbirds Records) ★★★

Discreet types that they are, Mancunian trio Doves would never overstate the case but, given the circumstances around the creation of their sixth album, Constellations For the Lonely, they are a band fighting for their life, reckoning not just with frontman Jimi Goodwin’s ongoing recovery from addiction and mental health issues but with the bereavement caused by the shutdown of live music during the pandemic, when all they wanted to do was share the music from their previous album, The Universal Want, with their loyal fanbase.

Not that you would hear any of this turbulence on opening track Renegade, which sounds almost overly comfortable with its easy listening indie ambience and the welcome return of Goodwin’s familiar hangdog vocals.

Things start to get interesting on Cold Dreaming, first with the swell of strings over a spry beat, reaching a symphonic soul crescendo which sounds rather like Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs and then the cold water shock of Goodwin’s musical compadres Andy and Jez Williams on strident indie vocals.

Singing duties are shared across an album replete with ambitious, atmospheric arrangements inspired by the psychedelic soul and baroque pop soundtracks of David Axelrod and Roy Budd. In The Butterfly House features propulsive rhythms, resonant guitar and fluttering strings, while Strange Weather sounds like some early Eighties synthesizer fantasia with crashing drums and gonzo organ licks.

Last Year’s Man is a big, beautiful analogue synth waltz with somewhat proggy overtones and choral backing vocals from the Williams brothers while Goodwin alludes to his struggles (“I looked for some guidance yesterday”). The intimate Orlando is also emblematic of Goodwin’s recovery journey, as he sings of rejoining society before gazing outwards on the chorus.

Stirling songwriter Stephen McAll, who records with a troupe of likeminded souls as Constant Follower, has also walked a road to recovery, in his case from severe head trauma following a violent attack in his teens. Music is a healing force for him, a carefully sculpted catharsis intimating a need to connect. Despite the twee title of his latest album, The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, one cannot argue with the virtuous circle sentiments.

The title track is representative of McAll’s mellow, melodic, meticulous guitar sound and the warm, yearning tones of his intertwined vocals with Amy Campbell and Kathleen Stosch. They sing in psych folk canon on the hymn-like Whole Be with their undulating wordless incantation bobbing on a sumptuous sea of sound.

Happy Birthdays is another exercise in soothing space, though the lyrics are a desolate requiem. There is solace to be found elsewhere in the gentle throbbing synth pulse of All Is Well and mesmeric fingerpicked guitar on About Time To Go with McAll intoning “try to just hold on”. The plaintive Americana track Patient Has Own Supply is another marriage of comfort and anguish, with the title repeated like a trippy mantra, while It’s Only Silence pairs lyrical minimalism and symphonic scope with gentle grace.

Texas guitarist Ally McErlaine is also no stranger to trauma, making a remarkable recovery from a potentially devastating brain haemorrhage 15 years ago, and now releasing the first album in eight years by Red Sky July, his easy breezy country collaboration with his wife Shelly Poole.

Original co-frontwoman Charity Hair has departed and Poole has a new vocal foil in Haley Glennie-Smith. They strike up a natural Emmylou Harris/Linda Ronstadt dynamic on fragrant country folk amble Stones and Bramble and the thoughtful MOR number I Found Angels, evoke some Fleetwood Mac spirit on the burnished roots rock of Misty Morning and invite singer/songwriter Joe Hamill on the tremolo-inflected road trip of Utah.

CLASSICAL

Tchaikovsky: String Quartets Vol 2 (Rubicon) ★★★★★

The Dodok Quartet Amsterdam have perfected the knack of playing pre-1900 repertoire on awkward gut strings, to the extent that it seems the only way to do it. In this second volume of Tchaikovsky String Quartets the centrepiece is the Quartet No 3, the composer’s last. The warmth and intimacy of the playing is deeply moving, bringing sharpened focus to the heartfelt questioning of the slow introduction, fiery playfulness to the Scherzo, languid simplicity to the Andante Funebre, and a joyous resolution - though not without its magical moment of reflectiveness - to the Finale. Prior to that, the Quartet Movement in B flat provides a perfectly-pitched scene-setter, aided by a final chord that perfectly mirrors the B fiat opening of the Third Quartet. The Dudok’s propensity for applying bespoke transcriptions to their creative programming materialises finally in four exquisitely arranged movements from Tchaikovsky’s character piano pieces The Seasons. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Matt Carmichael: Dancing With Embers (Own Label) ★★★★

Award-winning Scots saxophonist Matt Carmichael’s third album is a beguiling piece of work in terms of lyricism, tone and texture, informed by Scots folk music and place, though perhaps not quite for straight-ahead jazz diehards. Within his quintet with pianist Fergus McCreadie, fiddler Charlie Stewart, bassist Ali Watson and drummer Tom Potter, plus guests including guitarist Chris Amer and piper Brighde Chaimbeul, they generate a potently atmospheric soundworld, sonic light and shade reflected by titles such as the pensive A Distant Glow, which finds Carmichael on piano. There’s a lovely drift to the title track, sax phrasing dreamily over folky guitar (Innes White) and, in contrast, a perkily insistent tenor sax hook to Flint. Beckoning Night is a jazz ballad to which Chaimbeul’s smallpipes add the dignity of a Highland lament, while McCreadie creates riverine flow as Carmichael’s warm-toned sax ranges lyrically through Kite. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: Doves | Constant Follower | Red Sky July

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