Music critic

Published 13th Mar 2025, 20:05 GMT

Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation (AED Recordings) ★★★★

Jeffrey Lewis: The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis (Blang Records) ★★★

Kev Sherry: Wrath of Can (Witchworld Records) ★★★

Exactly 20 years since Edwyn Collins suffered two severe strokes, he continues to defy expectations with further recorded riches. Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation is his wryly-titled fifth solo album since his recovery. Life has changed but, by his reckoning, it’s pretty sweet. He’s got his family, his spectacular coastal home, his Aladdin’s Cave of a studio and he has re-assembled his band of musical brothers for another album of poignant philosophising, simple pleasures and beguiling craftsmanship.

“Knowledge is a friend of mine, still it’s hard to pin it down,” he opines sagely on Knowledge, a track infused with soulful backing vocals and a touch of nostalgia. “In my youth I was shy and awkward, anyhow I made it count,” he recalls. It’s not the last time he will wrestle with his changed fortunes.

Paper Planes exudes a more enigmatic, impressionistic nostalgia, couched in glistening understated soul pop terms. Elsewhere, Collins touches his favoured musical bases, turning up the fuzz guitar on garage pop number The Heart Is a Foolish Little Thing and applying banjo to the ruminative folk pop of The Mountains Are My Home.

Strange Old World is co-written with his son William, layering on a brooding bassline, some Duane Eddy twang and a Bowiesque saxophone part from Dexys member Sean Read.

“If I can’t talk to you and you can’t talk to me, how shall nation speak unto nation?” he asks on the title track. This spin on the BBC motto “nation shall speak peace unto nation” sounds lofty but turns out to be an affecting reflection on the effects of his aphasia. He is also in fine plaintive fettle as he documents mixed emotions on Sound As a Pound and muses on the creative act on tender bossa nova ballad Rhythm Is My Own World.

Meanwhile, outside his window, he celebrates his coastal locale on It Must Be Real and offers a quiet acoustic ode to his favourite Helmsdale haunt on The Bridge Hotel, with bonus birdsong and poignant penny whistle solo from local musician April Sutherland. This is no Hotel California. Like Collins’ music, it is comforting, familiar, humane and welcoming.

Cult troubadour Jeffrey Lewis lives (positively) on 4th Street, Manhattan, New York. For the cover of his latest album, he pays tribute to the iconic sleeve of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, shot on self-same thoroughfare, with a nudist recreation of the image to prove he is The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis. We agree. Now please put your clothes back on.

In musical spirit, Lewis is closer to an indie Loudon Wainwright, fashioning songs out of neglected day-to-day subject matter using witty rhyming couplets, simple arrangements and anti-singing style. Movie Date concerns the unwitting celluloid education of the long-suffering boyfriend, left to his own viewing devices while his companion falls asleep on the sofa. Tylenol PM is a spindly ode to oblivion by prescription, while Relaxation is hectic invective set to a swirling psych garage soundtrack.

“If I did what comes natural, I’d just be an a**hole,” he declaims on Do What Comes Natural. Not quite as audacious as Jonathan Richman’s similar rhyme on Pablo Picasso but certainly infused with the same outsider attitude.

Attic Lights frontman and graphic novelist Kev Sherry creates quirky portraits in more ways than one, producing comic strips to accompany the songs on his second solo album. Wrath of Can oozes indie tuneage, captured in deliberately handmade style by producer Chris McCrory.

Young Presbyterians is a catchy interrogation of national traits, Mismatched Plans a starry-eyed ode about the stories we tell our nearest and dearest, while misogyny, right-wing rhetoric and the wily ways of major record labels are all in his sights.

CLASSICAL

Mozart: Complete Works with Clarinet, Vol 1 - Gran Partita (Alpha) ★★★★

In the first volume of his period instrument survey of Mozart’s complete works with clarinet, Nicolas Baldeyrou and a skilled collection of musical friends tackle the composer’s Olympian masterpiece, the Gran Partita for 12 winds and double bass, effectively a wind symphony in seven movements. The performance is both expansive and gritty, that grittiness exaggerated by the juiciness of the early reed instruments. The players also bring out the work’s rich dramatic scope, from the delicious Adagio with its sublime oboe opening theme to the playful Andante Theme and Variations and effervescent joy of the Finale. Also featured are the two Serenades for wind octet, K375 in E flat and K388 in C minor. Again, it’s the brazen edge of the individual period instruments that distinguishes these performances, combined with the gutsiness of the tuttis. This bodes well for the rest of the series. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Simin Tander: The Wind (Jazzland Recordings) ★★★★★

The strikingly pliant vocals of German-Afghan singer Simin Tander featured in her memorable album, What Was Said, with Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen. Here, her singing ranges from breathy tenderness to sudden, tremulous passion in repertoire ranging from her own compositions to traditional Pashto and Norwegian, accompanied by violinist Harpreet Bansal, percussionist Samuel Rohrer and bassist Björn Meyer. The opening Meena sets the tone, voice quavering startlingly in unison with Bansal’s violin, while I Te Vurria Vasà – “I Long to Kiss You” – is sheer tenderness over mournful, single note strings and the traditional Pashto Janana Sta Yama sees her match Bansal’s violin, note for note, slide for slide. The solemnity of Norwegian hymn My Weary heart has violin lamenting as her voice swells into a passionate keening, while surprises include an astonishing recital of the Shelley poem Nursling of the Sky over staccato guitar and drums. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: Edwyn Collins | Jeffrey Lewis | Kev Sherry

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