Beautiful Happening: the verdict on Fairground Attraction's (very) long-awaited second album

Fairground Attraction | Fairground Attraction

Fairground Attraction: Beautiful Happening (Raresong Recordings) ★★★★

Nina Nesbitt: Mountain Music (Apple Tree Records) ★★★

Nelly Furtado: 7 (Nelstar) ★★★

REM: We Are Hope Despite The Times (digital) ★★★★

After almost 35 years, Eddi Reader and Mark Nevin of Fairground Attraction have mended fences. Their band was a double Brit Award-winning overnight sensation in 1988 but imploded before they could record a follow-up to debut album The First of a Million Kisses. Following a friendly rapprochement, they are poised to tour again and release their long-awaited not-difficult second album.

Beautiful Happening opens with the melodious title track, a contented comeback caressed by Reader’s instantly recognisable voice which sets the laidback tone of the album and re-establishes their pop string band credentials.

The album’s lead single What’s Wrong with the World? is something of an armchair shuffle but the easy listening of the music is part of its charm. Sing Anyway is a simple, self-comforting ode to the healing balm of singing which pours forth with pleasing spontaneity, while Reader exudes yearning languor against a Tex Mex backdrop on A Hundred Years of Heartache.

Next on the world tour of acoustic styles is the Hawaiian luau of Learning to Swim, the rhythm’n’blues-flavoured lament of Gatecrashing Heaven and delicious brass-soaked soul of Sun and Moon, while Reader evokes the plaintive rasp of Ronnie Spector on Simple Truth, co-written by Nevin with country artist Kimmie Rhodes and Mystery Jets frontman Blaine Harrison.

Miracles is a prime example of their self-styled neo-skiffle sound with added perky pop chops while this most welcome musical homecoming closes with the tender, intimate waltz Lullaby for Irish Triplets.

Nina Nesbit | Contributed

How goes it with Nina Nesbitt? Not great if the lyrics of Pages, the opening track of her new album, are autobiographical - “I used to wish that I was famous, now I want to run away... life scares me more each day”. It transpires that she is writing with a little distance, having made the decision to return to her singer/songwriter roots, fully in control with her own record label.

The homesick but optimistic I’m Coming Home captures another quarter-life realisation – that the boring town you couldn’t wait to leave represents comfort and sanctuary. The twee sentiments of lines such as “put the kettle on the stove, leave a light on” are countered by an air-punching chorus.

She returns to the theme on the country-influenced storytelling of Big Things, Small Town, while the rest of Mountain Music oscillates between fragile falsetto confessionals and rousing rootsy Scotpop from the middle of the road.

Nelly Furtado | Sammy Rawal

Nelly Furtado also makes a fresh start with her first album in seven years, released on her own wittily named Nelstar label. The pithy dance pop results were boiled down from a pool of 400 song ideas which comes to sleek fruition on Honesty and heady intrigue on Fantasy. There is also space for the longing ballad Better Than Ever, the limpid Lana Del Rey stylings of Untitled and the gleeful yodelling of Take Me Down, while Colombian band Bomba Estereo add cumbia flavour to Corazon and Swedish singer Tove Lo joins the party for Love Bites.

REM have curated a digital playlist of their more politically inclined songs to mark National Voter Registration Day in the US. We Are Hope Despite the Times takes its title from These Days, a rollicking gallop taken from their 1986 album, Life’s Rich Pageant, from which the Byrdsian jangle of I Believe and punky Just a Touch are also taken.

Most of the tracks date back to the late Eighties and the latter days of the Reagan presidency while speaking to future generations. World Leader Pretend is almost spookily prescient while this fertile selection from their pre-stadium days can really only close one way, with the cheery Armageddon of It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

CLASSICAL

Rogers & Hammerstein: Carousel (Chandos) ★★★★★

In his ongoing crusade to preserve the popularity of the 20th century’s most iconic stage musical scores, John Wilson’s most telling talent is the way his performances (here directing his resurrected Sinfonia of London) whisk you back to the era of their origin. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel dates from 1945 and with that comes a deliciously schmalzy sentimentality with teasing whiffs of the avant-garde and daring theatre - for example in the Overture, with its instant allusion to fairground intrigue and its mystical harmonies that prophesy eerie tragedy. Wilson captures these characteristics with awesome suggestiveness and an instinct for exactly the right tempi. This Carousel is like reading aloud a good book, the aural stimulus throwing up intoxicating images. The entire cast is made for the job, not least Mikaela Bennett’s sweet and sassy Julie and Nathaniel Hackmann’s angry anti-hero Billy Bigelow. A classic given classy treatment. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Artie Zaitz: The Regulator (Banger Factory Records) ★★★★

In this hugely enjoyable homage to the organ trios of the Sixties, respected guitarist Artie Zaitz recruits Hammond organ player Ross Stanley and, as well as drummer Steve Brown, makes his group a quartet by adding the Afro-Latin-American percussion of Dave Pattman. The album’s Sixties overtones and Zaitz’s blues-suffused credentials are established by the irresistible shuffle of the opener, Some Extent, guitar lean and waspish alongside that companionable Hammond gurgle, then singing through the bossa glide of Dizzy Gillespie’s Con Alma, with some nice interplay between organ and congas. There’s further bluesy bite in Boogaloo Ga Goo and in the rangy loping of Our Miss Brooks, laid-back guitar giving way to stuttering Hammond fireworks. And with a spoken intro from poet Fausta Joly, the title track is a tribute to Zaitz’s groove sustaining capabilities that fully justifies the title, while showcasing each band member. Jim Gilchrist