Album reviews: Haim | Loyle Carner | Water Machine | M John Henry

The Haim sisters have finessed another diverse collection of songs with some sophisticated bells and whistles, writes Fiona Shepherd

Haim: I Quit (Polydor Records) ★★★

Loyle Carner: hopefully! (Island EMI) ★★★★

Water Machine: God Park (Fat Cat) ★★★★

M John Henry: Strange is the Way (Gargleblast) ★★★

Haim | Contributed

“Can I have your attention please?” Haim’s fourth album opens with a polite request from singer/guitarist Danielle Haim, but this San Fernando sister act already do have the world’s attention, with their insidious rhythm-led pop stretching its tendrils across various musical styles. Danielle, Este and Alana simply draw the listener in again on first contact with Gone, a song for the newly singletons. “You packed my shit, but it’s nothing I needed” goes the brush-off lyric, hammered home by a sample of George Michael’s Freedom! ’90 and garnished with some tasty desert blues guitar.

I Quit is titled not in capitulation but carries the sense of moving on from a situation that isn’t working to a new beginning. Working again with former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij as co-producer, the Haim sisters have finessed another diverse collection with some sophisticated bells and whistles.

The MOR pop of All Over Me is standard fare but they move from there straight into some cool Nineties-inspired R&B on Relationships, featuring airy vocals which imply rapture but communicate uncertainty: “feels like we’re not even friends in this relationship”.

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They entertain nostalgia for their high school years on Take Me Back, which begins as a peppy minimal jam but builds into a junkyard orchestra of fuzz guitar, choppy harmonica, chiming percussion, woodwind and insistent vocal chants.

Their southern Californian roots are all over the west coast folk rock of The Farm and the yearning soul emanating from Love You Right but the spry beats of Million Years and loveable shuffle of Try to Feel My Pain demonstrate that the Haim sisters still consider rhythm as the key to unlocking their easy celebratory sound.

Loyle Carner | Contributed

South London rapper Loyle Carner also steps into new territory on hopefully! singing as well as rhyming about fatherhood while making use of a full band palette. The vibe is loose and laidback with Carner leaning into the low-slung tempo and stripped back guitar on in my mind, with a woozy vocal chorus which fades out on a murmur.

This is intimate stuff, capturing the squeak of acoustic guitar accompanying Carner’s chilled vocal on Lyin. Time To Go is a song to bathe in, with soft rapturous guitar strums and Carner’s gentle encouragement that “making your own mistakes if really the only way to know”.

Horcrux is a rare moment of taut urgency, with skittering jazz drumming, limpid piano and elegant gospel vocals. Benjamin Zephaniah guests on the drum’n’bass title track, meditating on the power and potential of youth, and guest American rapper Navy Blue exhibits the same gentle authority on Purpose, accompanied by finger clicks, wordless soulful backing vocals and a bare piano pattern. One to file next to Little Simz’ latest for Brit-hop creativity.

Water Machine | Brian Sweeny

Fun Glasgow five-piece Water Machine arrive with confidence, irreverence and a debut album stacked with singalongable tracks on a tranche of offbeat topics, from rabies to road rage. The song Water Machine is a rollicking synth-led ditty about finding love at the office water cooler which carries a sting in the tale, while their purest indie pop moment Tiffany offers the consolation “sorry your Fiesta is a little worse for wear”. Singer Hando spits out a satire on desirable locales on Hot Real Estate, gets their violin out for the plaintive, lo-fi Jimmy’s Waltz and fronts an eponymous country coda in tandem with bandmate Flore which ends on a punky flourish.

De Rosa frontman Martin John Henry returns as M John Henry with exposed solo album Strange is the Way. A number of bare guitar excursions and spindly sonorous piano ballad Yet-Agnes contrast with the fuller indie pop flow of Heart of Coal, gently beseeching Vessels and the banjo colourings of The Lord Is Here.

CLASSICAL

Ligeti: Violin, Piano and Romanesc Concertos (Harmonia Mundi) ★★★★★

When future generations look back on the 20th century, György Ligeti’s music will stand out as a monument to vision and originality. Here are two works that bolster such a claim: the 1988 Piano Concerto and the 1993 Violin Concerto, both written when the composer was in his 60s and demonstrating a newfound maturity after a critical rethink of his compositional style in the late 1970s. Where the Violin Concerto arises from a sea of warped tonality to reveal a mesmerising contest of blistering fire and haunting beauty, the Piano Concerto wastes no time in establishing a compulsive, mechanised momentum. Violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger respectively know exactly what they want to say, doing so with piercing insight, emotional clarity and rhythmic precision. Ligeti’s succinct Concert Romanesc (with Neuburger) and two of Kurtag’s Aus der Ferne pieces (with Faust) provide useful wrapping for the central attractions. Ken Walton

FOLK

Odette Michell: Queen of the Lowlands (Talking Elephant Records) ★★★★

An impressive second album from Yorkshire-born, Cambridge-based singer-songwriter Odette Michell, her often convincingly traditional-sounding compositions ranging from the personal to those tapping into Irish and Polish heritage and wider history. Her singing combines power, clarity and warmth, her guitar and bouzouki accompaniments bolstered by notable guests. Fiery fiddling from Fairport Convention’s Chris Leslie stokes the drama of the title track, a stirring account of the Queen of the Lowlands, a Dutch passenger vessel which during the First World War, converted to a troop ship, transporting thousands of American troops across the Atlantic. Scots singer Calum Gilligan provides effective duet vocals in Hourglass, an affectionate hymn to the seasons dedicated to her father. Requiem builds on Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous self-penned epitaph, the elegiac Waterline laments abandoned Fleetwood trawlers, while My Love Is Like the Rondelet highlights passionate singing over dark-toned fiddle and drums. Jim Gilchrist

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