Album reviews: Lorde | Barbra Streisand | Conscious Route & Supermann on da beat | Errant Boy

If you like a song-lite, production-heavy approach to pop music, you’ll probably enjoy the new Lorde album, writes Fiona Shepherd

Lorde: Virgin (Republic Records) ***

Barbra Streisand: The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two (Columbia) ***

Conscious Route & Supermann on da beat: Shadows (True Hold Records) ****

Errant Boy: A Little Distortion (Errant Media) ***

Lorde hit the ground running 12 years ago with her instant classic debut single Royals, and David Bowie endorsements following. Her reputation as the “Queen of Alternative” has more or less held up since, only taking a bash around the release of her third album, Solar Power. There are no chances being taken this time, with a marketing campaign keen to suggest that follow-up Virgin is to 2025 what Charli XCX’s Brat was to 2024. Fair enough, if you like that sort of song-lite, production-heavy approach to pop music.

Lorde | Thistle Brown

Despite Lorde’s declaration that “when you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail”, new single Hammer is no banger. Its thoughtful journaling is a gentle intro to some more enigmatic explorations of identity from speak-sing meditation Shapeshifter to the shoulder shimmy synth pop of Favourite Daughter.

What Was That is a relatively standard autopsy of a relationship, like Taylor Swift goes electronica, but Lorde gets into more intriguing territory on Man of the Year, a sparse ballad built on bassline and cello, about transformative forces, gender fluidity, health and body image issues. The autotuned a cappella Clearblue, which is named after a pregnancy test, links to the striking album artwork featuring an X-ray of a pelvis with a coil fitted and embraces the viscera of reproduction and genetics with the lines “there's broken blood in me, passed through my mother from her mother down to me.”

GRWM features more gnomic autobiography (“wide hips, soft lips, my momma’s trauma”) while Broken Glass sounds like a digital whiplash, the minimal music a blank slate on which to splatter some gutsy lyrics. Kate Bush has been here before and did it far better, but in the fuller production sound of If She Could See Me Now there is at least a glimpse of that imaginative pop lineage.

Barbra Streisand | Kathryn Boyd Brolin

There’s no soul searching from Barbra Streisand on her latest release, just her usual ability to sink into a song, this time in the company of an array of duet partners. From James Taylor to Josh Groban, Sting to Seal, there are no curveball choices; they’re in if they can fit into Barbra’s silky world.

Sam Smith can’t believe their luck on To Lose You Again, Celtic crooner Hozier is an inoffensive foil for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande are kept somewhat in check on One Heart, One Voice. Sir Paul McCartney reprises his own old school love ballad My Valentine with a brief tasteful guitar solo, while Streisand brings out the minx in Bob Dylan on The Very Thought Of You.

Conscious Route and Supermann on da beat | Contributed

Edinburgh-based rapper Conscious Route joins forces with self-taught producer Sanjeev Mann, aka Supermann on da beat, for his latest album of thoughtful hip-hop, taking aim at shouty rappers on the flinty querulous Overstood and deploring industry values on Super Smooth. He allows himself a backwards glance at his life over haunting samples on Shadows, while tough grime beats alternate with piano arpeggios on Dubplate. Vocalists Milla and Bridget Quinn are the best of the guests on the hooky pop R&B of Safety and the cool cocktail lounge Jazz Unsung respectively.

WATCH: Conscious Route Scotsman Session

Edinburgh trio Errant Boy remain dedicated to honouring “indie before it became a dirty word”. Their third album A Little Distortion was recorded over a number of years and locations but is consistent in its lo-fi jingle jangle influences, stretching right back to post-punk Scotpop trailblazers Orange Juice and Josef K, with a sprinkle of Sparks along the way. In keeping with the musical theme, Distortion’s ode to guitar effects is delivered like a mission statement.

CLASSICAL

Hallé: Adès | Marsey | Leith (Hallé) ★★★★

This evocative release by the Hallé coincides with the twilight of Thomas Adès’ recent two-year artistic association with the Manchester-based orchestra. His own music is modestly selective - recent works arising out of pandemic times and beyond - acting as scaffolding for those by two interesting younger British composers, William Marsey and Oliver Leith. The miniature sketches constituting Marsey’s Man With Limp Wrist (after Salman Toor’s eponymous painting) bristle with pithy charm and imagination, from the skittish inebriation of Bar Boy to the brooding, Weill-esque sobriety of Family Photo. Leith’s Cartoon Sun is a golden caricature of the sun’s visual power translated into visual fantasy. Adès, conducting these performances, elicits visceral luminescence and provocative characterisations. His own music ranges from the woozy, ethereal captivation of Shanty - Over the Sea and the chaconne-like Dawn, to his rugged, celebratory fanfare Tower and the more recent, more extended and ultimately ecstatic Aquifer. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Shez Raja: Spellbound (Gearbox Records) ★★★★

British-Asian bassist extraordinaire Shez Raja returns with further full-on Indo-jazz-funk adventures, joined by notable jazz and Indian classical players. The opening Quantum Spirits, for instance, sees John Etheridge’s guitar spitting fire before Raja’s inventively dexterous five-string bass guitar has its say and Vasilis Xenopoulos takes the lead on tenor sax. The title track sees another saxophonist, Toni Kofi, riffing in powerful unison with Raja over the joyful clatter of tablas before western percussion cuts loose, courtesy of US drummer Dennis Chambers. The Indo-jazz interface gives rise to striking soundscapes: the plangent sarangi fiddle (Zohaib Hassan) in Maharishi Mindtrip while the lovely Together We Fly features melismatic vocalising from Fiza Haider and the golden tones of Roopa Panesar’s sitar. Throughout, Raja’s bass establishes the groove, takes off deftly on its own or engages in a querulous wah-wah dialogue with guitarist Guthrie Govan in the muscular closer, Rabbits. Jim Gilchrist

READ MORE: Lana Del Rey, Glasgow review: 'an unlikely pop superstar'