Album reviews: Mull Historical Society | Hue and Cry | Wojtek the Bear
On the latest Mull Historical Society album, Colin MacIntyre soundtracks lyrics supplied by his favourite authors inspired by a photograph of their choosing, writes Fiona Shepherd
Mull Historical Society: In My Mind There’s a Photograph (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★
Hue and Cry: Everybody (Blairhill Records) ★★★★
Wojtek the Bear: I Don’t Think You Want To Hear This (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★
There is reminiscing on the latest Mull Historical Society album, but not from frontman Colin MacIntyre. In My Mind There’s a Photograph is the ambitious follow-up to In My Mind There’s a Room, on which he soundtracks lyrics supplied by his favourite authors inspired by a photograph of their choosing. With the exception of Louise Welsh, whose Charing Cross Canyon muses on an image of Glasgow’s Charing Cross district hollowed out to make way for the motorway, all are personal or family meditations.
MacIntyre selects soulful female backing vocals for Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana-set Cattle Bells and fragrant piano pop for the most harrowing lyrics on Palestinian poet Jehan Bseiso's Gaza On My Back. Dopamine Eyes is indeed a rush of a track, marking the early days of Irvine Welsh’s relationship with his wife. While some of the lyrics feel like they’ve been dictated off the cuff, Irenosen Okojie’s Budapest is among the most poetic meditations while Alan Johnson’s The Soldier and the Waitress is the most haunting.
Hue and Cry go all-out electronica on their latest album, Everybody, and it suits them, from the melodramatic soul synth odyssey Stronger to the Latin-flavoured house of And Then You Bloom. Greg Kane couches big brother Pat’s MOR pop delivery of Everybody Deserves to Be Loved in a pacey synth soundscape and swathes In Our Ruins in fuzzy analogue goodness, while the sunburst trance of I Remember could even travel well to Ibiza this summer.
Wojtek the Bear, a self-styled “smart casual indie pop” outfit from Glasgow, finesse their fourth album with former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones as producer. The brassy opener Kylie’s Put a Curse On Us is their reply to BMX Bandits’ equally frothy Kylie’s Got a Crush On Us but elsewhere they contrast darker lyrics with amiable music. The spiky sentiments of Regrets are wrapped in soothing country folk, while they rightly characterise the light jazz pop waltz of French Blue as “Nick Drake jamming with Vince Guaraldi”.
CLASSICAL
Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas 1 (BIS) ★★★★
The instant impression from this album of Beethoven Violin Sonatas is that of a marriage of equals. Alina Ibragimova (violin) and Cédric Tiberghien (fortepiano) are an instinctive partnership, establishing an explosive coupling from the very opening of the first Op 12 Sonata, which determines both the energy and risk levels that are to follow. It’s never brash playing, but the musicians’ dynamic interplay, characterised by Ibragimova’s 16th century Amati violin and Tiberghien’s modern reproduction fortepiano, captures vividly the excitable drama as well as its softer, lyrical hues. We hear all three of the Op 12s, which for Beethoven in 1778 were his calling card as the rising star within the middle-to-upper class circles of Vienna; also the famous “Spring” Sonata Op 24 of 1800, a less extravagant work, but reflective of a composer striding swiftly towards maturity. However, it’s the spontaneous rhetoric of these performances that most define their distinctiveness. Ken Walton
JAZZ
Atlantic Road Trip: Watch as the Echo Falls (Calligram Records) ★★★★
Two-and-a-half years on from their auspicious debut album, One, recorded as a quintet, Atlantic Road Trip have distilled into a Scots-American-Slovakian trio of Glasgow alto saxophonist, flautist and whistle player Paul Towndrow, Chicago trumpeter Chad McCullough (also on synths) and Slovenian vibraphonist Miro Herak. This is spare but richly textured, folk-infused jazz of beguiling character. Following the mustering forces of the short, opening Exordium, Towndrow’s Parting of the Adriatic, whistle sounding over dancing vibes and trumpet, is a spirited Irish frolic to Balkan tempo. Further lively whistle and trumpet excursions lead into an Irish air over Reich-like pulsing in McCullough’s Spell Breaking. Elsewhere, the alto sax, flugelhorn and translucent vibes glow in contemplative pieces such as Silere, while Echo Falls sees sax and trumpet engage in dance and duet. For an idiosyncratic, pared back trio, they produce glorious sounds. Jim Gilchrist
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