Album reviews: Ringo Starr | David Gray | The Weather Station

Ringo Starr may love the country music tradition, but on the evidence of his latest album he wasn’t born to perform it himself, writes Fiona Shepherd

Ringo Starr | Contributed

Ringo Starr: Look Up (Lost Highway Records) **

David Gray: Dear Life (Laugh A Minute Records) ***

The Weather Station: Humanhood (Fat Possum) ***

The right honourable Ringo Starr has been a long time lover of country music, hoovering up honky tonk records at the same time as he was diving into the hip new sounds of rock’n’roll. His second solo album, 1970’s Beaucoups of Blues, was a country affair recorded in Nashville. More than half a century later, he returned to the home of country to record Look Up with esteemed roots producer T Bone Burnett - who also wrote the majority of songs on the album – plus guests galore providing leavening support.

Billy Strings is the star of opening track Breathless, his lithe guitar playing outshining Starr’s rather flat vocal interpretation of lyrical ecstasy, while Molly Tuttle contributes supporting vocals to the bluesier title track. Keening pedal steel guitar adds instant melancholy to Time On My Hands – something or someone’s got to, as Starr just doesn’t have the vocal nuances to infuse its simple expression of regret with the requisite heartache.

Time and again, his guests add the special sauce to bland fare. Come Back is a dreamy country ballad in the spirit of Roy Orbison with angelic harmonies from Roger Waters’ favourite pop duo Lucius. Another vocal duo, Larkin Poe, join Starr for the low-slung fuzztone blues of Rosetta and he trades phrases with Tuttle in call-and-response style on Can You Hear Me Call, a plangent easy listening ballad of the sort The Beatles covered in their early career.

The slightly arthritic ska-tinged swing of You Want Some is enlivened by Mike Rojas’s perky piano playing while Alison Krauss lurks in the background on Starr’s own composition Thankful, with the man himself just about hanging in there “hoping for more peace and love” in the frail style of Brian Wilson’s recent naïve recordings. He may love the tradition but, on this evidence, he wasn’t born to do it.

David Gray | Robin Grierson

Life as an independent artist continues to suit David Gray, whose 13th album Dear Life was mostly recorded in the Covid haven of his studio on the Norfolk coast before layering on additional meticulous simpatico orchestration.

After the Harvest showcases the earthier style of this more intimate and less time-constrained way of working, exuding mellow maturity while retaining a bit of grit in the oyster. Gray’s gravelly vocal works against the antiseptic pop production of lead single Plus & Minus, on which he duets with Talia Rae on a track expressing careworn disillusion about a longterm relationship. Fighting Talk is another duet, this time with his daughter Florence, which exudes a more laidback retro jam feel with burnished brass and pattering drums in the mix.

The seven-minute Leave Taking, built around a poem by Louise Bogan, also draws on 70s MOR pop with gentle arpeggios ebbing and flowing throughout, while Sunlight on Water conveys that shimmering sensation with delicate orchestral drones and Future Bride is powered by light, bright brass and woodwind.

The Weather Station | Brandon George Ko

Acclaimed Canadian artist Tamara Lindeman, aka The Weather Station, dives straight into the big existential themes on her latest album, addressing a period of feeling untethered even as she toured the world on a critical high. Humanhood is her healing response, an elegantly crafted suite mixing gossamer songs with instrumental passages.

Guests including Sam Amidon and James Elkington join her intuitive crew to realise her tender vision. The steady but propulsive rhythm of Neon Signs is wholly grounding but there is plenty of space for the beauty of bewitching flute. Mirror comes on like a rootsier St Vincent, with its shuffling beat dappled with jazzy piano and clarinet, and when she and her ensemble step up the pace on Window, her vocal delivery remains as smooth and soothing as ever.

CLASSICAL

Ruth Gipps: Orchestral Works, Vol 3 (Chandos) ★★★★

The current revival of interest in the music of Ruth Gipps (1921-99) is well deserved. A pupil of Vaughan Williams immediately prior to the Second World War, her sleek, easygoing musical style is perhaps as understandable as the subsequent obscurity she suffered as a female composer of her time. Now, however, she’s all the rage, and orchestras and recording companies are clambering to perform what is a substantial and remarkable canon of work. This latest release features the BBC Philharmonic under Rumon Gamba in such major pieces as Gipps’ 1942 Symphony No 1, a dramatic landscape tempered by exquisite lyrical elasticity and flashes of the exotic; and the 1968 Horn Concerto, which soloist Martin Owen imbues with imaginative rhetoric, golden sonorities and airy flights of whimsy. The cinematic Coronation Procession, the Delius-like wistfulness of Ambarvalia and progressive adventurism of Cringlemire Garden are genuinely fascinating fillers. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Arild Andersen: Landloper (ECM Records) ★★★★

Arild Andersen, much honoured Norwegian bassist and longstanding pillar of the ECM stable, steps into the limelight as soloist, armed only with his double bass and trusty effects pedals, deftly looping and layering riffs or sighing sheets of sound to accompany himself in real time. Near vocal-sounding, echoing harmonics herald the opening Peace Universal (the only track not recorded live), Andersen’s arco bowing opening up his hauntingly ethereal Nordic soundworld. Repertoire veers with gleeful eclecticism from the free jazz of Albert Ayler’s Ghosts to an affectionately sentimental classic, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Two tracks, the stately Dreamhorse and the softly ticking Mira, we know from Andersen’s trio with saxophonist Tommy Smith and the late drummer Paolo Vinaccia, while an engrossing medley sees the eerie melancholy of the Ayler composition give way to a catchy Norwegian folk tune, then the mischievous gyrations of the titular Landloper. Jim Gilchrist