The The Ensoulment review: 'the brooding ambience and quiet rage are back'

Matt Johnson of The The | Gerald Jenkins

The The: Ensoulment (Cineola/earMUSIC) ★★★★

Sabrina Carpenter: Short n’ Sweet (Polydor Records) ★★★

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings: Woodland (Acony Records) ★★★★

In 2017, Matt Johnson released a documentary called The Inertia Variations, an existential study in procrastination as artform, as well as a welcome reminder that the dystopian soul man was alive if not entirely well, with grief and indecision playing their part in his absence from public view.

He has never been the most prolific of artists, but Ensoulment has been a long time coming even by his slowburn standards. It has been a quarter of a century since Johnson released an album using his The The moniker, but the brooding ambience and quiet rage are back with an ominous twang on the scene-setting Cognitive Dissident.

Some Days I Drink My Coffee By the Grave of William Blake is as much diary entry as urban blues, a soulful swinging contemplation of a “greedy unpleasant land” from Johnson’s regular isolated cemetery hangout. The personal inquiry continues with Where Do We Go When We Die?, a requiem for his father, who is the latest family member to be eulogised in song. On the dissonant symphony of Linoleum Smooth to the Stockinged Foot, he documents a pandemic hospital stay (for throat surgery) “drenched in morphine and iodine”, concluding that “in altered states the truth is glimpsed”.

Johnson often presents as just out of kilter with the social, cultural and political climate but in doing so expresses relatable anxieties. On Zen & The Art of Dating, he is a swaggering MC leering over the shoulders of young lovers swiping, while I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget) is a stripped-back cautionary ode to AI, with plangent guitar, handclap percussion and a hint of accordion. Long may he furrow his brow.

Sabrina Carpenter | Contributed

Sabrina Carpenter may be a newish name in the UK but, like Olivia Rodrigo, she came up through the Disney channel, before sealing her transition from child star to pop princess with this easy breezy sixth album. Short n’ Sweet gives the impression that she is not trying too hard but her success was written via Taylor Swift support slots and shrewd collaborations with Swift associate Jack Antonoff and Harry Styles’ songwriter Amy Allen.

With her 50s pin-up poses, she trades in a cutesy retro aesthetic already exploited by Katy Perry but her music is infused with pop R&B. This summer she was in competition with herself at the top of the UK charts with the feelgood disco pop of Espresso and the artfully produced Please Please Please, equally hewn from country pop, easy listening and synth-driven ecstasy.

Lyrically, she is sharp, making eye-watering reference to Leonard Cohen on Dumb & Poetic and punning on cowboy actor Slim Pickins to lament “the good ones are deceased or taken”.

Gillian Welch and David | Alysse Gafkjen

The symbiotic creative relationship of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings has produced ten albums under one or the other of their names, but they officially brand their partnership on Woodland, named after their Nashville Studio.

Welch exudes the blues on Empty Trainload of Sky. Her gift is in painting a full scene with a few choice words – here, the trigger is a freight train. Rawlings leads with Neil Young-like vulnerability on the luscious easy listening country of What We Had. The Bells and the Birds recalls Jefferson Airplane’s more plaintive minor key moments, while their intertwined vocals on The Day The Mississippi Died are pure Dylan and Baez.

Here Stands A Woman features exquisite work from Rawlings, an unassuming but devastating guitar hero, with Welch woebegone as the wronged woman, while the title Hashtag is an atypical 21st century intrusion on which they reckon that “singers like you and I are only news when we die”. They deserve to make musical headlines right now.

CLASSICAL

Philip Glass: Complete piano etudes (Delphian) ★★★★★ The least impressive playing of Philip Glass’s piano music I’ve experienced was by the composer himself, in Glasgow. Others have made far better sense of it, including Irish pianist Máire Carroll, whose new recording of the complete piano etudes embraces and articulates all the key Glass components - energy, beauty and imagination. Glass wrote these 20 minimalist studies both as a means of improving his own piano technique, and of channeling his more private thoughts on an intimate scale. That’s not to say they eschew the impatient, power-driven obsessiveness that defines so much of his music. Carroll’s performances have all of that when asked for, vitalised by electrifying fingerwork. She also enhances those trademark low-set timbres and subterranean gloom with a sublime radiance, and captures an endearing reflectiveness through her personable, eloquent lyricism. She does everything Glass asks for, then applies the expert pianist’s touch. Ken Walton

FOLK

The Rheingans Sisters: Start Close In (Own Label) ★★★★ A suitably demonic swarm of tortured strings heralds the song Devils, opening this engagingly multi-textured album from English sibling duo Anna and Rowan Rheingans, who accompany their clear singing with fiddles, banjos, guitar and assorted percussion. Traditional and self-composed songs in English are interleaved with French and Occitan. Devils is a droll tale of come-uppance, while Un Voltigeur is sung with unhurried clarity over brightly ticking banjo, Daniel Thorne’s saxophone piping gently behind. Drink Up is a breathlessly mordant commentary on uncertain times, the bourrée-driven Si Sabiatsz Drolletas is a piquant Occitan warning for women not to marry (complete with slyly reversed church bells), while the enigmatic repetition of Over and Over Again intones over echoing, desert-blues guitar. Fiddle-led Instrumentals range from the Swedish Brädmarsch – stately fiddle over jawharp twang, through the vibrant Shade Chaser, to further French echoes of Marche à la Cabrette. Jim Gilchrist