CD Reviews: Eva Cassidy | Ballboy | Ostad Elahi | Inner Space Music | Haflidi Hallgrimsson

EVA CASSIDY: SOMEWHEREBLIX STREET RECORDS, £12.99***

I'VE always been perplexed by the cult of Eva Cassidy – a competent bar singer whose winsome covers have somehow touched a wide audience since her untimely death. But this album of newly unearthed material is undeniably pleasant listening in parts. Her Latino take on Summertime may border on karaoke, her ballsy rhythm'n'blues covers are pretty standard fare and her versions of Robert Burns' My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose and Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors are insipid, but Somewhere boasts a handful of haunting folky numbers, including her delicate reading of the English folk tune Early One Morning.

BALLBOY: I WORKED ON THE SHIPS

PONY PROOF RECORDS, 13.99

****

IT IS quality business as usual on ballboy's self-released fifth album, with a fresh cast of characters to encounter and the usual intriguing song titles to conjure with. But now is not the time to take this Edinburgh group and their idiosyncratic musical world for granted, as frontman Gordon McIntyre – a PG-rated Aidan Moffat – serves up some of his most beautiful, wistful storytelling to date, encasing his whimsical, witty, yet sometimes stark lyrics in some of their folkiest arrangements yet.

OSTAD ELAHI – DESTINATIONS

LE CHANT DU MONDE, 13.99

****

OSTAD Elahi lived from 1895 to 1974, and played in a style unique to that part of Sufi Western Iran where music was seen as the hotline to God. Performing for family and friends on the now-rare tanbur lute, he purveyed an austere art. His ornamentation is sophisticated but subtle: a matter of tremolos, vibratos, and intermittent plucking of the strings, sending out his simple melodies, all based on intervals of a fourth. You can still hear music like this in neighbouring Tajikistan, but it's a dying form, so catch it here while you can.

INNER SPACE MUSIC: FIVE ANIMAL DANCES

SPHERICAL RECORDS, 10.99

***

TRUMPETER Loz Speyer, saxophonist Chris Biscoe, bassist Julie Walkington and drummer Seb Rochford – all band leaders in their own right – combine on this project, although Speyer does take the lead in providing the ten compositions, including the five animal-inspired pieces signalled in the title. They are all treated as vehicles for both structured and free improvisations that may prove a little abstract for some tastes, but draw characteristically inventive and energised responses from the musicians.

HAFLIDI HALLGRIMSSON: SOLO PIANO MUSIC

DELPHIAN, 13.99

****

THIS extensive disc of solo piano music by Haflidi Hallgrimsson reveals an unexpectedly mellow side to the Scots-based Icelandic composer. That's partly because such works as the charmingly elemental Sketches in Time are written for young players. Others, such as the Debussyesque Fley, are reworkings of early student sketches. But more generally, the young Northumbrian pianist Simon Smith captures in his distinguished playing a relaxed, human element in much of this music. Besides the sentimental charm of the Four Icelandic Folksongs, he brings empathy to the brittle angularity of Homage to Mondrian and intellectual rigour to the serially inspired Five Pieces.