Album reviews: Bruce Springsteen | Tom Petty

Bruce Springsteen: Letter to You (Columbia Records) ****

Tom Petty: Wildflowers & All The Rest (Warners) ****

Evie Sands: Get Out Of Your Own Way (R-Spot Records) ***

Like rock’n’roll’s answer to David Attenborough, Bruce Springsteen has a message for the world in these troubled times and it is this: “wake and shake off your troubles my friend, we’ll go where the music never ends, from the stadiums to the smalltown bars.” The wonderfully titled House of a Thousand Guitars was penned before lockdown but it functions as a stirring encouragement to let the music play on.

It could also serve as the theme tune for the peerless E Street Band with whom Springsteen reunites here for a celebratory session. Letter To You was recorded live in the studio in a mere four days, summoning a glorious, carefree energy which has been captured in a documentary film of the same name, to be premiered on the day of the album’s release.

Initially the band hold back on their legendary firepower. Opening track One Minute You’re Here is Springsteen at his softest, almost crooning the words. There is also a hint of vulnerability as well as liberation in the confession of feelings on the hearty, soulful title track, garnished with the burnished twang of Springsteen’s guitar.

Then they’re off with the chiming momentum and powerful drumming of Burnin’ Train. Saxophonist Jake Clemons steps forward for his dexterous solo on the gritty Last Man Standing but there is no triumphalism here, more a resigned acceptance, while Springsteen gets his hands dirty on Rainmaker, the gruff tale of a snake oil salesman with a perennial grim resonance.

Springsteen also revisits three songs from his 70s catalogue, often bootlegged but never previously released. Janey Needs a Shooter was originally recorded in the sessions for Darkness on the Edge of Town but didn’t make the cut, and is now revived as a wall of southern soul. If I Was the Priest, dating from the early 70s, is classic Springsteen storytelling, with Dylanesque phrasing but open-throated delivery, teamed with a widescreen performance from the band. Springsteen lets loose on some melodic riffing on the run-out groove, and then cracks out the harmonica on a deep, rolling Song for Orphans, which has finally found this happy home.

Christmas has come early for fans of the late Tom Petty with the deluxe re-issue of his 1994 album Wildflowers – choose from the “basic” double-CD/triple LP album or a whopping box set which adds a further three CDs/six LPs of unreleased demo and live recordings.

The original album - solo Petty but with the Heartbreakers in attendance in all but name – was conceived as a 25-track double but released instead with 15 tracks, each produced by Rick Rubin, with an intimate, understated and downbeat disposition, from the gentle ache of Only a Broken Heart to the weary majesty of Wake Up Time.

The high quality home recordings yield haunted folk renditions of Don’t Fade on Me and a beseeching Confusion Wheel, but the ten tracks originally intended for inclusion are where the interest lies - from the campfire immediacy of Climb That Hill Blues and the acoustic tribute to a childhood friend, Harry Green, to the slick ambivalent send-off of Hope You Never and the glossy, chiming Somewhere Under Heaven, all deserve their place on this restored gem.

New York singer/songwriter Evie Sands was feted on the northern soul scene and a favourite of Dusty Springfield’s in the 60s and 70s but destined for cult appeal rather than commercial breakthrough. Now in her mid-70s, she gives a rousing, rootsy account of herself on Get Out Of Your Own Way, her first new album in over 20 years, mining torch rock and bittersweet country soul across 12 tracks. Look out for a guest appearance from confirmed fangirl Isobel Campbell.

CLASSICAL

Bach (arr Koffler): Goldberg Variations (Linn) ****

Who was Jósef Koffler? In the sleeve notes to this enticing recording by the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble under Trevor Pinnock, dedicated to Koffler’s 1930s chamber orchestration of Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations, we learn of his progressiveness as a composer and his tragic fate as a Polish Jew under Stalinist, then Nazi, rule. Known to Berg and Schoenberg, he was in tune with serialism in its infancy, holding the unique position of professor of harmony and atonal composition at the Lwów Conservatoire. Under pressure to avoid anti-Soviet “formalism,” he found a politically safer outlet in such curiosities as this Bach adaptation. The result is “of its time” - a somewhat fanciful recolouring of Bach’s ingenious keyboard variations so skilfully and pleasurably done, however, that - ignoring the performance practices we know of today - the outcome is compelling. Pinnock avoids sentimentality by demanding keenness of texture and springlike rhythm and energy. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Joshua Jaswon Octet: Silent Sea (Ubuntu Music) ****

London saxophonist Joshua Jaswon and his pan-European octet deftly combine driving jazz with lyrical condemnation of environmental despoliation and Brexit xenophobia in an album which, after its perky opener, Maurice, is devoted to Jaswon’s suite, Reduce / Reuse / Recycle, based around poems by Rachael Boast, Maura Dooley and Scotland’s present Makar, Jackie Kay. Anna Serierse’s vocals float serenely over Johannes Mann’s limpid electric guitar in the suite’s introductory Silent Sea, before things take on edge, joined by Jaswon’s alto sax over flickering drums. That drive is further cranked up for Extinction, with Kay’s excoriatingly satirical lines – “no trees, no plants, no immigrants” – intoned hypnotically over urgent pulsing, with trumpeter Miguel Gorodi and tenor saxophonist Marc Doffey among purposeful soloists. Dooley’s Still Life With Sea Pinks is infused with a beaty imminence hinting at rising sea levels, adding to the album’s clarion eloquence. Jim Gilchrist

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Album reviews: Bruce Springsteen | Tom Petty | Evie Sands