Album reviews: East of Undergound | Trailer Trash Tracys | Folk | Classical | Jazz

POP

The Little Willies: For The Good Times

Parlophone, £12.99

Rating: ***

Norah Jones and her “loose-knit collective” of country-loving buddies convene for a second time to cover gems by Loretta Lynn, Ralph Stanley, Dolly Parton, Kristofferson and Cash. The tone of For The Good Times ranges from the heartfelt ache of Richard Julian’s lead vocal on Willie Nelson’s Permanently Lonely and Jones’ turn on the title track to the playful disposition of Foul Owl on the Prowl from Quincy Jones’ In The Heat of the Night soundtrack. But while their taste in country music is unimpeachable and it is hard to fault Jones’ sultry vocals and guitarist Jim Campilongo’s fluent licks on a technical level, their versions are too respectfully polite to provide any fresh perspective on the material.

Various: East of Underground – Hell Below

Now-Again, £15.99

Rating: ****

n THIS fascinating three-album box set compiles recordings made by enlisted US servicemen stationed in West Germany during the latter years of the Vietnam War, specifically representing the work of three groups – East of Underground, The Black Seeds and The Sound Treks – who were all winners of the US army’s Annual Original Magnificent Special Services Entertainment Showband Contest. But this is no It Ain’t Half Hot Mum concert party. Hell Below covers the soul, funk and rock standards of the era, from Sly Stone and The Temptations to Carole King and Neil Young. While the recordings are rough round the edges – and live, in some cases – the playing is persuasive, communicating a sense of the political upheaval of the times through the soldiers’ choice of material and their raw soul delivery.

Trailer Trash Tracys: Ester

Double Six, £10.99

Rating: ***

MY BLOODY Valentine’s groundbreaking soundscape of layered, distorted guitars and mesmeric vocal swooning retains its heady allure 20 years on. London quartet Trailer Trash Tracys don’t stray far from this influential but now well-worn template on their debut album which is by turns fuzzy and fluffy. Composed using the sacred solfeggio scale, their sound is beguiling to a degree but mostly lacking the giddy melodies, latent sexuality or sinister undertone of their benchmark, although the woozy siren call of Turkish Heights and the skinny, eerie funk of Black Circle testify to their potential.

Fiona Shepherd

FOLK

Bruce NacGregor, CHristine Hanson & Friends: Kissin’ is the best of a’

Brechin All Records £11.99

Rating: ****

THIS admirable instrumental spree comes from Blazin’ Fiddles stalwart and broadcaster Bruce MacGregor and cellist Christine Hanson, accompanied with unobtrusive skill by pianist Brian McAlpine on piano and Tim Edey on guitar and occasional accordion.

There’s real, infectious zest in much of the playing, drawn largely from traditional fiddle repertoire, including a lissom set of traditional jigs and a pair of energetically driven strathspeys, while a stand-out track begins with MacGregor’s nicely considered interpretation of Scott Skinner’s beautiful fiddle pibroch, Dargai, before skipping through the Sword Dance and into another Skinner classic, the reel Miss Shepherd.

Gentler excursions include the American Sunday River Waltz and the lovely song air Her Mantle So Green and a restrained but wistful interpretation of the old tune Gin Ye Kiss My Wife I’ll Tell the Minister, as well that sadly neglected genre, the slow strathspey.

Jim Gilchrist

CLASSICAL

Peter Hill plays Bach

Delphian, £13.99

Rating: *****

BRITISH pianist Peter Hill is better-known for his championship of contemporary music, but as this delightful presentation of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II reveals, he has an equal penchant for earlier styles. Hill’s approach is to capture the engaging balance between the crisp clarity of the music and its innate lyrical soul. He makes no apologies for the expressive potential of the piano, but simply uses that to harness the universality of the music, from its pre-echoes of early classicism to sparks of undeniable romantic mood-painting. Never once, though, does it sell out Bach’s stylistic integrity.

Kenneth Walton

JAZZ

Ron Carter: Great Big Band

Sunnyside Records, £12.99

Rating: ****

AS ONE of the greatest bass players in jazz history, Ron Carter has done most things across his five-decade career, but – somewhat surprisingly – this is the first time he has led his own big band. He has teamed up with arranger and musical director Robert M. Freedman for the project, and they have assembled a predictably excellent ensemble, with full brass and reed sections supported by pianist Mulgrew Miller, drummer Lewis Nash, and Carter’s own elegant bass playing directing everything. The material spans the history of jazz, from a reading of W C Handy’s St Louis Blues through to Tom Harrell’s Sail Away, and includes two tunes that played a major role in Carter’s career, Wayne Shorter’s Footprints and John Lewis’s The Golden Striker. The result is a very fine melding of traditional and contemporary approaches to big band music.

Kenny Mathieson

WORLD

Various Artists: Blind Note

Muziek Publique, £11.99

Rating: ****

n THE opening track on this CD is Armenian music at its most quintessential – a gentle-paced rumination on the duduk, which is that country’s answer to the western oboe, but infinitely more affecting. The second track comes from Turkey, with a beguilingly-sung ballad plus backing refrain accompanied by traditional acoustic percussion; the third, from Madagascar, has a hurryingly eager song bowling along with the aid of guitar, bass and duduk. Every track is a winner, coming from every corner of the globe, and every musician is blind. Muziekpublique is a non-profit organisation based in Belgium; this CD reflects its project to support eye hospitals in Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso. When these musicians play a live gig, they begin with the auditorium plunged in darkness, as a more than symbolic expression of the musical world they want to evoke.

And in so doing they plug into a tradition which is both timeless and world-wide: music is everywhere seen as one of the arts blind people are most likely to triumph at, whether they are Japanese shamisen players or singers like Stevie Wonder.

Sambasunda Quintet: Java

Riverboat, £11.99

Rating: ***

IF you want to know what the boat-shaped kacapi zither sounds like, check out the lilting background sound to the vocals on this CD.

This is the easiest of easy listening, marrying the ancient classical tradition of Sundanese music with eclectic global influences. You might not think Irish and Javanese music would mix, but they do surprisingly well. Violin, bamboo flute, drums, and human voices blend to create a spacious and seductive musical world; love songs and children’s games predominate.

Michael Church

Album reviews: East of Undergound | Trailer Trash Tracys | Folk | Classical | Jazz | World