Album reviews: Katie Melua | The Civil Wars | Classical | Folk | Jazz | World

The Scotsman’s team of music critics lend their ears to the latest offerings from the world of music

POP

Katie Melua: Secret Symphony

Dramatico, £12.99

Rating: **

Following the relative curveball of her fourth album The House, notable for the creepiness of some of the lyrics and a slight stretching of her musical wings, Katie Melua, retreats to her default position with another prematurely aged release that is all the more disappointing for the way it leans so heavily on cover versions to round out its stultifying MOR vision.

For example, Ron Sexsmith’s sublime Gold In Them Hills deserves better than this simpering treatment.

That said, her producer/manager Mike Bright Eyes Batt demonstrates that he can still write a pocket gem with downbeat ballad The Bit That I Don’t Get.

The Civil Wars: Barton Hollow

Columbia, £12.99

Rating: ***

The Civil Wars arrive with the particular recommendation of her Pop Highness Adele Adkins, who took this country duo out on tour with her last autumn and proclaimed them “by far the best live band I have ever seen”.Presumably she doesn’t have much time to get to gigs these days because Barton Hollow does not sound like the work of an exciting new arrival, being a straightforward, accessible album of country and roots music gussied up with a slick lick of rock and pop production and powered by what one might generously call the vocal chemistry of Joy Williams and John Paul White.These White Stripes-lite sound very comfortable with trad country balladeering, such as the sweet Forget Me Not, at points even straying into the safe, commercial country pop zombie zone of Lady Antebellum. But there are some surprises, both pleasant (the pretty, contemplative instrumental The Violet Hour) and not so welcome - such as their try-hard sparse roots cover of Billie Jean, on which they indulge an unfortunate tendency to showboat on the vocals.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

Lamentarium

Destino Classics, £13.99

Rating: ****

Atalante is relatively new on the early music scene. So is Destino Classics, on which the ensemble presents this fascinating selection of music from 17th-century Rome. The majority are settings of popular narratives – a good many of them laments dealing with everyone from Helen of Troy to the Blessed Virgin, and largely by two of the most predominant post-Monteverdi composers, Luigi Rossi and Marco Marrazoli. The music is beautifully expressive, riven with gorgeous dark-tinged moments, as are the stylish vocal and instrumental performances under ensemble founder and director Erin Headley.

KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

Martin Kershaw: The Howness

EJF Records (online only)

Rating: ****

The Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival makes an initial foray into the record business with this album (and another more mainstream offering from singer Angie King, I Told You So, on which Kershaw also appears). The saxophonist explains in his notes for this album that much of the music has literary inspirations, and in particular a fascination with the “how-ness” of human behaviour as explored by his favourite writers.

From the opening knotty, querulous joust with guitarist Graeme Stephen (a guest on two tracks) on the title track to his closing radical re-imagining of Charlie Parker’s Steeplechase, this is another powerful affirmation that Kershaw is one of our most consistently creative, absorbing and often challenging musicians.

Pianist Paul Harrison, bassist Euan Burton and drummer Doug Hough provide both strong and inventive support and full engagement with the saxophonist’s music.

KENNY MATHIESON

FOLK

Breabach: Bann

Breabach, £12.99

Rating: ****

This powerful yet lyrical recording sees Breabach expand from quartet to quintet, maintaining that powerful twin-pipes and fiddle front line with piper James Duncan Mackenzie, fiddler Megan Henderson and double-bassist James Lindsay joining core members Calum MacCrimmon, also on pipes, and guitarist Ewan Robertson, with shared vocals.

Instrumentally there are dramatic excursions such as the opening Glasgow of the Shops or Gig Face, while Henderson gives a sensitive rendition of Duncan Chisholm’s delicate air Farley Bridge, pipes joining in for a triumphant conclusion.

Songs include Scotland’s Winter, based by Robertson on Edwin Muir’s poem Scotland 1941, and passionately sung before giving way to the imperious strains of the Park Piobaireachd, while MacCrimmon gives convincing voice to his own song about his Canadian roots, Western Skies.

And where else might you hear a contemporary strathspey about Doctor Who’s Harris tweed jacket lead on to a brisk traditional classic of the genre, Tullochgorm?

JIM GILCHRIST

WORLD

The Rough Guide to Celtic Women

RGNet, £8.99

Rating: ****

As Dan Rosenberg points out in his notes to this laterally-thinking CD, Celtic music goes back three millennia, to a time when Celtic tribes stretched as far east as Anatolia and as far south as the Iberian peninsula; in those regions where the Romans failed to impose their writ – notably Brittany, Ireland and the northern parts of Britain – the Celtic influence persisted.

There are six surviving (though in some cases now struggling) Celtic languages – Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Manx – and today Celtic music thrives in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Asturias, and Galicia. All of which means that these 15 tracks have a large field to cover. But cover it they do, and very effectively. Scotland is represented by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Maggie Macinnes, and the supergroup Capercaille. Ireland comes in with Pauline Scanlon, Cara Dillon, Sharon Shannon, Karan Casey and Grada; Brittany with Cecile Corbel, and Canadian Celtic music with Teresa Doyle. In all, a rich and satisfying listen.

The Rough Guide to the Music of New Oreleans

RGNet, £8.99

Rating: ****

This is a more predictable but no less rewarding compilation, focusing on the most musically diverse city on earth.

New Orleans’ origins explain it all: the newly arrived Africans in the 16th century shared their culture with the American Indians, and the European settlers brought their own culture to the amalgam; the resultant Creole culture was actively encouraged by the then French government.

This compilation starts with the rhythm and blues and funk of Jessie Hill, the Meters, and Earl King, but then plunges us into the Mardi Gras maelstrom of Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, before whisking us off to brass band parades and some quite remarkable pianism, courtesy of Professor Longhair and Dr John.

MICHAEL CHURCH