Album reviews: Maria McKee | The Boomtown Rats | Deap Lips | Salt House

Maria McKee: La Vita Nuova (Fire) ****

 The Boomtown Rats: Citizens of Boomtown (BMG) *** 

Deap Lips: Deap Lips (Cooking Vinyl) ****  

From Lone Justice’s swaggering debut Ways To Be Wicked to her solo chart-topper Show Me Heaven and beyond, Maria McKee has showcased a natural (and commercial) knack for capturing the slings and arrows of romantic fortune. But 13 years since her previous album, she is tapping into something a little more occult and elemental on La Vita Nuova (“the new life”). 

According to McKee, the songs flowed following the end of her marriage to director Jim Akin and her subsequent coming out as a “pansexual, polyamorous gender fluid dyke”. There is liberation to be heard in this cohesive body of timeless piano confessionals, in McKee’s eloquent phrasing, her flamboyant delivery, and the cathartic power of her voice on soaring opener Effigy of Salt and throughout. 

But as well as producing an audacious spin on the mid-life crisis record, she channels the diverse and classic influence of Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, William Blake, Dante (the album is named after one of his texts), her late older brother Bryan MacLean of LA psychedelic heroes Love and David Bowie’s more baroque moments with the inherent melodrama of Let Me Forget. 

It’s a rich and strange brew, intriguing and intoxicating on I Should Have Looked Away, air-punchingly exultant on the title track and soaring symphonic power ballad Courage, and transporting on Right Down to the Heart of London, a love letter to her new home featuring her own string arrangements and field recordings from a street market. 

McKee’s artistic voice may be strong but it is not until she closes the album with the more understated arrangement of However Worn, when her vocals are not tossed about on a whirlwind of emotion, that the music comes to rest in a place of respite. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s worth the trip. 

The Boomtown Rats also return after a lengthy break with their first new album in 36 years. The release of Citizens of Boomtown is accompanied by an additional flurry of activity – frontman Bob Geldof publishes a new anthology, Tales of Boomtown Glory, on the same day and there is a documentary in the works. 

Suitably back in the game, the Dublin veterans waste no further time in pulling on their rock’n’roll pants to deliver a thrusting set of turbo-charged new wave rockers, ranging from the freewheeling Celtic soul-infused Here’s a Postcard to the low-slung rocking rammy She Said No. 

Geldof’s vocals are somewhat muffled throughout so it’s not always possible to discern what the message is but the generous lashings of soaring strings lend some extra emphatic impact to the likes of 70s power pop tune Trash Glam Baby. The dumb chant of Rock’n’Roll Yé Yé definitely offers more of the former than latter and the KLF-style throwback electro rock of The Boomtown Rats may be more jam than song but Citizens of Boomtown is a sufficiently likeable way to mark the Year of the Rat. 

Oklahoma space cadets The Flaming Lips advance from collaborations with mainstream pop disruptors Kesha and Miley Cyrus to Deap Lips, a fully integrated alliance with Julie Edwards and Lindsay Troy of guitar/drums duo Deap Vally. Deap Lips seamlessly embellishes the bluesy garage stylings of Deap Vally with the wiggy psychedelia of the Lips – though there are no prizes for guessing which half of the partnership came up with the title One Thousand Sisters with Aluminium Foil Calculators. Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd also successfully recycle unused Miley and Kesha tracks, The Pusher (“you know I smoked a lot of weed, I’ve popped a lot of pills”) and album centrepiece Love Is Mind Control, comprising seven minutes of epic existentialism on acoustic guitar. Fiona Shepherd   FOLK

 Salt House: Huam (Hudson Records) ***** 

This latest from Salt House – singer-songwriter-instrumentalists Jenny Sturgeon and Ewan MacPherson with Lauren MacColl on fiddle and viola – continues their thoughtful songsmithing way with pre-existing poetry or fresh lyrics. Huam is Scots for an owl’s call and there are shades of the bucolic and the nocturnal in these finely woven songs, couched in resonant strings and richly toned bowing. Sturgeon’s opening Fire Light, adapted from lines by Cairngorms chronicler Nan Shepherd, casts a glow that suffuses the album. At times she sounds strikingly like Karine Polwart, but is clearly forging a distinct craft of her own. They spin out a translated Danish ballad over taut, pizzicato strings and bring gripping freshness to Thomas Campbell’s 19th-century melodrama Lord Ullin’s Daughter, while MacColl’s playing enriches Sturgeon’s still, meditative The Disquiet and the multi-voiced warmth of Mountain of Gold. Jim Gilchrist 

  CLASSICAL 

Chopin: Piano Concertos (Decca) ***** 

“Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel!” Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has taken these words by Chopin completely to heart in these distinctive, compelling performances of both Chopin piano concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and its principal guest conductor Elim Chan. The E minor Concerto opens in a wash of summery radiance, the strings superheated and heartfelt, from which the woodwind solos emerge soulfully, followed by a first triumphant flourish from Grosvenor, releasing floods of effortless poetic diversion. Beyond that the enchanting timelessness of the Romance, the closing Rondo’s virile playfulness, and the dazzling virtuosity of the F minor Concerto unfold with breathtaking rapture. Chan’s subtle and inspired colouring of Chopin’s infamously unchallenging orchestral scores rather challenges that assumption. She and Grosvenor play entirely to the music’s natural strengths. Ken Walton  

Album reviews: Maria McKee | The Boomtown Rats | Deap Lips | Salt House | Benjamin Grosvenor