Album reviews: Morten Harket | The Gossip | Tenacious D | Classical | Jazz | Folk | World

The Scotsman’s team of music critics lend their ears to the latest releases

POP

Morten Harket: Out Of My Hands

Wrasse, £12.99

Rating: **

THE portrait in Morten Harket’s attic must be looking pretty haggard by now, judging by his preternaturally preserved looks and equally limber vocal chops. But his renowned vocal clarity and fluent falsetto is wasted on the bland songcraft of his first solo outing since A-ha officially split last year. Out Of My Hands is a strictly lightweight exercise in throwaway pop chirpiness, outdated synth arrangements, processed rock guitar and banal lyrics – one such example, Keep The Sun Away, supplied by Paisley’s former Fame Academy winner David Sneddon, another, the anodyne Listening, by the Pet Shop Boys in coasting mode – which is far inferior to A-ha at their enigmatic and epic pop peak.

The Gossip: A Joyful Noise

Columbia, £12.99

Rating: ***

THEY may originally come from queercore punk stock but The Gossip mean commercial business on their latest album, striding further towards the mainstream with this collection of steely electro pop, which was steered by producer Brian Higgins of Girls Aloud/Sugababes hit factory Xenomania after sessions with Mark Ronson didn’t work out. Frontwoman Beth Ditto has always been a gift of a left-field pop diva anyway. Tempering her raspier tendencies, she gives Gaga and Madonna food for thought here, providing an assured alternative to their generic dance pop direction. But equally there’s no doubt The Gossip have sacrificed much of their distinctive punk soul in bringing this album to fruition.

Tenacious D: Rize of the Fenix

Columbia, £12.99

Rating: **

THERE are undoubtedly folks out there who can bear more than small doses of hyperactive irritant Jack Black. Dave Grohl being among their number, one presumes, since he lends his rhythmic prowess to this not terribly funny parody record on which Black and his Tenacious D sidekick Kyle Gass conveniently ignore, yet again, the notion that the power metal genre hardly needs parodying and continue in their mission to fill the world with more songs about wrestling, women and musical progression, broadening their target range along the way with the 1980s power AOR of To Be The Best and the grizzled roots rock of 39.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

Allegri: Masses, Motets & Miserere

Delphian, £13.99

Rating: ****

OVER the past 20 years, David Trendell has built up a student body of sound at Kings College London that now must rank itself among the best university chapel choirs in the UK. The timbre is fresh, fruity and vibrant, the young voices issuing a quality of a cappella ensemble that combines Italianate ruggedness with English smoothness, a fusion that is the perfect vehicle for the wholesome Allegri Masses, Motets, and famous Miserere on this disc. The Miserere is cast in sturdy, perfectly intoned fashion, but more intriguing are the delicious eight-part Missa In lecturo meo and Missa Christus resurgens, together with their derivative motets, richly moulded with silken polyphony and antiphonal drama.

KENNETH WALTON

JAZZ

Euan Burton: Occurrences

Whirlwind Recordings, £12.99

Rating: ****

GLASGOW-BASED bass player Euan Burton’s music on this release comes in the form of a suite intended to build a narrative, although he provides no clues to extraneous content – the seven sections are simply numbered with no descriptive titles, and the listener left to build his or her own interpretation of the “occurrences”. Seven years in the making, the pleasingly melodic music has a refined and subtly crafted feel that speaks of much revision and development, and is carefully structured in tempo and mood in its unfolding sequence within the span of the disc.

Burton has recruited a very fine band for the project, with New York-based saxophonist Will Vinson and Irish guitarist Mark McKnight both making powerful contributions alongside Steve Hamilton’s excellent work on piano and Fender Rhodes. London-based drummer and rising star James Maddren completes a strong unit.

KENNY MATHIESON

FOLK

MALCOLM BUSHBY: ISLANDS

SHEARWATER MUSIC, £11.99

Rating: ***

RELEASED earlier this year but deserving of more exposure is this debut album by young Tasmanian-born Scots fiddler Malcolm Bushby. Currently based in Newcastle, Bushby is joined here by sidemen including Dave Wood on guitar and bouzouki, Iain MacDonald on flute, Darcy DaSilva, piano, and his multi-instrumentalist father John Bushby.

He excels in some nicely spinning jig work, such as the opening G Minor Set and an Irish set, although I do feel that some of his pipe marches, such as the 2/4 Major Manson’s Farewell to Clachantrushal or the 6/8 McNeil’s of Ugadale could do with more snap and swagger. Heights of Cassino sings out nicely, though, and overall there’s a ringing lyricism to his fiddling that, along with his treatment of slower material such as a lingering Norwegian hymn and the beautifully stately Falls of Lora, suggests him to be to be a player of real substance.

JIM GILCHRIST

WORLD

Edmond Mondesir: Bele, tradition and creation

Ocora, £12.99

Rating: ***

The Caribbean island of Martinique has seldom figured in the international spotlight: as one of the overseas départements of France it has a non-existent political profile, and its musical culture is mainly known through its association with Guadeloupe – the home of zouk – and through its being the fount of what became the Paris beguine. But there is another Martiniquais style called bele, which is what Edmond Mondesir and his colleagues purvey with burning conviction. Mondesir is keen to stress the music’s slave-trade origins, and the culture its West-African victims evolved as a carapace to protect their communal wound. One example of this is the “tree o forgetfulness” rite, with which its participants effaced the memory of those about to leave for servitude in unknown lands. Some rituals became elaborate forms of syncretism when African forms coalesced with the indigenous ones of their destinations: Brazilian candomble, Cuban santeria, and Haitian voodoo. Bele has no such grandly formulated grafts, being a sweetly unassuming form of singing, drumming, and dancing been passed down through the generations. The African polyrhythms marked by the drums underscore call-and-response chants whose words are often improvised; the dances themselves are apparently done crouching with bent knees, and follow a formation of two interlocking squares, in the middle of which individual dancers display their solo prowess. The white slave-masters permitted this as a way – as they thought – of neutralising rebellion, by allowing the slaves to let off steam. Bele is now a protected and governmentally honoured art-form – and quite right too.

MICHAEL CHURCH