Album reviews: Rufus Wainwright | Liz Lochhead & Andrew Wasylyk | LYR

Rufus Wainwright: Unfollow the Rules (BMG) ****

Liz Lochhead & Andrew Wasylyk: Still Life, Sweetheart (Blackford Hill) ***

LYR: Call in the Crash Team (Mercury KX) ****

Check Masses: Nightlife (Triassic Tusk) ****

In the old parlance, Rufus Wainwright might be called a renaissance man for his easy incursions into difficult artistic territory – musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s sonnets, composing two operas, impersonating Judy Garland – alongside the panoramic pop confessionals with which he made his name.

As he prepares to release his first new collection of pop songs since 2012, he prefers to declare himself a “seasoned artist” – with his musical voice well established, he feels free to do what he does best.

All of which means he follows his rules on Unfollow the Rules. Fans will relish afresh the ache in his voice, the soaring legato notes, the sumptuous strings, the mischievous sense of humour. All are present on opening track Trouble In Paradise, which comes with bonus rock guitar.

There are occasional twists on his signature style. Damsel In Distress is his homage to fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell, pastiching her choppy rhythms and bold vocal intervals with attitude. The title track unleashes the musical melodrama over a slightly dissonant symphonic backing, and You Ain’t Big uses throwback country swing with a rapturous female backing chorus as a vehicle for delivering some jazz hands showbiz advice.

Often, we are treated to the Wainwright take on domestic contentment, such as the mid-paced rumination Romantical Man, the uplifting canter of Peaceful Afternoon with its playful phrasing, and the musical theatre sweep of My Little You, another in his series of lovely, non-mawkish songs for his daughter.

But just in case we all get too comfortable, he plays with expectations by teaming romantical backing with comical sentiment on This One’s For the Ladies (That LUNGE!), while the timeless ache of album highlight Early Morning Madness is a remembrance of hangovers past.

It’s a good week to argue that poetry is the new rock’n’roll. Hot on the heels of Imelda May’s poetry EP, former Scots Makar Liz Lochhead and composer Andrew Wasylyk have resumed a collaboration first minted on Mull with Wasylyk’s band The Hazey Janes and saxophonist Steve Kettley. Still Life, Sweetheart emerged during a few pre-Covid days on the island when the pair were stranded because of ferry cancellations, and comprises Lochhead’s soft lullaby delivery set against the barest of piano backing.

Persimmons attests to the power of an evocative memory, the account of an artist diligently sketching complemented by the gentle brushstrokes of piano. The moving Coming to Poetry is Lochhead’s ode to Keats and the pivotal role of poetry as she grew up in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis.

But this is not the only high profile music/poetry interface in town. LYR is the collaboration of Fall-loving Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, singer/songwriter Richard Walters and producer Patrick Pearson. Despite its title, Call in the Crash Team is no Kate Tempest-like dramatic performance poetry jam but a gently wrought affair with carefully calibrated everyday observations backed by impressionistic music, hauntingly intertwined on Never Good with Horses and 33 1/3, a quiet lamentation for Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

Check Masses are another new three-way collaboration, this one between broadcaster Vic Galloway, DJ/producer Saleem Andrew McGroarty and singer/songwriter “Philly” Angelo Collins. These friends from Edinburgh’s 90s music scene bring their respective tastes and experience to an eclectic debut album, encompassing the cosmic dub of Drippn Angel, soulful space blues of Unravelled, sunshine reggae of Lonesome Little Paradise and trippy electro funk of the title track. They rock the casbah on gap year odyssey Moroccan Skies and Collins reserves his most soulful performance for fateful meditation The Will of God.

CLASSICAL

Cyrillus Kreek: The Suspended Harp of Babel (ECM New Series) ****

There’s a rich seam of choral music from 20th century Estonia that feeds on the country’s early vocal canon, reinterpreting the old runic folk melodies in a quest to define and preserve what is one of the Baltic area’s richest nationalist traditions. Among the composers who researched and restored these tunes is Cyrillus Kreek (1889-1962), whose arrangements of these hymns, psalms and folk settings – under the collective heading the Suspended Harp of Babel – are beautifully presented here by vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis, under its director Jaan-Eik Tulve, alongside traditional instrumentalists on nyckelharpa and kannel (an Estonian zither). Kreek’s sublime concoction of mildly chromatic, rich-scented harmonies with ancient modality imbues the music with a solid core integrity, against which those freer instrumental flourishes offer a spontaneous counterpoint. Ken Walton

JAZZ

John Scofield Bill Stewart Steve Swallow: Swallow Tales (ECM) ****

Veteran guitarist John Scofield generates a rather different vibe on this album from the incandescent set he played in Edinburgh three years ago with his Überjam jazz-rock outfit. Here he reunites with his mentor and collaborator over four decades, electric bassist Steve Swallow, to perform the latter’s music underpinned by drummer Bill Stewart. As Scofield says in his notes, the recording may have taken a mere afternoon, but he and Swallow have been playing these tunes for 40 years, which shows as they unspool with unhurried ease. The opening She Was Young, for instance, is gently paced over Swallow’s characteristically murmuring bass, yet gives Scofield a platform for chordal deliberations, yelping outbursts and growly slides, while things intensify in the up-tempo Portsmouth Configurations, guitar veering between staccato and sinuous over bass and drums. Jim Gilchrist

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Album reviews: Rufus Wainwright | Liz Lochhead & Andrew Wasylyk | LYR | Check Masses