Album reviews: Speech Debelle | Those Darlins| Classical | Folk | Jazz

Our team of critics review the latest offerings from the world of music

POP

Speech Debelle: Freedom of Speech

Big Dada, £10.99

Rating: ****

“I AM NOT a pop star, I’m a mother****ing thug,” declares London rapper Speech Debelle on riot retrospective Blaze Up a Fire, wilfully casting off the mainstream acceptance which saw her win the 2009 Mercury Music Prize and then disappear with little trace. Like the rest of this second release, it’s a track which blends dense, soulful production by Kwes and a sense of uneasy foreboding as she casts an unwillingly cynical eye upon the world even as she finds some kind of personal redemption on occasional upbeat soul numbers like I’m With It. There isn’t likely to be a more politically engaged record all year.

Those Darlins: Screws get loose Oh Wow Dang, £12.99

Rating: ***

THERE are unlikely to be many other bands in the world doing what Those Darlins do right now, a defiantly trashy kind of art-country which echoes the aesthetic of early Stateside punk-rockers like the New York Dolls, if not quite the sonic impact. The three-girl, one-boy outfit, despite the wrong-footing weirdness of the opening title track, deal in a crash of sleazy, feedback-whining Bowery sleaze whose rawest moments - $ and Fatty Needs a Fix – probably serve more as an enticement to the live show than an advert for a great album.

Field Music: Plumb

Memphis Industries, £11.99

Rating: ***

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

SUNDERLAND brothers David and Peter Brewis appear to have decided they’ll continue to skirt the fringes of the music business in esoteric fashion, rather than launching themselves towards the mainstream success of which they’re clearly capable. Good for them, because the sonic invention here – which brings together the styles of Pink Floyd, Ben Folds and Wings at the McCartneys’ most playful and off the wall – is often enough to bring an involuntary smile to the face. Yet only the falsetto funk of Is This the Picture? and finally the brisk glam rush of (I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing prove truly hard to resist.

DAVID POLLOCK

CLASSICAL

The Airmen: Songs by Martin Shaw

Delphian, £13.99

Rating: ***

Despite his notable contribution to easily singable church music, Martin Shaw (1875-1958) was never in the front-line mould of his friends Ralph Vaughan Williams or John Ireland. But as this intriguing disc demonstrates, he was no slouch when it came to effective songwriting. There are nearly 40 featured here – settings of sources as far removed as Shakespeare, Burns, Rosetti, even wartime poems sifted from the Times. Soprano Sophie Bevan, tenor Andrew Kennedy and baritone Roderick Williams share the load, accompanied by Iain Burnside. Most interesting are the pre-echoes of Britten in such exotic piano timbres as The Conjuration, or the sensitive underpinning of favourites like Ye Banks and Braes, despite the wrong version of the words given in the sleeve notes.

KENNETH WALTON

FOLK

Bard: The Springtime Fool

Woodburner Records, only available online

Rating: ***

IT’S a bit glib, perhaps, to describe this intriguing and stylistically ranging debut album as new English pastoral meets Acker Bilk, but its outstanding feature is the clarinet playing of Ewan Bleach that laces its sinuous way through these tracks.

The songs are written and delivered by Theo Bard and accompanied by Louisa Jones on accordion and vocals, and a tight rhythm section of bassist Jay Darwish and drummer Nick Owen. The singing can be a bit lightweight, though well bolstered with harmonies and the lyrics are sharply engaging – the brooding drift of Down Into the Sea, for instance, or the clarion call of Drums of Freedom, driven over a traditional Irish melody.

In contrast is the boom-chicka whimsy of Rambling With You, while the beguiling meander of Peace, My Mind is reminiscent of the Incredible String Band and that eloquent clarinet does become distinctly Bilkish in the New Orleans shuffle of Late Afternoon.

JIM GILCHRIST

JAZZ

Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez, Paul Motian: Further Explorations

Concord Jazz, £12.99

Rating: ****

RECORDED over several nights at New York’s Blue Note club last May, this two-CD set inspired by the example of Bill Evans (Eddie Gomez and Paul Motian both played with the pianist) offers much to absorb. The music features a mix of breathtaking trio interplay and improvisational invention with an occasionally taxing degree of complexity and abstraction that may be explorations too far for some tastes. All three players are acknowledged masters, and the death of drummer Motian late last year adds extra value to an already fascinating meeting. The set is an extended investigation of possibilities raised by Evans rather than a conventional tribute, both in terms of their interactive approach to piano trio and their selection of repertoire from a wide variety of points in Evans’s copious discography, including a previously unrecorded composition, simply entitled Song No. 1.

KENNY MATHIESON

Related topics: