Album reviews: Texas | Colin Hay | The Secret Goldfish

Texas are having fun with their ninth album. How much fun you have depends on how you feel about slickly produced feelgood pop

Sharleen Spiteri

Texas: Jump On Board ***

BMG

Colin Hay: Fierce Mercy **

Compass Records

The Secret Goldfish: Petal Split ***

Creeping Bent

It is one thing to maintain that you had great fun making an album; quite another to capture that carefree sensation, but then Texas are wearing their 30 years in the business very lightly these days. Their naffly titled ninth album keeps up the pop momentum of their 2013 comeback The Conversation with its somewhat frothy, footloose tone.

Clearly middle age suits them, conferring an almost liberating security on the band. They’ve put in the hours, so now they’re free to kick back and be whatever they want to be. It’s evident in the way that Sharleen Spiteri presents herself in the video for feelgood new single Let’s Work It Out, busting some moves over some choice archive footage of the US TV show Soul Train, while the track itself is airy and idly infectious, its sleekly produced disco pop guaranteed to elicit a shoulder shimmy in a couch potato.

Of course, Texas have been here before, indulging their love affair with the feelgood funk of Chic, The Bee Gees, Blondie and Abba on the likes of Summer Son as far back as 1999. These party bands are all on the mixtape spooling through Spiteri’s head – classic and certainly timeless reference points on which to build an album which is just hanging out and having a good time.

Spiteri is caught up in the rapture for much of Jump On Board’s trim 37 minute duration, purring her eternal devotion on the subtly sultry For Everything, which is founded on the Italian piano house rhythms that made Primal Scream’s Come Together a spiritual experience, and duly layers on devotional organ and cooing gospel backing vocals during the breakdown to seal the deal.

The keening blues guitar on Sending A Message harks back to their rootsy younger years but the effervescent pop production of Tell That Girl and Great Romances, both of which could have been lifted from The Go-Gos’ new wave girl group songbook, is a stronger reflection of where they are at now.

The entire album is immaculately produced but the song quality falls off towards the end – ironically as they reach the country-flavoured croon Won’t Let You Down, at which point the party loses some of its lustre.

Kilwinning-born Colin Hay is still best known as the frontman of Aussie band Men at Work, though he has produced far more music as a solo artist. Fierce Mercy attests to a long and pretty varied career. His gravelly mainstream rock voice is well suited to standard country rocker Come Tumblin’ Down but he also pulls off the Roy Orbisonesque romantic flourish of Secret Love, the grizzled whimsy of Frozen Fields of Snow and world-weary valediction of Two Friends. However, he walks an awkward line between the touching and the sentimental, and falls foul of an uncomfortable mix of MOR soul and hip-hop on I’m Walking Here.

Exhibiting a similar snail-paced work rate as their fellow Glaswegians The Pastels, The Secret Goldfish finally present their first new album in 18 years, a period over which little has changed in their sweetly stylised musical world. The gauche tunes, chiming guitars and wispy girly vocals of Petal Split are beamed straight over from the innocent DIY realm of 80s indie pop, signposted by blithe covers of Vic Godard and Edwyn Collins songs, then encased in a lo-fi Wall of Sound on O. Pioneers, and embellished with squelchy synth on Amelia Star, garage fuzz on X and mandolin on El Capitan Y Mi.

CLASSICAL

Verdi: Requiem ****

LSO Live

Verdi wrote his Requiem in the only way he knew, as a creature of the theatre. That’s not to say the result is a non-religious manifestation of the commonly known liturgical text. In his own way, Verdi found a means of expression that was equally true to himself as it was to the sacred potency of the words. But yes, it smacks of operatically-charged opulence, and that, in Verdi’s case, is what defines its sense of purpose. Under Gianandrea Noseda, this live recording by the London Symphony Orchestra, LSO Chorus and evenly matched vocal quartet of Erika Grimaldi (soprano), Daniels Barcellona (mezzo soprano), Francesco Meli (tenor) and Michele Pertusi (bass), play honestly and powerfully to its strengths. Noseda paces it with dramatic verve and fresh intensity. The chorus has focus, girth and versatility. The soloists strike that fine balance between discipline and indulgence. There are many moments that will send shivers up the spine.

Ken Walton

FOLK

Ímar: Afterlight ****

Big Mann Records

Taking no prisoners and turning on a sixpence, this Irish-Manx quintet emerges – at the gallop – from Glasgow’s session scene, collectively sporting a clutch of BBC awards and all-Ireland titles. The band comprises concertina virtuoso Mohsen Amini, uilleann piper Ryan Murphy, Adam Brown on bodhrán and, from the Isle of Man, Adam Rhodes on bouzouki and fiddler Tomás Callister.

The taut energy of sets such as the Firebird, with pipes, fiddle and concertina flying in tight formation over the flicker of bouzouki is reminiscent of the Bothy Band. Newly composed tunes spark off traditional material, as in the Speckled Heifer set, in which Murphy’s Léa’s reel breaks out of a Manx jig. Some nicely skipping polkas, too, in The Full Orkney. The pedal-to-metal approach might have been tempered by an air or two – the gentlest here is Hamish Napier’s Friends on the Hilltop – but the band’s joyous attitude is pretty persuasive. ■

Jim Gilchrist