By Fiona Shepherd

Published 1st Feb 2024, 16:12 GMT

Updated 1st Feb 2024, 16:24 GMT

The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy (Island Records) ****

Anna Calvi: Peaky Blinders: Season 5&6 Original Score (Domino Soundtracks) ***

Lee “Scratch” Perry: King Perry (False Idols) ****

London quintet The Last Dinner Party have scooped both the BBC Radio 1 Sound of 2024 and Brits Rising Star Award for this season – which you can take as a ringing endorsement or with a sceptical pinch of salt. Either way, the band seem utterly undaunted by expectation on debut album Prelude to Ecstasy. From opening orchestral track Prelude to the closing pomp flourish of The Mirror, this is a confident theatrical pop fanfare, dusted with a dash of Seventies art rock, which is brazen in its bombast. Like Florence & the Machine with a steelier, stagier approach, this is an album made for wind machines and dramatic gestures.

Cesar on a TV Screen is almost vaudeville in its broad strokes theatricality, while Feminine Urge opens with a Phil Spector Wall of Sound drumbeat, harking back to the Sixties girl groups, though the song itself is closer to Go-Go’s style new wave or Marina and the Diamonds’ ambitious soaring pop. On Your Side is more holistic, a floaty Florence-style message of succour, which goes out on a shrill drone.

Few of the songs travel quite where you might expect. Beautiful Boy’s elegant woodwind intro gives way to elevated catharsis, the short but impactful Gjuha takes in East European-style vocal declamation, wreathed in echo and embellished with plucked bouzouki and funereal organ. Sinner opens out from its Sparks-like staccato intro to sleek operatic pop with Bowie-style industrial guitar licks, while the lush, chiming chords of My Lady of Mercy are redolent of aspirational Eighties productions before being rudely interrupted by the crunchy riffs of the stormy rock chorus. In this audacious company, breakthrough single Nothing Matters already sounds underwhelming.

In recent years, the stunning singer/guitarist Anna Calvi has retooled the tradition of dramatic rock flourishes; now she has written the soundtrack to two seasons of stylish period drama Peaky Blinders, delivering a thoroughly modern prowling blues odyssey to match the steely intensity of the show.

You’re Not God is a cold, swampy warning shot, and Tommy’s Plan the sultriest of noir blues. The foreboding drone of Tommy’s Requiem #1 is punctuated by the death rattle of her guitar and heavy sighing like bellows. Death is a Kindness teams the switchblade shimmer of guitar with a creepy hum somewhere between human and AI.

Having established a sound palette, she puts occasional twists on a theme – the tremulous strings and steady beat of Moseley #1 are reminiscent of Barry Adamson’s soundtrack work and her guitar wrangling on Tommy’s Requiem #2 is heroic.

Working with Nick Launay on season six has produced a similar sound but fuller arrangements, as well as the occasional outing for her rich, alto vocals, a clanking cover of series theme Red Right Hand and a touch of Hollywood flair to the flinty, futuristic shudder of Michael’s Plan.

The late Lee “Scratch” Perry – dubbed “the Salvador Dali of music” by fellow space cadet Keith Richards – recorded his final album in the months before his death at the age of 85. Working with producer Daniel Boyle, Perry honours his signature dub sound while allowing for the influence of various guest vocalists.

South London soul singer Greentea Peng makes light work of the bouncy 100lbs of Summer, as does Nottingham-bred singer/songwriter Rose Waite on thoughtful roots reggae track The Person I Am, while Chinese-British artist Fifi Rong’s fragrant vocals are a foil for Perry’s gruff cogitations on the elegant trip-hop of Midnight Blues.

Speaking of trip-hop, he sounds positively tickled in the company of trip-hop pioneer Tricky on Future of My Music and “duets” with Tricky collaborator Marta on the eccentric I Am a Dubby before meeting his match for free-associating lyricism in Happy Mondays’ frontman Shaun Ryder.

From Handel's Home: The Keyboards of Handel Hendrix House (Delphian) ****

Had Handel and Jimi Hendrix been contemporaries they would have been next door neighbours. Thus the unlikely Handel Hendrix House museum in London’s Mayfair (23 & 25 Brook Street) that jointly celebrates two very distinctive musicians and their shared creative gravitas. Not that Hendrix plays any literal part in a disc illustrating the instruments now housed in Handel’s apartments, from numerous harpsichords (mostly faithful modern copies) to an original 18th century Mahoon spinet and Snetzler bureau organ. Nor is this simply a compilation of Handel’s greatest hits. Keyboardist Julian Perkins throws in music by contemporaries Telemann, Scarlatti, John Stanley and William Babell for a more representative perspective. His performances are stylishly crisp and alert, fellow harpsichordist Carol Cerasi’s ultimate presence adding girth to a wholesome Handel Suite for two keyboards. If Hendrix’s spirit is at all invoked, it’s in a provocatively dissonant, closing Sarabande by living Welsh composer Rhian Samuel. Ken Walton

FOLK

Hirondelle: Hirondelle (Own Label) ****

Deriving their name from the transcontinental migration path of the swallow, this “Provençal, classical and Northern English folk project of roots and wings” proves an unlikely yet striking and at times haunting collaboration between Northumberland’s Brothers Gillespie, the polyphony and percussion of Occitan trio Tant Que Li Siam, and the folk-inclined chamber strings of Trio Mythos. The opening Golden One exemplifies the Gillespies’ keen vocal harmonies against the wordless singing of the string trio. The lusty polyphonic harmonies and rattling percussion of Tant Que Li Siam feature in La Roumanço de Pèire d’Aragoun and Ô Ventour, the latter with a pensive string break and an enigmatic closing recitation (translation notes would have been welcome). There is richly evocative spoken word against atmospheric strings in Northumberland I, the ensuing Northumberland II bringing in guitar, percussion and a sung paean to the Gillespies’ native turf, laced dramatically with strings. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: The Last Dinner Party | Anna Calvi | Lee "Scratch" Perry