Album reviews: The Psychedelic Furs | Deep Purple | Rumer

The Psychedelic Furs: Made of Rain (Cooking Vinyl) ***

Deep Purple: Whoosh! (earMUSIC) **

Rumer: Nashville Tears (Cooking Vinyl) ****

Fontaines DC: A Hero’s Death (Partisan Records) ****

Since reforming at the turn of the millennium, post-punk veterans The Psychedelic Furs have proved a mean touring machine, their reputation as one of the more extrovert, theatrical alternative rock bands of their era combining favourably with a back catalogue of cherished songs often deployed to conjure up a rent-a-cool-Eighties atmosphere on film and TV soundtracks.

So far in their second life, they have been content to deliver the oldies – and why not, when their idiosyncratic sound has weathered the years so healthily? But now it’s time for some new clothes. Made of Rain, the first new Psychedelic Furs album in almost 30 years, juggles their familiar widescreen scope with a desire not to simply fall into the old patterns. Richard Butler’s instantly recognisable voice, gruff yet tremulous, and Mars Williams’s expressive, urgent saxophone provide that stamp of Furs authority throughout. Allied to the mountainous drumming and playfully pretentious lyrical references to “my insect heart” and “glitter hips” on robust opener The Boy That Invented Rock’n’Roll, it is tempting to think that the band have simply picked up where they left off.

But for every slice of windswept gothic pop such as Don’t Believe or arena alt.rock such as No One, there are more expansive, textured interludes such as the baleful Wrong Train (featuring “a wife that hates me – so does her boyfriend”) and the moody shimmer of Ash Wednesday to indulge in, making Made of Rain a thoughtful, atmospheric comeback rather than a rip-roaring return.

Doughty veterans Deep Purple churn out more of their signature hoary mix of blues, rock and baroque on latest album Whoosh! which, despite its optimistic onomatopoeic title, fails to lift off.

No Need to Shout showcases the sludge rock sound they inspired but heads off piste with some Gershwin variations. Throw My Bones is standard, steady pomp rock with the requisite lashings of bombastic keyboards, excessive riffage and frontman Ian Gillan enunciating with purpose.

He offers brotherly advice to cool your jets on the prog rocking Drop the Weapon and keeps it caveman on the dinosaur boogie of What the What, which knowingly resolves “to celebrate the fact that we’re still alive… in that case, we’d better make it tonight.” Hard to grudge these old rockers behaving badly but the party moved on long ago.

Velvety vocalist Rumer sounds like her idea of a party is swinging winsomely in a hammock on a balmy Southern evening. On Nashville Tears she delivers elegant easy listening which is a pleasure to submerge in. The subtle symphonic country of The Fate In Fireflies sets the gentle, contemplative pace while there is a suitably sultry accompaniment to Deep Summer in the Deep South.

This beautiful, burnished work celebrates the music of the undersung Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer Hugh Prestwood, whose poignant, observational songs have been recorded by esteemed vocalists Trisha Yearwood, Alison Krauss and Judy Collins and are characterised, at least by Rumer, as wistful storytelling in the vein of James Taylor. This quality marriage of material and interpreter is pitched as Rumer’s Dusty in Memphis but is closer in spirit to Gretchen Peters’ recent album celebrating the songs of Mickey Newbury.

Dublin band Fontaines DC continue to lead the charge of the punky indie brigade on their second album, A Hero’s Death. Once again, rhythm is key, in the martial beats and brooding basslines and in frontman Grian Chatten’s atonal bark, all heading inexorably to cathartic release. But the propulsive, almost manic mantras such as the rockabilly swing of the title track are balanced with softer, slower material such as poetic ballad Oh Such a Spring and the plangent, choral Sunny.

CLASSICAL

Handel: Semele (Soli Deo Gloria) *****

Handel’s Semele belongs to the “secular oratorio” genre he adopted late in life to counter the aristocratic London theatrical establishment and the fall in popularity of opera. As such, the drama of the piece is even more immersed in the musical score, fully espoused in this bristling new live recording by John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. Besides the pacy dynamism of the delivery, and the palpable stylistic synergy of the constituent ensembles and cast (you’d expect nothing less from the scrupulous and demanding Eliot Gardiner), there is colourful virtuosity from a cast that capture every golden moment of Handel’s spirited score. Nowhere is this more true than in the title role, where the lustrous Louise Alder finds endless expressive range. In “O sleep” in Act II, time stands still. Thrilling, too, are the resplendent Hugo Hymas (Jupiter) and intoxicating Lucile Richardot (Juno/Ino). Ken Walton

FOLK

The Wilderness Yet (Own Label) ****

This debut from Anglo-Irish trio The Wilderness Yet fairly thrums with life, its music echoing the aureate hymn to the natural world by Gerard Manley Hopkins which informs both their name and their title track. Singer Rosie Hodgson’s bright, lissom vocals sound straight from the English tradition in songs such as the lively Bruton Farmer, couched in the deft fiddling of Galway-born Rowan Piggott and the flute and guitar work of Philippe Barnes. They’re also well able for some finely poised a cappella singing, as demonstrated by Hodgson’s celebration of tree lore, In a Fair Country, as well as that title song. Piggott’s fiddle matches the winsome lilt of Hodgson’s singing in Woman of the Woods and, in a sign-off nod to Irish influences, they’re joined briefly by Rowan’s father, accordionist Charlie Piggott, and his former De Dannan colleague, bodhran ace Ringo McDonagh, for Seán Ó Duibhir A’Gleanna before they trot off into a Hibernian sunset. Jim Gilchrist

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Album reviews: The Psychedelic Furs | Deep Purple | Rumer | Fontaines DC