Album reviews: Tom Jones | Cold Specks | Gaz Coombes | Classical | Jazz | Folk

THE Scotsman gives its verdict on the pick of this week’s longplayer releases

POP

Tom Jones: Spirit In The Room

ISLAND, £12.99

Rating: ***

Acting stiffly as celebrity coach on The Voice or getting stuck into some hand-picked blues and gospel-influenced favourites – it’s not difficult to tell where old Tom Jones feels most comfortable these days.

Spirit In The Room is another mainly morose collection in the vein of Praise and Blame, intended to position him as a UK Johnny Cash.

Some will miss fun, cheesy, lusty Tom but the irony is that Jones can’t quite shake off those cabaret vocal stylings or muster the darkness or vulnerability to make these songs – by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Odetta – truly affecting, even though great care has been taken to surround him with elegantly bruised or sinister, twanging arrangements. FIONA SHEPHERD

Cold Specks: I Predict A Graceful Expulsion

mute, £10.99 Rating: ***

TOM Jones could learn a little about mining a lonesome vein from the understated delivery of Canadian troubadour Al Spx, who records as the no less oblique Cold Specks.

Her haunted husk of a voice is melancholy and evocative but tempered with a youthful purity which, along with the spruced-up production and swelling choral embellishments, gives her debut album of self-penned laments a radio-and-Jools Holland-friendly accessibility.

Spx cites the Alan Lomax field recordings as an influence on her blues-derived material but cannot quite convey the troubles she’s seen with this rather more manicured product. FS

Gaz Coombes: Gaz Coombes Presents… Here Come The Bombs

Hot Fruit Recordings/EMI, £12.99

Rating: ****

Despite leaving behind an enviable catalogue of bold and beautiful pop tunes, Supergrass were never a band to shout their talent from the rooftops. And so it follows that their erstwhile frontman, Gaz Coombes, launches his solo offering with a similar quiet confidence.

Here Come The Bombs is as robustly melodic as anything he released with Supergrass, and comes garnished with little twists on the formula, such as the off-kilter rhythm of Sub Divider, stealthy bassline and backwards guitar of Universal Cinema and the light Krautrock pulse underneath the more familiar garage pop sound of debut single Hot Fruit.

The luxurious synth rush of Fanfare and all-out analogue judder of Break the Silence suggest he could easily push the boat out further. FS

CLASSICAL

Britten: War Requiem

LSO LIVE, £13.99

Rating: ****

BRITTEN’S War Requiem stands out as one of the most moving and significant choral works of the 20th century. That’s partly due to the emotive connection it has with a century twice gripped in world war, and the gripping pathos achieved by Britten’s juxtaposition of texts from the standard Latin mass with poems by Wilfred Owen. It’s also partly because the musical score, which calls on multiple orchestras, choirs and three soloists, is nothing short of a bristling masterpiece. This new London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus recording comes bang on the 50th anniversary of its Coventry Cathedral premiere and, under Gianandrea Noseda’s direction, is chillingly dramatic and potent. Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside and Sabina Cvilak are a class act as the vocal soloists. KEN WALTON

JAZZ

John Abercrombie Quartet: Within a Song

ECM Recordings, £12.99

Rating: ****

ECM has never been a label to dwell on jazz’s past, but at first glance that is just what guitarist John Abercrombie is up to. He looks back to his formative influences as an aspiring jazz musician in the 1960s, but it quickly becomes apparent that their treatments are not only informed by a contemporary aesthetic, but also fit nicely within the open, thoughtful ethos familiar from so many ECM discs.

Abercrombie’s masterly touch is beautifully complemented by Joe Lovano’s silky tone on tenor saxophone, and a rhythm section of Drew Gress and Joey Baron complete a state-of-the-art outfit.

Abercrombie’s title track is paired with the Youmans-Rose standard Without A Song, and the group bring their expertise to bear on interpretations of tunes by (or associated with) Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Davis, Jim Hall and Ornette Coleman. KENNY MATHIESON

FOLK

VARIOUS ARTISTS: CRIDHE GU CRIDHE

RC DIOCESE OF ARGYLL & THE ISLES, on sale via www.rcdai.org.uk Rating: ****

THERE is no doubt of the importance of liturgical music to the survival of Gaelic song, and Cridhe gu Cridhe – “Heart to Heart” – features Roman Catholic spiritual material from the southern Outer Hebrides, performed by Seumas Campbell, Gillebride MacMillan, Mary MacMillan and Alasdair Codona with a musicality that transcends any considerations of language or belief.

Often delicately accompanied, these include songs from such notable island bards as the 19th-century Father Allan MacDonald, or the more recent Donald John MacDonald, as well as contemporary settings by Ishabel T Macdonald and Codona – whose O Calum Cille invokes the saint’s intercession for reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Hymns such as A Mhoire Mhin-Gheal, sung here by Mary MacMillan, with clarsach from Rachel Hair and whistle from Fred Morrison, or Gillebride MacMillan’s beautiful, unaccompanied Do Làmh a Chriosda, have all the plaintive dignity of folk melodies, while Codona’s spirited Magnificat is uplifting in anyone’s language.

For more information on this release, visit www.rcdai.org.uk JIM GILCHRIST