CD reviews roundup

POP

Hot Chip: In Our Heads

Domino, £11.99

****

WITH one foot on the dancefloor and the other in classic songwriting, Hot Chip sound more than ever like the UK’s best response to The Scissor Sisters. Their fifth album encompasses the playful party likes of Night And Day, with its robotic rhyming couplets (“I like Zapp not Zappa, so please quit your jibber jabber”), the trance-like (but not in a dance culture sense) Ends of the Earth, soulful 70s fusion track Now There Is Nothing, the lovely, longing ballad Look At Where We Are and an unabashed AOR guitar solo on Always Been Your Love. No anthems this time but plenty to appeal to the head, heart and feet.

Bobby Womack: The Bravest Man In The Universe

****

XL Recordings, £11.99

BOBBY Womack’s guest spot on Gorillaz’ Stylo must rank as one of the most passionate vocal performances of recent times. For his first solo album in nearly 20 years, the veteran soul man has teamed up again with Damon Albarn who co-produces with XL boss Richard Russell, highlighting Womack’s cathartic delivery against a self-consciously hip backdrop of trebly beats, undulating keyboards, tremulous orchestration and spoken-word samples. It certainly beats the MOR approach of contemporaries such as Al Green. Womack is a class act whether emoting on the unadorned acoustic gospel of Deep River, rippling piano protest song Stupid or the bubblegum synth pop of Love Is Gonna Lift You Up, and he is bittersweetly complemented by his guests Lana Del Rey and Fatoumata Diawara.

The Hives: Lex Hives

Disques Hives, £12.99

***

NOT much changes in the realm of The Hives, unless it’s the purchase of new matching black-and-white costumery. Lex Hives is another raucous exercise in ramping up the gonzo garage rock ante which sounds much like their previous efforts. The snub-nosed exhortation to Come On! and the slightly mechanical boogie of Go Right Ahead misplace the band’s mojo but they reclaim some of their missing swagger with the country punk of My Time Is Coming and when they drop the pace for the bluesy Without The Money. The belligerent humour doesn’t go amiss either: “I got a million answers – one’s gotta be right,” spits Howlin’ Pelle Amqvist on 1000 Answers.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel

GFOCD, £23.99

*****

MENTION of Engelbert Humperdinck sends out all the wrong messages these days. But this is all about the composer of that operatic gem Hansel and Gretel, not the UK’s geriatric attempt to win Eurovision. Indeed, it’s the youthfulness of this Glyndebourne Festival Opera recording, with the lithesome Robin Ticciati conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra and a sparkling cast, that hits you square in the face. Ticciati makes superb sense of the tuneful score, aided by Alice Coote’s wonderfully boyish Hansel and Lydia Teuscher’s sparkling Gretel. Nothing short of compulsive listening.

KENNETH WALTON

FOLK

JAMES THOMSON & CHRIS WAITE: BORDERS YOUNG PIPERS

BORDERS TRADITIONS, web only

****

TWO accomplished young pipers from Berwickshire, playing with crispness and panache, showcase the revival of interest in the hitherto neglected Border piping repertoire in this latest Border Traditions recording. Waite’s exhilarating opening set on whistle and Border pipes, bolstered by Angus Lyons on accordion, whip you into this fine recording in no uncertain manner. Thomson makes an impression, too, with his lush whistle intro and easeful playing on small pipes in his own Cally and Gavin’s Wedding. Tasteful accompaniments are provided by fiddler Stewart Hardy and multi-instrumentalists Marc Duff and Stevie Lawrence.

Other highlights include Waite’s gently paced Pawky Adam Glen, leading into a brisk 9/8 jig excursion, the haunting fiddle voicings behind Fairly Shot of Her, or simply the pleasure of hearing tunes from time out of mind, often less ornate than those of the Highland piping tradition, but with a robust character of their own, so freshly revivified.

JIM GILCHRIST

JAZZ

Troyka: Moxxy

Edition Records, £12.99

****

JAZZ-ROCK went from cutting edge to dinosaur status in the 1970s, but there have been many indications in recent times that a contemporary take on the music is re-investing this much-maligned genre with new energy and relevance. Troyka – guitarist Chris Montague, pianist and keyboard player Kit Downes and drummer Joshua Blackmore – are currently in the vanguard of that development. The trio blend distinct jazz-rock and prog-rock influences into a mix that is thoroughly contemporary in feel, fuelled by a level of improvisation that underlines their jazz affiliations. All of the music on their second album is written within the band, and explores a range of moods, tempos (often slow) and intricate textural effects in highly confident fashion. Montague makes telling use of the effects pedal and loops to augment his improvisational guitar skills, while Downes is endlessly resourceful, and Blackmore provides drive and groove.

KENNY MATHIESON

WORLD

Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis: Greekadelia

Riverboat Records, £11.99

****

AS GREECE continues to implode, this CD brings a whiff of hope. These young Greeks draw on old urban demotika songs, and deploy the traditional Greek lauto, plus an Indian harmonium and frame drums, all of which they soup up with the aid of live looping, but their artistry is so sweetly down-home that there’s no awkward culture clash. The songs travel the length and breadth of the Greek archipelago: from a sailor’s song from the Dodecanese, telling of a ship in danger and the crew’s prayers for help, to a lament for an absent lover, collected in Epirus. The most haunting song concerns a young girl raped in the forest outside her home, telling her brothers what has happened.

“Reinvented folk” is how they like to describe their art, but with its ancient vocal undertones, this gentle reinvention goes back to the music’s source.

Le Super Borgou de Parakou: The Bariba Sound

Proper, £13.99

***

FOR those unfamiliar with this sound – as I was until I heard this CD – a little history is needed. The Bariba are a predominantly Muslim people living in northern Nigeria, with the city of Parakou as their metropolis. This music, recorded in the 1970s, means that yet another lost cultural archive is opened by the leaders of the band Super Borgou, whose emergence represented one of the biggest musical discoveries of the mid-20th century. The band’s founder, Moussa Mama, had imported the music he had learned while working as a goldsmith in Accra, Ghana, and when he took it back home it created new roots for itself. As performed at the Bar Congolaise, this music has elements of all the strands which distinguished the region’s 70s sound, with the Congolese rumba as its centre. It’s convivial, high-spirited, inventive, and infused with more than a dash of the Latin music that had taken Central Africa by storm.

MICHAEL CHURCH