By Fiona Shepherd

Published 20th Feb 2024, 14:20 BST

The Snuts: Millennials (Happy Artist Records/Orchard) **

Laetitia Sadier: Rooting For Love (Duophonic Super 45s) ****

Hurray For the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive (Nonesuch Records) ***

Whitburn four-piece The Snuts are an established fixture on the Scottish musical landscape, one of our foremost indie rock outfits. Behind the scenes, there have been developments. Since the release of their second album – the varied, sprawling Burn the Empire – they have parted ways with their previous label Parlophone and set up their own, the pointedly-named Happy Artist Records. Now, theoretically, they are free to do what they want any old time.

Rather than build on the potential for eclecticism, third allbum Millennials arrives as a work of distillation – tight, radio-friendly pop nuggets fired out in less than half an hour, somewhat to the detriment of their burgeoning character as a band. The music is redolent of an album written on tour – on the hoof but also trim and tight. Of late, The Snuts have toured with Kings of Leon and Louis Tomlinson – the sound of Millennials veers closer to the direct pop of the latter.

The political undercurrents of Burn the Empire are largely excised in favour of universal life landmarks – love, break-ups, the failsafe rigmarole. Blithe chiming guitar sets the hectic pace of Gloria, an indie pop scurry with Jack Cochrane’s focussed vocals delivered with a hint of rasp.

The helter skelter pace continues on the catchy but vacuous pop number Millionaires, on which they sound like Coldplay’s kid brothers, hitting us with some highly processed “oh-oh” backing vocals. The tinny rhythm of Yoyo sounds like a retro video game, warmed up somewhat by Joe McGillveray’s guitar on the verses. NPC features a welcome injection of funk, though the chorus is as fizzy and woo-hoo as ever, while Butterside Down is possibly their poppiest moment to date.

Although equally in a rush, the pop punk pogo of Novastar at least conveys a sense of exultation and optimism, while Wunderkind looks outwards to “a dog eat dog economy” with Cochrane proclaiming himself an “over-stressed, under-dressed, depressed, deadbeat millennial” – they could get a t-shirt slogan out of that one. They fade out on a slower number, Circles, which passes for a ballad on this express journey.

Stereolab frontwoman Laetitia Sadier makes a welcome solo return with her first album in eight years. Rooting for Love is dream-like meditation on human and planetary healing, sung in English and French, opening with the warming torch song atmosphere of Who + What, which casts Sadier as psych jazz crooner with a dreamy backing chorus, and closing on Cloud 6, a delicate patchwork of vocal and instrumental drones.

Along the way, Sadier proffers the mellow symphonic pop of La Nageuse Nue and the persuasive prayer of The Inner Smile with featherlight ba-ba-backing vocals, a touch of funk bass and choral washes. An Autre Attente opens with breezy, jangling guitar and sunshine synths; within a minute a proggy breakdown interrupts the gallop across the sand, while Panser L’Inacceptable (“heal the unacceptable”) is a delicate invocation with woozy but insistent strummed guitar teamed with cleansing droplets of vibraphone.

Bronx born, New Orleans-based Alynda Segarra, aka Hurray For the Riff Raff, has an easy way with storytelling and musical portraiture, occupying contrasting musical and lyrical worlds. This time they are the story. The Past Is Still Alive was recorded shortly after the death of their father. Snakeplant (The Past Is Still Alive) provides a burnished and brooding autobiography of an itinerant childhood, while Hawkmoon returns to their urban roots with the realisation that “I’m becoming the kind of girl that they warned me about”. Buffalo longs for a free and wild existence, while Colossus of Roads is a gentle tribute to the victims of the homophobic Club Q shooting of 2022 and a celebration of outsider cultures.

CLASSICAL

Handel: Complete Violin Sonatas (Delphian) *****

What we may once have been regarded as Handel's definitive violin sonatas have diminished in number. Research now shows several to be of spurious origins, so what we encounter here from Croatian-born violinist Bojan Čičić and harpsichordist Steven Divine are the ones now deemed authentic. They open with the late D major Sonata, Handel’s genius encapsulated instantly in the gorgeous lyricism of its opening Affettuoso and the effortless joy of the ensuing Allegros, before leaping into the earliest of the works, the G major, where a last-minute flight of eccentricity confirms Handel’s latent individuality. Every one of these performances is revealing for their musical intimacy, spirited virtuosity and and fluidly ornamented spontaneity. Čičić errs essentially towards simplicity and directness, which paradoxically fills this music with a natural zest of its own. In Divine, who plays a meaty 1756 Kirckman harpsichord, he has a kindred spirit. Ken Walton

FOLK

Amy Laurenson: Strands (Own Label) *****

As debut albums go, they don’t come much more impressive than this exhilarating recording from Shetland pianist Amy Laurenson, 2023’s BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. Technically accomplished, inventive and with a palpable delight in her mainly native island repertoire, she is crisply accompanied by guitarist Miguel Girão, double-bassist Rhona MacDonald and Lea Sondergaard Larsen on bodhran. The joyously vivacious opening set of Shetland reels sets the tone, with its smart switch from Tilly Plump into Ahint da Daeks o Voe over percussive snap of guitar and rattling bodhran and on into the Scallowa Lasses. Similarly the Da Boys o’ Da Lounge set sees James Hill’s venerable Newcastle Hornpipe wondrously reinvigorated. Delicacy leads to further exuberance in the Swedish Bas-Pelles Eriks Brudpolska, while Laurenson brings a yearning deliberation to airs such as the lovely Trowie Burn. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: The Snuts | Laetitia Sadier | Hurray For the Riff Raff