ACCORDING to Eels mainstay Mark 'E' Everett, the Dog Faced Boy of a previous album has now grown into Hombre Lobo's "dignified old werewolf" character, through which he channels his perpetual outsider's burden of loneliness. This is most beautifully
expressed on ballads such as the yearning The Look You Give That Guy and the country-inflected love paean In My Dreams. But this fluent, eclectic album also leapfrogs from fuzzy blues garage to indie beat pop to virile rock by way of the foreboding Beefheart stomp of Tremendous Dynamite and the juddering stealth attack of single Fresh Blood. Being a loser never sounded so vital and celebratory.
BROKEN RECORDS: UNTIL THE EARTH BEGINS TO PART
****
4AD, £11.74ALONG with Glasgow's The Phantom Band, Edinburgh septet Broken Records are charting an ambitious musical course of cross-pollination with multiple musicians weighing in on strings, horns and accordion, much like a Caledonian Arcade Fire. Their debut album is unashamedly anthemic, with singer Jamie Sutherland resounding like Brandon Flowers if he actually had something to shout about. Helter skelter folky maelstrom A Good Reason particularly jumps out of their epic stramash, like a cross between Sons & Daughters and The Waterboys.
CLASSICAL
THOMAS WILSON: A CHAMBER PORTRAIT
****
Delphian, £13.70IN HIS later years, despite ongoing creativity, Thomas Wilson's music slid marginally out of fashion. Eight years on from his death, how refreshing it is to revisit this assortment of chamber music, performed with all the affection and admiration necessary to rekindle the soul at the heart of its inspiration. The most telling factor in all these performances – from premiere recordings of the 1960s' Piano Trio and the String Quartet No 3 of 1958 – is the warmth of their interpretations. The Edinburgh Quartet plays a central role in these particular works, highlighting – along with pianist Simon Smith – the thrusting transparency of the Piano Trio and the structural solidity of the Quartet. There are climactic moments in the latter where the tension doesn't quite hold firm, but rarely does that kill an otherwise taut performance. Overall, the inclusion of such relative delicacies as Cancion and the Three Pieces for guitar – portrayed with flirtatious intuition by guitarist Allan Neave – give emotional balance to the selection. Smith offers a powerful coupling of the pungent 1959 (revised 1964) Piano Sonata with the more elusive 1983 Incunabula, a poignant example of Wilson's later, more reflective style. Maybe the message is that the time is now right to investigate further revival performances and recordings of one of Scotland's most influential 20th-century composers.
JAZZ
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & CHICK COREA: FIVE PEACE BAND LIVE
***
CONCORD RECORDS, £9.78WITH two of the major names of the early-70s fusion era co-leading the band and a cover image that plugs straight into its psychedelic ethos, this project clearly intends to evoke that past, down to the inclusion of that most seminal of pieces, Joe Zawinul's In a Silent Way, combined with Miles Davis's It's About That Time. It's a reminder that both leaders were involved in shaping the mould for jazz-rock fusion, but the music also reflects the fact that both moved on to create substantial bodies of alternative work in the ensuing decades. Self-indulgence triumphs in places, but the flashy, high-energy workouts are counterbalanced by more understated jazz explorations in a live two-CD set that covers diverse stylistic ground, including a driving swing outing on Jackie McLean's bop staple Dr Jackle. Saxophonist Kenny Garrett, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta complete the band.
MARK LOCKHEART GROUP: IN DEEP
****
EDITION RECORDS, £13.70SAXOPHONIST Mark Lockheart is often regarded as an undervalued contributor to the creative health of the UK jazz scene, and one reason for that may be the fact that – as the title suggests – his music doesn't give itself up as easy surface pleasure. You do have to work a bit at delving into the thoughtful, often complex harmonic and rhythmic processes at work beneath his oblique but lyrical melodies, and if you don't know his work, this is as good a place as any to start the investigation. Liam Noble's cogent contributions on piano continue his current rich vein of musical inspiration, Dave Priseman is a fine foil for the saxophonist on trumpet, and the young rhythm team of Jasper Hoiby on bass and Dave Smith on drums are responsive and imaginative collaborators.
WORLD
BAABA MAAL – TELEVISION
***
PALM, £13.70BEGINNERS in Baba Maal studies should not begin with this, but for aficionados it marks an important new stage in this Senegalese musician's development. The title song refers to what he calls "the stranger you didn't ask to come into your living room – who seems to come from nowhere and gives you information". Television and the internet have in his view turned traditional African culture upside down, so it's appropriate that he should have done exactly that with the lyric of one of his songs: its original words praised the woman who stays loyally at home, but now they eulogise the woman who goes out and changes the world. As a collaborator with Damon Albarn, and as a United Nations "youth emissary", Baba Maal is constantly thinking out of the box: for this CD he has enlisted the singer and keyboardist of New York's Brazilian Girls, with interestingly multilingual results. The music itself blends electronic dance music with traditional African styles: there is no kora (for him, the late Kaouding Sissoko was irreplaceable), but we do hear the veteran blind griot Mansour Seck, who Baba Maal says has kept him on the straight and narrow path. Some of the songs sail over a serenely melodious groove on guitar and synthesiser, and Sabina Sciubba's vocal timbre is arresting, but the whole thing has a rather conspiratorial air. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't rise much above background listening.
NAJMA AKHTAR AND GARY LUCAS – RISHTE
***
WORLD VILLAGE, £13.70THIS CD represents a melange of western pop and Indian vocal styles – Najma is not only versed in Urdu ghazal love poems, but also in Bollywood modes, and she's carved out a parallel career on the London stage. Her lyrics have a sweet, childlike quality and her voice has a curiously wispy sound, but with muted guitar, plus delicate flutterings on the tabla in songs where the harmonies often shift playfully, her performances have singular charm.
The full article contains 1089 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
