SHE & HIM: VOLUME ONE
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DOUBLE SIX, £10.99SCARLETT Johansson is not the only Hollywood starlet making credible musical inroads these days. Zooey Deschanel, star of The Happening and better films, is the She in question here
, providing the songs and performance, while her Him is cult troubadour M Ward in the role of producer.
Deschanel has a lovely rich honey voice, reminiscent of Linda Ronstadt, and favours a diet of mostly sweet and satisfying country pop, including the gorgeous old-school croon of Take It Back. She also pulls off the convincing cutesy girl group pastiche I Was Made For You and stripped back covers of The Beatles' I Should Have Known Better and Smokey Robinson's You Really Got A Hold On Me. Let's hope there is a Volume Two in the works.
THE HOLD STEADY: STAY POSITIVE
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ROUGH TRADE, £10.99THE UK has fallen in love belatedly with Brooklyn's The Hold Steady but now they have come into our lives, it's pointless to resist. Their approach is simple – pump out E Street Band-esque blue-collar rock with the passion and urgency of a garage band, lavishing on ebullient brass, rolling piano chords, and even a touch of harpsichord and xylophone.
Frontman Craig Finn delivers the news with testifying spirit, only pausing for breath once, on the brooding Both Crosses, a track that demonstrates they are just as effective with their foot on the brake as they are when they are careering headlong into our affections.
BLACK AFFAIR: PLEASURE, PRESSURE, POINT
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V2/COOPERATIVE MUSIC, £9.99HAVING created something distinctive and quite elusive with The Beta Band, their erstwhile frontman Steve Mason has opted to go unashamedly retro for the first album in his latest solo guise, by reproducing the sounds from the darker end of early 80s electronica.
Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and even Ultravox are cheekily referenced over the course of a consistent collection which celebrates the world of bondage on It Goes Like This, flirts with the Orient on Japanese Happening and all but covers Devo's Whip It on Mute Me.
FIONA SHEPHERDCLASSICAL
JUAN DIEGO FLOREZ: BEL CANTO SPECTACULAR
****
DECCA, £11.99JUAN Diego Florez is very much the tenor of the moment, and this recital focuses on the bel canto repertoire in which this Peruvian has made his reputation. This disc offers arias and duets (with Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecien, Patrizia Ciofi, Daniela Barcellona and Placido Domingo), drawn mainly from Donizetti, with a bit of Bellini and Rossini thrown in.
The selection is designed to place his light lyric tenor, and his command of both a smooth high register and coloratura, firmly in the spotlight. It opens with the Amici miei sequence from Donizetti's La Figlia del Reggimento, a recent stage triumph for the singer in both Milan and New York. Selections from La Favorite, L'elisir d'amore, Linda di Chamounix and Lucrezia Borgia are also represented, alongside Bellini's I puritani and Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims. A duet with Domingo from Rossini's Otello is listed as a bonus track, whatever that means – surely it's either on the CD or it isn't?
ALWYN: ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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NAXOS RECORDS, £5.99NAXOS' survey of the orchestral works of English composer William Alwyn has already covered the five Symphonies and several concertos in well-received versions by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under David Lloyd-Jones. This disc delves into some of his shorter works to equally attractive effect, including his earliest orchestral work, the Five Preludes of 1927.
The nostalgic Pastoral Fantasia (1939) features Philip Dukes as viola soloist, while the evocative Autumn Legend (1954), with Rachael Pankhurst on cor anglais, is the most striking work on the disc. Two more single movement works, the Overture to a Masque (1940) and Tragic Interlude (1936), are also included, alongside the carefully structured three-movement Concerto Grosso No 1 (1943) and a lively Suite of Scottish Dances (1946).
KENNY MATHIESONJAZZ
WILLIE NELSON & WYNTON MARSALIS: TWO MEN WITH THE BLUES
***
BLUE NOTE RECORDS, £11.99THIS collaboration between jazz maestro and country icon works better than you might expect, although if you know Willie Nelson's earlier forays into jazz standards, blues and swing, it may not even seem an unexpected one.
Nelson is not a conventional great singer, but his rather idiosyncratic approach to interpreting a song – and pretty much any song at that – is worth endless amounts of polish and technique. Wynton Marsalis can play the blues in his sleep, and slots neatly into the populist blues, R&B and jazz material chosen for this concert at the Lincoln Centre early last year, abetted by his excellent band and Nelson's harmonica man, Mickey Raphael.
Marsalis even breaks into song on My Bucket's Got a Hole In It, and the whole set has a playful, feelgood air that suggests they had fun.
FOLK
AILIE ROBERTSON: FIRST THINGS FIRST
****
LORIMER RECORDS, £10.99AILLIE Robertson's debut CD confirms the major promise that the Edinburgh harpist has shown in the course of picking up an armload of prizes at successive National Mods. If that implies a strictly traditional approach, then think again.
The harpist is pushing the instrument in fresh and contemporary-sounding musical directions, and the band setting that she adopts here – with James Ross on piano, Ewan Robertson on guitar, Duncan Lyall on bass and Paul Jennings on percussion – is a very effective complement to her own virtuoso technique and expressive interpretations in the role of lead instrumentalist.
Her lovely, evocative execution of slow airs is particularly impressive, but she is equally intent on underlining the fact that the harp is also an appropriate vehicle for flying jigs, reels and polkas, all dispatched in vibrant, sure-fingered style.
KENNY MATHIESONWORLD
THINK GLOBAL: NATIVE AMERICA
****
THINK, £7.99YOU'D never think it from the way it's critically neglected, but Native American music was the first "ethnic" variety to be recorded, on wax cylinders in the 1890s. And for this traditionally oppressed minority – not so small, in that it comprises more than one million people – music has always been a solace and a way of reinforcing cultural identity.
Buffy Sainte Marie – who was born on a Cree reservation in Saskatchewan, central Canada, and later adopted by a white couple – is the best-known representative of this music, having mixed with the Greenwich Village crowd and having had her songs covered by Presley, Streisand, and Janis Joplin among many others. The electrifying song she sings here was hitherto unreleased, and well reflects her high-octane art.
We also get R Carlos Nakai, the Navajo flute-player par excellence: austere, meditative, and supremely accomplished and we get Walela – the Cherokee word means "humming bird" – which consists of a family of three females, whose music has strong elements of Deep South Gospel.
No Native American compilation would be complete without its quota of powwows, and here the drum group Thunder Hill does the principal honours, chanting (and doubtless also dancing) to an insistent dry beat.
Another outstanding track on this excellent CD consists of a peyote song by Johnny Mike, whose grandparents used peyote at a time when its use in church was enough to send you to jail.
MICHAEL CHURCH
The full article contains 1201 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
