Rock

Nick Salomon has been leading The Bevis Frond from the front since 1986, playing flamboyant lead guitar with liberal use of effects, in a way that evokes the progressive psychedelia of Jimi Hendrix, the heavy blues of The Groundhogs and the grunge-rock of Dinosaur Jr. He is going through a prolific patch. His 2021 album Little Eden examined the state of the nation, looking for positives, and these 19 songs range from his role as a musician on ‘Mirror’ to a look back at ’70s nightlife on ‘Mr Fred’s Disco’. But the focus is on our mismanagement of the planet, and when he warns us that we need literally to ‘cool it’ on the opener ‘Heat’, the unadorned vocals, incisive lyrics and power trio energy all combine to give a poignant effect. MB

Ty Segall
Three Bells
Drag City DC841CD; LP: DC841

It’s instructive to note that West Coast American singer and multi-instrumentalist Ty Segall is a fan of both Harry Nilsson and Hawkwind, two musical approaches that just about form a yin-yang balance on this, his 15th solo album. ‘My Best Friend’ is a hook-laden paean to his two dachshunds – an update of Nilsson’s ‘The Puppy Song’, perhaps? ‘Watcher’ has a sweet, breezy vocal melody with acoustic picking and a keening guitar hook, but Segall’s music has a restlessness about it and an edginess that breaks out spectacularly on ‘Eggman’. Here his explosive guitar playing almost buckles the song structure before it ends in an abstract sonic pile-up. MB

Sheherazaad
Qasr
Erased Tapes ERATP164CD; LP: ERATP164LP

Sheherazaad is an American artist of Indian descent, brought up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in her music she examines her position within American society and her need to establish a sense of her roots. She sings mainly in Hindi, and on ‘Mansoor’ her remarkable voice drifts across acoustic guitar lines – at times reminiscent of flamenco – before curling into delicious melismas. ‘Dhund Lo Mujhe’ is similarly spacious with pizzicato string patterns and flourishes, while slide guitar adds to the atmosphere on ‘Koshsish’, and piano on ‘Khatam’. Sheherazaad describes Qasr as a ‘folk-pop synthesis’, even a bit ‘new age’, but it’s a lot more besides. MB

The Jesus And Mary Chain
Glasgow Eyes
Fuzz Club FC226CD; LP: FC226V12GR

As mid-’80s enfants terribles, brothers Jim and William Reid allied primal rock ’n’ roll with feedback guitar racket, their confrontational gigs provoking crowd trouble. Things have calmed down now but Jesus And Mary Chain still nod back to The Ramones, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground, and the eternal formula of simple chord changes shaping pop melody. Over William’s terse guitar lines, Jim wryly sifts through rock history, citing their influences on ‘The Eagles And The Beatles’, becoming self-referential on ‘jamcod’, and sounding particularly world-weary when describing young people having fun over the squelchy synths of ‘Discotheque’. MB