I haven’t heard an album quite this beguiling since Whalebone Polly’s Recording With The Window Open back in 2005, so it’s a particular delight to discover that there are still females around who can do this sort of thing. Mountain Man are three women, two of them still in school in Vermont, the other a nanny, who use nothing but their close-harmonising voices and acoustic guitars to create the most haunting, spine-shivering songs imaginable. Recorded live in an abandoned factory, there’s a purity and immediacy to the sound of this album that puts most others into the shade: you feel you’re right there and they’re singing just for you. Bliss.
The Coal Porters are but one facet of the abundant creativity of renaissance man Sid Griffin, who also helms a band called Western Electric, runs his own record label and writes excellent books on musical themes. The Porters, however, are the incarnation of Sid that you’re most likely to encounter in your favourite live music establishment, and their fourth album, Durango, is as splendid an alt-bluegrass excursion as you’ll hear all this year. A sprightly bunch of fiddle, mandolin and banjo-driven songs are fleshed out with choice covers, including a yearning version of Neil Young’s ‘Like A Hurricane’. Plus a video documentary on the band.
Everything about Dark Hope was screaming ‘No!’ at me. Opera singer covering rock songs? No, it never works, never ever. Well, I reckoned without the good taste of Fleming and producer/arranger David Kahne. They’ve re-interpreted fabulous contemporary songs by Band Of Horses, Muse, Death Cab For Cutie plus a sprinkling of classics from Jefferson Airplane, Peter Gabriel and Leonard Cohen.
Few artefacts set off my poo detectors as fast as solo albums by drummers from famous bands. Happily, in the case of Radiohead’s Phil Selway, drums are not what Familial is about. Right from the fragile opener, ‘By Some Miracle’ – an acoustic number – it’s obvious Selway is a proper songwriter, every bit as interested in melody, texture and lyrics as he is in beats. Indeed, the album’s percussive pulse is very subtle indeed, being beautifully integrated and imaginative throughout the set.
This sparkling Motown homage should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers that Collins’ first UK No1 was his 1982 cover of The Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. It’s more a question of why he left it so long. For the most part, he’s chosen to faithfully recreate the sound and arrangements of 18 ’60s classics, even drafting in members of Motown’s revered Funk Brothers session crew to get it spot-on. Even so, the voice is unmistakeably Collins, and his passion for the material is unmistakable in the effervescent zip of every track.
By the time your average band gets around to celebrating its 20th anniversary, they’ve usually slowed down and are headed out to pasture. Ireland’s Saw Doctors, thankfully, have never been your average band, so their seventh studio album is, if anything, more vibrantly tuneful than ever. The core of the band remains intact but the arrival of powerful new drummer Eimhin Cradock has significantly upped their energy levels and his contributions as a songwriter beautifully complement those of founder members Davy Carton and Leo Moran. Shamelessly sentimental, unrepentantly traditional, The Saw Doctors also remain kick-ass rockers and tunesmiths extraordinaire.
I fondly remember the thrill of hearing the band’s eponymous 1976 debut album, so I wished for something a little more exciting from their first reunion in eight years. Petty has attempted to get back to his roots by writing a bunch of blues and r’n’b flavoured songs but, although things start well with the punchy ‘Jefferson Jericho Blues’, a drift towards pastiche sets in fast and there’s a lack of energy that no amount of laidback finesse can replace. ‘Candy’, for example, is entertaining but insubstantial, just another reworking of the venerable Memphis riff with Petty overdoing his down home vocal. More passion and a little less journeyman cool would be welcome here.
This Portland, Oregon, trio have released three albums prior to Mines and, I’m ashamed to say, I haven’t heard any of them. That’s all going to change though, because this is a corker. At first listen, Mines might seem a bit angular and disjointed, so may I suggest that you start your listening experience with the most instantly mind-obliterating tour de force, ‘Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such A Big Boy’. With its triphammer percussion, melodramatic keyboard riff, mood switches and powerhouse vocal surges, it’s one of the album’s several stratospheric high points.
Fresh (well, relatively fresh) out of San Diego, California, comes the ace second album by this spirited, soulful Americana quintet who subtly combine elements of straightforward Jayhawksy country rock with hints of the experimental tendencies of Wilco. Known for their use of unconventional instrumentation, including trash-can lids, orchestral bass drums, drones and quirky choirs, Delta Spirit are blessed with a belter of a vocalist in former busker Matthew Vasquez, but the whole band is tight as all get out and the songs demand that you sing along after just a couple of listens. So that’s my in-car listening sorted until the last of the summer sun is gone.
Sound Quality: 90%
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This Brighton-based combo get points because on their website it says they ‘enjoy sitting on the beach, engaging in semi-meaningful relationships’. So should we all. This debut album was produced by Dave Eringa, famed for his work with everybody from the Manic St Preachers to Kylie. Good man that he is, he’s had the good sense to let these eccentric, quintessentially English songwriters breathe, so that their peculiar charms are presented in all their haphazard glory.
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