Watching live music is a little tricky at the moment so it's an excellent time to catch up on some CD releases. Here are three recent albums that should help to keep our spirits up. The smell of rain, an isle in the water ...and tea and symphony. Just what we need to provide some proper musical refreshment...
Can You Smell the Rain
Nils Kercher
(Ancient Pulse Records)
Can
You Smell the Rain sees
world music multi-instrumentalist Nils Kercher heading off in a new direction.
The Bonn-based musician's earlier albums Ancient
Intimations and Suku - Your Life Is
Your Poem conjured up dreamy, mesmerising soundscapes featuring kora and
West African percussion, but Nils has gone back to the guitar as a main instrument
on his latest album. In doing so, the tracks on 'Can You Smell the Rain' are
much more in a singer-songwriter vein than his previous albums, though the kora
is never far away and a rich melange of percussion is also on display.
Some have compared Nils' sound to Paul
Simon's Graceland but I was reminded much
more of very early Simon and Garfunkel records, with the gentle voice and
filigree acoustic guitar on tracks like 'Feathers'. I also detected shades of Jon
Anderson and Yes, both because of the singing and the ever-evolving nature of compositions
like the title track - a funky shapeshifter of a song.
As with his earlier albums, there is something
delightfully original and refreshing about Nils' music. Guitars, percussion, kora,
violin, piano and vocals all blend together to create an effect like a welcome
rainstorm on a hot day.
To an Isle in the Water
Brisk
(Appel Rekords)
If Nils Kercher's music is not bound
to any particular region, Brisk's music sounds thoroughly and authentically Irish,
so it comes as a big surprise to discover the quartet are actually Belgian! Their
fiddle player, Naomi Vercauteren, graduated from Ghent Conservatory having
completed her thesis on bowing styles in Irish folk music. And why are they called Brisk? Their publicity
material helpfully explains their music is lively and quick ...and "just
sounds brisk!"
This debut album is a carefully-curated
collection of elegant and energetic versions of Irish, Scottish and Breton tunes
featuring, alongside Naomi's fiddle, Gunnar Van Hove's Irish flute and whistles,
Jeroen Knapen's guitar and vocals and Wim Moons's bodhrán, vocals and mandolin.
Most of the tracks are medleys
comprised of tunes boasting quirky titles. 'Sofie's', for example, combines
'Sofie's Doopwals' with Hamish Napier's 'Grant Wood Reversed Into My Dad's
Fence'. Contrasting with the ...well, yes, briskness of the instrumental tracks is a touchingly
delicate rendition of the sea shanty 'Leave Her, Johnny', while Jeroen and Naomi's
'Shy One' is an impressive setting of W.B. Yeat's poem 'To an Isle in the Water',
which also provides this admirable album's title.
Tea & Symphony
- the English Baroque Sound 1968-1974
(Ace Records)
Musician and music journalist Bob
Stanley has put together this affectionate compilation of tracks from that magical period
in English pop music, the late sixties and early seventies. As the sleeve notes
eloquently put it, "the English Baroque sound shunned guitar solos for
string quartets and woodwind. Drenched in summer-into-autumn melancholy and
never far away from the charts ... it was informed by Paul McCartney's 'Eleanor
Rigby' and 'For No One', the Zombies' Odyssey and Oracle and the chamber pop
of the Bee Gees and Scott Walker."
The epitome of this style is
Honeybus's 'I Can't Let Maggie Go', and this is included along with Colin
Blunstone's 'Say You Don't Mind' and Clifford T Ward's 'Coathanger'. Among the
previously undiscovered delights for me were Bombadil's 'When the City Sleeps'
and Vigrass & Osborne's original version of 'Forever Autumn'.
Much as I enjoy coming across new
music and, indeed, some of the other benefits of the 21st century, I can quite
happily reside fairly indefinitely between 1968 and 1974, so Tea & Symphony suits me just fine.
