Time for some proper musical refreshment

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.