Reviews

Photo: Judith Burrows Tinariwen

Were I a gambling man, I think I’d have put money on this new Tinariwen album being a full-tilt attempt to cross over into the mainstream: possibly involving some English language lyrics, probably featuring guest appearances from big name rock star fans (Damon Albarn perhaps?) and definitely playing up the group’s rebel rocker/Saharan freedom fighter image. Well, it’s great news for my bank balance that I don’t go in for gambling, because this album couldn’t be much further from that prediction… and a good thing too!

For Imidiwan, the Touareg blues busters have gone back to their hometown Tessalit where they recorded their debut, 2001’s The Radio Tisdas Sessions and it’s a tribute to how far they’ve come (and to producer Jean-Paul Romann) that this, their fourth album, has a very different feel to that earlier release. Where The Radio Tisdas Sessions was sultry and taut, this new one is far more airy, the sound of a band with the confidence to loosen up. Not that they don’t still grab the chance to rock out. There are a number of tunes where the guitars snarl and the band lock into a ferociously hypnotic groove and they can also deliver a Stones-ey swagger on mid-tempo material too. But there’s a greater sense of space than on any of their previous recordings, allowing a gentler, lyrical side to come to the fore. Yet again, Tinariwen have come up with something fresh-sounding and unexpected, but surely they’ve pushed their limited range about as far as it can go? I look forward to being proved wrong yet again about this with their next release.

www.tinariwen.com; www.independiente.co.uk

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Photo: Ian Anderson Adrian Edmondson

It really shouldn’t work, but this has quickly become one of my favourite albums of the moment. Adrian Edmondson, famed TV comedian of this parish, teams up with a gang of Celtic folk rockers of a certain age to rework favourite songs of the post-punk/ new wave era in their style. Oh yeah? It’s a piss-take, right? Or dead embarrassing, as blokes old enough to know better have a mid-life crisis, mutton dressed as spam…

Well actually, no. Three essential nuggets of truth that Edmondson spotted are: that there were some very good songs hidden behind the fairly unlistenable vocals of Wreckless Eric (Whole Wide World), the pompousness of Kraftwerk (The Model) and the pretentious stylings of Talking Heads (Once In A Lifetime); that there was contemporary storytelling as good as found in many a folk song in Squeeze’s Up The Junction (sung, inexplicably, in a fake American accent on the original) or, the stand out track here, the Jam’s Down In The Tube Station At Midnight; and that freed from the stylistic straitjacket of expectation, putting completely new clothes on PiL’s ultra-catchy Rise and unassailable classics like God Save The Queen, Teenage Kicks or London Calling rather than attempting straight ‘covers’ might just allow them to breathe in a different way. And since he’d become a born-again folk fan, why shouldn’t he pair two of his enthusiasms?

Still, none of that would have worked if he hadn’t then assembled such a skilful band of co-conspirators as Troy Donockley (pipes, cittern, whistle), Maartin Allcock (12 -tring, bass), Andy Dinan (fiddle) and Mark Woolley (bodhran, percussion), or turned out to be a rather good singer and “thrash” mandolin player himself. Now, not only do those guys have bucketfuls of chops, but I have a secret suspicion that the originals of these songs may not have been as central to their youth culture as they clearly were to Edmondson’s. Could this be one of the secrets as to why the arrangements and playing here are so fresh, newly appropriate and energetic rather than reverend? Another, of course, could just be that they get off on playing such a great set of material.

After Jim Moray’s fab reworking of XTC’s All You Pretty Girls into a new folk classic got a Folk Award nomination, there’s now clearly a precedent. If the Bad Shepherds’ new treatment of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight isn’t up for a similar gong next year, there’s no justice. A song is a song is a song…

www.thebadshepherds.com

Photo: Dave Peabody Andy Cutting & Chris Wood

Chris Wood doesn’t do ‘obvious’ and while this carries the subtitle An Anthology, it’s not your conventional greatest hits collection. A strikingly packaged 21-track double album with a simple white design and assorted notes from those who’ve been touched by his music and personality, including Simon Emmerson, who entertainingly likens him to a bittern: “He wants to spend his life sulking around in the reeds, being invisible but making this huge booming noise, making his presence felt.” The collection itself is drawn from 12 different albums (and includes one previously unreleased track The Farmer by Two Duos Quartet) and covers all aspects of his career, some of which (his trio with Martin Carthy and Roger Wilson, English Acoustic Collective and one track Roseville Fair from his first demo cassette with Andy Cutting) may be unfamiliar to those lured by the famed chip shop opera One In A Million (which is here), Hard (which isn’t) or the 2009 BBC Folk album of the year, Trespasser (three tracks from that, Summerfield Avenue, Mad John and John Ball reflecting the complexities of his music, chosen ahead of the more obviously populist The Cottager’s Reply and Come Down Jehovah).

It’s certainly not the easy introductory step that’s the designated role of most compilations – in some ways it’s more akin to a B-sides and obscurities compilation – and perhaps demands even more attention from the listener than his regular albums. Cold Haily Rainy Night, the standout track from The Imagined Village, does launch the second CD in a blaze of Johnny Kalsi’s dhol drums, but it is immediately followed by the mellifluous The Land: When the Land is White With Snow, a Wood tune developed by Karen Tweed into a sophisticated semi-classical piece with Timo Alakotila on piano, Roger Tallroth (12-string guitar), Maria Kalaniemi (accordeon), Timo Myllykangas (double bass) and Shanti Paul Jayasinha (flugelhorn) for her May Morning album. The two tracks – over six minutes apiece – couldn’t be more contrasting, encapsulating instantly the free-thinking vision of the man which not only inspires the reverence of his peers but has made him such a vital and excitingly unpredictable influence on the modern scene. Other personal highlights include Tucker Zimmerman’s The Taoist Tale from Wood/ Wilson/ Carthy, The Shouter from the Two Duos Quartet album Half As Happy As We and the English Acoustic Collective track, The Colour Of Amber, all offering more insights and confusion into the wonder of Wood.

“A brilliant musician and arranger,” says Karen Tweed of Wood in the sleeve notes. “I especially enjoy his controversiality and reluctance to swim with the flow… it is what makes his music so great.” Amen to that.

www.navigatorrecords.co.uk, via Proper.

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Photo: Judith Burrows Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara

Africa rocks in two distinctive and different ways. The second album from ex-Jah Wobble/Robert Plant guitarist Adams and Guinean master of the riti fiddle Camara, Tell No Lies, is much like its predecessor (2007’s award-winning Soul Science) only even more so. Adams lays down a good-rockin’, blues-riffin’ foundation over which Juldeh’s rough-hewn strings and tangy, expressive vocals saw and sail. Again imaginative support is provided by percussionist Salah Dawson Miller with newbie Zanzibari backing singer Mim Suleiman a worthy addition. There are enough hooks, both instrumental and melodic, for this album to gain an appeal beyond hardcore West Afro aficionados. Kele Kele (No Passport No Visa),with its Bo Diddley beat and bilingual lyrics, sounds like a potential hit to me, but then what do I know of such things? Only occasionally is there a sense of trying too hard. At one point Camara’s voice appears to be put through that infernal electronic treatment effect employed on far too many modern pop productions. But on the whole the various elements (there are also traces of surf guitar, reggae and Celtic sounds) come together with an unforced ease and as they demonstrate on the closing Futa Jalo, they can slide into gentler, acoustic territory when the fancy takes.

www.realworldrecords.com, via Proper.

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Invisible System’s album is a bit like a wayward relative of last year’s A Town Called Addis by Dub Colossus: perhaps its deranged brother, who’s been locked away in the attic for years, subsisting on a diet of hallucinogens and psych rock. Masterminded by English producer/ multi-instrumentalist Dan Harper (who was also involved in A Town Called Addis), it features a combination of Ethio roots musicians and UK players from the furthest reaches of world and rock. This must be the first album to find space for both Mahmoud Ahmed and The Damned’s Captain Sensible. Justin, Juldeh, Dub Colossus main-man Dubulah, Martin Craddick from Baka Beyond and members of The Mission, Here & Now and Ozric Tentacles, all add embellishments to recordings of local musicians made by Harper in his Ethiopian studio.

The result is highly unusual and at times quite intoxicating. It starts out warm, dubby, jazzy, a little like A Town Like… before moving into wilder territory, with elements of drum ‘n’ bass and techno, swathes of rock guitar, an unhinged sense that anything could happen. It doesn’t all work, but there are a lot more hits than misses and Melkam Kehonelish – If That Is What You Want combines Mahmoud’s majestic vocals with rumbling electronica to delicious effect. Not to everyone’s taste I’d guess, but well worth a try. I find that it grows with each listen.

Distributed by Discovery.

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Po’Girl: Deer In The Night (Po’Girl Music PG004)
Eclectic, sometimes jazz-inflected original numbers with engaging harmony singing. Resourceful Canadians Russell, Teixeira and Sidelinger vary the mood and pulse, Gandy Dancer recalling Bruce Phillips. No lyrics supplied. www.pogirl.net

Ulas Hazar: Virtuoso (Acoustic Music 319.1409.2)
Musicians who release solo albums entitled Virtuoso should be avoided at all costs. If you’re in any doubt, watch the ‘bonus’ videoclip on Ulas Hazar’s new CD. Our hero picks up his saz from a smoking chest, then proceeds to furiously noodle through some baroque scales in a glittering Ferrero Rocher ballroom. Decadent and sickly. www.ulashazar.com

Värttinä: 25 (Westpark 87171)
22 of the most notable tracks from the popular Rääkkylä-born band’s 25 years, from initial teenage exuberance to much more skill-evolved but still energetic treatments of songs now usually new-written but always in the distinctive runo-song tradition of eastern Finland, which no other band has championed so determinedly and successfully. Kudos. www.westparkmusic.de, via Proper.

Tony DeMarco: The Sligo Indians (Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40545)
Described on the liner as ‘long-awaited’ (but presumably in a Damocletian sense), this is a classic example of how Americans just don’t get Irish music and features the protagonist doing a remarkable impersonation of the Mothers’ bassist Roy Estrada on the cover. Via Egea Music UK.