Album reviews: Hamish Hawk | Craig Armstrong | Melody’s Echo Chamber | The Primevals

Hamish Hawk: Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Vol 0 (self-released) ★★★★

Craig Armstrong: Pacific (CMA Records) ★★★

Melody’s Echo Chamber: Unclouded (Domino) ★★★★

The Primevals: Best of the BBC Sessions (Precious Recordings) ★★★★

The Edinburgh International Book Festival gets into the vinyl records game with this recording of Hamish Hawk’s acclaimed tribute to the inimitable Ivor Cutler, performed to sell out audiences at this year’s festival. Limited to 1,000 copies, Life In a Scottish Sitting Room, Vol 0 is inspired by Cutler’s classic live album of almost the same name which was recorded at Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre in 1977 and chronicled his austere childhood in Govan with idiosyncratic license.

Hawk moves the “action” to his own childhood Scotch sitting room across the country in Fairmilehead, listing the local shops like Stations of the Cross. Over the drone of Cutler’s own harmonium, he lovingly and wittily paints scenes evoked by old family photographs, as alert to smells and sounds as images. Hawk is a natural performer, capturing his parents and siblings with gentle comedy, as well as a pleasurably erudite wordsmith who relishes the retro associations of words such as “ecru” and “oblong”, honing his own offbeat vernacular in much the same way that Cutler conjured his kitchen sink fabulism.

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The storytelling is punctuated with affectionate renditions of a handful of Cutler’s incisive and whimsical songs. Hawk is a markedly more melodic vocalist, injecting twinkly character into the bathetic romance of Lemonade, the lo-fi bossa nova of Are You Alright, Jack? and the Morse Code mini symphony Little Black Buzzer as well as Cutler’s most enduring paean to semi-togetherness, Beautiful Cosmos. He also successfully Cutlerises his own Catherine Opens a Window on this treat of a quirky chamber piece.

Glasgow-based composer Craig Armstrong has made his international name over the last three decades with his film scores for Baz Luhrmann and Peter Mullan among others, but he remains as in demand for his classical commissions. Pacific is a new work in three movements for cello, piano and electronics, commissioned for the Berlin Confidential event series and premiered earlier this year.

Cellist Lena Angelina Von Almen and producer/musician Guy Sternberg join him again for the immersive recording, with proceeds from sales going to the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. Pacific was written as a global elegy but the first movement is inherently dramatic even in its measured reflection, with lambent cello darkened by electronic drones and suffused with Celtic yearning, like watching crashing waves from the comfort of a cosy living room.

The second movement features burbling synths and legato strokes before moving into the slightly ominous territory of horror movie arpeggios. In contrast, the third movement is lyrical and soaring, its little leaps of joy tempered with sober reflection.

French musician Melody Prochet, who records as Melody’s Echo Chamber, also has an ear for evocative composition. Her realm is the breathy coquetry of 60s easy listening Gallic pop, with shades of Air, Saint Etienne and psych rock also embellishing her fourth album, Unclouded. It’s a transporting listen with highlights including Childhood Dream, a ravishing reverie with swooning strings and jazz drum breaks, and the luscious undulating vibraphone and plaintive flute of Burning Man.

Veteran Glasgow garage outfit The Primevals are still rocking strong to this day but their latest release captures a time in the mid-80s when they were cult outliers, more accepted in Europe than at home. The BBC, however, were sold, with great support coming from Radio 1’s triumvirate of evening presenters - John Peel, Janice Long and Andy Kershaw. This compilation of their BBC session recordings captures them at arguably their sleazy peak, digging on Captain Beefheart and Tav Falco at a time when most of their Glasgow peers were smooth pop operators, taking in the gutter-trawling likes of See That Skin, the utterly unholy Spiritual and the shamanic Follow Her Down.

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CLASSICAL

Nash Ensemble: Ravel (Onyx) ★★★★★

There can be few more idyllic ways to round off Ravel’s 150th birthday year than with this mouthwatering chamber music served up by the Nash Ensemble. Everything about this richly perfumed album echoes the diaphanous perfection of the man and his craft. As if the Introduction and Allegro - written as a 1905 sales pitch for the modern harp, superbly handled here by harpist Lucy Wakeford - weren’t enough, along comes the gushingly iridescent wartime Piano Trio (illuminated by subtly implanted Basque influences) and the ravishing String Quartet, both overflowing with vivid colouring, luxuriant suppleness and rapt expressiveness. La Valse makes a surprise appearance, glowingly executed in its two-piano version by Alasdair Beatson and Simon Crawford-Phillips. Nothing of its red-hot Viennese-style suavity and orchestral opulence is lost thanks to the virtuosic expansiveness and playful intimacy of the duettists. A veritable tour de force. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Ian Shaw: Stephensong (Silent Wish Records) ★★★★

The self-explanatory subtitle, “Ian Shaw Sings Stephen Sondheim”, says it all, as the award-winning vocalist, supported by the superbly empathetic piano of Barry Green, brings his characteristic combination of emotional power and intimacy to the Sondheim canon. From the up-tempo urgency, as well as defiance, of the opening Everybody Says Don’t to the serene reassurance of No One Is Alone, cusped beautifully by limpid piano, these are deeply personal interpretations of a revered songbook. Shaw channels both ecstasy and anguish in Being Alive, while he and Green steer Marry Me A Little to a jubilant crescendo. There’s considerate piano accompaniment, too, in the fond regret of Good Thing Going, while Shaw nurses open-hearted nostalgia in I Remember. The album’s final number, Somewhere from West Side Story, is a showstopper in itself – an utterly individualistic interpretation but, like so much of this album, loaded with feeling. Jim Gilchrist

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