Album reviews: Hen Hoose Collective | Lucinda Williams | Megadeth

Lucinda Williams: World’s Gone Wrong (Thirty Tigers) ★★★★

Megadeth: Megadeth (BLKIIBLK) ★★★★

There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind. Even better, pooling resources and offering mutual support. In an ideal world, all albums would be made like The Twelve. But in an ideal world, its proactive creators, Hen Hoose Collective, wouldn’t need to exist to bolster opportunities and create favourable conditions for female and non-binary musicians.

For their debut album, 12 talented musicians - Hen Hoose founder Tamara Schlesinger, aka MALKA, Emma Pollock, Carla J Easton, Frances McKee, Inge Thomson, Susan Bear, Ray Aggs, Rebecca Shearing AKA SHEARS, Cariss Crobie, Amandah Wilkinson aka AMUNDA, Djana Gabrielle and Jill Lorean - spent one week writing and recording at Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis.

Bringing a wealth of vocal, instrumental and production skills, they organized into three revolving groups of four, tasked with producing three songs apiece, with the expertly finessed results testifying to the stylistic blend of singers, players and writers.

READ MORE: Ones to watch in 2026: James Emmanuel, singer

Schlesinger leads on Wipe Out, an electro pop number with bluegrass undertones and harmonic incantations aplenty. Carla J Easton’s rhythmic rapped vocals contrast with piercing soul tones on droll feminist pop treatise Rich (Katy’s In Space), while the classy Game For Two makes great use of Lorean’s pop fluency and breathy spoken word from Gabrielle.

Pollock brings her thoughtful indie chops to Sirens Call My Name before breaking out into an unfettered disco pop chorus, typical of the sense of fun and play at the heart of the music, whether the silky electro soul of Promise or the indie folk of Ego Death, inspired by McKee’s love of a cold water swim.

Standing out even in such quality company, In Control gets its hooks in with a big pop chant, beefy martial percussion, hypnotic synth drones and psychedelic guitar before the album ends with the haunting affirmation of Blessings on the Day, all of which will be on show when the album is launched on the final weekend of Celtic Connections.

Also gracing the Celtic Connections stage, the imperious Americana doyenne Lucinda Williams returns with another straight-talking but compassionate album. Despite its title, World’s Gone Wrong zones in particularly on America’s past, present and future with songs inspired by the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves from Africa and the subsequent waves of civil rights activism. Mavis Staples, one of the key voices of the movement in the 60s and 70s, adds her alto authority to a cover of Bob Marley’s So Much Trouble in the World.

READ MORE: Ones to watch in 2026: Chris Amer, musician

Everything else is a Williams original, co-written with husband/manager Tom Overby. How Much Did You Get For Your Soul is directed at a certain White House occupant but largely her heart is with the people affected by his policies. Freedom Speaks personifies a lamenting lady liberty, while she musters hope and motivation in the company of Norah Jones on We’ve Come Too Far To Turn Around, a sentiment of which Staples would surely approve.

Thrash metal legends Megadeth - the architects of the genre along with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax - formed in 1983. Fifty million album sales later, they bow out in fret-tastic style with their self-titled 17th album. Opening thrill ride Tipping Point is the genre in a nutshell with its power drill drumming, lightning fretwork, gruff vocals and hoary horror imagery. I Don’t Care proceeds with a snotty punk edge while Puppet Parade packs gruff theatrical swagger. Rather than unleashing the dogs, I Am War is world-weary and regretful, while founder and frontman Dave Mustaine shows some vulnerability on Hey God! But there is no doubt he was born to rock on Let There Be Shred, a creation story with apocalyptic riffing.

READ MORE: Ones to watch in 2026: Lisa Robertson, composer

CLASSICAL

Robin Stevens: Orchestral Music, Vol 1 (Toccata) ★★★★

Among living British composers Robin Stevens is hardly a familiar name, but as this very listenable uncovering of his music by the RSNO illustrates, the Welsh-born, Manchester-based 67-year-old possesses a compositional voice that is as attractive and characterful as it is technically sound. Central to this disc, conducted by Paul Mann with Adam Mackenzie as soloist, is Stevens’ decade-old Bassoon Concerto, the potency and frenetic intensity of its outer movements momentarily subdued by the queasy, microtonal inflections colouring the central Lament. Leading up to the concerto are an impassioned Dona Nobis Pacem (for two horns and small orchestra) and the quirkily acerbic Disrupted Chorale for Wind Dectet, its Messiaen-like harmonies countered by brief and frivolous neoclassical offshoots. As if to confirm Stevens’ eclectic penchant, the album signs off with a Brigadoon-like pastiche, the sentimentally pleasing Suite Écossaise, reeled off with refined patriotism. Ken Walton

FOLK

Andy M Stewart: Songs of Robert Burns (Birnam CD) ★★★★

Just in time for the season of haggis eviscerations, this revelation features the late Andy M Stewart, legendary vocalist with Silly Wizard and peerless interpreter of Scots song. Recorded in 1989 for a German folk label, it has had to wait three and a half decades for UK release. Stewart, who died in 2015 following prolonged illness, had long wanted to record a Burns album and was accompanied on the recording by Capercaillie’s Manus Lunny on guitar and bouzouki, Donald Shaw on accordion and keyboards and fiddler Charlie McKerron. Obvious choices include a fondly lingering Ae Fond Kiss and the redoubtable Man’s A Man, while the likes of Rantin’ Rovin' Robin adopt characteristic swagger. The recording occasionally shows its age in some dated-sounding keyboard washes, but nothing detracts from Stewart’s ability to deliver a song with smeddum or tenderness, always with persuasive clarity. Jim Gilchrist

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