Album reviews: James Yorkston and Friends | Tom Grennan | Adrian Sherwood
In Cardigans singer Nina Persson and Johanna Söderberg of First Aid Kit, James Yorkston has assembled a Scandi dream team for his latest album, writes Fiona Shepherd
James Yorkston and Friends: Songs for Nina and Johanna (Domino) ★★★★
Tom Grennan: Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn’t Want to Be (Insanity Records) ★★★
Adrian Sherwood: The Collapse of Everything (On-U Sound) ★★★★
James Yorkston is a musician with many friends. Effective as a solo performer, he is even better in collaboration with the likes of KT Tunstall, Pictish Trail and Sweden’s Second Hand Orchestra. It was through working with the latter that he was first introduced to Cardigans singer Nina Persson, who became the special guest vocalist on his 2022 album The Great White Sea Eagle.
What started as a tentative musical blind date has become an intuitive creative coupling. Persson was down for another duet album but competing commitments meant that she could only contribute a handful of tracks. Enter another Swedish songbird, Johanna Söderberg of sister act First Aid Kit, a natural born harmoniser who forms a Scandi tag team with Persson on Songs for Nina and Johanna.
Persson’s crystal clear yearning and Söderberg’s rich tone lend themselves to complementary styles. Persson tends to helm the bare folk ballads while Söderberg presides over fuller rootsy arrangements with members of Second Hand Orchestra colouring in the detail.
The album opens with Persson on beseeching solo form on the beautifully pitched fragile folk of I Can Change. Her vocals are exquisite on A Moment Longer, which only needs a touch of plangent bass, Ullis Gyllenberg’s quiet trembling fiddle and Peter Moren’s undulating guitar to complete the emotional wrench.
Söderberg is in a country state of mind on the luscious harmonic bluegrass of Oh Light, Oh Light, while Lina Langendorf’s saxophone snakes around her yearning vocals on Love/Luck. She rides the waves of emotion on Oh Sparrow, Up Yours, an impish title for an utterly sincere song about childhood cancer.
Yorkston takes the lead on Where’s the Time?, its pattering drums, lyrical guitar and plaintive storytelling reminiscent of Belle & Sebastian’s wistful chamber folk moments, and adopts a gritty timbre for rattling domestic yarn I Spooked the Neighbours, which is typical of his ability to set wry lyrics to transporting tunes.
Pop singer/songwriter Tom Grennan is four albums in and clearly unconcerned about unwieldy titles. Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn’t Want to Be belies its cautionary sentiments. Grennan has had his mental health troubles but he’s made it through the rain and now it’s time to pay it forward with a pumping party pop collection.
Propelled by a house piano riff, Full Attention leaps into action like a Robbie Williams banger. Cool With That is similarly full of beans, a maximalist pop exercise with big brassy attack and Grennan remains nimble on his feet on the ska-influenced Shadowboxing as he recalls his days at war with himself.
The sleek Eighties pop of Boys Don’t Cry briefly dials the energy down a notch before Grennan ramps it up again with the fizzing funk pop of Celebrate. He is practically partying on the ceiling on Higher and sustains the Tigger-like energy on Dirty Dishes. Even his one ballad, I Won’t Miss a Thing, requires a certain amount of chest-beating catharsis.
Veteran production ace Adrian Sherwood takes some time out from behind the desk of other artists’ albums to release his first solo offering in 13 years. The Collapse of Everything was inspired by a lyric fragment by his friend, the late Mark Stewart of The Pop Group. He also pays implicit tribute to his Tackhead compadre, drummer Keith LeBlanc, who contributed to the recording before his death last year. The album is grounded in Sherwood’s signature dub vibrations but embellished with plaintive flute and psych guitar on the slinky, jazz-laced title track. Sherwood makes good on his intention to create a soundtrack feel, with the spy drama swagger of The Well Is Poisoned and acid sci-fi strut of The Great Rewinding, while Spaghetti Best Western delivers on its punning title with some wah-wah Morricone harmonica and spectral Hammond organ.
CLASSICAL
Maier, Franck & Schumann: Sonatas for Violin & Piano (Delphian) ★★★★
Such is the vastness of musical history that the potential to home in on snapshots can be both a blessing and a joy. That’s precisely what the Canadian-based Duo Concertante - violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steves - have achieved in recording an album that focuses on three Sonatas for Violin and Piano from the latter half of the 19th century: Schumann’s Sonata No 1 in A minor (1851), Amanda Maier’s B minor Sonata (1875), and César Franck’s A major Sonata (1886). Together these reflect the liberating spirit of late Romanticism, while separately they reveal three distinctive artistic creators: late Schumann at the point of declining mental health; a youthful Swedish-born Maier open to the hothouse inspiration of Leipzig; and Franck, fluidly inventive in his easeful maturity. Dahn and Steves exhibit a vital, affectionate partnership, their performances characterful and wholesome, Maier’s warm-hearted Sonata, in particular, an unexpected eye-opener. Ken Walton
JAZZ
Gabriel Latchin Trio: The Man I Love (Alys Jazz) ★★★★
The fondly familiar is refreshed utterly as pianist Gabriel Latchin returns with bassist Jeremy Brown and American drummer Joe Farnsworth to manifest his life-long love of George Gershwin’s music. Seeking new ideas for such widely covered material must have posed a daunting challenge, but Latchin rises to it with panache and imagination while maintaining due deference. He declares his intentions unequivocally with the opening Summertime – surely one of the most recorded numbers ever – while nodding to another of his loves, Debussy, with a magically impressionist opening. Latchin dwells lovingly on How Long Has This Been Going On, over gently hissing brushes and spare bass, and It Ain’t Necessarily So swings along nicely. Elsewhere, Love Walked In does so at quite a scamper, briskly escorted by Farnsworth, while the title track, so often treated languorously, here enjoys a beefier, bluesy excursion that lopes along satisfyingly. Jim Gilchrist
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