Album reviews: Nathan Evans & the SAINT PHNX Band | Blue | The Cribs | Dry Cleaning
The new album from Nathan Evans & the SAINT PHNX Band should appeal to nostalgic expats with its unashamedly sentimental Celtic country numbers, writes Fiona Shepherd
Nathan Evans & the SAINT PHNX Band: Angels’ Share (Universal) ★★
Blue: Reflections (Blue Blood International/Cooking Vinyl) ★★★
The Cribs: Selling A Vibe (PIAS) ★★★★
Dry Cleaning: Secret Love (4AD) ★★★★
Nathan Evans & the SAINT PHNX Band have found cultural and commercial strength in numbers. The singing postie from Airdrie who shot to fame in lockdown with his TikTok rendition of New Zealand whaling song Wellerman, spawning “shanty mania” along the way, has made a shrewd match with brothers Alan and Stevie Jukes, aka Scotrockers Saint Phnx.
Arguably, neither act could have filled the Hydro on their own nor helmed their forthcoming Heather on the Hill summer day festival, but together they can max their potential for a Celtic knees-up. Their debut album collaboration, Angels’ Share, raises a glass to many a Scottish tradition and truism. The title track is an unashamedly sentimental Celtic country number, adding yearning pedal steel and bluegrass fiddle to the mix, while Islay continues the quest for whisky sponsorship with trite references to “the wind through the barley” and “the bonnie, the brave and the true” playing into the hands of nostalgic expats.
In addition to covering bluegrass standard Cotton Eye Joe, their originals follow the commercial country playbook, invoking place names, liquor, wicked women, daddy lessons and homesickness. Milarrochy Bay is brazen Scottish line dancing fodder with Evans calling the steps, while The Wedding is a perky electro swing number to the tune of The Streets of Cairo. Drinking Song turbo-charges the sea shanty tradition to create a lagered-up anthem while All Roads is more dewy-eyed nostalgia, garlanded with the swelling skirl of bagpipes and military drums.
Saint Phnx’s emotional anthem Happy Place is retooled here to turn up the guitar picking and turn down the martial rhythms. This requiem for their dad remains a fair cut above anything they have come up with in collaboration with Evans, who at least fits snugly into their existing template to create a bigger band of brothers.
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Blue celebrate 25 years as a boy/man band (with a brief hiatus in late 2000s) by releasing a seventh album which does little to mark them out as any more than an R&B-oriented pale shadow of Take That. The Vow and The Day The Earth Stood Still are standard swelling, chestbeating orchestral ballads while One Last Time hits the non-winning combination of sounding forced and banal.
They make us wait for the R&B attitude of All About Us, featuring an arthritic self-referencing rap, and the slick soul funk of Neon Honey, their acknowledged rip-off of Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar. More of this easy breezy pop style could have elevated the album and boosted their hit rate in the competitive man band market.
Indie power trio The Cribs were a fixture of the 2000s festival circuit; now Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman return with their first album in five years, older, wiser, less chaotic and helter skelter but still with a ready supply of tunes, from the indie doo-wop and Beach Boys romance of Selling a Vibe’s title track to the fuzzy melancholia of Summer Seizures.
Frontman Ryan takes aim at himself on the low-slung acoustic punk of Looking For the Wrong Guy then flips the sentiment on the choppy If Our Paths Never Crossed. Navigating the free flowing Self-Respect and the operatic flourish of You’ll Tell Me Anything, they arrive at Brothers Won’t Break, a reaffirmation of their fraternal bonds.
South London quartet Dry Cleaning enlist the wiggy Cate Le Bon to produce their third album of sprechgesang drollery. Stealthy gothic punk basslines and the industrial scree of guitar are teamed with frontwoman Florence Shaw’s breathy insouciance on Hit My Head All Day. Her bandmates are free to explore a seductive leftfield soundtrack as she commands much of the attention with her mostly spoken ruminations on such lesser sung topics as her love of well-fired rolls and other incinerated foodstuffs (“I could never live with someone who didn’t enjoy scorched and burnt foods as much as me”).
CLASSICAL
In Search of Youkali - Songs of Kurt Weill (Chandos) ★★★★
Fate dictated Kurt Weill’s life journey. Born in 1900 to a synagogue cantor, and despite early signs of a future aligned to the diktats of German modernism, impatience led Weill to the world of theatre, those caustic Berlin collaborations with Brecht, ultimate disfavour with the Nazis that took him to Paris, before eventual exile in America where his Broadway songs rank among his greatest hits. In Search of Youkali - featuring soprano Katie Bray with the flavoursome support of accordionist Murray Grainger, double bassist Marianne Schofield and pianist William Vann - is an affectionate tribute to Weill’s theatre music, a journey scanning the quintessential earthiness of the German songs, the cool Parisienne intermission and show-stopping American numbers. Bray adopts a single-minded approach that maybe underplays the grittiness of the Brechtian Weill, countered however by the quirky ingenuity of the backing arrangements. The interspersed Youkali improvisations provide a moody, poignant connecting thread. Ken Walton
FOLK
Winter Wonderband: Joy Illimited (Own Label) ★★★★
This warmly atmospheric seasonal offering comes from Maclaine Colston, Jennifer Crook, Beth Porter and Saul Rose, their richly toned instrumental palette including accordion, harp, hammered dulcimer, cello and percussion (with further drumming from producer Stuart Bruce). These glittering song accompaniments open with a striking setting of Thomas Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush, the bird’s outburst of “joy illimited” providing the title of this double album (the second disc a live recording). Robust vocal harmonies deliver the hoary old Gower Wassail and the tender yet stately Coventry Carol, sounding over harp and dulcimer chimes and accordion strains. Elsewhere is the delicately poised harp and dulcimer duet of Lady Marian, while traditional material such as the stalwart trudge of the Gallant Poacher rubs shoulders with the contemporary bittersweet of Crook’s Slow Down December, Boo Hewardine’s New Year’s Eve and even a tremulous rendition of George Michael’s Last Christmas. Jim Gilchrist
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