Album reviews: Neil Diamond | Midge Ure | Carla J Easton | Countess of Fife

Neil Diamond: Wild At Heart (Capitol/UME) ★★★

Midge Ure: A Man Of Two Worlds (Chrysalis Records) ★★

Carla J Easton: I Think That I Might Love You (Fika Recordings/Ernest Jenning Record Co) ★★★

Countess of Fife: New Phone, New Car, New Man (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★

All but retired from live appearances, the mighty Neil Diamond turns his attention to catalogue curation, dusting off some of the unreleased tracks from his late Noughties collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, the man who spun gold from Johnny Cash’s later career. His work with Diamond spawned two well received albums, 12 Songs and the chart topping Home Before Dark.

The material on Wild At Heart dates from the sessions for the latter and while it is clear there are no undiscovered classics lying twinkling on the cutting room floor, Diamond offcuts are better than most. If nothing else, it is a pleasure to revel in his baritone authority once more.

The opening title track sets the standard for touching simplicity as he proclaims himself “wild at heart, ready for a rodeo” over perky electric piano and honky tonk rhythms from Tom Petty’s onetime wingman Benmont Tench. Next, he pairs the straight-talking philosophy of You Can’t Have It All (“do we really need more stuff?”) with harmonizing guitars.

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Ruminations on relationships and affairs of the heart loom large, whether it is his plea to value action and feeling over words on Talking It To Death, a song that is sick of arguments and eloquently embellished with spare Spanish guitar, or Shine On’s simple words of encouragement in the midst of weariness.

Diamond still has the capacity to surprise. The Secret You is audaciously backed only by organ drone, with Diamond scatting through a portion of the song, while You’re Getting to Me could be classed as a non-romantic love song. However, You Still Look Good To Me is a more conventional ode to contentment and fulfilment in later life, while he can’t resist his preferred love metaphor on You’re My Favorite Song, another simple ditty with a pleasing western swing touch.

In contrast, Midge Ure has been so busy touring in recent years that he has neglected the studio. He fills that gap now with his first album of new material in 12 years. A Man of Two Worlds comprises eight instrumentals and eight new songs. The first “world” of beatific keyboard compositions was inspired by his lockdown listening to instrumentals and ranges from the limpid The Space In Between to the chiming minimalism of Blues and Greys with its touch of baroque drama.

The songs tend to the ponderous and pompous, with Ure turning his gaze inwards and outwards across the eight tracks. The synth prog of Ordinary Man is typical Ure, World Away is early 80s angsty synth pop (“please stop giving our world away”) in style if not content, while The Man Who Stole Your Soul is yet another lament inspired by the 47th President of the US.

Inspired by the Scottish girl bands she interviewed for her excellent Since Yesterday documentary, singer/pianist Carla J Easton has taken up guitar for the first time in her solo career. The results lead her in a jangly indie direction on I Think I Might Love You then onwards to the sugary pop of Oh Yeah and the grunge pop-inflected Pillars Crash Down. Her collaborators include Belle & Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson, Hefner frontman Darren Hayman and her Hen Hoose associate MALKA and keyboards are not entirely banished on the slinky electro pop likes of Let’s Make Plans for the Weekend.

Rezillos frontwoman Fay Fife sings up a storm on New Phone, New Car, New Man, the second album by her country outfit Countess of Fife, mustering psych folk energy on Call Me the Witch, attacking Big Sister Little Sis and Take Me to the Grave with rockabilly and cowpunk relish (ably assisted on the latter by bandmate Kirsten Adamson) and digging in with soft yet strong vocals on the ballad Live Again.

CLASSICAL

Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Cello (Signum Classics) ★★★★★

Beethoven’s five cello sonatas provide progressive insight into key stages of the composer’s tumultuous creative journey. The first two, written in Berlin in 1796 for the cello-playing Prussian monarch King Friedrich Wilhelm II, combine virtuosic adventure with fresh-faced bravado. The wonderful 1807-8 A major Sonata, dramatic and lyrical, belongs to the rhetorical world of the Fifth Symphony. The final two, from 1815, embrace the late Beethoven’s inner intensity. What really singles out this excellent double-album release by cellist Paul Watkins and pianist Alessio Bax is the sheer generosity of their performances, both to each other (theirs is a genuinely shared and eloquent partnership), and to the spirit of Beethoven. Nothing is forced, especially from Bax, who partners Watkins with restraint yet remarkable poetic precision. Watkins, while equally sensitive to scale, garners energy from within the music itself. The result is teasingly unprovocative, yet profoundly illuminating. Ken Walton

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FOLK

Lady Maisery and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith: Wakefire: A Summer Album (LM Records) ★★★★

Following their fine winter project, Awake Arise, Lady Maisery (Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans and Hazel Askew), and the duo of Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith reconvene with this elegantly packaged, 27-track CD and book celebrating summer. With superb individual and harmony singing as well as spoken word, couched in accompaniments including guitar, melodeon, harp and fiddle, the joyous and jubilant are interleaved with the thought-provoking. The introductory Summer’s In lifts the heart right away, with a passage from Cider with Rosie, but there’s much more to this than English pastoral idyll. Rheingans’s May Day invokes political struggle, tradition is celebrated but also questioned, as in the unsettling harp and cittern setting of Staines Morris, there are excursions to Sweden and Latvia and Askew’s visionary River Came Back gives way to wildfire smoke and the looming spectre of climate change. Jim Gilchrist

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