Album reviews: Queens of the Stone Age | Bernie Taupin | Siobhan Miller
Like its title, the new Queens of the Stone Age album falls just shy of being flawless, writes Fiona Shepherd
Queens of the Stone Age: Perfecth (Matador Records) ★★★★
Bernie Taupin: The Sea Has No Mercy (Vertigo/MCA Nashville) ★★★★
Siobhan Miller: While We Have the Time (Songprint Recordings) ★★★
As part of the typically droll marketing campaign for the ninth Queens of the Stone Age album, the band launched a complaints hotline for some general venting. No objections here though. Like its title, Perfecth falls just shy of being flawless but it’s another damn fine QOTSA album which lives up to its themes of vulnerability and the unattainability of perfection in love and life, inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken vessels are repaired with gold to create something more beautiful.
As a band, the ineffably cool Queens have a chemistry that just works - gnarly, inspired, yes even beautiful. Band leader Josh Homme arrives here fresh from duetting with Shania Twain and Mastodon (not on the same record - he’s eclectic but he’s not that eclectic) to ace the opening brooding grunge torch song It’s Only Love, its Tom Waits-like limping rhythm and soused strings interrupted by the sound of passing trains.
Soulful southern rocker Insignificant Other concerns the sudden absence of someone who was the centre of your world (“My four leaf clover, it’s over”), capturing the emotional confusion on its second take with plangent noodling, soft, sultry backing vocals and Homme mourning “I thought I knew you baby”, distending the “knew” long enough to induce some guilt in his quarry.
McCartneyesque rocker Where the Goth Girls At? is a more celebratory affair, with Homme recalling the teenage trawl for attention while the band gradually ramp up the pace for a mean streak to the finish line. And the gems keep coming. Mono is dark rapture with acid blues guitar, From The Cliff a tender psych pop paean, twisted slightly left of centre, while Sunday is super slinky in a late 70s Bowie fashion, with Carlos Alomar-style guitar crunch and a steady tribal drumbeat.
There are intimations of Brian Eno and Iggy Pop influences on the emotive croon of Run Away from the Mob and Easy Street with its controlled, distorted guitars and rock’n’roll imagery of life on the edge, but such is this band’s strength of character that they can only come away from this with their prestige enhanced.
Bernie Taupin, the man who put words into Elton John’s mouth, digs down into his Brown Dirt Cowboy persona on what he describes as “a late life manifesto”. Not only is The Sea Has No Mercy his first solo album since 1987 but also the first entirely self-written collection from the 76-year-old, recorded in Nashville with some of its finest session musicians and vocal contributions from the likes of Brandi Carlile and Lee Ann Womack.
Perhaps surprisingly for a songwriter used to being the silent partner, Taupin’s suitably weathered folk/country voice is immediately inviting and credible, whether delivering the gentle gospel country of Old Church Road or the spare, gravelly blues of Joker. He pays mellow, yearning tribute to Ghosts Of Greater Men (“peace in the valley when George Jones sang”) and adds Tex Mex flavouring to Come On California, another plaintive grizzly remembrance, with Carlile aching in the background.
With her deep feeling for Scottish folk heritage, Siobhan Miller has become a go-to artist for curating ambitious, heartfelt tribute events but she gets her undiluted moment in the spotlight again on her sixth studio album, with guests such as Eddi Reader, Donald Shaw and Kris Drever playing her tune for a change. While We Have the Time is a light, fragrant folk pop listen from start to finish, thanks to her easy dynamic with her band. She leans into Americana on Out of Time and mines some Joni Mitchell spirit on piano ballad High Above It All. It’s all pretty cosy until the closing moments when Fergus McCreadie cooks up a jazzy maelstrom on Everybody’s Leaving.
CLASSICAL
Britten: A Boy Was Born | A Ceremony of Carols (Delphian) ★★★★
In December it will be the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten, surely the foremost influential figure in 20th century British music. There will be other tributes, but the Choir of Merton College Oxford have stolen a march with a charming new album focusing on his Christmas masterpieces. The release shines a light on the schoolboy composer (the inventive purity of A Hymn to the Virgin); on the searching and extensive complexities of his student years (A Boy was Born); but also on the early maturity witnessed in such uniquely imaginative gems as A Ceremony of Carols (with harpist Cecily Beer), the deceptively simple A Shepherd’s Carol and the joyously off-kilter Festival Te Deum (with organist François Cloete, who also performs solo the austere Prelude & Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria). Benjamin Nicholas directs choral performances that capture both the purity and profound lucidity of Britten’s music. Ken Walton
JAZZ
Matt Carmichael: Held in the Dark: Porthole Music ★★★★★
Apparently written while caring for a loved one, this album sees the young Scots tenor saxophonist further develop his very personal, folk-infused jazz with regular collaborators pianist Fergus McCreadie, violinist Charlie Stewart, bassist Ali Watson and drummer Stephen Henderson, plus guitarists Chris Amer and James Mackay, with Tom Gibbs on clarinet. Carmichael’s understated yet warm-toned phrase-making gives fellow musicians plenty of leeway, instruments swirling together or breaking away. Sax murmurs over guitar strum to establish a sultry, bluesy riff in opener Red Sky, while McCreadie’s hymn-like introduction to Morning Geese gives way to a pensive sax hook, intensifying gloriously amid echoing guitar and fiddle. Carmichael takes over piano for a solitary, contemplative Prayer, before the groove resumes with a vengeance in the jubilant stramash of Golden Moon. Limpid piano introduces the haunting title track, closing what is arguably Carmichael’s richest and most emotionally informed music yet. Jim Gilchrist
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