Album reviews: Sleaford Mods | Courtney Marie Andrews | Barry Adamson | M John Henry

Sleaford Mods: The Demise of Planet X (Rough Trade) ★★★

Courtney Marie Andrews: Valentine (Thirty Tigers) ★★★★

Barry Adamson: Scala!!! OST (Mute) ★★★★

M John Henry: Early Songs, Of Late (Gargleblast Records) ★★★★

Buckle up for another stream-of-consciousness ride with Nottingham electro-punk duo Sleaford Mods. Frontman Jason Williamson is not a happy clappy chappy but he does have a way of skewering dishonorable behaviour and shining a light on social minutiae, while his co-conspirator Andrew Fearn is let loose on a playground of sounds and samples to temper Williamson’s strident realities.

Following 2023’s UK Grim, their latest album, The Demise of Planet X, is a further catalogue of disillusion, drilling down into concerns personal and local but relatable, more state-of-the-pavements than state-of-the-nation. This time round there are more leavening guest spots, with actress Gwendoline Christie adding some oddball glamour on opening track The Good Life, alongside the crooning of Joe Hicklin of fellow Midlands duo Big Special. As well as providing an excuse for some actual vocal melody, Hicklin sounds like the angel on Williamson’s shoulder as the latter engages in an internal debate on his compulsion to diss other artists over Fearn’s pliant bassline.

Double Diamond is a ruminative wallow in the druggy dirt, mitigated by hypnotic piano and strings, while Williamson returns to narcotic territory on the choppy No Touch. His guest vocal foil Sue Tompkins, erstwhile frontwoman of Glasgow’s Life Without Buildings, provides a conversational punkiness in a Slits style, while it’s hard not to compare and contrast Aldous Harding’s coquettish siren call and Williamson’s curt bark on Elitist G.O.A.T (unfavourably) with Baxter Dury’s more joyful oeuvre.

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Donald Trump is the inspiration for Bad Santa, a sinister offering slightly elevated by pan pipe effects. The title track brazenly co-opts the melody of The Magic Roundabout theme tune to soundtrack its descent into insular tribalism while there are further cultural namedrops on the woozy, lopsided Don Draper and Kill List, inspired by the Ben Wheatley film of the same name.

Elsewhere, Megaton tackles the schizophrenia of social media and Shoving the Images the energy-sapping negativity of the internet. So far, so what. Gina Was is more intriguing and murky. Opening with a spoken word recollection by Williamson of an assault at school, it emerges as one of the lighter, catchier tunes on offer.

Americana singer/songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews offers cleansing balm on her latest album. Valentine was written in the destabilising midst of bereavement and new love but it’s an easy listen, with her beautiful country pop tones soaring high above the opening Pendulum Swing, shades of Joni Mitchell in her soprano rapture.

The yearning earworm Cons & Clowns is gently embellished with plaintive flute and sighing male backing vocals, while Little Picture of a Butterfly shares some MOR pop DNA with Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun and Everyone Want to Feel Like You Do is a steady AOR plea with an unexpected burnished guitar solo. Even in such charming company, the heartbreaking simplicity of Best Friend shines through.

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Former Magazine bass player and all round cat Barry Adamson unleashes his soundtrack for Scala!!!, the 2023 documentary celebrating London’s legendary underground cinema. This is a world of twanging guitars, impish organ and funky beats which thrums with the glee of exploitation pics, late night specials and cult curios, ranging from the strutting gumshoe vibes of Babs Johnson is Divine, with its bendy bassline and Henry Mancini horns, via the analogue synth dystopia of Acid Celluloid to the 80s electro groove of Spandau Politics.

M John Henry, onetime frontman of Bellshill outfit De Rosa, reworks a rich trove of older and unreleased material on Early Songs, Of Late, with those indie roots poking through on the likes of Camera and the acoustic math rock of All Saints Day. The majority of tracks date from his band’s 2006 debut album Mend, but the bare picking of Evelyn and the twinkling vistas of Cathkin Braes sound timeless.

CLASSICAL

Arise My Love: Music for the Break of Day (CORO) ★★★

Among the quirks of Oxbridge chapel choirs is Magdalen College Oxford’s quaint tradition of issuing an annual May Day dawn chorus atop its chapel tower. In tune with that is an album of “morning” music, liturgical and poetic settings from composers associated with the college's 500 year history, from John Sheppard to James Whitbourn to such broader luminaries as Purcell, Tallis, Britten, Finzi, Leighton, Weir, Tavener and Walton, plus works by Gabriel Jackson, Charlotte Bray, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Jonathan Dove. There’s a drivetime vibe to the sequencing - the awakening ecstasy of Jackson’s To Morning, a dash of Tallis’s lightly-spiced O Nata Lux and trademark mysticism of Tavener’s As One Who Has Slept intertwined with the heft of Britten’s Festival Te Deum, Walton’s Jubilate Deo or Finzi’s Welcome Sweet and Sacred Feast. The choir’s engaging performances have an unpolished charm, if not always bang in tune. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Asaf Harris: I Thought I Was Ready (Asaf Harris Music) ★★★★

Melding lyricism and improvisational spontaneity, Israeli saxophonist and composer Asaf Harris is joined to potent effect on his second album by Guy Moskovich on piano, double-bassist Omri Ever Hadani and drummer David Sirkis. Their sprightly opening title track seems to banish any titular self-doubt, piano tracking tenor sax with alacrity. Their animated approach continues in I Don’t Know What’s Inside (but it’s got to be good), Moskovich’s piano climbing jubilantly over brisk propulsion before a brooding excursion from Harris. Langa Grove, meanwhile, is beautifully mysterious, sax and bowed bass singing alongside flowing piano, sax wailing over ominous drum outbursts. The up-tempo Climbing Down could be the theme from a TV drama series, while a lonesome, Middle-Eastern-accented solo saxophone leads into the powerful closing track, FCB, its keenly lamenting sax and drum flurries laced through to dramatic effect by Onn Yosef Kadosh on oud. Jim Gilchrist

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