Album reviews: Stereolab | Dr Robert & Matt Deighton | Scott C Park

Dr Robert & Matt Deighton: The Instant Garden (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★

Scott C Park: Crossing the Line (self-released) ★★★★

Beloved analogue synth stylists Stereolab return with their first new album in 15 years and will spend most of the second half of 2025 touring this excellent comeback record. Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a mouthful of a title for an album that is easy to digest, from the glorious aqueous pop of Aerial Troubles, with its devotional intertwining voices, to the pastoral electronica of Immortal Hands, one of a number of tracks which unfolds over more than five minutes and several movements.

They offer song titles to conjure with, too. Electrified Teenybop! is as fun as its name, all hectic bubblegum arpeggios with some disco kicks, while Esemplastic Creeping Eruption is not some death metal odyssey but a blithe pop number with shades of sci-fi shudder.

Blow Monkeys frontman Dr Robert teams up with Matt Deighton of Nineties acid jazzers Mother Earth for a balmy album of gentle acoustics, beguiling pastoral pop and soothing harmonising vocals. Deighton calls their hippyish collaboration “horticounterculture”. The Instant Garden is infused with the influence of Syd Barrett, Crosby Stills & Nash and George Harrison, while opening Bowiesque ballad Giving Up the Ghost also gives off distinct early Eighties Glasgow vibes. Gardening in the Mediterranean Way, meanwhile, is not a stray title from the Sparks album but a jumping off point for some mellow melancholia.

Hebridean singer/songwriter Scott C Park exhibits strong pop chops on his debut album, emerging as a Scottish Bright Eyes on the spindly, plaintive folk pop of Crossing the Line’s title track. Several tracks are dappled with cosmic Americana brushstrokes while Park exudes Paolo Nutini-style Caledonia soul vibes on Slide. It’s an easy listen on some difficult subject matter, from the bitter country waltz of Blind Eye to Come Back to Me Dead, a sad and angry confessional on loss of faith.

CLASSICAL

Schubert: Music for Violin and Piano (Delphian) ★★★★

Did Schubert write Summertime? Of course not, Gershwin did. But there’s a lovely touch at the end of this Schubert duo album by violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux and pianist Joseph Havlat where the two composers shake hands. This is Sommer-Abschied, a “reimagining” by Halvat in the spirit of a Schubert Lied in which the harmonic framework of the Gershwin gives vent to a lyrical Schubertian fantasy by the violinist. It’s a magical end – dissipating into the ether – to an already imaginative programme that intersperses major Schubert works with genuine transcriptions of his songs. The former range from a sparkling Rondo in B Minor to the eccentric Fantasy in C, via the adventurous Sonata in A, showcasing the expressive versatility and supple rapport between Saluste-Bridoux and Havlet. The incidental songs invoke rare intimacy, the arrangement of Sei Mir Gegrüsst – which the Fantasy uses for a variation set – an especial delight. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Janette Mason: ReWired (JM Music) ★★★★

Pianist Janette Mason has worked widely across genres and it shows in her capricious choice of material, ranging from classics such as Rodgers and Hart’s Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered to hits by Oasis and David Bowie, all re-imagined with inventive relish with longstanding collaborators bassist Tom Mason and drummer Eric Ford. They open with Gary Numan’s Cars, the original’s wobbly electronica replaced with vivacious piano work from Mason, and Lullaby of Birdland commences with restraint before giving way to an unhurried bass solo and tantalising tempo switches. The gospel inflections of satisfyingly rolling piano complement Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger before erupting mischievously, while Eleanor Rigby is given the time of her life. They’re joined by saxophonist Paul Booth for two tracks, the haunting Prayer for the Planet and Olivia Rodrigo’s Good 4 U, in which he breaks out deftly as Mason ups the pace. Jim Gilchrist

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