Album reviews: Suzanne Vega | Peggy Seeger | Andy Bell | The Supernaturals

Peggy Seeger: Teleology (Red Grape Music) ★★★★

Andy Bell: Ten Crowns (Crown Recordings) ★★★

The Supernaturals: Show Tunes (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★

New York singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega says her first album of exclusively new material in over a decade is themed around struggle. Listening to it, however, is no chore as the ideas, sentiments and musical styles pour forth with the easy practice of an expert performer.

The reassuring chug of acoustic rhythm guitar and Vega’s soothing voice are embellished with tremolo guitar trills and cooing backing vocals on peppy opener Speakers’ Corner. The song flows freely but the lyrics caution that free speech is a right that comes with accountability.

From here, Vega shoots off in myriad directions, taking in the slower, spacious, soaring title track, chunky rock reverberations of Witch, familiar half-spoken pen portrait of Lucinda and the wholly unexpected Eighties sunshine funk groove of Love Thief.

She effortlessly rides the tonal contrasts between the freewheeling folk pop waltz Galway and the scampering garage rock’n’roll of Rats and also within songs, channelling Leonard Cohen on Last Train From Mariupol, an undulating lament for the huddled masses of the Ukraine, which then ramps up dramatically with crashing percussion and martial drums. Not everything is quite as arresting as this but there’s enough food for thought to go round.

US folk legend Peggy Seeger goes out on a musical high, celebrating her 90th birthday by releasing her 25th and final album, forged in the company of her sons Calum and Neill MacColl and daughter-in-law Kate St John. Teleology rages against the dying of the light in part. Seeger remains alive to the troubles of the day, calling out hardship, inequality and greed on Sing About These Hard Times and making a call to protest and direct action on Sit Down, with harmony voices in accord.

Driftwood is her solo ode to refugees, with her voice echoing against the sound of wind, while autoharp, piano and a sighing harmony chorus back her song for the displaced, No Place Like Home. She favours bare balladry throughout, from the poignant valediction of Apple Tree to a touching rendition of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written for her by her then husband Ewan MacColl.

Her work here is maybe not quite done as she shares a final impish wish on I Want to Meet Paul Simon, a sweet ode from one musical icon to another, populated by his characters and speckled with his lyrics: “I’ve got fifty ways to meet him but I’m running out of time”.

Erasure frontman Andy Bell is on a galactic dance odyssey on latest solo album Ten Crowns, kicking off with celestial trance track Breaking Thru the Interstellar, before applying bells and whistles to the hi-NRG-inflected disco of Dance For Mercy. He is bolstered by the mighty alto strains of US singer Sarah Potenza on pumping electro pop number Lies So Deep and by his vocal shero Debbie Harry on middling affair Heart’s A Liar. Bell mostly paints in broad brushstrokes with a handful of pomp flourishes, none more so than the church organ solo which opens Latino electro pop plea Dawn of Heavens Gate.

Glasgow indie outfit The Supernaturals were pulled along in the Britpop slipstream of the late Nineties, making it on to Top of the Pops and numerous advert soundtracks with their most enduring track, Smile. The group have released three albums since reforming in 2012, their latest inspired by their original guitarist Derek McManus’s direction that the band should write “show tunes”. In practice, this means everything from the dreamy synth arpeggios of Clockwork Orange to the grungey Burn the Witch, alternative lullaby The Dread to the rollicking regret of If You Can’t Love Yourself, all dispatched with seasoned panache.

CLASSICAL

Bruckner: Symphony No 9 (Hallé) ★★★★

To complete or not to complete: that’s the question posed by many of history’s unfinished symphonies. Bruckner’s Ninth figures among them, his last great symphonic utterance left after his death as substantial drafts, but requiring skilled and sympathetic archeological work to be turned into a convincing conclusion. Several have done so, most recently the editorial team led, in this latest 2022 revision, by John A Phillips. The impact of the Finale - now a bold statement of brazen self-belief rather than the sublime resignation of the foregoing Adagio that ends most “unfinished” performances - is powerfully expressed in this fascinating recording by the Hallé Orchestra under its new chief conductor Kahchun Wong. The Finale aside, Wong asserts his own broadly-paced view of the entire symphony, the patience he applies to unfolding its gargantuan structure marked by an unexpected sensuousness. Mostly it works, sometimes it challenges natural instinct. It’s definitely thought-provoking. Ken Walton

FOLK

Flook: Sanju (Flatfish Records) ★★★★

Thirty years on from their formation, the flute-powered Flook open their fifth studio album, Sanju, with The Farther Shore, re-establishing the familiar, mellifluous flute and whistle pairing of Brian Finnegan and Sarah Allen over a companionably unhurried shuffle from guitarist Ed Boyd and bodhrán master John Joe Kelly. Studio guests include Patsy Reid on fiddle and viola and producer Stevie J Jones on various keyboards, while co-producer John Calvert provides grounding with ukulele bass. Reid’s viola adds muscle to the lively Jig for Shaun and breaks out on her own dramatically for The Dawn Wall. This band can work up speed without any loss of lightness or articulation, although much of the album remains in relaxed mood. Tie the Knot in Georgia is another fine Finnegan melody, gliding elegantly over chiming guitar plus piano from Konstantine Tumanov before whirring bodhrán brings a joyous skip to the subsequent reels. Jim Gilchrist