Album reviews: The Black Keys | Jack Garratt | Humour
The Black Keys serve up sparkling, soulful indie pop on their 13th album, writes Fiona Shepherd
The Black Keys: No Rain, No Flowers (Easy Eye Sound/Parlophone) ★★★★
Jack Garratt: Pillars (Cooking Vinyl) ★★★
Humour: Learning Greek (So Young) ★★★★
Ohio duo The Black Keys hit the lucky 13th album stage in free and easy mood. Oscillating between garagey blues and sparkling, soulful indie pop for much of their career, they stick in the latter territory for No Rain, No Flowers.
Like its equally upbeat predecessor Ohio Players, this is a collaborative effort with singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney welcoming some additional musical voices. Last time round, the high profile likes of Beck and Noel Gallagher joined the party; on this occasion, The Black Keys work with backroom songwriters who have penned hits for the likes of Madonna, Adele and Stevie Nicks (Rick Nowels) and country stars Kacey Musgraves, Tim McGraw and Tenille Townes (Daniel Tashian) and can bring some piano-led chops to their deceptively economic set-up.
Auerbach is an experienced production ace, and has already worked with Nowels on Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence. Unsurprisingly, the sound of No Rain, No Flowers is sumptuous, not least on the title track, with its burnished guitar tones, pop soul vocals and touch of disco synth.
The Beck-like funk blues of The Night Before pairs fuzztone guitar with a cheery melodic hooklike, while Babygirl layers on a light blues piano line to breezy pop effect. Down to Nothing leans back into their signature psych blues while there is further blues rock heft behind Man on a Mission and its beseeching realization that “you’ve become my new obsession”.
On Repeat is a rapturous trip with a heady guitar figure, ecstatic vocals and shuffling drums coalescing to produce an escapist dreaminess. Make You Mine is even more euphoric, with falsetto vocals and glorious strings drawing on the influence of 70s soul and disco outfits such as The Stylistics. In contrast the feelgood pop funk of All My Life is rooted in Eighties style while the closing, country-flavoured ballad Neon Moon stands apart from the rest of the album in invoking the spirit of The Band.
Several years before Lewis Capaldi went public on his mental health struggles, one man band Jack Garratt felt compelled to take his own musical hiatus. Having hit the ground running with both the Brits Critics Choice and BBC Sound of 2016 awards, he promptly ran into the ground. His delayed second album Love, Death & Dancing then got lost in the Covid shuffle and there have been further crises of confidence - a reminder in particular of the loneliness of the long distance solo artist.
Garratt returns with a third album of mixed blessings. No doubt the Ed Sheeran-style formulaic feelgood pop of Catherine Wheel and the Coldplay-with-a-breakbeat vibes of Shaftesbury Avenue will keep daytime radio programmers happy but he also takes a leaf out of Jungle’s loose, carefree funk book on Ready! Steady! Go! and the positive build of Manifest/It’ll Be Alright in the End which opens as luminous piano R&B, dappled with autotuned and pitch shifted vocals, before opening out into an exultant soul track. Later in the album, Garratt loses a bit of momentum around the introverted electro mantra Flower Girl Confetti but brings things up again with the suitably liberated Higher.
Glasgow post-hardcore quintet Humour follow up some well-received EPs with an ambitious debut album produced by Idlewild’s Rod Jones. Learning Greek is themed around singer Andreas Christodoulidis’s burgeoning interest in his Hellenic heritage with lyrics inspired by his family’s history under Greek military rule, sampled readings from his father and recurring motifs of death, war, stoicism and making peace with the past, all wrapped up in bludgeoning drums, churning guitars, quieter moments of brooding desperation and contrasting passages where Christodoulidis lets rip with full metal throttle.
CLASSICAL
Sparks from Ashes: Nicky Spence and Dylan Perez (Chandos) ★★★★
If anything can rescue the mediocre Moravian poems of Gustav Pfleger-Moravský, it’s surely Dvořák’s affectionate settings: that scented cycle of 18 songs he published as Cypresses. Add to that this carefully considered performance by Scots tenor Nicky Spence and pianist Dylan Perez and the outcome is about as good as it can get. Spence delves deep into the shifting, sometimes dark sentiments yet delivers it with seemingly effortless rapture. Bartók’s five Village Scenes provide a grittier complement, which the duo embrace with compelling verve. But that’s just part of the story with Sparks from Ashes, an album title borrowed from the four-song Op 5 collection by the sadly short-lived Czech composer/conductor Vítezslava Kaprálová, which is featured alongside her later Op 15 songs, Waving Farewell. Spence and Perez finish with Jaroslav Křička’s quirky folk-inspired Three Fables Op 21, ending a fascinatingly characterful recital with the engaging buoyancy it always promises. Ken Walton
FOLK
Magnus Turpie & Friends: Hold On Tight! (Brechin All Records) ★★★★
This notable debut album from Edinburgh-based button accordionist Magnus Turpie’s dance band ropes in a sizeable shifting cast of players including Daisy McCormick on fiddle, guitarist Dominic Blaikie, piano accordionist Linda Campbell and pianist Beatrice Blanco. Apart from three hoary old songs, the tracks include country dance sets such as Dashing White Sergeant and Gay Gordons, as well as popular airs like The Dark Island and Leaving Lismore, all played with ease and affection. Nothing groundbreaking; just old favourites and some surprises – as when a perky Breton tune gives way to Turpie’s own composition, Magnus’s Polka. Turpie doesn’t let the fact that he lives with Down’s Syndrome get in the way of a good tune. In fact, as he declares in the sleeve notes, the condition enables him to “reach the parts that other musicians cannot reach”. Jim Gilchrist
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