Album reviews: The Bluebells | Fellow Mortals | Broken Chanter | Brontës
The Bluebells are back with an expanded line-up, although their new double album might have made more of an impact at half the length, writes Fiona Shepherd
The Bluebells: This Is…The Bluebells (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★
Fellow Mortals: Stella’s Birth-Day (Hands Full Recordings/Believe) ★★★★
Broken Chanter: This Could Be Us, You, Or Anybody Else (Chemikal Underground) ★★★
Brontës: Brontës (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★
A mere 45 years into their on-off career, The Bluebells would like to reintroduce themselves. You may know them as founding members Ken and David McCluskey and Robert “Bobby Bluebell” Hodgens but their latest line-up is completed by their peers Campbell Owens, Douglas McIntyre and Mick Slaven, veterans variously of Aztec Camera, Love & Money and The Leopards and not the kind of musicians you simply summon from the subs bench when it’s time to perform. All six members have contributed to the songs on their latest album, hence its title.
As reintroductions go, This Is…The Bluebells is a tad longer than it needs to be, a double album which could do with being a trim single dispatch. Despite the occasional appealing turn of melody, the likes of middle of the road beat tune You’re Leaving and the twee Sing Like Little Birds Sing amble by without leaving much of an impression. The carefree What I See Up on the Roof is typical of their easy breezy listening, with its gentle intimations of fresh viewpoints.
But scratch that pleasant surface and there is a degree of anger and engagement underscoring some of the tracks, not least the album’s two singles which balance historical perspective with concern for the legacy for future generations. The languid jangling and soothing nostalgia of A Monochrome Set contrasts the seeming black and white transmissions of history with the technicolour complexity and noisiness of 21st century communication. A lyrical shadow passes across the deceptively mellow soundtrack of No Pasaran! as Ken McCluskey croons “Donald blasts his infernal trumpet… a dark clarion call” before fretting gives way to optimism.
The Bluebells continue to honour their part in writing Glasgow’s jangling indie pop blueprint but the latter half of the album turns up the twang for a slightly rawer, rootsier sound on a number of tracks and even a loping reggae rhythm to accompany the David Lynchian reverie of Dream On.
Ahead of the release of a new Trashcan Sinatras album this summer, frontman Francis Reader embarks on a ravishing collaboration with Simon Dine of Noonday Underground as Fellow Mortals. Their album Stella’s Birth-Day is inspired by a series of poems written in the 1720s by Jonathan Swift for Esther Johnson aka Stella. Special editions will be bound with a book of Swift’s poetry.
Reader makes light work of the Restoration verse on the twinkling Bossa nova-inflected With These Eyes while elsewhere Dine fits beatific guitar twang to A Better State, lithe jazz trumpet and pizzicato strings to Stubborn Stoics and a stomping time signature and baroque backing to the unexpected, eccentric and intoxicating I’m Alive.
Onetime Kid Canaveral frontman David MacGregor releases his fourth album as Broken Chanter. This Could Be Us, You, Or Anybody Else, named after an etching by Indian artist Arpita Singh, channels the anger of previous album Chorus of Doubt into a desire to find community.
The Future Is Bright and I Don’t Want It and A Year Without Summer are as brooding as their titles suggest, while the indie maelstrom of Piazzale Loreto is named after the square in Milan where Mussolini’s body was displayed, but there is also fidgety new wave swagger to Atrocity/Adverts/Idiocy and a wiggy Tina Weymouth-style bassline tempering To The Victims They Call Citizens.
The debut album from Glasgow indie pop quartet Brontës is smooth sailing, blending bittersweet girl group sounds with latent anger and a yearning edge supplied by singer Eva Watt, who laments bad timing on San Francisco and bad boyfriends on Wouldn’t Be Me, before the band takes off into the sunset on Thelma and Louise.
CLASSICAL
Reich: The Sextets (Colin Currie Records) ★★★★
Prepare to be hypnotised; to experience the intoxicating minimalist adrenalin surge that Steve Reich’s music exists to deliver. Reich turns 90 this year, and the Colin Currie Group hits 20. Given the closeness of that ensemble’s eponymous Scots founder/director to Reich’s work - this is his label’s fourth dedicated disc - the immediacy and connection of this double celebration is hardly surprising. Currie’s assortment of percussionists vie with piano and synthesisers in Reich’s 1985 Sextet, capturing both its engineered precision and an emotional span extending from the lugubriously surreal to pugnaciously ecstatic. The more liberally-scored Pulitzer-winning Double Sextet offers invigorating, even subtler timbres - noxiously Weill-like in the slow central movement - beyond which Six Marimbas (re-scored from the earlier Six Pianos) is a timeless, moody response. Dance Patterns brings us back to the sidestepping vigour of archetypal Reich, a toe-tapping sign-off to a dazzling, energising album. Ken Walton
JAZZ
David Bowden: Unsung Songs for Solo Bass (David Bowden Music) ★★★★
Glasgow double bassist David Bowden is well known as a cornerstone of the high-flying Fergus McCreadie Trio as well as other collaborations including his world-jazz fusion outfit Mezcla. Here, as the title suggests, these absorbing explorations in solo double bass playing are informed by his immersion in vocal music, aiming to transpose its expressiveness on to the bass – no looping, layering or other effects, just the woody voice of the big bass fiddle. Some of the nine tracks, including three covers, start in meditative mode before thoughtful development – the opening Spiders Talk, for instance, or Hakken-Kraks, which gradually works up a riff for a busy excursion. WGS Blues lopes along with springy energy, while Lullaby for Esmée is a gently murmuring benison for Bowden’s daughter. And whoever was the recipient of Chris Thile’s Jessamyn’s Reel, its loose-limbed progress suggests a vivacious character. Jim Gilchrist
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