Album reviews: Van Morrison | Mary Chapin Carpenter | Marianne Faithfull | Mike McKenzie

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Personal History (Lambent Light/Thirty Tigers) ★★★

Marianne Faithfull: Burning Moonlight EP (Decca Records) ★★★★

Mike McKenzie: I’d Wait Again (Metro 13 Music) ★★★★

Such is his prolific flow that it seems barely a week goes by without a new album by Van Morrison. In fact, Remembering Now is only his first album of new material in three years, following collections of skiffle and rock’n’roll covers.

The past and present ebb and flow across its 14 tracks, as Morrison continues to pay tribute to his musical and geographical roots. Down to Joy is already familiar from the soundtrack to Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast while If It Wasn’t For Ray (“I wouldn’t be where I am today”) is a lightly exultant ode to Mr Charles’ rocking R&B.

The self-soothing hymn Haven’t Lost My Sense of Wonder features warm, brooding Hammond organ and gospel reassurance and, as if to prove the point, Back to Writing Love Songs sounds like the burden of grievance has been lifted off his shoulders.

He backs up his claims with the spiritual southern soul of Love, Lover and Beloved and makes light weather of the hard work needed to hold down a relationship on The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours.

Stomping Ground crosses over into whimsical nostalgia but the low-slung title track is a more intriguing exploration of what shapes us. Best of all, closing track Stretching Out is a soul jazz saunter which does indeed stretch out to a luxurious nine minutes and is a pleasure all the way.

Mary Chapin Carpenter also looks back in languor on her latest album. Arriving on the heels of her Looking for the Thread collaboration with Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis, Personal History was recorded live at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios and produced by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufmann, with his bandmate Anais Mitchell providing sweet support on the yearning Home is a Song.

Telling life stories through song is a running theme, introduced on What Did You Miss and refined on Paint + Turpentine, which ponders the mysteries of creativity. New Religion deals with finding her tribe while The Saving Things is Carpenter’s spin on a favourite things list song. Musically, she moves from uncluttered acoustic confessionals to the rootsier rock of Bitter Ender and limpid piano waltz The Night We Never Met with her usual restrained mastery.

Marianne Faithfull’s swansong EP comprises four songs recorded in the last year of her life. Like Morrison and Carpenter, she drew inspiration from her own past, specifically her first two albums, Marianne Faithfull and Come My Way, which were released simultaneously in April 1965 on Decca Records.

The opening lines of her debut hit As Tears Go By provide a jumping off point for Burning Moonlight, on which Faithfull’s commanding voice is accompanied by sonorous strummed guitar. The fuller sound of classy cocktail pop track Love Is, written with her grandson Oscar Dunbar, incorporates spoken word samples of the younger Marianne and the EP is rounded off with two traditional songs attesting to her lifelong love of folk music. Three Kinsmen Bold was originally learned from her father Glynn, while She Moves Thru The Fair is a song she has turned to throughout her career, rendered here as a ghostly a capella.

Edinburgh singer/songwriter Mike McKenzie is the spring chicken of the bunch but has lived enough of a life as a musician and frontman to present a sophisticated debut solo album, I’d Wait Again, recorded at Granton’s Metro 13 studios. His natural pop voice hits the spot across the ebullient Mr Bang!, big brassy number Control the Tide and the easy, rootsy pop of Sunshine, while the light dusting of Bacharach brass, strings and plangent guitar on Mourn You and Breathe You In are effortlessly but elegantly arranged.

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CLASSICAL

Heinrich Biber: Complete Violin Sonatas - 1681 (Delphian) ★★★★★

Croatian-born Baroque specialist Bojan Čičić has distinguished form when it comes to adventurous single composer albums. His complete Bach Partitas and Sonatas (2023) and complete Handel Sonatas (2024) for violin were exceptional, and so is this latest explorative immersion, the complete 1681 Violin Sonatas of Heinrich Biber, a composer whose radically inventive use of scordatura (retuning the violin), improvisatory freedom and out-of-the-box expressiveness are just some of the distinctive hallmarks of his extraordinary style. Čičić is joined by The Illyria Consort (theorbo, harp and organ), whose flexible, inventive intimacy over two discs makes for a heavenly and fascinating match. The opening - Sonata 1, the playlist is chronological - emerges over a drone in the way a folk band might open a pub set, teasing the listener with false starts, countering momentary flamboyance with soulful repose. Such tricksy spontaneity and stylish virtuosity persist throughout. It’s compulsive listening. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Colin Steele Quartet: The Blue Nile (Marina Records) ★★★★

The Blue Nile completes trumpeter Colin Steele’s fine trilogy of “songbook” albums that has already produced striking re-imaginings of music by the Pearlfishers and Joni Mitchell. It exudes virtuosic affection as Steele re-assembles his trusty quartet with pianist and arranger Dave Milligan, bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer Alyn Cosker. The spare lyricism of Steele’s trumpet channels beautifully Blue Nile vocalist Paul Buchanan’s wistful delivery in numbers such as Easter Parade – a sublimely still prelude to the album – while he and Milligan dwell lovingly on the quietude of Family Life. Steele sounds terse, mute phrases before breaking out exuberantly from the strut of Body and Soul, followed nimbly by Milligan and some brisk piano and drum exchanges, Headlights on the Parade builds triumphantly over assuredly muttering bass, while Happiness rolls along lazily, suffused with bluesy, township character, trumpet parping zestily. Jim Gilchrist

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