Album reviews: Willie Nelson | Jeff Goldblum | Manuela | Steven Lindsay
He may be 93 years-old, but the last surviving country outlaw has no plans to stop until his muse tells him to, writes Fiona Shepherd
Willie Nelson: Dream Chaser (Legacy Recordings) ★★★★
Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra: Night Blooms (Fontana) ★★★
Manuela: Ultraviolet (Lost Map) ★★★★
Steven Lindsay: Chords And Colours (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★
“Last night a new song came to me, faster than I could write it down,” sings Willie Nelson on the title track of his latest album. “Sometimes I wonder if there’ll be another, then another comes around”. The coolest 93-year-old in the business has just released his 79th solo album. If it is not already apparent, the last surviving country outlaw has no plans to stop until his muse tells him to.
Dream Chaser is a collection of new songs, many co-written with his producer Buddy Cannon, and it starts with Nelson catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror (“time just seemed to vanish, right before my eyes”). Sure, he sounds a touch more grizzled these days but, thanks to his signature conversational tone, this reflection on the bittersweet passing of the years is more matter-of-fact than sentimental, accompanied by little flourishes on his trusty guitar Trigger against a deluxe bluegrass backdrop.
Unlike his fellow Highwayman Johnny Cash, Nelson prefers not to meditate on the dying of the light but to ruminate over relationships in the present. His tender vocal adds heft and humanity to MOR country ballad We’d Make a Good Movie and he is bemused not bitter on the classic countrifying of I Can’t Read Your Mind (“the letters are too small”), his first co-write with Bob Dylan in 33 years.
Elsewhere, he ticks more old school Americana boxes on prison lament Fly Away and the alcoholic philosophising of Whiskey Wants Me To, while the beautifully played slow waltz Love Overdue would make an ideal first dance at a second (or third) wedding.
As usual, his curation is impeccable. The one cover version on the album is an old George Jones number, Developing My Pictures (sample lyric: “my mind’s a darkroom”). For this literally peerless veteran, every picture/track still has to tell a story.
Jeff Goldblum can be forgiven for wringing maximum mileage out of his role as the Wizard in Wicked, including recruiting his co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as guest vocalists on his latest album with jazz ensemble the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. Night Blooms is a laidback companion to their Still Blooming album and is more cocktail lounge than big band, with Melody Gardot on familiar territory with the easy listening Misty. Pop singer Charlie Puth showcases a talent for smooth jazz on Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, while Scarlett Johansson delivers The Best Is Yet To Come with delicious personality.
Manuela Gernedel leads the Anglo-German band that bears her name, along with her husband Nick McCarthy, late of Franz Ferdinand. Representing for non-conforming vocalists, Gernedel’s querulous tone is oddly compelling, especially when married to the dreamy retro-futuristic electronica soundscape of their second album, which takes in the streamlined guitar heroics of Liar, the sumptuous synth strings of Regrets and the surreal shaggy dog disco of Hyena, inspired by a Leonora Carrington story, plus bonus guest appearances from former Mystery Jets guitarist William Rees and Stereolab frontwoman Laetitia Sadier coolly intoning in the background on Coniine.
Big Dish frontman Steven Lindsay harmonises with his career as a visual artist on his fourth solo album. Chords and Colours is a collection of songs taking inspiration from the titles and subjects of some of his paintings, a process which began with imagining the story of the young boxer depicted in A Prayer for the Disenfranchised. Lindsay interprets Elsewhere using delicate picked guitar, limpid piano and mournful incursions on brass, provides an elegant psych funk backing with shades of Air and Beck for Fall of the Empire, and defers to slick but stately Scotpop on Existential Crisis Management.
CLASSICAL
Mahler: Symphony No 3 (Harmonia Mundi) ★★★★
Flowers in the meadow, birds in the forest, personifications of morning and night, joy transcending death - such are the evocative clues Mahler offers in the movement titles and texts of his epic Third Symphony, a work as tortuous as it is euphoric, ultimately one of the most complete statements of his universal vision of human existence. That completeness is well-captured by Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Chorus, vocally augmented by mezzo soprano Hanna Hipp and the excellent Tiffin Boys’ Choir. Petrenko steers a steady ship, striking a neat balance between architecture and spontaneity. The wrestling light and shade of the opening movement powers cohesively towards its thunderous conclusion. Beyond the beguiling summer warmth and vying freneticism that opens Part II, the final movements reveal their profound messages, hauntingly in Hipp’s “O Mensch!”, cheerily in the children’s lusty “bimm-bamm” chorus, overwhelmingly in the final visionary Adagio. Ken Walton
FOLK
John Cage / The Whistlebinkies: Scottish Circus (Mode Records) ★★★★★
It’s been a long time coming, but an extraordinary cross-cultural encounter is finally captured by this DVD and extensive booklet. American avant-garde composer John Cage was intrigued by the Whistlebinkies folk band when visiting Scotland in 1984 and commissioned to create Scottish Circus, premiered in 1990, although these improvised performances were filmed in Edinburgh’s Inverleith House in 2007. Group members play Lowland pipes, clarsach, fiddle, viola, flute, concertina, drum – but individually, each to their own tune, while wandering through the mansion’s rooms, creating an ever-shifting and strangely haunting cacophony. Inverleith House has its own acoustic role, as snatches of pipe or flute, Gaelic song or drum rumble drift through doorways or are left hanging in the air. The ‘Binkies also deliver Cage’s notorious 4’33’’ (of silence) twice, the second, outdoors performance curtailed by rain – nicely satisfying Cage’s emphasis on chance in his music. Jim Gilchrist
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