Album reviews: Bat For Lashes | Willie Nelson | Adam Ross | Man Of Moon

Willie Nelson: The Border Album (Legacy Recordings) ****

Adam Ross: Littoral Zone (Fika Recordings) ***

Man Of Moon: Machinism (Cosmic Pool) ***

Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, is not one for standing still but her latest creative shift was prompted by the biggest shake-up of her life – giving birth to her first child. Her sixth album, The Dream of Delphi, is named after her young daughter and charts her journey of new motherhood through the pandemic, “a very strange but magical year” in her adopted home of Los Angeles (Khan has now returned to London).

Largely improvised in snatches between breastfeeding, the music is less look-at-my-baby-photos chronicle – despite song titles such as Her First Morning and The Midwives Have Left – and more an evocation of the gentle ecstasy of her experience, with an almost spiritual jazz energy to the title track’s heavenly harps and slow synth arpeggios before the electronic beats kick in towards the end.

Gauzy instrumental passages abound with murmured vocals about gifts on the sonorous Christmas Day and the altered state of sleep deprivation on plangent piano waltz At Your Feet. Inspired by Maya Angelou’s book of the same name, Letter to My Daughter features Khan’s breathy assurance over modular synths.

Her compositions are suffused with the elemental influence of Bjork and Kate Bush but also the soothing pulse of late night radio. Breaking Up, a meditation on the end of her relationship with Delphi’s father, is embellished with oriental chimes and sultry saxophone, but the album’s strongest hook is the autotuned angst of her cover of DJ Baauer’s Home, chosen because of her daughter’s delighted reaction to the original. Khan’s version is distinctly hers but does retain shades of house piano and snappy percussion.

Willie Nelson is 91 years young and an estimated 152 albums into his career. The Border Album is another gem to add to the bumper collection. He showcases his outlaw spirit and supreme storytelling gifts on the opening cover of Rodney Crowell’s The Border, a gentle Tex Mex reproach for those who would exploit immigrant tensions which sounds like it could have been written by or for him.

Nelson also celebrates his home state on the playful western swing of Made In Texas and rolls out the droll humour over impish pedal steel on What If I’m Out Of Mind. Clear-eyed confessional Nobody Knows Me Like You is a dose of domestic reality, while I Wrote This Song For You matches mournful harmonica and mellifluous, melancholic guitar with Nelson’s understated emotion. Elsewhere he imagines himself as Hank Williams’ guitar on as tender a love song as you will hear, while his economic playing and unique phrasing is front and centre on Many a Long and Lonesome Highway as he resolves “in the end I’ll do it my way”. Amen to that.

Littoral Zone, the second solo album from Randolph’s Leap frontman Adam Ross, was inspired by his move to the Aberdeenshire coast and the purchase of a piano on which he has played out a fondness for Seventies MOR pop songwriting. Fellow pianist Andrew Wasylyk produces and there are delicate embellishments on strings, brass and vocals from Pete Harvey, Rachel Simpson and Gillian Fleetwood, making their presence felt with the spry orchestration on Apogee, uplifting arrangement of Union Gary and the soft, gospelly vocal counterpoint to the aching lyrics of Ego. The title track pushes further into southern soul territory while the murder ballad-inspired Brambles boldly rhymes “Banchory” with “Tanqueray”.

Glasgow-based alt.rock duo Man Of Moon channel technophobia and late night doomscrolling on their second album, Machinism. Mainman Chris Bainbridge is joined by new drummer Iain Stewar for the kosmische Krautrock-inspired journey of proggy propulsion (You And I), moody rock balladry (The Tide) and Nineties gothic grunge undertones (In the Water) before kicking it up a notch on tech rocker Reign.

CLASSICAL

Brahms & Contemporaries, Vol 1 (Chandos) *****

Ever on the track of unjustly forgotten composers, The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective unearth another neglected treasure in the first of a new three-recording series sold successively on the back of Brahms’ Piano Quartets. Partnering the lengthy, more introspective Second Quartet in Vol 1 is the radiant F minor Piano Quartet by one Luise Adolpha Le Beau. Seventeen years Brahms’ junior, like most other aspiring female artists of her time she battled professional suppression as a result of her gender. Yet here, in music as robust, exhilarating, profound and characterful as any of her male peers, there is little to place her under the shadow of Brahms. This is a pairing of piercing intellects and supreme creativity, the accumulative dynamic sizzlingly pleasurable. Violinist Elena Urioste and her pianist husband Tom Poster lead their ensemble in truly arresting and crafted performances. Brahms genuinely rated Le Beau, and here’s the reason why. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Strictly Smokin’ Big Band: Strictly Smokin’ & Friends (Jazz Sound Records) ****

Led by founder, trumpeter Michael Lamb, the Strictly Smokin’ outfit preaches the gospel of big band jazz with joyous and at times blistering zeal. As an opener they bounce with relish into Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise, which becomes a trumpet showcase as guest trumpeter Mike Lovatt is joined by the SSBB’s Lamb, Gordon Marshall and Pete Tanton. Each track features a notable guest soloist, organist Ross Stanley riding the bluesy swagger of Cool Struttin’, vocalist Polly Gibbons bringing lithe and powerfully worldly-wise delivery to Cole Porter’s Love for Sale. Alan Barnes’s crisp alto sax leads Sonny Rollins’s Airegin, the band punching behind, there’s wonderfully spirited flute from Gareth Lockrane in Daisy Mae, while Paul Booth closes with gleefully piping soprano sax in his own Twitterbug Waltz. This is music that is big, bold and, dare one say it, fun. Jim Gilchrist