Album reviews: Ed Sheeran | Baxter Dury | Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Ed Sheeran: Play (Gingerbread Man/Atlantic Records) ★★★

Baxter Dury: Allbarone (Heavenly Records) ★★★★

Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Perimenopop (Decca) ★★★★

Spinal Tap: The End Continues (Interscope) ★★★

Having burned his way through his mathematically-themed album titles, Ed Sheeran moves on to his next series using media control symbols. Following a pop pause for two introspective acoustic-oriented releases, he returns to the commercial middle of the road with Play - a title signalling not just his intention to proceed but also to inject some fun after some tough personal times.

The Persian pop-flavoured earworm Azizam, one of a number of tracks co-written with Swedish-Iranian producer Ilya Salmanzadeh, certainly delivers but nothing else comes close. The manicured Punjabi pop of Sapphire, featuring Hindi singer/producer Arijit Singh, is the other explicit example of the world music influences with which some of the tracks are infused but it’s more finger food than tasting menu, with some tabla garnish applied to the pop R&B number Symmetry.

READ MORE: Lewis Capaldi, Glasgow review: 'left only happiness in his wake'

Instead, Play is distinguished by the number of middle of the road ballads on offer, from the wedding song fodder of The Vow to the lovey dovey In Other Words. Old Phone is another of Sheeran’s shuffly folk pop numbers. While it is sheer musical vanilla, the lyrics do capture universal sentiments on the perils of nostalgia. Slowly borders on the creepy and manipulative in its evocation of anguished separation anxiety, while there are more big feelings wrapped in sheepish clothing on A Little More. This breezy pop stroll with bilious lyrics makes you wonder who rattled Sheeran’s cage and if he has the capacity or desire to ever match those strong sentiments with some bold music.

Baxter Dury has woman trouble - of course he has - on his latest nugget of an album. Allbarone might sound like a cool Euro destination (and Dury does radiate a certain scruffy glamour) but simply separate that title into three little words and you will appreciate that his travails are closer to home. The brilliant fidgety title track conveys this with a touch of Underworld judder.

Dury has always been one for throwing shapes but enlisting producer Paul Epworth as his wingman gives his music more of a dance edge than ever before. Alpha Dog pairs his signature hangdog narration with dreamy, creamy disco pop while pitchshifted vocals, sickly synths and an inexorable bassline drive Hapsburg.

Dury lets rip on the dregs of humankind (or maybe just East London hipsters) on the territorial Return of the Sharp Heads, as ever delivered in a cool, charming monotone, while he retreats to his West London hood for Mr W4, another of Dury’s pithy portraits, this one a more ambivalent tribute to “a nylon god…making money 24/7”.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s latest album is unadulterated dance pop joy, conveying a relaxed party-in-the-studio feel. Ellis-Bextor has long embraced her groovy mum image and plays wittily with it here on Vertigo, a giddy disco number inspired by climbing a ladder for her neighbours. Elsewhere, Stay On Me is a breathy, flirty summer cocktail of a tune, Dolce Vita is the perfect title for her luxe disco pop and there is no higher compliment than to note the Girls Aloud overtones to the sleek Glamorous.

To national treasures of a more advance vintage: Spinal Tap are back, promising that The End Continues. Not everything on their fourth album is quite as spooftastic as its title but they do convincingly employ standard issue riffola and hoary vocals to wallow in old glories on Brighton Rock and hail ye olde band reformation on Let’s Just Rock Again.

Fellow legends are on hand to revisit a handful of Tap classics with Paul McCartney relishing the pipe and slippers nostalgia of Cups and Cakes and Elton John making a meal of their early psychedelic number (Listen to the) Flower People and the still ridiculous Stonehenge with its fiddle-de-dee folk breakdown.

CLASSICAL

Nielsen: Helios, Clarinet Concerto, Symphony No. 5 (Chandos) ★★★★

Experience of listening to Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic (where he was music director until 2024) tells us that attention to detail was paramount to his incumbency. Here’s further proof in a radiant all-Nielsen album that climaxes with the Fifth Symphony. First up is the Helios Overture, a ripe and rosy launchpad to a coupling of more substantial works, the Clarinet Concerto (1928) and the Symphony (1922). Alessandro Carbonare takes the solo spot in the concerto, confronting Nielsen’s waspish writing with matching impertinence. He’s also unflinchingly in control, which – together with a nagging edginess from Gardner and the orchestra – sharpens the musical theatrics. The Fifth Symphony, notable for its combative side-drum, is a powerful test of gnawing grit, searing textural complexity and expansive, driving vision. Gardner’s response may not be the most ferocious on offer: hardly a loss when it proves so satisfying in other ways. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Olivia Cuttill Quintet: Tunes to be Swingin’ (Olivia Cuttill Music) ★★★★

From Olivia Cuttill’s deliciously fruity solo trumpet intro to Busy, to the closing plaintive slow blues of Buck Owens’s Cryin’ Time, with Cuttill’s eloquent blowing joined by Tom Harris’s honky-tonk piano, this album is a hugely engaging, occasionally quirky combination of unabashed old-time sensibility with straight-ahead drive. The limber clarity of Issey Chivers’ singing and vocalising brings warmth and soul, excelling with just piano accompaniment in Linger for a While with the Sun, while Alex Fisher’s tenor sax adds beef to the all-out jive of Showbiz Casino and Cuttill and Chivers are both superb in their take on the Art Blakey classic Moanin’. A homely excursion into Cuttill’s family history, laced with intergenerational snatches of conversation, introduces There’s a House Down By the Station with its nostalgic sing-along, while Harris is on a suitably energetic 12-bar roll in The Boogie Woogie Bug. Jim Gilchrist

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