Various
The Rough Guide
to Delta Blues
(World Music Network)
3/5 
COMING out of the grinding rural poverty of the Mississippi delta in the early 1900s, the Delta Blues is arguably the most influential of all the strands of the genre, planting the seeds for the rock’n’roll explosion half a century later.
Performed by Bukka White, opening number Special Streamline perfectly encapsulates this musical history with the guitar accompaniment chugging along like the train he sings about.
The rest of the album’s 24 songs comprise contributions from legendary bluesmen like Son House and lesser-known artists such as the brilliantly named and talented Memphis Minnie. Highlights include the Dylan-influencing The World is Going Wrong by the Mississippi Sheiks and Charley Patton’s Poor Me.
With the songs developed from work chants and slave songs, this is another memorable collection in the Rough Guide series, though a newcomer may have difficulty differentiating between some of the tracks.

Marching Church
Telling It Like It Is
(Sacred Bones)
4/5
ORIGINALLY the solo project of 24-year-old Elias Bender Roennenfelt, Copenhagen’s Marching Church has grown into a full band, borrowing members from Lower, Hand of Dust and Rennenfelt’s punk-rock group Iceage.
Telling It Like It Is is their second longplayer and what an album it is — 10 songs of swaggering, enigmatic rock’n’roll jam-packed with drama, pathos and head-messing sounds.
British bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and Primal Scream are obvious influences, with the ghost of Shaun Ryder providing vocals on the cacophonous Lion’s Den.
Best of all is the skipping Heart of Life, a delightfully unpredictable track that reaches for The Cure’s most poppy moments before breaking down and picking itself up again.
Singing in English with no trace of his Danish accent, Roennenfelt’s confidence, melancholia and unhinged persona blasts out of the speakers. A very talented man indeed.

Wolfgang Muthspiel
Rising Grace (ECM records)
4/5
HAVING made his debut as band leader for ECM in 2014, Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel has brought together something of a jazz supergroup for his new record.
Virtuoso Brad Mehldau plays piano, rising star Ambrose Akinmusire is on trumpet and the rhythm section features double bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade.
Unsurprisingly, with such a wealth of talent, it’s a consummately professional album of warm and reflective instrumental jazz.
Deploying delightful classically tinged guitar on the title track, elsewhere Muthspiel’s playing is reminiscent of Pat Metheny’s talkative guitar work on albums like 2008’s Day Trip. Akinmusire’s melodies are a particular highlight and on Intensive Care he transforms his sound into the flat, flute-like style of Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
Throw in a tribute to the late jazz composer Kenny Wheeler and you’ve got an enticing and deeply impressive set.

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