Stone The Crows
Live At The BBC
Repertoire REPUK
★★★★

In the early 1970s Glasgow’s rock ’n’ soul giants Stone The Crows were on fire on the college and festival circuit.

Fronted by Britain’s answer to Janis Joplin, Maggie Bell, who was regularly voted Melody Maker’s best female singer.

With four albums released between 1970 and 1972, they were hitting their stride when guitarist Les Harvey was electrocuted at a gig in Swansea. Harvey’s death took took its toll and Jimmy McCulloch was brought in as a replacement.

This set features tracks from John Peel’s Top Gear, Friday Night Is Boogie Night, In Concert, Sunday Concert and Sounds Of The 70s.

The band are on blistering form on Keep On Rollin’, Dylan’s Hollis Brown, Raining In Your Heart, Percy Mayfield’s Danger Zone and the two parter I Saw America.

Full credit to BBC producers were happy to broadcast great rock music.

TONY BURKE

Soft Cell
Happiness Not Included
(BMG)
★★★
 

With a picture of the abandoned funfair at Chernobyl on the cover and a downbeat title, you’d be expecting synth-pop duo Soft Cell’s latest studio release — after a 20-year hiatus — to be a return to their dark, decadent world.

However, opener Happy Happy Happy is more about a slightly twisted sci-fi future, not the warped revelry the band were known for.

Polaroid recounts meeting Andy Warhol and reeks of early Soft Cell, while Purple Zone sounds like the Pet Shop Boys because it was written and performed with them.

This is standard synth-rock with Marc Almond’s distinctive voice, albeit with a bit too much rhyming dictionary lyrics.

Nighthawks has a dirty edge, but was done by keyboard player Dave Ball before, Nostalgia Machine deserves a dancefloor remix to take it to another level, but overall this is disjointed and rather than delightful, suffers from a bit too much padding.

MIK SABIERS

Tom Rainey Obbligato
Untucked in Hannover
Intakt Records
★★★★

Stream on Bandcamp

In October 2018 a group of esteemed US-based improvisers came together at Jazz Club Hannover, to play a programme of American Songbook ballads.

Trumpeter Ralph Alessi, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist Drew Gress and drummer/leader Tom Rainey stretch out on standards like Stella By Starlight and Just in Time and show how the freest musicians can also bond with great show melodies and create improvising gems from them.

There is some superb ensemble musicianship playing on the cusp of very recognisable melodies and powerful solo virtuosity — hear Dress at the outset of What’s New or Laubrock’s lyricism on I Fall in Love Too Easily.

These five musicians turn tradition inside out while still keeping faith with its enduring melodic messages.

There is power and beauty in their soundscape, transforming Americana with both familiarity and sudden creative surprise, reaching a long way back and far forward simultaneously.

CHRIS SEARLE

Tony Allen
Secret Agent
World Circuit 
★★★★

Tony Allen, who died aged 80 in 2020, was one of the world’s greatest drummers. Says who? Well, Ginger Baker for one.

As a member of Fela Kuti’s band, Allen’s drumming propelled the hard-driving, brass-laden, funky and politically charged music which formed the sound of emerging African nations in the 1970s and 1980s — Afrobeat.

Recorded in Paris and Lagos, Secret Agent was Allen’s 2009 World Circuit debut.

A promo CD was never off my deck — and is the album is an Afrobeat classic with heavy brass work, sparkling keyboards, lyrics which pull no punches and confront state corruption and oppression — in the best tradition of Fela Kuti.

With call and response vocals, five different singers including Allen (on the opening and closing tracks) his pulsating, rhythmic and on-the-beat drumming is astounding. Don’t miss it. 

TB

 
Honeyglaze
Honeyglaze
(Speedy Wunderground) 
★★★★

The eponymous debut album from South London’s Honeyglaze, recently seen supporting the rapidly rising Wet Leg, has hints of Warpaint, Galaxie 500 and The Sundays.

Its pared-back, simple guitar rock driven by warm guitar, soothing vocals and a very soft edge.

Not bad for a band formed just before the first lockdown as a result of lead singer/guitarist and songwriter Anoushka Sokolow’s desire to be in a group rather than perform solo.

For someone wanting to succumb to the shadows, the songwriting is all very confessional.

Latest single Female Lead is ostensibly about dyeing your hair but really about how it all went wrong, and the independence call of I Am Not Your Cushion gets a simple indie pop groove going.

Burglar brings to mind Warpaint, while Young Looking has good echoes of Cate Le Bon.

For fans of female fronted laid back pop-rock this fits right in.

MS

Leleka
Sonce u Serci
Intiative Musik
★★★★★

The Ukrainian singer resident in Berlin, Viktoria Leleka, calls her music Ukrainian Folk Jazz, or “improvised folklore.”

Taking traditional songs from her native land and singing them with a soft and lilting lyricism with the accompaniment of an outstanding trio: pianist Povel Widestrand, bassist Thomas Kolarczyk and drummer Jacob Hegner, she has created a memorable album which she calls Sonce u Serci, or Sun in Your Heart.

There is more than a touch of jazz/soul in her instrumental mates. Hegner’s drumming is brilliant throughout and hear Kolarczyk’s dancing plucked strings in Sleep or Widestand’s sharp-edged pianism in Rose.

This is a pre-invasion album made in 2021, yet the lyrics carry ominous presages as well as a sustaining optimism.

“The sun hides everything in the storm clouds,” sings Leleka. “But we have our own suns in our hearts / And the whole world is illuminated by this.”

CS

Blowing Free
Underground And Progressive Sounds Of 1972
Esoterick
★★★★★

Another superb box set from the Cherry Red stable focussing on British underground and progressive rock  from 1972, culled from the top progressive labels of the era: Charisma, Harvest, United Artists, Deram and Vertigo.

With five hours of music from Atomic Rooster, Barclay James Harvest, Edgar Broughton, Caravan, Curved Air, Emerson Lake And Palmer, Family (their hit Burlesque), Free, Gentle Giant, Hawkwind, Help Yourself, Man (the classic Bananas), Matching Mole, The Pretty Things, Procol Harum (a live Conqistador), Ten Years After (Choo Choo Mama), Thin Lizzy (Whiskey In the Jar — what else?), Uriah Heep, Van Der Graaf Generator, Vinegar Joe, Wishbone Ash, Yes with lesser mortals like Skin Alley, Pink Fairies and Nektar, 1972 was a pivitol year when progressive music was at its zenith, the BBC played long album tracks which sold by the shedload.

Great booklet with tons of period memorabilia.

TB

 
Florence + the Machine
Dance Fever
(Polydor)
★★★★★

THE fifth studio album from baroque pop star Florence Welch (and her Machine) mixes rock, disco and dance all underpinned by her elegiac vocals.

As she hits her mid-thirties and ponders life, lockdown and the return to (ab)normal life, this is a cracking collection of tunes that lift you to the heights while dwelling on the depths of the soul.

Opener King encapsulates her craft, her voice the focus, the centre of attention, but exposed, sweet, foreboding, yet uplifting, Welch is defining herself.

And as the album progresses she opens doors, to vulnerability, to observation, to her innermost thoughts and fears.

Iggy Pop is cited as an inspiration, and the rock-out of Cassandra brings that to the fore, Daffodil is delightful, Restraint is anything but.

This is accomplished, quirky and quite beautiful, it’s music as art, therapy, wonder and all underpinned by Welch’s voice and vision, delight in the Dance Fever.

MS

Andrew Cyrille / William Parker / Enrico Rava
2 Blues for Cecil
TUM Recordsk
★★★★★

A meeting in Paris of three great veteran improvisers: drummer Andrew Cyrille, (born New York, 1939), bassist William Parker, (born Bronx, 1952) and flugelhornist Enrico Rava, (born Trieste, 1948) in celebration of another — the pioneering free pianist Cecil Taylor (1929-2018).

Rava’s amalgam of volleys, squalls and gentle sounds show his true virtuosity; Parker’s immense depth of throbbing subterranean strings and the mighty Cyrille in his constellation of universal drums play with lifetimes of power and artistry.

Listen to them on Rava’s Ballerina or Parker’s hymn to indigenous America, Macchu Picchu.

Every cluster of notes is a sonic discovery, yet they still end with the freest of versions of the standard, My Funny Valentine.

Truly, an album of tripartite genius to a fourth old comrade whose spirit lives on in his surviving confreres.

A wondrous album, crossing the Atlantic, Europe, the Andes and everywhere music is created, played and embraced.

CS