Monkey See Monkey Do
A Night Out
(Self-released)
★★★★

Monkey See Monkey Do met at the Southampton folk scene where band members “Aaron and Sam grew up and Helen and Matt didn’t.” Mercifully, such strict pecking order hasn’t had a detrimental effect on the music making of this live-wire quartet that earns its crust with ceilidhs in pubs up and down Hampshire.

They deploy the fiddle, guitar, bodhran, clarinet and the “occasional squeeze of melodeon” to deliver infectiously diverse fare, sung in melodious voices that are strong individually and collectively.

Former Durham miner Ed Pickford’s Pound A Week Rise, a Dick Gaughan favourite, has a melancholic bite that clenches fists — and shames Labour in 1960s England.

Superfly reverberates with Appalachian dance tunes, while the shanty Alexander the Great has some sensible advice for would be pirates: “If you’re holding a hand grenade, stick to drinking tea.”

Need cheering up? Look no further.

Georgie
At Home
(Soul Kitchen Records)
★★★★

AFTER the intimate set of his Live album, Mansfield balladeer Georgie’s new offering At Home is a musically different kettle of fish.

She wrote these songs “purely from the heart because I didn’t have much else to do” while housebound during lockdown.
 
In consequence, At Home is confessional and presumably cathartic for the singer-songwriter, with characteristic soul-baring songs of hurt, regret and hope, sentiments we all harbour.

Complex instrumentation, with back-up choruses, make for a multilayered sound that transforms the ballad idiom well into pop territory and Rule We Broke verges on rock.

Rich and familiar, Georgie’s distinct voice is her main asset. Infused with emotion as it ebbs and flows it’s sometimes crowded out by complex arrangements and elaborate production.

Nevertheless, a promising work in progress.

Krononaut
Krononaut
(Glitterbeat)
★★★★

AVANTGARDE jazz is akin to Marmite — you can’t get enough of it or couldn’t care less.

London Krononaut fall into that category with this album of 10 pieces of intriguing, ambient instrumentals mixing the cerebral with the emotive.

Classically trained Leo “can’t play jazz” Abrahams is at the core with jazz “war hog” drummer Martin France and it takes Shahzad Ismaily on bass to keep these two on the straight and narrow by “framing” the overall attitude and direction. It provides an admirable symbiosis to the resulting instrumental dialogues.

Assorted worthies such as US saxophonist Matana Roberts (Jena, Wealth Of Nations) and Swedish Arve Henriksen on trumpet (Leaving Alhambra, Visions Of The Cross) add colour and melodic narrative to the “muscle” of the other three.

Although improvised without overdubs, it’s impressively focused and the frequent rough edges contrast with softer and subtler passages.

Noteworthy, in every sense of the word.