Nathan Bell
Red, White And American Blues
(It Couldn’t Happen Here)
Need To Know Music
★★★★★

THESE are hard, unforgiving songs — political chronicles writ with deeply lacerating words that dissect the broken US of today — the odious betrayal of its people, poverty, racism, hopelessness and wanton murder.

Son of the late famed poet-laureate of Iowa, Marvin Bell, Nathan grew up in the company of such notable wordsmiths as Kurt Vonnegut and the inimitable Studs Terkel and it paid a rich radical dividend.

He sums up the system’s cynicism in the pounding and unnerving Wrong Man for the Job, exposes the racism and inhumanity of incarceration in Angola Prison, Louisiana, and pays tribute to Gil Scott Heron: “You can shoot a black man for just walking down the street when you have/the American Blues,” and offers respite with the melodic melancholy of A Lucky Man (dedicated to his father).

A monumental accomplishment.

Skinny Lister
A Matter of Life & Love
(Xtra Mile Recordings)
★★★★★

FIND a spot in your life and heart for this Greenwich sextet who, rightly, are a legend of their time.

These uplifting songs, about camaraderie and companionship through thick and thin, calls to cherish the simple things brims with an unbridled zest for life delivered with a musical kaleidoscope of high-octane infectious folk-punk rooted in shanty.

From the pounding fury of Damm the Amsterdam to the delicately lyrical Embers, from the anthemic Shoulder to Shoulder to the endearing ballad Bonny’s Eyes or the joyous praise of drinking as cure for flight-fright in Breakfast at Heathrow — the exquisitely synchronised voices are as rapturous as they are compelling and so are the arrangements full of passages of instrumental virtuosity.

Lead vocalist Dan Heptinstall says: “we can’t wait to see what further adventures lay in store.” Neither can we.

Mikael Mani
Nostalgia Machine
Smekkleysa (Bad Taste)
★★★★★

REYKJAVIK born and bred guitarist Mikael Mani gets under your skin with the very first notes of this formidable oeuvre.

The musical idiom is structurally jazz with its discipline but the mesmerising impressionism is anything but improvised.

The soothing, largely minimalist narratives are articulated with rare instrumental excellence of great precision and abundant emotional charge.  

An alluring, elegant drumming of Magnus Trygvason Eliassen defines Trying to Stay Afloat while in conversationalist My Day With Pierre Solvi Kolbeinsson’s clarinet meanders wonderfully, fully immersed in the bands compact “wall-of-sound.”

I Want to Know Better is Mani’s melancholic guitar meditation, while the up-tempo gentle Almost There reinvigorates with its tranquil positivity. There is compact energy in the brisk and compelling Ani — a wonderful tour de force by the band.

Mani et al offer innovation and tradition, reassurance and challenge. Highly recommended.