NOAH AND THE WHALE: PEACEFUL, THE WORLD LAYS ME DOWN ****
VERTIGO, £9.99THIS year's bright young things may be next year's discarded landfill but, for the moment, the bright, melodic, folky sounds emanating from a close-knit c
ommunity of London musicians in their late teens and early twenties tastes like a refreshing tonic next to the legions of identikit indie bands clogging up the country's airwaves and gig circuit.
First to garner attention was 18-year-old Laura Marling, whose otherworldly debut album Alas I Cannot Swim has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Next to charm was Shakespearean actor-turned-troubadour Johnny Flynn and his band The Sussex Wit. But with the blanket airplay Noah And The Whale have picked up for their current single 5 Years Time, they could be poised to eclipse their friends and contemporaries.
Frontman and songwriter Charlie Fink, who also produced his sometime bandmate Marling's album, is rather fancifully described as a "visionary" on the press release for this debut album. While this is premature praise, you have to admire his audacity in cramming whistling, handclaps, a ukulele and a twee lyric about a date at the zoo into one mercilessly catchy package.
If you have survived round-the-clock exposure to its chirpiness, don't then be put off by the band's glossy press shots which portray the four-piece more as "wacky" Oxbridge students than the erudite minstrels they are.
Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down may have an affected title but the songs are, for the most part, natural-born charmers, with an easy flow and warm folky arrangements, using fiddle, accordion, horns and Marling's dulcet tones on backing vocals, and a knack of shoehorning wordy, often defeatist lyrics about love and mortality into simple, beguiling melodies.
2 Atoms In A Molecule is one such deceptive gem, bowling along breezily, yet founded on mournful sentiments. "If love is just a game, how come I've never won? I guess maybe it's possible I might be playing it wrong," moons Fink.
Likewise, former single Shape Of My Heart, poetically described by Fink as "a party for the uninvited", bursts forth with a wonderful horn arrangement, uplifting a battle-hardened lyric: "if there's any love in me, don't let it show."
Allegations of tweeness, which the band are keen to fend off, seem perfectly justified in the case of Second Lover, with its knowingly coy lyrics mooning over an unrequited love. Mostly, their music is just open-hearted in the vein of their influences, Jonathan Richman and Daniel Johnston, though a couple of less effective, more mainstream moments, such as Give A Little Love (which is insipid enough to fit on the most recent Coldplay album), lack the innate character of their other material.
There are darker moments too – the palpable, unvarnished melancholy of Do What You Do and the mordant Hold My Hand As I'm Lowered which opens out from its initial stripped-back intimacy to become a sombre procession in its closing stages, taking this impressive debut from life-affirming to graveside mourning.
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HELLSONGS: HYMNS IN THE KEY OF 666 *****
BODOG MUSIC, £9.99SWEDEN: home of a particularly feral strain of heavy metal and also of keen metal aficionados Hellsongs, who have here transformed ten of their favourite old school headbangers, including Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It, Metallica's Blackened and Slayer's Seasons In The Abyss, into fragrant folk frolics trilled by vocalist Harriet Ohlsson in such a demure fashion that you can discern all the lyrics.
Hymns In The Key Of 666 is novel rather than novelty, and demonstrates that the likes of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath could write tunes which stand up even when divested of their overblown theatre.
AGNOSTIC MOUNTAIN GOSPEL CHOIR: TEN THOUSAND ***
BALLING THE JACK, £9.99NOT so much a choir – gospel, agnostic or otherwise – as four beardy guys from Canada with a Tom Waits obsession, the Agnostics evoke/plunder the spirit of the Mississippi delta and the Smoky Mountains in punked-up style and have the endorsement of vagabond bluesman Seasick Steve. Ten Thousand mostly apes Waits' junkyard lurch but also features the mountain shack blues of Nehemiah's Misfortune and the straight bluegrass hoedown You Got It Wrong. A pastiche, but a good one.
CLASSICAL
CRAIG ARMSTRONG: MEMORY TAKES MY HAND ****
VIRGIN CLASSICS, £12.99GLASGOW-BASED Craig Armstrong is less well known for his concert repertoire than his Oscar-winning film scores. So this recording of three recent works, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Garry Walker, is an intriguing testament to the less glitzy side of his output.
It includes One Minute, the series of orchestral miniatures he composed (originally with projected visual images) for the opening of the new Perth Concert Hall, and the luminescent soundscapes of Memory takes my Hand, which was commissioned for the reopening of Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery.
But the most fascinating sounds come from the violin concerto Immer, written for Clio Gould and premiered in France only two months ago. This is a work of haunting, mystical beauty. Its mesmerising textures unfold with a quiet inexorable force, which Gould captures to stunning effect.
JAZZ
ARUN GHOSH: NORTHERN NAMASTE ***
CAMOCI RECORDS, £12.99BORN in Calcutta, brought up in Lancashire and now resident in London, the clarinettist has absorbed a diverse and wide-ranging musical palette into his debut recording.
His own flowing clarinet is combined with piano, bass and drums, the tenor saxophone of Idris Rahman, and instruments from the Indian percussion tradition in a fluent and well-integrated fusion (although he doesn't like that term).
The music here is often atmospheric and reflective, but the up-tempo final track, Greenhouse, based on a traditional tune but with a contemporary feel in his arrangement, suggests there is plenty in reserve.
WORLD
EAST MEETS WEST – A MUSICAL CELEBRATION ****
WARNER DVD, £14.99PUT the Kodo Drummers, Donal Lunny and Coolfin, Sharon Shannon, and Jean Butler together, and this DVD is the result.
At this time of year, the Japanese taiko drum group host their Earth Celebration on Sado Island off the west coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, a magical time-warp where you might still be in the 19th century. The Irish folkies have twice been their guests, while the drummers have toured in Ireland – no wonder their musics blend so engagingly.
The most revealing part of this glorious DVD comes when Kodo's manager, Takashi Akamine, describes the regime they follow back home. As I found when I visited them, "monastic asceticism" is putting it far too mildly.
The full article contains 1117 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
