the times | Friday July 31 2020 1GT 9
music reviews
hope in the final movement always
bring me to my knees.
Recorded in Moscow in 2017, the
performance has the authenticity
and depth expected from the
Kiev-born conductor Kirill
Karabits, Oleg Tsibulko (bass),
the Russian National Orchestra
and two Russian choirs.
Bluntly caustic or sharply ironic
about the worst of Soviet life and
times, explosive with tongue-twisting,
zinging consonants, Yevgeny
Yevtushenko’s chain of poems
tumble out of the vocalists’ lips with
sombre power and unstinting force.
Karabits controls this grim feast
masterfully well.
Geoff BrownD
aniel Barenboim has
conducted sufficient Elgar
recordings by now for the
albums to advertise their
contents with ELGAR
BARENBOIM in large letters, as
though that’s now his name.
He certainly puts his stamp on
music that many conductors outside
Britain prefer to avoid. Armed with
his excellent Staatskapelle Berlin,
Barenboim typically plunges right
in, underlining the bonds that tie Elgar
to the central European tradition,
especially Strauss and Wagner,
savouring every aching harmony,
soulful melody and instrumental glory.
All of these elements are on
stimulating display in the account ofGaranca/
Barenboim
Elgar
Decca
{{{{(Karabits
Shostakovich
Pentatone
{{{{(that kaleidoscopic symphonic study
Falstaff, taken from Berlin concerts
given in October. Barenboim,
indeed, spotlights the work’s
changing colours so vividly
that he risks turning this
multilayered trip
through the soul and
character of England’s
past into just a
symphonic showpiece.
Yet he makes the work
structurally cohere
more convincingly than
it usually does.
Take heed, too, of the other name
on the album cover: the Latvian mezzo
Elina Garanca, pictured, captured in
December, who bravely fights throughthe often cobwebbed poems of Sea
Pictures, the song cycle made
newly famous 55 years ago in
a benchmark recording
by Janet Baker.
Garanca lacks some
of Baker’s subtleties
and doesn’t articulate
words as clearly. Yet
she has her tenderly
phrased moments, and
never gets drowned in
the swelling waves with
Barenboim’s musicians.
No one would attach “lovely”
to Shostakovich’s sulphurous vocal
Symphony No 13, “Babi Yar”,
completed in 1962, although the
circling flutes offering a gleam ofin concerts
boim,
ork’s
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toShostakovich’sFull-blooded Elgar brought to life by the Berliners
classical
In 2017 this Southampton band made
a debut album featuring the kind of
rock hysteria not heard since the glory
days of Queen. Clearly uninterested in
toning it down on their follow-up, they
have gone even further into the realms
of the ridiculous. “She’s my cyanide/
I drink her every night!” the singer
Will Gould yells on Cyanide. He tries
to be all dark and scary on Born Cold,
but in a way that sounds as though it
comes with its own dance routine.
Rooted in classic rock and with
shades of everyone from David Bowie
to Manic Street Preachers, it is played
entirely straight, yet you can’t help but
sense a tongue in cheek.Creeper
Sex, Death & the
Infinite Void
Roadrunner
{{{{(Time has been
kind to Alanis
Morissette.
The open
wound of
angst that was
Jagged Little
Pill, her 33
million-selling
album of 1995,
predated
today’s trend
for emotional
expunging
and has
become a
classic of
heartfelt
pop rock.
Now she is back with her trademark
brand of straight-talking, and it can
veer towards self-help style navel
gazing. “This is the sound of me
hitting bottom,” she tells us on the
opener, Smiling, while Reasons I Drink
sounds as if it came straight off the
psychiatrist’s couch. Yet Morissette
is such a good songwriter, her
powerhouse voice running through
singalong melodies with the verve
of musical theatre, that the lack of
subtlety becomes part of the appeal.Alanis Morissette
Such Pretty Forks
in the Road
RCA
{{{((d k
Fontaines DC
A Hero’s Death
Partisan
{{{{(In a year, we’ll all love them
A stadium is what
this band need.
For now, we have
a great album, says
Will Hodgkinson
C
onsider the fate of Fontaines
DC. The Dublin five-piece
popped up early last year
with something no band
had captured in years: a
perfect blend of punk energy, poetic
sophistication and blank-eyed attitude
from a good-looking frontman, all
wrapped up in catchy, exciting songs
that made you want to jump about
and knock into people, preferably in
a muddy field in Somerset.
This was the summer they were to
go from festival to festival, building
more and more fans and playing to
bigger and bigger crowds along the
way. Now all that has gone.
They have come back with a second
album even better than their first, and
found themselves shouting into the
void of a summer without live music.
The one sliver of hope is that listeners
will lose themselves to the depth,
atmosphere and introspection of
A Hero’s Death anyway, even if only
in solitude.
Fontaines DC’s 2019 debut, Dogrel,
was a taut, lively rock’n’roll album,
filled with Dylan Thomas references,
tales of nationalistic Dublin taxi
drivers and dreams of glory, all driven
by a melodic snarl from the singer
Grian Chatten that made him sound
like the Irish Liam Gallagher.
This time they have stretched out
into Joy Division gloom, reflective
balladry and Wall of Sound-style
drama, while dwelling on the
conflicting feelings of being in
a lauded band.
“I don’t belong to anyone,” intones
Chatten, over the doom-laden gothic
rock dirge of I Don’t Belong, and it
seems as if he’s talking about living
up to the false images and sense of
ownership that fans of cult acts tend
to have. Fontaines DC have become
disillusioned with fame even before
they have achieved it.RICHARD DUMASJazz album
Trumpeter Eddie
Henderson reviewed at
thetimes.co.uk/artsof clouds in rainy skies, cats on the
backs of chairs, and other things that
don’t make a great deal of sense, but
are evocative nonetheless.
It ends with a fairly straightforward,
potentially anthemic, acoustic strum
about dealing with life’s low moments
called No.
“Please don’t lock yourself away.
Just appreciate the grey,” Chatten
sings, and we’re reminded of the glory
days of Oasis, when two and a half
million people applied for the chance
to sing along to Champagne Supernova
at Knebworth.
Right now, no crowds will be singing
along to this superb album by one of
the best new bands of our time — but
that won’t be for ever.That isn’t to say that A Hero’s
Death isn’t without hope, or uplift.
The Beach Boys-like title track finds
Chatten offering advice on how to
lead a happy life: be sincere, buy
yourself some flowers every now and
then, and “if you find yourself in the
family way, give the kid more than
you had in your day”.
There’s a romantic quality to the
gentle Oh Such a Spring, with its
vision of sailors drinking American
wine down by the docks, while
A Lucid Dream builds washes of
reverberation against the drummer
Tom Coll’s fantastically propulsive
rhythms in a fashion not heard since
the glory days of the Cure. Chatten
builds a suitably dreamlike imagepop
Fontaines DC are on a roll
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