Times 2 - UK (2020-12-11)

the times | Friday December 11 2020 1GT 9

music reviews

This Canadian heart-throb comes

across as a lovely guy, but poetry

is not his strong point. “Ooh, your

body’s like an ocean,” he groans on

Teach Me How to Love. Surely he’s

not telling his girlfriend, fellow pop

star Camila Cabello, that she has piled

on the pounds and got massive?

Not quite doing for modern pop

what Van Gogh’s Starry Night did

for painting, Look Up at the Stars

compares the twinkling heavens to

“pieces of art”, and 24 Hours is a love

ballad about that most romantic of

subjects: signing off on a mortgage.

Amid all this, the music flits

between winsome acoustic torpor

and standard-issue dance pop, yet

there’s something about Mendes’s

guilelessness, sincerity and innocence

that actually makes the whole thing

quite appealing.

Shawn Mendes

Wonder

Island

{{(((

Alex Maas

Luca

Basin Rock

{{{{{

Here is one of the quieter releases of

2020, but also one of the best. Alex

Maas is the singer in the Black Angels,

heavy rock stalwarts from Austin,

Texas, and on his solo debut he

combines druggy, late-1960s paranoia

with intimate, heartfelt songwriting.

Shines Like the Sun and What Would

I Tell Your Mother, odes to Maas’s

toddler son, evoke paternal feelings of

wonder and anxiety, while The City is

a campfire lullaby about a citadel filled

with happy, trusting people who prove

easy meat for the hostile forces

gathering beyond the city walls.

Filled with melodies that sound as

if they have always existed, Luca is a

beautiful, thoughtful album of gentle

psychedelia for the modern age.

featuring cunningly chosen French

song settings presented in palindrome

form. At the centre is Messiaen’s

ecstatic cycle exploring human and

divine love, Poèmes pour Mi,

sandwiched between related slices

from composers in Messiaen’s orbit,

from his first wife, Claire Delbos,

to modern French music’s

fountainhead, Debussy.

The sound balance tends to favour

Armstrong’s piano, marvellous in

itself, while Dain lower down her vocal

register can’t match the glory of Dain

higher up. Yet such quirks are easily

offset by the musicians’ penetrating

artistry; by the thrill of their repertoire

too. It’s almost worth buying this

album just for the opening and closing

songs by Kaija Saariaho: perfect in

every way.

Geoff Brown

Yo-Yo Ma/

Kathryn Stott

Songs of

Comfort

and Hope

Sony Classical

{{(((

Katharine Dain/

Sam Armstrong

Regards sur

l’infinie

7 Mountain Records

{{{{(

O

f all the benefits of being

vaccinated, stopping the

stream of classical artists’

Age of Coronavirus albums

might not come near the

top of most people’s list. There are

days, however, when it looms large

on mine.

I’m not thinking of those

courageous recording projects

executed under lockdown conditions,

such as the Philip Glass Ensemble’s

stunning home delivery of Glass’s

little-known Music in Eight Parts.

It’s rather those celebrity-driven

collections of soothing bits and pieces,

kindly meant, but with musical and

emotional satisfaction very difficult

to arrange, yet alone guarantee.

Take Yo-Yo Ma’s entry into this

testing field, Songs of Comfort and

Hope, a collection curated by his

piano partner on this album, Kathryn

Stott. All would be well if their

music-making remained as strong and

beautiful as it is in their Mendelssohn

Song Without Words or the extract

from Bloch’s Jewish Life. Yet such

jewels quickly become smothered by

fussily arranged folk material

(Shenandoah), too much diversity

(from a Zulu lullaby to Vera Lynn’s hit

We’ll Meet Again) and what I can only

describe as the musical equivalent of

limp celery. Ma plays with his heart in

every track; even so, I’d advise seeking

comfort and joy elsewhere.

You could try gazing into infinity

with Katharine Dain, an American

soprano with scorching top notes,

based in the Netherlands, and the

incisive British pianist Sam Armstrong.

As a virus album, Regards sur l’infinie

is impressively elegant and thoughtful,

gold digger who seems like “a winner

when she’s cooking you dinner, but

she’s really moving in for the kill”

Lavatory Lil (or should that be Harpic

Heather?) deserves to be flushed

down the U-bend.

On Deep Down McCartney slips

into groovy grandad mode as he sings

about partying every night against

a weirdly sombre funk groove. Yet

more often than not — the raw,

White Stripes-like heaviness of Slidin’

or Women and Wives’s simple message

of our actions having consequences for

others wrapped in a melancholic piano

ballad — these loose songs tumble

along with feeling and sincerity.

It won’t stop McCartney from being

the thumbs-up fab Macca we know

and love, but it is a reminder that

underneath the woolly jumper

beats the heart of a lifelong artist.

blues of Long Tailed Winter Bird and

the accompanying Winter Bird / When

Winter Comes, a sweet pastoral reverie

on fixing the fence, digging drains

by the carrot patch and other seasonal

necessities of the rural idyll. You

feel that, had he not become one of

most successful rock stars, this is the

life McCartney would like to have led.

Between those two songs is a series

of seemingly unconnected snapshots

that are anywhere between three and

eight minutes long. On the soulful,

intense Deep Deep Feeling he sings

of the pains of love — “sometimes I

wish it would stay, sometimes I wish it

would go away” — and there is none

of the glibness he so often uses as a

shield against the world.

The throwaway approach does not

always work. From its recycled John

Lee Hooker riff to its words about a

Paul McCartney

McCartney III

Capitol

{{{{(

A solo album from

Paul McCartney is

brimming with

sincerity, says

Will Hodgkinson

I

t is Paul McCartney’s destiny —

and after 57 years in the game

there doesn’t appear to be much

he can do about it — to be the

cheery, sentimental, uncool

Beatle. It doesn’t matter that he

was exploring Sixties London’s

countercultural world of

underground magazines and pop art

happenings while John Lennon was

still playing at married life in suburban

Weybridge. It makes not a jot of

difference that he made an ambient

techno album in the early Nineties

under the guise of the Fireman. He

is the jumper-wearing fab Macca

of Wonderful Christmastime and

Ebony and Ivory, and no amount

of pioneering experimentation can

change that.

This is a shame because although

McCartney does have shocking lapses

of taste — see the excruciating Fuh

Yo u from 2018 — he is prepared

to take risks. Which brings us to

McCartney III. He self-recorded the

first in his solo album series in 1969,

distraught at the collapse of the band

he had spent his adult life in, and its

unfinished messiness came as a shock

after the melodic perfection of

Blackbird, She’s Leaving Home and

countless others.

The end of Wings brought the

minimal, electronic McCartney II in

1980, and the events of 2020 have

pushed him back into that solipsistic

mindset for McCartney III. As with

the first two albums, he has done

everything himself. And he has been

brave enough to expose to the world

whatever he blurted out without

thinking too much about it.

This unguarded delivery means

we get to discover what has been

on McCartney’s mind. The album is

bookended by the rough electric guitar

A heartfelt hug more smothering than soothing

Belle & Sebastian

What to Look for in

Summer

Matador

{{{((

In 2019 the

beloved

Glasgow

band

Belle &

Sebastian

launched

the Boaty

Weekender,

which featured three

nights on a cruise ship off Sardinia.

The bilious prospect of 2,

indie rockers dealing with the twin

forces of alcohol and seasickness

notwithstanding, it sounds, based on

this live recording from the weekender

and a few other dates, like a lot of fun.

There are plenty of “you had to be

there” moments as the singing slips

out of tune and the crowds roar, but

leader Stuart Murdoch’s way with

words still shines. “She was into

S&M and Bible studies... not

everyone’s cup of tea,” from If You’re

Feeling Sinister, is just one such gem.

MARY MCCARTNEY/MPL COMMUNICATIONS

Loose songs that tumble with feeling

redthree

i hi ffS dii

pop

classical

Jazz album

Chris Potter reviewed

at thetimes.co.uk/arts