Record Reviews

Jon Langford Four Lost Souls

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For many musicians, it’s a dream to record in the famed Shoals region with members of the legendary Muscle Shoals recording crew. But Jon Langford was invited to do just that, completely sight-unseen. After producing artwork for an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2015, the Welsh musician was invited to come out to Alabama to record by Elvis’s former bassist and member of Muscle Shoals rhythm section, Norbert Putnam.Joined by f

Source: Jon Langford Four Lost Souls

Jake Bugg: Hearts That Strain review – a rootsier return 

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Jake Bugg’s last album, On My One (2016),was an ill-advised bid to engage with a new crowd. The Nottingham singer’s fourth set, recorded in Nashville, abandons the rapping and Kasabian-friendly rock in favour of dusty country-folk. Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys contributes to three tracks and Miley Cyrus’s sister Noah duets on Waiting, but Bugg is most convincing when his guests take a back seat. The delicate title track, which evokes Bert Jansch, is rich in imagery and bristles with intent. And though the faster songs are largely throwaway, Bugg is inching closer to a sound that is both familiar and very much his own.

Source: Jake Bugg: Hearts That Strain review – a rootsier return | Music | The Guardian

Personal meets political on Nick Mulvey’s assured sophomore release

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Wake Up Now is an exuberant display of exceptional musical talent showing Mulvey’s flair for pairing structural intricacy and sonic intimacy.

In this supposed age of apathy and indifference where a sneering sense of irony increasingly rules the roost, Nick Mulvey’s second album is something of an anomaly: a direct call for the listener to – for want of a better phrase – ‘stay woke’. While the 2014 Mercury Prize-nominated First Mind proved Mulvey to be a musician with intelligence, poise and a distinct talent for simple yet heartfelt odes to love and emotion, his new album Wake Up Now sees him combine the personal with the political to create a sophomore release which is both astute and assured.

Politics have never been far from Mulvey’s consciousness – he is, for example, quoted as having felt “a bit sick” upon learning of former Prime Minister David Cameron’s admiration for him. Yet they have certainly never been closer to his music than on ‘Myela’, a track which tackles the European refugee crisis and seeks to encapsulate the horror of displacement in an unfeeling twenty-first century global milieu: “they’d rather die once in the sea than dying every day a little more”. ‘We Are Never Apart’ is a poignant elegy to both nature and nurture, to caring for the world around us as closely as our fellow humans, and a quiet protest song against fracking. [ . . . ]

Read more at: Personal meets political on Nick Mulvey’s assured sophomore release – The Boar