Album opinions: Emeli Sandé | David Holmes | Cat Power

David Holmes: Blind on a Galloping Horse (Heavenly Recordings) ***

Cat Power: Cat Power Sings Dylan – The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (Domino) ****

Conscious Route: Belterz (True Hold Records) ****

Divorced and settled with a brand new companion, Emeli Sandé nonetheless has relationship stuff to work via – at the very least in a artistic capability. Following comparatively scorching on the heels of 2022’s Let’s Say For Instance, her fifth album How Were We To Know options extra common musings on the character of affection and heartbreak, delivered along with her common MOR lyrical knowledge, all simply imprecise sufficient to use universally.

The huge ballads cope with break-ups, the title observe a style of absolution on the collapse of a relationship, along with her breathy falsetto giving strategy to full Sandé holler. “What am I supposed to do with all this love?” she bleats on the modern exaltation of All This Love. Hire a gospel choir to ship the information?

No metaphor is simply too clichéd, as she searches for a secure haven on Lighthouse, a plea for restoration with cosmic Seventies soul and light-weight dub vibrations within the combine. Fluttery pop R&B ballad Too Much is paying homage to Rihanna and never simply due to the marginally strangulated vocal type, whereas Like I Loved You might match snugly into the Sam Smith or Ed Sheeran catalogue, with funky drummer shuffle lifting the acquainted emoting and customary strings.

Engaging Eighties electro quantity My Boy Likes to Party shouldn’t be fairly the fizzy pop promised by the title, relatively a melancholic admission that “I don’t think he’s ever going to settle down”, but it surely’s a welcome variation on a confirmed banal system as Sandé continues to discover huge emotions in airbrushed, generally downright neutered phrases.

Belfast DJ, producer and composer David Holmes has been so busy with soundtrack work – gold star for the Killing Eve rating – that 15 years have elapsed since he final launched an album of his personal. Blind On a Galloping Horse is a considerate relatively than a celebration comeback, that includes shimmering, psychedelia-inspired backing tracks and funky vocals from Raven Violet.

Holmes addresses the social, political and private upheavals of the instances with the horrible resonance of the unusually beatific When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified and the pacier indie electro of Hope Is The Last Thing to Die, whereas Necessary Genius is his roll name of heroes, from Sinead O’Connor to Terry Hall. The late Andy Weatherall is in that quantity too, and an unrecorded Weatherall observe, I Laugh Myself to Sleep, gives a post-punk jolt to the final reverie.

On her latest album, Chan Marshall aka Cat Power pays stay tribute to her idol Bob Dylan, specifically the controversial interval when he was making the transition from acoustic folkie to electrified units. Cat Power Sings Dylan – The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert recreates the infamous present – which truly took place on the Manchester Free Trade Hall – when he was heckled as “Judas” for his heresy. The authentic Dylan tape was mislabelled because the Royal Albert Hall and Marshall has recorded her rendition on the London venue – full with viewers tribute heckle.

Marshall has the measure of those songs, singing the delicate first half with the softest of vocals and devoted preparations. The distinction with the rocking second half is stark although not shocking, with highlights together with the boppy Tell Me, Momma, the strutting Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat and an acidic Ballad of A Thin Man.

Edinburgh rapper Conscious Route is huge on collaboration and neighborhood assist. His new album Belterz is full of visitor rappers and singers – Empress, Stanley Odd’s Solareye, Queen of Harps, Becci Wallace – poised to reinforce the various musical menu which takes within the drum’n’bass tempo of Essence, basic Caledonia-meets-California grooves of Day Ones and the candy lovers rock of Late.

Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos 3 & 5 (Linn) *****

Mendelssohn has featured considerably within the historical past of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It fits their strong intimacy, expressive suppleness and jewel-like precision. Successive chief conductors have utilized differing approaches, the latest being Maxim Emelyanychev, whose brilliant new coupling of the Third (Scottish) and Fifth (Reformation) Symphonies gives delectably contemporary and usually individual perception. He addresses the Scottish Symphony for what it’s: a reflective impression, by no means a direct narrative, of the composer’s 1829 Caledonian sojourn. As such, he honours the aerodynamic logic of its symphonic sweep with out shedding sight of its picturesque inflexions – misty glens, carefree folk-inspired exuberance, and far in-between. The similar exhilarating textural element emerges within the Restoration Symphony, a piece anchored by its Lutheran symbolism – the early luminous emergence of the Dresden Amen, however particularly the joys of a cathartic Finale primarily based on the hymn Ein feste Burg. A gloriously uplifting conclusion to a totally compelling disc. Ken Walton

John Scofield Trio: Uncle John’s Band (ECM Records) ****

Following his final, intimately solo launch, famend guitarist John Scofield additional delves into his copious tune-memory banks, within the tightly empathetic firm of double-bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart. Thus this double album opens with Dylan’s Mr Tambourine man, rising amid drones and cymbal hiss, whereas the closing title observe is a companionable ramble with a Grateful Dead quantity. In between, the trio ranges via full-flight bebop in Miles Davis’s Budo and Scofield’s personal How Deep, whereas the energetic funk of Mask provides strategy to a fondly contemplative remedy of Bernstein’s Somewhere. There’s a dreamy, bluesy glide via the basic ballad Stairway to the Stars whereas countryish Back In Time, with its echoes of Ghost riders within the Sky, or Neil Young’s Old Man, are re-energised by Scofield’s mix of limber fluidity and sudden attack, each swoop and chop placed with care. Jim Gilchrist