Album reviews: Biffy Clyro | The Divine Comedy | Boo Boos | Former Champ
It’s mostly business as usual on Biffy Clyro’s latest album, although there are a few new ideas thrown into the mix, writes Fiona Shepherd
Biffy Clyro: Futique (Warner Records) ★★★
The Divine Comedy: Rainy Sunday Afternoon (Divine Comedy Records) ★★★★
Boo Boos: Young Love (PIAS) ★★★★
Former Champ: I saw you in paradise (Hand of God) ★★★★
As their band name attests, Biffy Clyro are not averse to inventing words. According to frontman Simon Neil, the title of the band’s tenth album, Futique, aims to capture “those beautiful, sad and fleeting moments that only become significant in hindsight”. In many respects, it’s a call to live in the moment and cherish what you have. For Biffy, it’s an appreciation of what they have as a unit. This famously tight trio, comprising Neil and twin brothers James and Ben Johnston, have been stretched over the past few years but have come back together with their signature mix of melody, power and imagination.
First single A Little Love arrives on clattering drums and sonorous strings before resolving into one of those big Biffy choruses in celebration of love as a conquering force. Hunting Season barrels along with garage metal urgency and a snotty vocal from Neil which is almost John Lydon-like at points before the cathartic release of the epic chorus. The fleet Friendshipping showcases the band in terse, propulsive, melodic mode and It’s Chemical! is another bilious Biffy number cloaked in exultant uplifting rock.
This is mostly Biffy Clyro as you might expect to encounter them but their arrangements are often so intricate that new ideas can easily pop into the mix. Dearest Amygdala is another imaginative Biffy title with an accompanying intriguing song, drawing on Seventies classic rock. Woe Is Me, Wow Is You opens as a string-infused ballad with call-and-response backing vocals before taking off into pounding territory. There is a playful edge to their bass baritone intonation of the title and, as they well know, the band that plays together stays together, so the hookline “this ship is built to last” rings out as a statement of intent from the trio themselves.
Neil Hannon returns on top form with the first album by The Divine Comedy in six years. Like Biffy Clyro, there are no particular curveballs on Rainy Sunday Afternoon, just an exquisite distillation of all that Hannon does best - torch song vocals, witty lyrics, earworm melodies and sumptuous arrangements. He recounts some domestic travails on the Bacharachesque title track and offers a study in lassitude on the Fifth Dimension easy listening vibes of The Man Who Turned Into A Chair. He harks back with unabashed nostalgia to a childhood Christmas shopping trip to London on the twinkly All the Pretty Lights and delivers a moving lament for his father in his final days The Last Time I Saw the Old Man but there are also satirical barbs aimed at VIP meet-and-greet culture and gated privilege on I Want You and Mar-A-Lago By the Sea.
The equally gifted Eels frontman Mark “E” Everitt finds another songwriting outlet in Boo Boos, his collaboration with Brooklyn-based vocalist Kate Mattison. Together, they form an indie Tammy Wynette/George Jones double act, trading droll compliments on the acoustic country strum The Toughest Bitch I Know and the cutesy retro handjive of Boo Boo Time. Chicken in a Molehill is an odd image around which to build a heartfelt country soul ballad but they pull it off, while C’mon Baby rocks Stevie Nicks influences and Total Thunder is a sleek New Wave homage.
Former Champ are a Glasgow-based indie supergroup fronted by Claire McKay, aka Martha Ffion, alongside members of Savage Mansion - including her husband Craig Angus - Catholic Action and Secret Motorbikes. Their debut album i saw you in paradise is stuffed with three-minute (or less) indie songs with fizzing melodies and fuzz guitar, topped with McKay’s yearning voice. Crooked little line and now you see me capture similar plaintive territory to Camera Obscura against a grungier backdrop while their love of Thin Lizzy shines through on the chiming porcelain.
CLASSICAL
Lotte Betts-Dean & Dimitris Soukaras: everything you’ve ever lived for (Delphian) ★★★★
Originality is everything to Australian mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, not least the distinctive multicoloured versatility that defines her work. It was on show live at the recent Lammermuir Festival, and now again in a new duo album with stylish Greek guitarist Dimitris Soukaras. The recording setting is, in itself, a mood-facilitating feature, the intimate glow within Midlothian’s Crichton Collegiate Church benefitting any style the pair throw at it, whether Richard Rodgers’ Blue Moon (schmalzy and seductive), the vocalist’s chorister-like purity in Seiber’s Réveillez-vous, the haunting delicacy of songs by Ravel and Debussy, Sinéad O’Connor’s ghostly Jackie, or the refined ecstasy of a Britten lute song from his opera Gloriana. This is a highly-personal nostalgic collaboration, which perhaps lends a certain sameness to the collection. But equally there’s something totally beguiling in the mutable allure of this heartfelt programme and its uniquely expressive presentation. Ken Walton
FOLK
Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey (Wee Studio Records) ★★★★
Originally an acclaimed stage show marking the centenary of mass emigration from the Hebrides to Canada on the vessels Metagama, Marloch and Canada during 1923-24, these 36 tracks of new and traditional music and narration chart the emigrants’ story and the profound economic and social impact their departure had on the islands. Narrated by the show’s writer Donald S Murray and the indefatigable Dolina Maclennan, the show’s formidable ensemble includes singer-songwriters Liza Mulholland and Willie Campbell, singer and piper Calum Alex Macmillan, cellist Christine Hanson and fiddler Charlie Mckerron. The music varies considerably in style and mood, from the upbeat opener, Statue of Liberty, to the stately melancholy of a retreat march, or the Prohibition speakeasy romp of Mosquito Fleet. Most potently infused with that homeward yearning which never left the emigrants, however, are the Gaelic songs Faili Faili and Eilean Fraoich, both written by emigrant bards. Jim Gilchrist
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