Album reviews: Jessie J | Vagrant Real Estate | Iona Zajac | Restricted Code
Jessie J’s first album since 2018 channels her travails in unexpected ways, writes Fiona Shepherd
Jessie J: Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time (Darco Records) ★★★
Vagrant Real Estate: Neither Collar Nor Crown (self-released) ★★★★
Iona Zajac: Bang (Post Electric Artists) ★★★★
Restricted Code: Chasing Shadows (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★
Jessica Cornish, aka Jessie J, has been marked absent from the pop scene for almost eight years, with good reason. Lows and highs in that time include a serious car accident which injured her larynx and left her with a hearing impairment, a miscarriage then motherhood and, most recently, treatment for breast cancer.
Her first album since her 2018 Christmas collection channels those travails in unexpected ways as Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time sets out its store as a mature R&B record with no great urgency, desperation or ostentation. Cornish does make up for lost time with a bumper track listing which arguably could have been trimmed back, but everything is of a standard.
Cornish is an acknowledged pop power singer but the tone is more smoky than shouty on R&B slow jam Feel It On Me and the elegant fluid soul of If I Save You. “Let’s make love and listen to Sade” she trills on the suitably laidback Believe in Magic/Joy, an ode to getting her priorities right after tough times.
She reckons with the loss of friends including DJ Jamal Edwards on I’ll Never Know Why and reels through the years on cutesy confessional Complicated, backed barely with guitar and a touch of brass. Her measured gospel testifying on Colourful shows power in restraint but still makes it clear she can let rip if required.
She seizes her moment as the album gears up in the closing stages with the made-it-through-the-rain sentiments and 80s pop/rock influence of Living My Best Life. H.A.P.P.Y. perks up further with an elastic funky bassline, disco strings and catchy whistling refrain before the would-be show-stopping indulgence of belting ballad The Award Goes To.
Aberdonian DJ/producer Nick Cronin - you can call him Vagrant Real Estate - emerges as a Scottish DJ Shadow, blending diverse field, folk, even stand-up samples and inventive loops and backdrops on his ambitious new album, which celebrates the influence of Scottish music on his work. Neither Collar Nor Crown features an impressive 25 guest artists, with fellow Aberdonian MC/producer Jackill gracing most tracks, veteran rapper Madhat McGore and Glasgow-based Bemz showcasing their particular energies and singers Iona Fyfe, Fiona Soe Paing and AiiTee bringing their various vocal traditions to a project characterized by its satisfying fusion of ensemble rapping and ethereal Gaelic singing.
Edinburgh-bred, London-based singer/harpist Iona Zajac has already charmed in jazz folk trio Avocet and just recently on larger stages as part of the new touring line-up of The Pogues. Her tantalizing debut solo album Bang is an opportunity to reel in the listener with her own seductive, subtle alt.pop sound, shot through with anger but also dark humour and inspired by an array of developmental experiences from queasy encounters with older men to a torrid, surreal dream about Billy Connolly. A name to watch, a voice to hear.
Hailing from Easterhouse but signed to Edinburgh label Pop:Aural, post-punk likely lads Restricted Code burned briefly on the Central Belt scene, touring with The Human League and Fire Engines before splitting in 1981. Forty years on, they have reconvened their original line-up, older and in their words A Little Wiser, finding a natural middle ground between flinty post-punk and melodic jangling on comeback album Chasing Shadows. Highlights include recent single Silver Sun with its warm electric piano, soothing, crooning vocals and melodic synths and the twinkling keys and gentle shuffling rhythm of Six Years, while they don’t shy away from open sentimentality and melodrama in pursuit of their classy Scotpop.
CLASSICAL
Nicola Benedetti: Violin Café! (Decca) ★★★★
The smiling cover shot says it all: a radiant, contented Nicola Benedetti enjoying a break from her jet-setting life as concerto virtuoso, festival administrator, visionary influencer and busy mother to gift something homely and heartfelt, as much to herself as to her faithful following. Violin Café! is an easy-listening parcel of musical trinkets - from sophisticated gems by Sarasate, Dushkin, Bloch, Debussy and others to such classical lollipops as Peter Maxwell Davies’ Farewell to Stromness, even a sentimental sequence of traditional Scots arrangements. What distinguishes them is Benedetti’s idiosyncratic continental café-style backing ensemble, not least the aromatic timbres of Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes, Italian accordionist Samuele Telari and Scotland’s Brìghde Chambeul on small pipes. The playing is palpably relaxed, effortlessly lithe and genuinely characterful. If the Scots selection wears a little thin, placed as an internally-grouped set, the beauty of this potpourri is its universal, inoffensive appeal. Ken Walton
FOLK
Dick Gaughan: Live at the BBC 1972-79 (Talking Elephant) ★★★★★
Sidelined from performance by a stroke in 2016, the masterly singing and fiery guitar technique of Dick Gaughan made him a signal presence on the folk scene over four decades. These ten BBC live recordings from the Seventies, when the gruff passion of his singing seemed to emerge fully formed, come as a foretaste of a seven-CD plus DVD box set due for release in February. Listeners familiar mainly with the powerfully conscience-tweaking protest repertoire of his later career may find these largely traditional songs a revelation, especially as some featured on now shamefully unavailable early albums. Here are Gaughan classics such as a peerless Flower o’ Northumberland and a gorgeously tender Rashy Moor. From Floo’ers o’ the Forest, recorded with members of Boys of the Lough, to his haunting, a cappella declamation of MacCrimmon’s Lament, their distinctive narrative power is imbued with a quintessential humanity. Jim Gilchrist
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