Album reviews: Idlewild | Waylon Jennings | Joshua Hotel

Waylon Jennings: Songbird (Son of Jess/Thirty Tigers) ★★★★

Joshua Hotel: Rapture Party (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★

Idlewild’s self-titled tenth album is a decent summation of the many moods of one of Scotland’s most influential bands, capturing aspects of their punky roots while honouring the anthemic sweep of some of their best loved indie epics and leaving room for a touch of experimentation.

Like I Had Before barrels along reaching an exultant fuzz guitar coda. The slick philosophical pop/rock of The Mirror Still contrasts with the crunchy riffs of Make It Happen, while both sides of the band’s musical personality come together on I Wish I Wrote It Down. More intriguing, however, is the propulsive synth-driven meditation of closing track End With Sunrise.

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Waylon Jennings’ musician son Shooter has uncovered a trove of unreleased recordings from his father’s Seventies outlaw country peak, fashioned here into the first of three planned album releases, mixed in analogue to capture the essence of the original recordings with embellishment from surviving members of Jennings’ band The Waylors.

His rich but sensitive version of Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird now receives additional backing from country divas Elizabeth Cook and Ashley Monroe, slow waltz I Don’t Have Anymore Love Songs is wreathed in pedal steel and Jennings’ artistic reach is showcased by the orchestral Nashville sound soul of Dink’s Blues but also the perky irreverent blues of I’d Like To Love You Baby, with its squall of harmonica and impish guitar.

Inverness trio Joshua Hotel dig on the Eighties across an impressive debut set of stylized songs by frontman Joshua Mackenzie, who carries off some ever so slightly mannered vocals, leavened by a trail of cool female backing vocals. Beautiful Day bounds along at heatseeking pace. Elsewhere, the tone is wistful on Hometown 2001 and coloured with dream pop ethereality on Easy Feeling and recent single Show Me Around, as good a shop window as any for their classy sound.

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CLASSICAL

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances (Pentatone) ★★★★★

Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances marked a turning point for the great Czech composer, not only releasing him from the drudgery of playing and teaching that had thus far supported him, but also establishing him as a voice of global fascination and popularity. Originally written for piano four hands, it was in the orchestral form requested by his publishers that both sets – 16 pieces published 1878 and 1886 respectively and fashioned after Brahms’ Hungarian Dances – bore such an explosive impact. Awash with Bohemian joie de vivre and delirious rhythmic verve, their unquenchable spirit is kindled magnificently in this new recording by Sir Simon Rattle and the Czech Philharmonic. The detail is both instinctive and polished, the various Polkas, Furiants, Dumkas and Sousedskás rhythmically vibrant, the rich inner voicings crafted with such warmth and meaning as to counter the outward cut and thrust of Rattle’s immaculate characterisations and vital tempi. Ken Walton

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FOLK

Kim Carnie: A’ Chailleach (Càrn Records) ★★★★

Award-winning Gaelic singer Kim Carnie consolidates the impact she made as a performer of quiet power with And So We Gather, with this second album steeped in female folklore and magic, setting venerable Gaelic texts to her own music. She’s accompanied keenly by the likes of guitarist Innes White, fiddler-singer Megan Henderson, John Lowrie on keyboards plus special guests. The opening Ulc a dhèan mo lochd, brief but otherworldly with its phased vocals, sets the tone, followed by the steady beat of Òran na Bèiste Maoile, a selkie tale laced with the glitter of Seckou Keita’s kora and fervent vocal responses to Carnie’s singing. American dobro star Jerry Douglas lends new edge to the waulking song Clò nan Gillean and there’s lovely fiddle in Ceus-chrann nam Buadh – “The passion Flower of Virtues”, while a highlight is Crònan, with Carnie’s breathy yet authoritative delivery joined by Julie Fowlis. Jim Gilchrist

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