BEST OF THE NEW RELEASES...
MADI DIAZ: Weird Faith (Anti-)
HARRY STYLES was so impressed with Madi Diaz when the Pennsylvanian artist supported him in North America that he asked her to join his touring band as a backing singer and guitarist. This album of well-crafted but distinctly unsentimental love songs shows why he was so keen. Diaz sets her candid words to pretty folk-pop melodies, but there’s bite here, too. Same Risk begins acoustically before building through strings, while Texan star Kacey Musgraves, who has also toured with Styles, duets with Diaz on powerful country ballad Don’t Do Me Good.
★★★★✩
THE REYTONS: Ballad Of A Bystander (Self-released)
LIKE Wigan band The Lathums, Rotherham quartet The Reytons have stepped into the breach following the Arctic Monkeys’ decision to abandon raucous guitar music in favour of lush ballads and lounge jazz. The group’s third album is dominated by brusque, punky singalongs that should go down a storm at indie discos. Frontman Jonny Yerrell sings of whiling away hours in shopping arcades and hopping on the 116 bus with his girlfriend. Seven In Search Of Ten, about a Tinder addict with unrealistic expectations, hints at greater nuance.
★★★★✩
DECLAN McKENNA: What Happened To The Beach? (Columbia)
DRIVEN by a wish to make decent albums rather than TikTokfriendly earworms, Declan McKenna admits to over-thinking his songwriting on his second album, Zeros, in 2020. He has lightened up this time around. There’s a wonky edge to some of his lo-fi arrangements, but also a feel-good spirit that comes to the fore on the Latin-tinged Elevator Hum. Mulholland’s Dinner And Wine explores the dark side of a party lifestyle, while he vents his frustrations at an intrusive music business executive on the tonguein-cheek Nothing Works.
★★★✩✩
VERDI: I Lombardi (BR Klassik)
VERDI’S fourth opera, set in the First Crusade, has acquired topicality owing to the Middle East situation. The tenor hero Oronte, who dies at the end of Act 3, is a Muslim, and the soprano heroine Giselda a crusader’s daughter. This live recording is one of a series of Verdi operas conductor Ivan Repusic has presented at Bavarian Radio. Confusingly there are two tenors and two sopranos and the other main role is for bass (Michele Pertusi). He’s foggy at the start and Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze has a Slavic edge, but tenor Piero Pretti is fine and the solo singing is thrilling.
★★★★✩