Renewed energy
Two decades after their debut, Stereophonics show a willingness to experiment, while Billy Bragg’s ire seeks out injustice
POP Stereophonics: Scream Above The Sounds
Parlophone Records
JJJ
Billy Bragg: Bridges Not Walls
Cooking Vinyl
JJJ
Golden Teacher: No Luscious Life
Golden Teacher Records
JJJ
Roy Orbison with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: A Love So Beautiful
Sony Legacy
JJJ
While some of their peers are succumbing to marketingdriven nostalgia,
Stereophonics are marking 20 years since the release of their debut album Word Gets Around, not with an anniversary re-issue but with new music which takes this conservative rock band into the most interesting sonic territory they have investigated since 2005’s Language.
Sex. Violence. Other?
They start with what they know, given a performance-enhancing injection. Kelly Jones’ ragged soul voice is shown off to good advantage on middle of the road roots rocker
Caught By the Wind, while he learns to stop furrowing his brow and get that foot on the monitor on Taken A
Tumble.
All In One Night, inspired by the one-take heist movie Victoria ,witha refrain adapted from a vocal warmup exercise, is one of the smoother, snoozier, more streamlined numbers but there is better to come on Geronimo, a mid-paced blues rock stomp, livened up with punky saxophone and jazzy piano licks and the softer, melancholic strains of What’s All The Fuss About? embellished by lithe, layered, mournful trumpet and a rich, focused vocal.
Jones allows himself a backwards glance on Before Anyone Knew Our
Name, a sentimental piano ballad reflecting on the early days of the band and the death of original drummer Stuart Cable, and Boyona
Bike, which contrasts the invincibility of his own childhood with the circumscription of adulthood.
Jones has described the new material as anthems to rally round in fractured times; Billy Bragg ,asone might expect, just goes for the jugular on his latest mini-album, reacting as he goes to the volatility of the past year with country songs on climate change, soul songs about race hate and folk songs about the free market, the most satisfying of which are the most timeless. The spare soul swagger of The
Sleep of Reason responds to the rise of Trumpism but is a challenge to good men doing nothing, while Anais Mitchell’s Why We Build The
Wall was originally written for her folk opera Hadestown, inspired by Greek mythology, but bristles with cautionary intent in Bragg’s hands.
Saffiyah Smiles was inspired by the photograph of activist Saffiyah Khan smiling in the face of hate at an antiimmigration rally earlier this year – Bragg takes up the chant “this is what solidarity looks like”. Full English
Brexit plays into the narrative of Leave voters as nostalgic Little Englanders but does at least acknowledge a sense of disenfranchisement in the wistful line “change is strange and no one is listening to me”.
Meanwhile, back on the dancefloor, Glasgow’s Golden Teacher ,one of the city’s most idiosyncratic ensembles, finally deliver their debut album. No Luscious Life is playful, unfettered electro funk, arguably best experienced live. Its arty party playlist encompasses the deadpan dance of Sauchiehall Withdrawal, disorientating dub of Shatter, electronic gamelan of the title track, cosmic house odyssey of Spiritron and darkly mischievous machine music of What Fresh Hell Is This? Get on their guest list.
There are few more celestial sounds in music than the unique voice of
Roy Orbison. With the blessing and participation of his sons, Aloveso
Beautiful resurrects vocal recordings from across his career and surrounds his haunted, transcendent tones with new orchestral arrangements by the Royal Philharmonic. The scurrying strings convey the urgency of I
Drove All Night and there is exquisite melodrama to spare, but nothing that cannot be better expressed by the sublime originals. ■
Billy Bragg’s Full English Brexit plays into the narrative of Leave voters as nostalgic Little Englanders