CDS of the week: three new releases
With their 1986 “masterpiece”, the Smiths achieved guitarist Johnny Marr’s dream of “ranking alongside the Rolling Stones, the Stooges and all the other great rock bands who changed lives”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. The record was the “popcultural high point of the 1980s” – and this remastered and expanded version “still sounds incredible: the bravery and brilliance of Morrissey’s words; the intensity and intricacy of Marr’s arrangements; the rhythmic insistence of bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce”.
This “must-have” reissue (4 CDS/5 LPS) includes demos, alternative mixes, B-sides, a concert recording and a 13-minute film by Derek Jarman, said Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times. But all these extras don’t divert from the thrill of the album itself, on which Morrissey and Marr “hit the summit of their abilities” as a partnership touched by genius. Songs such as the title track, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out are “imperishable and still breathtaking”. In his two decades fronting Destroyer, Dan Bejar has “constantly switched styles, taking in everything from baroque pop to rampaging, Wizzard-style glam rock”, said Dave Simpson in The Guardian. This excellent album contains “semi-acoustic strumming”, indie rock and “shimmering Italian house”, but mostly settles on a “blissful, electronic pop sound” that recalls a mellow New Order. “Old analogue drum machines tick,” synths soar and basslines twang – most effectively on the sublime Tinseltown Swimming in Blood.
“Walk into a room and everything clicks,” sings Bejar on this record – and he might as well be surveying his band’s music, said Ludovic Hunter-tilney in the FT. It has a similar way of “clicking into place despite surreal lyrics, eccentric singing and wilfully unpredictable structures”. On Destroyer’s previous album, 2015’s Poison Season, Bejar performed “an idiosyncratic homage to crooners”. This time, the music is infused with a love of vintage indie rock and electropop. Solo recordings by Krystian Zimerman “come round so rarely that each one is an event”, said Richard Fairman in the FT. Now aged 60, the great Polish virtuoso has decided it is time to put onto record some of the late, great sonatas of Schubert and Beethoven, which he has been including in recitals for more than 30 years. On this disc, Zimerman tackles Schubert’s A Major, D959, and the expansive, final B Flat Major, D960 – and his performances are “propulsive, alive to every detail and full of subtle, gentle expression. It is peerless playing.”
Characteristically, the performances have been prepared with “immense care”, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian. To recreate something of the sound world that Schubert would have known, Zimerman has replaced the standard Steinway keyboard with a piano he designed and made himself. “The hammers strike the strings at a different point, creating a new set of overtones and hence a different range of keyboard colours.” The resulting recordings are thoughtful and “technically impeccable”.