Albums of the week: three new releases
Steve Reich composed Reich/Richter to accompany an abstract art film made by the artist Gerhard Richter and the director Corinna Belz. But the great American pioneer of musical minimalism always intended his score for 14 instruments to have an “independent life”, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian. And this “cool, elegant” recording, of a 2020 recital by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, reveals the piece to be one of his “most impressive recent works” – with something of the “certainty and inevitability” of his great Music for 18 Musicians.
When I saw the film, I confess I found the visuals “unrewarding”, said Geoff Brown in The Times – but it is a “delight” to focus solely on Reich’s music, delivered here with “pinprick precision and reverberant haze” by Pierre Boulez’s old group, keenly conducted by George Jackson. “The more intently you listen, the more subtleties emerge among the shifting, criss-crossing textures and phrases, sometimes coloured with gentle melancholy and Hebrew sighs”, but in the end “decisively upbeat”.
Angel Olsen is regarded as a “thoughtful songwriter, an imaginative musician, an authentically emotional singer... and a bit of a misery guts”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Some of her songs have offered such a bleak take on romance that they “made a great argument for celibacy”. Her new album, though, marks a mood shift. Big Time was recorded during an “unsettling” period in which Olsen lost both of her parents, but also fell in love and came out as gay. And while there is “plenty of lamentation and some maudlin bar-room philosophising”, it’s a “lot more cheerful than anything she has done before”.
Olsen’s “dramatic vibrato” has often been compared to Roy Orbison’s, and there’s an “Orbison-esque sensibility to her songcraft”, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. Following a reversion to acoustic on 2020’s Whole New Mess, this new album “dials the production back up again”. Strings, brass, percussion, keyboards and steel guitar combine “with just the right amount of weight and contrast”, while Olsen’s rich vocals “sigh and shiver” to arresting effect.
Sheffield rockers Def Leppard have just set out on a huge stadium tour of the US, co-headlining with Mötley Crüe, said James Hall in The Daily Telegraph. A million people have booked to see them thrash out 1980s mega-hits such as Pour Some Sugar on Me and Animal. And understandably, their 12th studio album doesn’t stray far from the “shiny, crunching mid-paced rock” that has proved such a winning formula. There are at least two songs here (Kick and Fire It Up) that have “suitably huge”, stadium-ready choruses. But there are also some “fascinating curveballs”, including a great ballad (This Guitar) featuring the country giant Alison Krauss, and contributions from David Bowie’s long-time pianist Mike Garson.
The first three tracks, and the last two, are “smashers”, said Joe Muggs on The Arts Desk – thrilling reminders of why Def Leppard were “one of the biggest bands in the world in the mid-1980s”. After 45 years, their output remains “as joyously direct in their pursuit of the pleasure principle as any disco or house record”. It’s quite a feat.