ALBUMS OF THE WEEK
Surrounded By Time
EMI, out April 23 ★★★★★
The quality of Tom Jones’s voice at 80 years of age is a physiological miracle, testament to the care he must take of his priceless instrument. The musical choices the Welsh knight and producer Ethan Johns makes also betray inquisitiveness and no trace of complacency in terms of the arrangements of these 12 covers. While this is still very much
Jones The Voice, he sings over a production of Michel Legrand’s Windmills Of Your Mind that is reminiscent of Kraftwerk. Similarly, Cat Stevens’ Popstar is like early Depeche Mode. But it is not all ta-pocketta-pocketta electronica. Dylan’s One More Cup Of Coffee is rendered with acoustic guitar, panpipes and Hammond organ. The latter is also to the fore on The Waterboys’ This Is The Sea that comes in gusts rather than the Force 10 power of the original. Jones still seems intent on pushing the envelope rather than pulling on the slippers.
Jinx Lennon
Liferafts For Latchicos
★★★★★
Just a year after the 34-track double album Border Schizo Fffolk Songs, Ireland’s eminent folkpunk-rap-poet returns with a 19-song collection that will again provoke, discomfit and upset. That’s the good news. The better news is that this is perhaps his best since 2009’s Trauma Themes Idiot Times. With subject matter in some cases instantly recognisable as inspired by tragic and infamous incidents in our recent history, there are triggers here for the sensitive. But while he flails on his guitar or jabs at a keyboard, what he says or shouts on Iron Bars; Quiet Man Of Discotheques; My Friend Says and Serve A Drink To Our Sister deserves to be heard, though some may contend otherwise. Pushing The Patients Around addresses the resentment he encounters from some in his hometown of Dundalk. But I doubt popularity or profitability form any part of Jinx Lennon’s ambitions.