Popular Music

MARK ELLEN’S nostalgic pick of jazz, pop and blues CDS

Mark Ellen

Anyone occasionally wishing to feel teleported back to the distant past – all of us? – would be amused to note that in June the top two entries in the UK album charts were by Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

If Young’s album Homegrown (£14.99) sounded like his old self – crackling guitars, rubbery bass, harmonica with a whiff of woodsmoke – then that’s because it

was his old self, recorded 45 years ago (with Emmylou Harris and the Band’s Levon n Helm and Robbie Robertson). It was shelved while he released Tonight’s The Night (£ 6.99).

Inspired by the break-up with his then girlfriend, he thought it ‘too personal’ to put out at the time. He thankfully changed tack and billed it ‘the one that got away’. Bruised, beautiful and well worth exploring.

Dylan could hardly sound more different from his mid-1970s incarnation. Twenty years ago, he started writing songs rooted in the delicate jazz, swing, incendiary blues and big, comforting show tunes he heard growing up in the 1940s and 1950s.

You catch echoes of all of them on the captivating Rough and Rowdy Ways (£12.99), especially of Django Reinhardt, Jimmy Reed and barrelling 1950s rhythm and blues. His fabulously creaky old voice – described recently as a ‘phlegmy croon’ – sounds at times like an intensely intimate poetic recitation. It’s an unbeatable gift for young and old alike.

You can play ‘spot the reference’, since the lyrics allude to William Blake, Walt Whitman, William Burroughs, Anne Frank and the Rolling Stones.

There are splendidly amusing rhymes: on I Contain Multitudes, we get ‘I paint nudes’, ‘I eat fast foods’ and ‘all the young dudes’.

Another enthralling record to hit a groove and sustain it is Rejoice (£10.99) by Nigerian drummer Tony Allen and the magnificent South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, which comes rammed with timeless, rippling, Afrobeat rhythms, chiselled melodies and the odd dash of bebop. ‘A swing-jazz stew’, as Allen called it.

Life Goes On (£17.99) by the Carla Bley Trio is equally y atmospheric p – delicious delici jazz-blues excursions by the great pianist, vividly embroidered by saxist Andy Sheppard and full of wry musical references. Beautiful

Telephones amusingly quotes the old patriotic tunes You’re A Grand Old

Flag and Hail To the Chief, ending with the last four bars of My Way.

Dust-blown images of the vast and attractive landscapes of Middle America are part of the appeal of

Xoxo (£11.99), another divinely spirited outing from the Minnesota country rock band, the Jayhawks.

This Forgotten Town drops you into the set of a western, their gorgeous harmonies conjuring flavours of the Beatles and Byrds on these soulful contemplations on the state of their nation.

The Byrds are a key part of the mix, too, for Summerlong (£15.04) by Rose City Band, an eternally sunny modern rock adventure by the generously bearded and heartwarming San Franciscan songwriter Ripley Johnson, who plays all instruments apart from drums. The effect of its lazy, fuzzed-up guitars and gently cantering pace is delightfully hypnotic. As is Love & Peace (£10.99) by the raw-edged Californian folk-and-blues showman, Seasick Steve, whose songs mine a rich seam of sunbaked modern American folklore, awash with scuffling minstrels, carnivals carn and travelling shows. The Pet Shop Boys’ 14th album, alb Hotspot (£9.99), came out ou in January. As ever, their influences infl – Abba, Bowie, Dusty Du Springfield, Kraftwerk and an 1980s New York dance hits h – merge in their symphonic sy blend of literate, machine-tooled m British pop. This T is as clever and characterful c as usual. The short stories and poetic observations are set against the backdrop of Berlin (where it was recorded), which feels as cinematic as Vienna in The Third Man.

Two other towering figures in the electronic pop landscape were back in the frame too – the pioneering composer, producer and former Roxy Music member Brian Eno and his brother Roger. Their Mixing Colours (£10.99) is a richly tuneful, softly supercharged, piano-driven, ambient record.

Any ripple of friction at a family gathering can be swiftly dispelled by a few minutes of this: relaxing, consoling and guaranteed to bathe your living room in a warm and luminous glow.

Goes well with port and mince pies. All CDS from: store.hmv.com