Oldies who need a few more goldies
Sting
The Bridge
Out Friday ★★★★★
Rod Stewart
The Tears Of Hercules Out now ★★★★★ Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raise The Roof
Out Friday ★★★★★ Ren Harvieu
Gorilla, Manchester Touring until November 24 ★★★★★
You don’t have to be a septuagenarian to have an album out this week, but it helps. Rod Stewart is 76, Robert Plant 73. Even Sting, who reached the top years after them, has just turned 70. It’s a relief to find Plant bringing along Alison Krauss, a mere whippersnapper at 50.
All three of these grizzled giants can still sing, and they each have their strong points.
The one who cares most about quality control is Plant, whose last record, Carry Fire (2017), was a gem. The canniest salesman is Stewart, who, unlike the others, has noticed that Adele’s new album is due on Friday, and nipped in ahead of it.
The one working the hardest is Sting. During lockdown, according to the press release, he was in his home studio by 10.30 every morning. By rock-star standards, that’s like you or me clocking on at the crack of dawn.
Working alone, with a few trusted friends chipping in remotely, Sting could have been really bold. On one of these 13 tracks, he was: Loving You, narrated by a jealous husband, combines brooding textures with chilling lyrics (‘I’ve been given to violence’). But the rest is a tour of his old musical haunts – punchy pop, wordy jazz and Geordie folk. All that’s missing is the old white reggae.
Sting’s strengths are still there, from difficult emotions to breezy melodies. And so are his flaws, including a tendency to turn a line into a lecture.
Apart from Loving You, only three songs are vintage Sting: the snappy Rushing Water, the short-story-like The Bells Of St Thomas and the elegant For Her Love.
Still, he’s streets ahead of Sir Rod, who, while remaining perfectly fine on stage, has been phoning his albums in for years. His songwriting, which peaked in 1971 with Maggie May, is now thin, corny and sometimes toe-curling.
‘Sex is cool and sex is nice,’ he writes. ‘Sex will leave you in paradise!’ The man has eight children, yet there was nobody on hand to talk him out of that.
The track in question is called Kookooaramabama, when a more accurate title might be Utter Drivel.
Robert Plant could have spent the past week celebrating the golden jubilee of Led Zeppelin IV, the greatest LP in the whole of hard rock.
Instead he has made it abundantly clear that he’s finished with Led Zep, however much the fans may wish otherwise.
He is not, however, totally averse to reunions. After a 14-year gap, he’s back with Alison Krauss, the bluegrass star who joined him for the much-loved covers album Raising Sand. They actually started work on a sequel in 2010, only to abandon it. Now they’re having another go with Raise The Roof.
It won’t put your roof in grave danger: this is 55 minutes of mellow Americana. Plant sings forcefully and Krauss quite beautifully, but only two songs, the Everly Brothers’ The Price Of Love and Merle Haggard’s Going Where The Lonely Go, are a match for their magic.
In the long flat months over lockdown, when there was no live music, the thing I looked forward to most was the return of Ren Harvieu, Salford’s answer to Dusty Springfield.
Her tour, rescheduled twice, is worth the wait – if only to see her outfit, a dark-green velvet minidress with sleeves like wings.
Harvieu’s career has been a rollercoaster. Signed at 17, then laid low by a broken back, she made a top-five album, only to be dropped by Island Records. She licked her wounds, joined Bella Union and found a soul mate in Romeo Stodart of the Magic Numbers, now leading her vibrant six-piece band.
At 31, Harvieu has some hardwon self-belief and two albums of blazing torch songs.
Her voice is one of the wonders of the pop world – rich, apparently effortless, built to convey both despair and delight.
If you’re placing an order for Adele, do treat yourself to a bit of Ren too.