CDs of the week

After announcing her singing talents
to the world in 2008, with the critically acclaimed Safe Inside The Day, Dee invites us back into her strange, enchanting world with the follow-up.

Originally released in 2004 as a book with an accompanying CD, the newly arranged album sees harps flutter, strings rise and Dee's voice — a rich tapestry of whispers, bellows and cackles — dance the fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous. The woman whose previous observations include "you can't keep a good albino down" is in fine lyrical fettle once more.

Black But Comely, the album's slow-burning highlight, revolves around the refrain: "I'm not a tree of sticks, but a forest of hemlocks and beeches, as water dark as wine from boundless reaches." Not the catchiest of choruses, granted, but part of the album's charm lies in its total disinterest with the commercial.

The rich lyrical vein continues on the title track, an evocative blend of plucked harp, undulating cello and Tom Waits-like crooning: "So come, my love, and take this sorriest stone all to find a grateful place, that warm and sunlit wall." It may have been written during a bleak midwinter in Cleveland, but this is a record that radiates with the new possibilities of spring.
Completely different and completely brilliant.
RICK PEARSON

Drive-By Truckers
The Big To-Do
(PIAS)
****
Living up to the their name, Drive-By Truckers haven't stopped at my place in all the 12 years of their existence. Until now. Led by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, the group makes straight-down-the-road rock music which cleaves to the simple belief that you can't have too many guitars. This record is drenched in them and to good effect. Added to the guitars and sturdy song structures is a delight in telling terrific tales. The Big To-Do features hard-nosed hookers, the ultimate bender, sex shenanigans, rubbish jobs and local bad boys. Best is the story of the Flying Wallendas, a high-wire trapeze act that defied death, but not all the time. If you yearn for the great days of Tom Petty and Neil Young, you will love this retro-monster.
PETE CLARK

Angus & Julia Stone
Down The Way
(Flock Music)
****
Very possibly the world's favourite Australian indie-folk brother and sister duo, Angus & Julia Stone are as winning as they are winsome. They've crafted a spartan yet oddly warm sound, where his genuinely lovely or her more acquired Joanna Newsom-esque vocals compete and complement. Initially championed by Travis's Fran Healy, they have evolved into a deeper albeit less idiosyncratic proposition on this second album. When they add sparkling melodies as on the Angus-sung Big Jet Plane (which for all its charms is quietly and unambiguously lust-laden) or Julia's declaration of devotion, For You,
you can almost sense the hushed reverence in medium-sized halls throughout the land.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Lou Rhodes
One Good Thing
(Motion Audio)
***
Lou Rhodes has reunited with Andy Barlow, her old musical partner in trip-hop act Lamb. You might have expected the duo to revisit their old sound, especially now their contemporaries Portishead and Massive Attack are back in vogue. Instead, Rhodes has something weightier on her mind — the death of her sister — and uses Barlow's studio to record her third solo album of glacial folk instead. Grief infuses the music, especially when she tackles the subject head-on in Janey. Plucked guitar, restrained strings and her softly quivering voice make for a claustrophobically intimate experience. More variation would make for wider appeal, though it sounds like it had to be made whether anyone else wants to listen or not.
DAVID SMYTH

Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet
Live at the Union 1966
(Reel Recordings)
***
With early Ian Carr albums fetching up to £1,800 on eBay, this rarely heard session, remastered from tapes found after the distinguished writer/trumpeter's death last year, blushingly enters the market. Recorded at London University's student union it finds Carr and saxman Rendell in the hectic UK free-bop mode that preceded electronic jazz-rock fusion. Fast tempos, mostly in then-fashionable 6/8 time, occupy drummer Trevor Tomkins and bassists Dave Green or Tony Reeves. Mellower moments include pianist Michael Garrick's ballad, Ursula, and laidback blues, Webster's Mood, with Rendell on flute. Proceeds go to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.
JACK MASSARIK

Sierra Maestra
Sonando Ya
(World Village)
****
It was Sierra Maestra who kicked off the revival of Cuban son back in the mid-Seventies — long before the Buena Vista Social Club became international superstars. The nine-piece group still has five original members and they are masters of Cuban son — with piercing trumpet, soft jangly tres guitar and a lively bed of Afro-Cuban percussion. Many of the songs here are new, but they sit alongside the classic repertoire. Most of the songs are about love, of course, but many are about music. Un Toque de Bembé is a celebration of Afro-Cuban Yoruba religion, packed with percussion, and Sangre Negra is about the band itself. They play live at Darbuka in Clerkenwell on Monday.
SIMON BROUGHTON