CDs of the week

Evening Standard   05.09.08

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POP

Joan Bez
Day After Tomorrow (Proper)
***
Having played her first gig 50 years ago, folk veteran Joan Baez continues to keep her hand in with protest songs. The title track here is a Tom Waits composition about an American soldier returning from the conflict in Iraq. Elsewhere her main foil this time around is country singer Steve Earle, who provides a low-key production sound emphasising acoustic guitar and mandolin, in addition to writing three tracks including the dramatic a cappella Jericho Road. However, it's a lesser-known young Brit, Thea Gilmore, whose song The Lower Road is the gorgeous overall highlight of the album. Baez sings calmly and subtly throughout, as befits her advancing years.
DAVID SMYTH

Metallica
Death Magnetic (Vertigo)
***
Stung by the far from universally enthusiastic response to their previous album, 2003's St Anger, Metallica have sought commercial and artistic redemption by reacquainting themselves with guitar solos and recruiting a new bassist, Rob Trujillo, and a new producer, Rick Rubin. The new blood has relit the old fires and Death Magnetic is a restatement of what makes them the planet's most popular cult band. None of the 10 songs lasts for less than five minutes and they're all powered by gargantuan riffs, some lyrical nonsense and curveball tempo changes, most majestically on the unstoppable Suicide & Redemption. It's thrilling, but it won't gain them a single new fan.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Glasvegas
Glasvegas (Columbia)
*****
Hurtling out of Glasgow, powered by the sounds of Phil Spector and the widescreen darkness and intensity that The Jesus and Mary Chain were always too smalltown to successfully deliver, Glasvegas, led by singer, sole songwriter and co-producer James Allen, are everything pop music can sometimes be. Alongside their white-knuckle approach, their massive choruses and stately, kitchen-sink production, there are heart-wrenching tales of a son's death (Flowers and Football Tops), family disintegration (Daddy's Gone), gang wars (Stabbed) and mental illness (Geraldine). And yet, for all that, it's genuinely uplifting. Album of the year? Perhaps. Debut album of the year? Unquestionably.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

JAZZ

Est
Leucocyte (Act)
***
Leucocytes are white corpuscles, the immune-system blood cells that undergo regular renewal to remain capable of working. So too, declared Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson, must his trio through jamming. Tragically, Svensson's shocking death in a scuba-diving accident this summer has silenced his big-selling group. His final legacy is this typically Scandinavian panorama, brooding soundscapes with mild electronica and unabashed repetition, redeemed by Svensson's dreamlike and uniquely sensitive keyboard touch. One track, Jazz, incorporates US post-bop phrasing, but the rest has the Keith Jarrett pastoral-Euro aura that has served this trio so well. They will be greatly missed.
JACK MASSARIK

WORLD

Rokia Traore
Tchamantche (Nonesuch)
****
Rokia Traoré is a gorgeous singer from Mali, but she brings her own idiosyncratic style to the music of West Africa. She lives in France, has worked with opera director Peter Sellers and the Kronos Quartet and her soft, understated voice is a far cry from the belt-it-out divas who dominate the Malian music scene. This album, her fourth, is stripped down in its textures with guitar, ngoni desert lute and soft percussion behind her gentle caressing voice. The songs touch on illegal immigration from Africa to Europe and Mali's glorious past. There are a couple of songs in French and a cool version of The Man I Love with sparce electric guitar and ngoni. It's very beautiful and very Rokia.
SIMON BROUGHTON

 

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