ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Jim Lauderdale
Time Flies 4/5 (Yep Roc)
Often termed a songwriter’s songwriter, 61-year- old Lauderdale is the sort of country artist who, like Lee Ann Womack and Chris Stapleton, flirts with, but always manages to side-step, many of the clichés associated with the genre.
The title track, for instance, sounds like a typically lush Nashville breeze until Lauderdale’s vocal interrupts the flow, his slurring style practically channelling Mick Jagger’s phrasing on the Stones classic Time Is On My Side.
Meanwhile, Where The Cars Go Fast, which finds Lauderdale lying on his back by the freeway, staring at the stars, could be just sentimental sky gazing but for the brilliant female harmony and a curiously moving lyric.
The whole of this wonderful album’s like that: Country but not quite as you know it.
Hilang Child
Years 3/5 (Bella Union)
London-based newcomer Ed Riman – a half- Welsh, half-Indonesian writer who records as Hilang Child – knows exactly the style and atmosphere he wants to conjure up: dramatic, ethereal, slightly vulnerable and naive in a Coldplay-ish sort of way.
He pulls it off brilliantly on the opening track I Wrote A Letter Home, a breathy, sweetly poppy sigh of a ballad that demands an instant replay.
From here on, though, the album meanders a little, flirting with A-Ha-like melodrama on Growing Things and Starlight, Tender Blue, and toying with phased vocals and all sorts of curious, twinkling effects.
With more disciplined arrangement and production (Thomas Dolby would be perfect) his next album should hit the mark.
Loose Tooth
Keep Up 3/5 (Milk! Records/ Marathon Artists)
A female drummer and guitarist plus male bass player, all of them highly effective vocalists, Loose Tooth are yet another young Australian band with real talent.
Channelling The Ramones, The B-52s and peak-period Blondie, with a dollop of louche garage-rock on top, they make a fantastically commercial noise on the opening Keep On, one of those rat-a-tat choruses that keeps jangling around in the head, while You Say adds attitude and swagger and All The Colours Run the sweetest of lead vocals.
Re-issue of the week
Paradise: The sound of Ivor Raymonde 4/5 (Bella Union)
The common thread that links classics as sublime as Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You and The Walker Brothers’ Make It Easy On Yourself are the arrangements of all-round musical boffin Raymonde, who died in 1990.
Compiled by his son, former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde, this is a superb compilation of his 26 greatest tracks. Spellbinding.