CD: Alt-J - Relaxer

Cambridge art-rockers extend their ambitions, but can they maintain their winning formula?

Some say Alt-J represent a paradox, blending, as they do, consummate artsiness with some absurdly catchy tunes. It's precisely this combination of ambition and accessibility that's helped them become one of Britain's most universally acclaimed bands. Everyone, it seems, has a soft spot for them, except, possibly, hipster journalists who feel they've sold out. Relaxer is a slightly different proposition. It's more ambitious than ever, and in places sublimely pretty, just not as immediate.

The songs naturally divide into two groups. Firstly, there are a handful that still evoke the spirit of band's first album, An Awesome Wave - an indefinable melange of rhythmic folk, blues and electronica. But the dominant sound is closer to the slow atmospheric second album. Except now the songs are longer with added strings and delicate, open-tuned guitars: a kind of ambient indie-folk.

Don't let that description put you off. There's nothing whining, or excessively fey about songs like "3WW", and "Last Year". Quite the opposite. The latter, a break-up song featuring Marika Hackman, is achingly sad. By contrast "3WW" looks at the beginning of a relationship with choral melodies that give way to folk harmonies which then melt into Mexican guitars. Possibly more intriguing is the band's reworking of "House of the Rising Sun" complete with orchestra and 20 classical guitars. To some the idea might feel preposterous. But if you can get beyond the sense of indulgence the net effect is intense and satisfying. 

The mid- and up-tempo songs are more of a mixed bag. "In Cold Blood" possesses much of that infectious quirkiness that people loved about "Breezeblocks". But unfortunately the Graham Coxon-style garage rock of "Hit Me Like That Snare" just sounds odd. It's the album's only serious misfire and, ultimately, Relaxer's offbeat mix of styles and dogged self-belief manages, again, to speak fulfillingly to both heart and mind. 

@russcoffey 

Overleaf: watch Alt-J's video for "3WW"

CD: Jim Jones & The Righteous Mind - Super Natural

The Righteous Mind’s debut is a punk-blues scorcher

To call Jim Jones a punk-blues dynamo is something of an understatement. Having already fronted three epic bands since the mid-Eighties in Thee Hypnotics, Black Moses and the Jim Jones Revue, he’s now ready to unleash the debut album by his latest combo, Jim Jones & The Righteous Mind. Super Natural, happily enough, shows no evidence of diminishing returns though and is actually considerably more than is needed to prove that Jones is still riding the garage rocket.

The opening track, “Dreams”, comes roaring through the speakers like an air raid. Primal and gritty rock’n’roll with fire and brimstone vocals, it opens up the Righteous Mind’s sonic stall with gusto. Swaggering and sleazy tunes follow with Jones’s yelps and howls of encouragement, duelling guitars with Malcolm Toon and a voodoo beat from Phil Martini’s sticks. It’s incendiary stuff that channels the spirit of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Tav Falco and Gallon Drunk into a sonic cacophony that aims straight at the guts with its raw and giddy ambience.

“Aldecide” and “Boil Yer Blood” may be loud and lairy highlights with a swaggering menace that can’t be ignored. But picking out particular tunes on Super Natural feels a bit churlish, given the consistently high-quality adrenalin-fuelled groove. It’s not quite all white-hot punk-blues sounds: towards the end of the disc “Shallow Grave” and “Everyone But Me” turn down the volume if not the menace. Whoozy and disconcerting ballads, they even give Toon the chance to lay out some melancholy sounds with his pedal steel as Jones croons things out.

An album as feisty and cliché-free as Super Natural is a rarity these days. However, given the similar magnificence of the Righteous Mind’s live show, it’s unlikely to be a flash in the pan and that can only be a good thing.

Overleaf: watch the video of “Aldecide”

CD: Barry Adamson - Love Sick Dick

★★★ CD: BARRY ADAMSON - LOVE SICK DICK Former Bad Seed and Magazine man gets funky, but he’s still feeling blue

Former Bad Seed and Magazine man gets funky, but he’s still feeling blue

Barry Adamson has forged an impressive solo career since the soundtrack-without-a-film of Moss Side Story in 1988. His epic cinematic noir sounds have absorbed blues, jazz, rock and a myriad of other musical designs along the way and Love Sick Dick happily doesn’t stray too far from that tradition.

CD: Imelda May - Life. Love. Flesh. Blood

 

A rich mix, synthesising Imelda May's multifarious influences

As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.

Reissue CDs Weekly: Chuck Berry

THE SONGS OF CHUCK BERRY The rock'n'roll great remembered in classic versions of his finest songs

Fabulous collection shows how one man’s music helped change the world

When a skiffle group called The Quarry Men played live in 1959, their repertoire included covers of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The folk-based skiffle was becoming rock. In 1960, when the same band became The Beatles, they added Berry’s “Carol” and “Little Queenie” to their set.

CD: Fink - Fink's Sunday Night Blues Club Vol 1

Woozy, evocative but ultimately rather empty tilt at the blues

Fin Greenall’s career is developing as a reverse mirror image of musical history. Originally a DJ and electronic music pioneer working on the edge of contemporary performance, for the past decade he has been on a journey into the acoustic and American past. His last release, 2014’s Hard Believer, had tinges of blues alongside some resonant Americana.

CD: Miraculous Mule - Two Tonne Testimony

Passionate, paranoid heavy rock built for these times

Miraculous Mule summon up that great feeling when you walk into an anonymous festival marquee and are caught up in a storm of music by someone you’ve never heard of. Two Tonne Testimony has a looseness, where songs matter less than hefty grooves, a feeling that its stew of swamp rock, psychedelia and grungey biker riffs is merely the jumping-off point for a wild live show. It’s also punctuated by a very contemporary paranoia that time is running out.

Tanita Tikaram, Barbican

TANITA TIKARAM, BARBICAN Generous show balances onstage charm with songs full of barbs and doubts 

Generous show balances onstage charm with songs full of barbs and doubts

There’s scarcity value in a Tanita Tikaram gig these days. Like seeing a rare bird, you feel special for simply having been there. Last night, in a programme spanning her whole career, she made a strong case to be a songbird of unique character. Her originality is not ostentatious; it charms its way into your heart like a lullaby. Yet despite not inhabiting an obviously radical sound-world, by the end of a long and generous set, she had become compelling. She can’t be mistaken for anyone else.

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