Albums of the week: The 1975, Alessia Cara, Clean Bandit and Bryan Ferry and his Orchestra

The 1975- A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships

(Polydor)

****

MULTIPLE reviews have already called The 1975’s third album some variation on “OK Computer for millennials”, a comparison made easy by the presence halfway through of The Man Who Married a Robot. Like Radiohead’s Fitter Happier from 1997, it features a speech synthesizer, hinting that technology ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

A fair point but the band are more interesting elsewhere. Love It If We Made It is a wide-ranging rant that sums up the strangeness of our time by quoting the American President praising Kanye West. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You), the catchiest tune amid stiff competition, turns out to be an ode to frontman Matty Healy’s sometime heroin addiction rather than a sparkly love song for a girl.

Throughout, lyrical darkness and confusion rubs up against highly shined, powerfully melodic music. The band have never been afraid of sounding cheesy but they go full gorgonzola on I Couldn’t Be More in Love, a glossy power ballad ideal for a wedding sequence in an Eighties chick flick. There are great productions too, including the Auto-Tuned angst of I Like America and America Likes Me and the perfect, lightfooted electronic pop of TOOTIMETOO TIMETOOTIME.

Healy is as exhaustingly self-aware as it’s possible for a musician to be, and knows that his big-selling band is in a strong position to make a decade-defining third record like The Queen is Dead, Parklife and yes, OK Computer. His masterplan may well come off.

A Brief Inquiry is not without its flaws but it’s never boring.

By David Smyth

Alessia Cara -The Pains of Growing

(Virgin EMI)

****

ALESSIA Cara’s storming 2016 debut, Know-It-All, put the Toronto teen firmly on the musical map thanks to her standout, soulful interpretation of teenage angst. Winning a Grammy for Best New Artist, Cara earned praise for her emotive honesty in addressing everything from mental health issues to the pressures of the social media gaze with both maturity and sensitivity. The Pains of Growing follows a similar pattern, although this time through an increasingly personal lens as autobiography dominates. More soulful and stripped back, perhaps best exemplified by the stunning A Little More and Comfortable, the 22-year-old experiments with a wider range of styles, managing easily to keep the listener’s attention across a lengthy track list. Ballads like Out of Love and the acoustic remix of Growing Pains often soar but avoid the saccharine over-production so many of her pop contemporaries favour. This is a well-crafted, endearing follow-up for Cara that truly impresses.

By Elizabeth Aubrey

Clean Bandit- What Is Love?

(Atlantic)

**

CLEAN Bandit have become market leaders in horribly catchy hits. The Cambridge graduates have scored No 1s with Demi Lovato, Anne-Marie, Sean Paul and Zara Larsson, all of them included here. When it comes to crafting an album, though, they’ve boxed themselves in with a production-line formula.

A dozen predictable pop tunes doesn’t amount to a body of work that’s likely to endure. There are other familiar names, including Ellie Goulding, Alma and Rita Ora. Marina Diamandis is one of the more interesting guest vocalists, even if Baby feels like a reheat of the summer 2017 Latin sound. This processed pop collection will pass you by in a blur.

By Andre Paine

Bryan Ferry and his Orchestra- Bitter-Sweet

(BMG)

****

WHAT’S that? Bryan Ferry has recorded an album Weimar cabaret numbers with what sounds suspiciously like an... oompah band? And it’s magnificent? The muse works in mysterious ways. The former Roxy Music frontcad first convened his orchestra in 2012 to re-record numbers such as Love Is the Drug as Roaring Twenties jazz instrumentals.

It was surprisingly excellent. Now, inspired by his soundtrack work on the German Netflix series Berlin Babylon, he has revisited his less celebrated solo material and introduced his own worn smoking jacket of a voice into the mix too. “I’m a stranger in your town / That’s the place I belong,” he pipes on Boys and Girls (from his 1985 album of the same name). Ferry has always traded in a peculiar combination of modernism, artifice and tenderness, which finds an ideal niche in the Berlin cabaret setting — and his world-weary sigh is an elegant still note against the keening reeds and parping brass. “No reason or rhyme, no presence of mind,” he pipes on Reason or Rhyme (first heard on 2010’s Olympia). “Just a dance to the music of time.” Your make-up will be streaming when the lights go up.

By Richard Godwin

World- Afro Celt Sound System

(ECC Records)

****

NOW in their 22nd year, Afro Celt Sound System, the European- and African-based musical collective, have become something of a British institution. Yet Flight, their eighth album, is very different to anything else they’ve done, featuring guest ensembles to underline its theme of migration. At the album’s heart is a four-part Migration Medley juxtaposing avian and human journeys driven by Afro Celt’s trademark powerful drum-and-bass beats, but with a soft a cappella choral conclusion. Birds can return, humans often can’t. The Amani Choir, led by Emmanuela Yogolelo, bring robust harmonies to the Sanctus over powerful drumming, xylophones and horns. The Stone Flowers, comprising refugee musicians, join the band for a moving conclusion which asks for tolerance and understanding.

By Simon Broughton

Tessa Souter- A Picture in Black and White

(NOA Records)

****

TESSA Souter is a hugely experienced singer and composer blessed with wide-ranging vocals and a post-bop sensibility, through which she filters sounds from West Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Andalusian Spain. Raised in London, based in New York, she has won acclaim for her honeyed contralto and the spare, elegant way she puts it to use.

On this fifth autobiographical album Souter brings together standards, originals and traditional songs to tell the story of a young Englishwoman who discovers in adulthood that her estranged father was black. Arrangements are sophisticated, lifted by strings, bass, piano and percussion. Highlights include opener Kothbiro, sung in the Dholuo language of Kenya, and a fittingly dynamic take on McCoy Tyner’s Contemplation (Ancestors). Liberating stuff.

By Jane Cornwell

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