Album of the week and the best of the week’s new releases

Album of the Week  

EL VY
Return to the Moon

4AD

★★★★

Turning a decade-long friendship into a deadline-free collaboration, Matt Berninger (The National) and Brent Knopf (formerly of Menomena and current Ramona Falls main man) faced the daunting task of whittling over 450 of Knopf’s demos down to 11 fully formed songs. Don’t be fooled. EL VY (pronounced like a plural of Elvis, obviously) may have hit the funny button with their goofball videos and daft Instagram antics, but the pair’s debut release runs the gamut of emotions. Described by Berninger as a record of “really personal things and a bunch of bad jokes”, Return to The Moon finds common ground in a nostalgic, wry, white-collar angst while adding new shades to the duo’s palette.

At its best Knopf’s intricate production stands shoulder to shoulder with Berninger’s abstract lyrics, the chords and syllables folding around each other and prodding art-rock into the pop realm. The title track’s guitar knots and funk rhythms set things up nicely, injecting an earworm tune into a song with oblique references to politics, family, alienation and loss. I’m the Man to Be is even better, an overblown, megalomaniac pisstake inspired by Schoolboy Q’s There He Go (which itself features a Knopf-penned Menomena sample). It overflows with striking images (“I’ll be the one in the lobby in the collared fuck-me shirt. The green one” is Berninger at his best) and smart musical left turns.

The gorgeous Paul Is Alive playfully channels Berninger's Ohio youth and obsession with Californian punks The Minutemen, a theme that's developed on the pseudo-glam Need a Friend. Still, a sparse, introverted atmosphere pervades proceedings. Songs drift into National-esque structures as Berninger's trademark wine-bleached baritone dominates No Time to Crank The Sun and It's a Game. It gets darker again when Knopf flexes his muscles with pulsating guitar crunches and brief bursts of noise on the companion pieces, Sad Case and Happiness, Missouri, and the existential intonations of "It's agony" that haunt Careless makes the album's earlier one-liners and in-jokes seem like a distant memory. This pairing drinks from a deep creative well. There's more to come from EL VY, begging the question: Where to next?
Brian Keane

New Releases  

Roots Manuva
Bleeds

Big Dada

★★★★

It’s a pity Rodney Smith won’t get the plaudits he truly deserves until sometime in the future when his skills will be belatedly celebrated. A superb MC with a sharp, witty turn of phrase and an instinctive appreciation for the power of words, Smith has oddly never enjoyed the acclaim afforded lesser talents. Bleeds is another step on from 2011’s 4everevolution, with Smith taking stock of the world around him from a veteran’s perch in suburbia. He’s lost none of his ability to deliver tart commentary on both personal and universal issues, with Hard Bastards showing Smith’s observational eye on ordinary life. There are wins too from his work with Four Tet on the demented Facety 2:11, the Switch-propelled banger One Thing and I Know Your Face, while the Barry White-sampling Don’t Breathe Out is a deeply funky groove.

Jim Carroll

Van Morrison
Astral Weeks

Warner Bros

★★★★★

It’s 47 years since a 23-year-old Van Morrison walked into a New York studio and laid down what many believe to be his greatest album. “You showed everybody else that the limits that they had accepted on invention, expression, honesty, daring, were false,” critic Greil Marcus wrote in 2010’s Listening to Van Morrison. Even at this remove, the album retains its mystique. That is why any tinkering with the recording arouses suspicion. But this “remastered and expanded” version is a job well done. The remastering cleans up the sound sensitively while the expanded tracks feature two longer, and fascinating, versions of Slim Slow Slider (a baroque coda, no less, topped by a godly invocation) and Ballerina. There are also revealing different takes of Beside You and Madame George, the latter shorn of its gypsy fiddle.

Joe Breen

John Newman
Revolve

Universal Island

★★★

There must be times when John Newman curses the day another lanky, bequiffed soul singer appeared on his patch. But while Sam Smith has calibrated his voice and soppy ballads with the mainstream very much in mind, you get the sense that Newman is working to a different gameplan. On his second album, it’s all exuberant old-school soul and uptempo stompers from the Yorkshireman, with tracks bathed in swanky brass, dashing rare grooves and skyscraping gospel backing vocals. The retro-soul field is a crowded one but Newman and his producers Greg Kurstin and Jack Splash do well to differentiate the singer from the pack with strong, vibrant, anthemic tracks such as Give You My Love, Something Special and the funk-loaded We All Get Lonely.

Jim Carroll

Run The Jewels

Meow the Jewels

Mass Appeal

★ ★ ★

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Nearly 3,000 RTJ fans contributed to a crowdfunding campaign to make this remixed version of El-P and Killer Mike’s last album using cat sounds a reality. On the surface of it, Meow the Jewels is a ridiculous notion (it did after all begin as a throwaway jape), yet it also shows that where there’s a will and the internet, there’s a way. Producers and collaborators such as Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, Just Blaze, Massive Attack’s 3-D, Boots, Zola Jesus, Prince Paul, Blood Diamonds supersize the duo’s boom tunes with meows, yelps and purrs from the feline gallery. The album is played for laughs, yet there’s something strangely compelling about Barrow’s rendition of Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) and Just Blaze’s bonkers Oh My Darling Don’t Meow.

Jim Carroll

Elvis Presley

If I Can Dream: Elvis Presley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

RCA

★★★

Here we go: another posthumous Elvis Presley release. Cynical, us? His widow Priscilla’s blessing for this combo of Presley’s vocals and newly recorded orchestral arrangements means little in the face of a cheesy duet with Michael Bublé on Fever, while tinkering with the already-perfect In the Ghetto just seems pointless. At times it sounds like we’re listening to a previously unearthed era of Elvis: “Cruise Ship Elvis”. At others, there are moments of poignant beauty, as heard on the heart-swelling swarthiness of You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling or the deftness that an orchestra brings to Burning Love. Recalling The Beatles’ LOVE album, it’s listenable and occasionally pleasant - but you just can’t beat the originals.

Lauren Murphy

Pugwash
Play This Intimately (As If Among Friends)

Omnivore Recordings

★★★★

Thomas Walsh has always borne his influences brazenly - but when those influences are classic pop bands like ELO, The Kinks and The Beach Boys, where’s the harm? His band’s sixth album is another stellar concoction of charming, melodic tunes that are infused with everything from country (You Could Always Cry) to chic bossa nova (Clouds) and psychedelic mariachi horns (We Are Everywhere). Lyrically, Walsh is preoccupied with both falling in and out of love (Lucky in Every Way, The Fool I Had Become), and old friends and heroes Neil Hannon, Ray Davies and Jeff Lynne feature in various contributory roles. It may not be the most original album you’ll hear this year, but Pugwash remain a reliably entertaining prospect.

Lauren Murphy

Alanis Morissette
Jagged Little Pill

Rhino

★ ★ ★ ★

There are many thirtysomething women whose introductions in 1995 to basic feminist truths were discovered via Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette may oversing on numerous songs here, but the emotional rubble she sifts through for meaningful nuggets has as much weight now as it did when the landmark record was first released. It’s easy to understand why the album - reissued/remastered here in a four-disc collector’s edition, with previously unreleased demos, a live concert in London from 1995, and photos/essay - struck such a chord. “I am frustrated by your apathy,” she sings on the opening track, All I Really Want. It sets the tone for what follows, which is an often thrilling sequence of melody held down by barbed-wire lyrics.

Tony Clayton-Lea

Guy Garvey
Courting the Squall

Polydor

★★★★

There is something reassuring about Guy Garvey’s voice and physical presence - each is substantial and provides noticeable shelter from different kinds of storm. It’s little surprise, then, that Garvey - still a member of Elbow - has named his debut solo thus; he has always been in the thick of things, battling the emotional elements in a shiny sou’wester, his voice and words protective and calming. Courting the Squall sees him engage with similar topics, but the music is different (and possibly signposts Elbow’s next steps?). Opening track Angela’s Eyes is appealing in Tom Waits’ rag’n’bone shop style; Broken Bottles and Chandeliers is as bold as it is brassy. Other tunes such as Harder Edges configure Peter Gabriel-era Genesis in a way that is smart, valid and suitably progressive.

Tony Clayton-Lea