By Fiona Shepherd

Published 14th Jun 2024, 10:06 BST

Updated 14th Jun 2024, 14:25 BST

John Cale: POPtical Illusion (Double Six/Domino) ****

Isobel Campbell: Bow to Love (Cooking Vinyl) ***

Eels: EELS TIME! (E Works/Play It Again Sam) ****

Seasick Steve: A Trip A Stumble A Fall Down On Your Knees (SO Recordings) ***

Finding that time is only running faster in this eighties, composer, producer and Velvet Underground legend John Cale has swiftly followed the collaborative jamboree of his 2023 album Mercy with a solo affair which sounds like the work of a carefree jamming ensemble.

POPtical Illusion is a wide-ranging affair, unleashing the potential of keyboards, synthesizers and samplers to create, in some cases, a home orchestra interpreting a portion of the armoury of 80 songs Cale composed through the pandemic.

There are soaring pop tunes such as Davies and Whale, the plaintive balladry of Edge of Reason and the lyrically acute though musically light Calling You Out – a dread mantra with shimmering backing – and I’m Angry with its summery organ and breathy vocals.

Company Commander is a more strident part-spoken word piece with discordant backing, while the soothing oriental chimes and chilllout synthesizers of Setting Fires are followed up with the VU-style garagey gutbucket blues of Shark-Shark. There is also a track called Funkball the Brewster – just sayin’.

Isobel Campbell cannot hope to muster such dynamism with her pallid, breathy voice and simple melodies but her latest album, Bow to Love, still resonates with delicate, layered arrangements from the psych pop drone of 4316 to the relatively cacophonous opening of Keep Calm, Carry On which resolves into a restorative lament.

The one-time Belle & Sebastian member had a fight on her hands to release her previous album, There Is No Other. She was newly back in control of her career and music when the pandemic hit so Bow to Love is infused with lyrical anxieties, even as the music wafts and she breathes in her version of Dire Straits’ Why Worry.

The title track is a rocking chair lullaby on the notion that love is not a panacea, Everything Falls Apart, her “elegy to the patriarchy”, is more of a mantra, while the bare ambient backing of Take This Poison throws Campbell’s voice into sweet relief.

Capitals and exclamation mark aside, EELS TIME! is not some hyped-up garage dispatch from Eels but a sanguine recognition that time is short and precious. Mainman Mark “E” Everitt underwent open heart surgery last year and is in reflective mood – though when is he not? – musing on mortality and the big stuff across a batch of tender tunes.

If I’m Gonna Go Anywhere is about making generous choices and I Can’t Believe It’s True is the sound of a man who feels lucky to be alive. The old hangdog E re-emerges briefly on the trippy chamber pop of Let’s Be Lucky but he’s able to talk himself round, while And You Run, one of E’s earliest songs, written in adolescence then championed and finessed years later by his childhood friend Sean Coleman, captures the naivety of early Beach Boys.

Seasick Steve also returns to some of his earliest material on A Trip A Stumble A Fall Down On Your Knees. He first began writing San Francisco Sound in situ in the summer of love. Nearly 60 years later, it finally lands as a suitably hippie tribute with a mellow Hendrix vibe.

This one man Black Keys continues in his electrified groove, delivering an appreciation of fine vinyl on Let the Music Talk, celebrating his love of Sly & the Family Stone with dirty horn blasts and a silky soulful breakdown on Funky Music and warning against online scammers on Internet Cowboys. In fact, he suggests we all “leave your phone behind… time to get offline” on the playful blues swing of Move to the Country before saving his most soulful vocal for the cleansing acoustic ballad Elizabeth.

CLASSICAL

Laura van der Heijden: Bridge | Frances-Hoad | Walton (Chandos) ****

If Frank Bridge deserves recognition other than simply for being a teacher of Benjamin Britten, here is striking evidence. Soloist Laura van der Heijden opens this substantial trilogy of English works for cello and orchestra with his dark-hued Oration, a gnawing concerto-styled elegy completed in 1930 as a tribute to those who perished in the First World War. Heijden, authoritative and compelling throughout, captures Bridge’s pathos and positivity in a rhetorically intense performance with the BBC SSO under Ryan Wigglesworth that finds ultimate release in the quietly optimistic Epilogue. Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Earth, Sea, Air – written especially for Heijden – is altogether more expansive, the profound mystery of the central Larghetto separating the heft of the opening Allegro and sparkling gaiety of the finale. Walton’s Cello Concerto takes us finally to more familiar territory, a nostalgic world of searing melodies, racy flippancy and leisurely opulence. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Tomasz Stanko Quartet: September Night (ECM) ****

This serendipitous, hitherto unreleased live recording made in Munich in 2004 captures the Polish trumpeter and European free jazz pioneer Tomasz Stanko, who died in 2018, in peerless form with his rhythm section of young protégés, pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz – a formidable trio in their own right. Stanko’s lingering, melancholic tone informs the haunting Song for Sarah, while a drone-like bass thrum heralds Hermento’s Mood before trumpet slips in, becoming perkily conversational as piano and drums weave their way into the glittering, ever-shifting backdrop. Euforila sees Kurkiewicz work up an unforced but compelling groove and things really start to travel with Wasilewski and Stanko heightening the drama, while high and lonesome playing from the trumpeter over sullen drum rolls launches Celina, before things open out with a rangy, Latin-tinged swing, the whole breathless excursion ending with a jubilant, brazen yell. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: John Cale | Isobel Campbell | Eels | Seasick Steve