For their fifth album Fontaines D.C. turn down the guitars and dig into synthesizers to create big music for big arenas, writes Fiona Shepherd
Fontaines DC: Dopamine Chamber (XL Recordings) ****
Richard Thompson: Hippies, Thugs and Heroes (New West Records) ****
Merrowfolk: Understory (Iffy Folk Records) ****
The Temperance Movement: New Promise Land Incorporated (Earache Records) ****
While Arctic Monkeys look away for a moment, their place as the most inventive indie colossus in the lands has been pinched by Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. who have demonstrated, like their forebears, that it is possible to please yourself while also appealing to the masses. Their rise post-pandemic has been steady but stellar. The quintet’s November Hydro show sold out in nanoseconds and they are poised to headline Glasgow Green next year.
How do they respond to their ever burgeoning fanbase? By turning down the guitars on which they built their reputation and digging into synthesizers and effects. Their fifth album, titled for that seductive, insidious device in our pockets, opens on the growling electronic drone of Six Shot Morning, garlanded with glistening top notes and Grian Chatten’s deadpan impressionistic poetry, sorting through an overload of images, before breaking open at the halfway point with starburst synths.
The scale of those synthesizers hits on Marianne: this is big music for big arenas, far from the choppy urgent punk of earlier albums despite Chatten’s declamatory vocal. Instead, the direction of travel is towards the sleek post-punk of Mimesis, with its sonic intimations of the Bunnymen. They are also in the realms of superstar collaborations with breathy guest Rosalía lending some Lana Del Rey qualities to luscious orchestral torch song Where Is Gone?
Happy For You is a pretty tune with sinister sentiments, Chatten walking the thin line between love and hate with a lyrical blend of pleading and threats. The dynamic contrasts continue. You Miss Me and Japan are equally rapturous and melodious for all the ambivalence of the lyrics. One Man feels grubby and celestial (how do they do that?). Classical minimalism meets cacophonous indie rock with the latter winning the tussle on Tongue. Job done once again, they bliss out on album finale Intimate.
Folk hero and guitar maestro Richard Thompson is a master craftsman of new songs in the old style, like a modern dress Shakespeare. His 20th studio album features a cast of characters, vagabonds and villains across limber, diverse musical settings from bluegrass to New Wave. The Cajun-style petty crime blues Everybody’s Stealing is baleful and witty in equal measure. She Burns It All broods like ancient wisdom, Pipe Dreams places Beatley whimsy in a western swing setting while Pauper’s Grave rivals Nick Cave as a gothic folk incantation.
Glasgow-based Irish-Scots seven-piece Merrowfolk sup from the same elixir. Debut album Understory is an impressive showcase for the songs of vocalist Mima Merrow and her bandmates ability to conjure a melodramatic soundscape of folk, rock, prog and jazz proportions. Let Me Be Yours, for example, seamlessly entwines a twanging gothic bassline, mournful dubby brass, siren vocals and lyrical inspiration from a John Cooper Clarke poem, while Witch or Woman (Biddy Early) manifests as a cheery, catchy synth pop song paying tribute to the pioneering herbalist of the title.
The Temperance Movement, in contrast, are all about fidelity to one tradition, that of rootsy rock’n’roll. Their first album of new material in eight years features suitably raw production from Ethan Johns and is fronted by the formidable Phil Campbell at his paint-stripper best, channelling both Alex Harvey and Brian Johnston on hoary opener Shadows. Eat You Alive is as derivative but committed as Black Crowes, Love Kicks a mean punky boogie and Silverlight Blues steeped in searing blues rock guitar wrangling. But the band also cool it effectively in the second half of the album, on the streamlined Scars and gritty ballad Mongrels while the iridescent intro to Hometown Kings & Queens shows they are more than retro rockers, if they ever want to be.
CLASSICAL
Women & The Piano (Hyperion) ****
Press play, and for all the world you could be listening to Scarlatti. But like all the music on pianist Susan Tomes’ latest album, this lively Sonata was written by a woman, Marianna Martines (1744-1812). The project is a worthy adjunct to Tomes’ book Women and the Piano, featuring historical names as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. More interesting, though, are the unknowns, as much for their biographies as their compositional proficiency. Martines was Haydn’s landlady; Hélène, Marquise de Montgeroult, curried favour improvising on La Marseillaise before a French Revolutionary Tribune. Venezuelan Teresa Carreño married and divorced Glasgow-born piano legend Eugen d’Albert. Tomes’ affection for her subjects is revealing, whether in Montgeroult’s artful Etude No 106, the Chopinesque snugness of Maria Szymanowski’s Caprice or Amy Beach’s Dreaming. Ken Walton
JAZZ
Emile Parisien: Floating (ACT Music) *****
Renowned French soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien, pianist Yaron Herman , double- bassist Linda May Han Oh and percussionist Prabhu Edouard first assembled for a memorable Paris concert, following which, says Parisien, “we immediately realised that we couldn’t just let the story end there”. This album of superb chamber jazz is the result. The title of its opener, Asian Songs and Rhythms, No 40, may suggest a catalogue entry but emerges as a melancholy melody that encapsulates the group’s finely balanced sound, Parisien’s rich soprano sax voice-like, resembling an Armenian duduk. There’s sparkling soloing from both Parisien and Herman in the irresistibly tabla-driven Nusrat, Olive Branch flows tranquilly while crisp tabla propels Parisien’s Bonbon. El Toro features Edouard’s urgent konokol as well as agile bass from Oh, who enjoys a short but eloquent solo showcase in As It Comes and As It Goes. Jim Gilchrist