list.co.uk/music SCOTS AMERICANA RICK REDBEARD Awake Unto (Chemikal Underground) ●●●●●
More commonly known as the singer with propulsive, Germanic-influenced Scots psych-rockers The Phantom Band, Rick Anthony unleashed his Rick Redbeard persona back in 2013 with the debut album No Selfish Heart, a surprisingly mellow set of autumnal Caledonian folk tracks. In the wake of 2014’s third Phantoms record Strange Friend and last year’s companion piece Fears Trending, he’s keeping up that particularly productive streak with this fourth album he’s been involved with in as many years.
The ambling pace of Anthony’s muse as Redbeard hasn’t altered much over the last three years, but the tone is markedly different. Where No Selfish Heart was infused with that decidedly Scots alt-folk sensibility, there’s a sense of smoky Americana to Awake Unto. This impression is shaded by the banjo, accordion and buzzing, reverb-fuelled guitar filling the backdrop. That the forthcoming Refugee charity compilation places him alongside Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on the tracklist is surely no mistake.
The opening ‘Wild Young Country’ is pure Will Oldham, with Anthony
serenading a partner who was ‘sent from above’ in their ‘heathen glory’ over a delicate, waltzing piano line. It all feels very analogue, very rustic; much like the strident but rootsy ‘In My Wake’ and ‘The Golden Age’, a cheerfully anthemic collision of banjo and steel guitar. Anthony has mastered a particular kind of tone here - from the dust-baked, Breaking Bad menace of ‘Unfound’ to the bittersweet nocturnal lullaby ‘The Night is All Ours’ and the measured ‘Get Friendly (Blood)’, which places this record in the same bracket as the likes of Smog, for example.
There are echoes of dewy Scots folk here and there, as on the minimal reverse-guitar melancholy of ‘Field Years’ and the King Creosote-like ‘Let It Rust’, but this seems to be a record concerned with stepping out of comfort zones so that something more personal might emerge. (David Pollock) Out Fri 17 Jun.
Records | MUSIC
INDIE ROCK MITSKI Puberty 2 (Dead Oceans) ●●●●●
Coming to terms with notions of identity can be long and laborious. For singer- songwriter Mitski, the process is ongoing and one that is reflected upon often in her compositions and lyrics. Continuing on from the witty, introspective third album Bury Me at Makeout
Creek, Puberty 2 strikes a balance between apprehension and self- empowerment, as told by means of broad and semi-familiar narratives. This is epitomised perfectly in lead single ‘Your Best American Girl’, where the desire to conform conflicts with Mitski’s sense of self: ‘Your mother wouldn’t approve / Of how my mother raised me / But I do, I think I do.’ The song’s gradual, feedback- heavy build-up echoes her own defiance, a motif that appears throughout the album. But it also signals an anxiety with life, illustrating a curious middle ground most evident in opening track ‘Happy’.
Elsewhere on the album, Mitski unleashes her angst full throttle, like on the
rowdy and rapid ‘My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars’, which brings to mind elements of 90s indie rock such as Neutral Milk Hotel. ‘Once More to See You’ is more wistful in its delivery, with an emphasis placed on her tender vocals. Similarly, on slow-burning ‘Thursday Girl’, the vocal line is sublime in its steady rise and fall.
In closing track ‘A Burning Hill’, a fingerpicked acoustic guitar accompanies the melody in what appears to be a fitting conclusion to the two-part story
narrated in Bury Me at Makeout Creek and continued in Puberty 2. Rather than ending on a wholly positive note, Mitski hints at her own progress in the path to acceptance, noting: ‘I’ll love the littler things / I’ll love some littler things’.
Describing a period of uncertainty akin to adolescence, Puberty 2 brilliantly highlights Mitski’s personal and musical evolution through an experience that is universally shared, but not always fully understood. (Arusa Qureshi) Out Fri 17 Jun.
ELECTRO POP RÓISÍN MURPHY Take Her Up to Monto (Play it Again Sam) ●●●●● CELTIC SOUL ADAM HOLMES AND THE EMBERS Brighter Still (Gogar Records) ●●●●●
Flinging the word ‘genius’ at any old artist whose work you’ve found yourself enjoying for more than five minutes is a glib cliché. But a visit to the thesaurus is required to find another way of describing the wondrous Róisín Murphy. OK, here’s one: ‘prodigy’. Although that doesn’t quite nail it, hinting more at potential yet to be fulfilled
rather than an experienced artist who’s close to the height of her powers as musician, singer, lyricist, aestheticist, costume designer, film director and walking art project.
From pop success in the 1990s with Moloko to the experimentation of her unheralded first two solo albums from the new century, 2015’s comeback record Hairless Toys combined the two styles to striking, Mercury-nominated effect. Take Her Up to Monto is a very worthy follow-up, combining playfully atmospheric electronic composition with dazzling lyricism.
The album opener ‘Mastermind’ is a lush, sultry wash of oscillating
Edinburgh-based Celtic soul man Adam Holmes has been writing his own songs since his early teens, his precocious talent recognised on several awards nomination lists for his solo work and as part of folk firebrands Rura. If you have yet to make his musical acquaintance, prepare to be impressed and even seduced by his latest work. Holmes’ unforced and natural style has its roots in the folk music he has
hoovered up since childhood, but there is undeniable pop crossover appeal built into his gracefully crafted second solo album. Brighter Still is a slice of summer satisfaction, shot through with understated confidence and quiet charisma. There is more than a touch of Paolo Nutini to lonesome piano ballad ‘Joanna’
and the sultry, brooding ‘When the Lights go Down’ – you can’t blame him for turning on that bedroom baritone – but the comparison probably comes down to their common influence, the late John Martyn, whose mellow, slow-burning Caledonian soul style is a touchstone here.
synthesisers and stabbing drum machine whose lyrics reveal chasms of dramatic meaning. When the protagonist sings, ‘it’s just like taking candy from a baby / I’m easy, go on, say it’, is she cursing her own perceived foolishness or the wrongness of the man she chose to go home with? It’s an epic of a song with a sweet hook and sinister undertow, much like ‘Ten Miles High’, which conflates a squelching, primitive synth groove with a blissed-out summertime dream of flying
‘Shining Star’ harks back to the easy, rootsy Scotpop sounds of the 1980s, but
in this case without the stultifying production which overpowered many of those records. Of this collection, only the terminally laid-back ‘One Soul’ is too smooth and snoozy for its own good. Holmes has a winning, bruised, soulful tone, shown off most effectively on the album’s epic, stormy centrepiece ‘Nadine’ which builds up to a controlled wail of
and the greatest Grace Jones impersonation you’ll ever hear. Murphy spins oddness and beauty around one another in the same lyric: from ‘Pretty Gardens’ and its invitation to a lover through to ‘Thoughts Wasted’ with its firm address to a stoned partner, and the cool bossa nova of ‘Lip Service’. The album’s latter stages, particularly ‘Nervous Sleep’ and ‘Sitting and Counting’, further indulge a fascination with weird, dreamlike playfulness to an almost Lynchian degree. (David Pollock) Out Fri 8 Jul.
a climax.
But he also lightens the mood with the simple, direct ditty ‘I Want to be Your Friend’ and Afro pop inflections of the single ‘People Come/People Go’, while he and guest vocalist Eddi Reader dig deep into trad country tradition with tears-in-their-beers duet ‘Love Down the Line’. (Fiona Shepherd) Out Fri 10 Jun. Brighter Still launches on Thu 9 Jun at CCA, Glasgow. Adam Holmes and the Embers play Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Sun 4 Sep.
2 Jun–1 Sep 2016 THE LIST 85