These New Puritans
Crooked Wing
George and Jack Barnett’s 2008 debut album, Beat Pyramid, offered a refreshing disregard for genre boundaries, defying the popular ‘post punk’ label with its audacious song structures and general artfulness.
Seventeen years later, the duo are still full of fresh ideas, as evidenced in their fifth and latest album Crooked Wing. Recorded “on industrial estates, in churches, studios, circus wagons and cheap hotel rooms”, it presents a shift into modern minimalism and exquisitely graceful, sombre chamber pop, with striking results.
In “Industrial Love Song”, Caroline Polachek’s guest vocal provides a sweet foil for Jack Barnett’s husky yearning. The title track, meanwhile, features pristine piano and majestic organ in harmonious, almost psychedelic union.
The aptly named ‘Wild Fields’ presents a very different vibe, with its ominous, bass-weighted sound and filthy growl, as does ‘The Old World’ with bell chimes and forlorn massed vocals.
Label: Domino
Jacob Alon
In Limerence
Scottish folk newcomer Jacob Alon explores loneliness, dreaming, love, queer outsiderism, the pain of unreciprocated crushes and more in their compelling debut album, which blends candid lyrics with beautiful vocals and plangent guitar work.
Born in Fife, Alon started out performing in Edinburgh folk clubs, but their music feels closer to that of Adrianne Lenker, late 2000s-era Bon Iver and Rufus Wainwright than any Gaelic traditions.
Vocals are the immediate focus of this set – Alon’s silvery voice delivers an effortless reach to falsetto, along with a sense of lived experience – but the ebb-and-flow of their guitar work and the frankness of their lyrics add to its appeal.
Musical poeticism abounds in the burnished hush of ‘Don’t Fall Asleep’, with its smart change-down at the two-thirds mark; ‘Liquid Gold 25’, where drum brushes and trumpet heighten the tenderness of raw emotions, and closer ‘Sertraline’, which summons a startling image of teeth tearing at tree bark against murmurous synth and organ.
Alon has since talked about moving into electronic music – whatever comes next, there’s no doubting their musical capabilities.
Label: Island / EMI
Estelle
Stay Alta
London singer, songwriter and rapper Estelle Swaray debuted in 2004 with ‘1980’, an infectious autobiographical track that drew on her experiences growing up in the UK capital.
Her debut album shone brightly with a mix of soul, funk, R&B and Missy Elliott-style hip hop, attracting guests including John Legend, but it was a collaboration with Kanye West in 2008 for the track ‘American Boy’ that propelled her to number one.
Estelle now resides in Los Angeles, and her sixth album delivers a consummate blend of US and UK flavours that’s both reflective and zinging with transformative energy. Stay Alta draws inspiration from various sources including Loose Ends, Soul II Soul, Beverley Knight, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones.
Guest vocalists include Teedra Moses and Russell Taylor (for disco-funk banger ‘Grateful’), Joi (on the smooth, piano-house/disco-soul hybrid ‘Fire’) and Durand Bernarr (on the booming, electro-boogie workout ‘Let It Drop’). The album title translates as “stay high”, and its songs feel like an uplifting motivational soundtrack for fractious times.
Label: 1980 Records
Quinie
Forefowk, Mind Me
As Quinie, Josie Vallely makes hypnotically earthy folk music in the unaccompanied tradition of Scottish Traveller singers, influenced in particular by the late Lizzie Higgins. Her artistry is rooted in landscape, as well as people and history, and she recently travelled across the Argyll landscape with her horse to gather inspiration for her third album.
Though forefowk means “ancestors” in Scots (one of Scotland's three official languages), Vallely, who’s not a Traveller herself, is neither a strict worshipper of tradition nor a showy upsetter.
Her focus is the relationship between pipe music and the voice but for this set, she’s gathered players on viola, double bass, violin, duduk, bouzouki and percussion, as well as smallpipes.
The latter instrument’s subtly shifting, insistent drone lends the songs a modern edge, while Vallely’s interpretive spirit breathes fresh life into both the opening ‘Col My Love’ (a translation from the Gaelic ‘Colla Mo Run’ into Scots) via her extraordinary vocables, and ‘Sallow Buckthorn’ – based on an Irish sean-nós tune – where gently soughing strings join pipes in perfect harmony with Vallely’s keening.
The steady strength of her voice is especially compelling on two unaccompanied tracks, ‘Bonny Udny’ (recorded by Higgins in 1968) and sweetly mournful closer ‘Craigie Hill’.
Label: Upset The Rhythm
