Brand New Zeros
Back To Zero
Fretsore Records
★★★★★

SINGER-SONGWRITER Ronan MacManus, guitarist extraordinaire, Luke Dolan and accomplices breathe admirable new life into the rock canon on this album. And if the voice has a familiar ring, that’s because MacManus is Elvis Costello’s bro.

His delivery, primal and throaty, has an impressive emotional range, from the pounding Angels With Guns, about the escalation of school killings, to the piano-accompanied ballad Human Kindness which featured on Artists4NHS, launched with the assistance of Costello.

“As my wife is a nurse, I think we have all seen how the human experience is at its best when we work together,” says MacManus.

The striking Money Goes To Money emphatically denounces widespread poverty: “You’ll never know how it feels/Living your whole life in the red/I can’t eat/I can’t sleep.”

Brilliant rock for our time: honest, down-to-earth, political.

MICHAL BONCZA

Malcolm Holcombe
Tricks of the Trade
(Need To Know Music)
★★★★

AMERICANA’S answer to Tom Waits may not be a household name just yet. But this grizzled North Carolina native can always be relied upon to reward his discerning coterie of listeners with some of the most poetic and thought-provoking balladry that they could ever wish to hear.

Malcolm Holcombe’s fractured baritone  may not exactly be a thing of beauty but his musical output since the mid-1990s has been little less than superlative and Tricks of the Trade marks the latest addition to his impressive body of work, with this troubadour of the troubled exploring the vagaries of the American blue-collar experience via compelling ditties such as  Your Kin, Money Train and Damn Rainy Day.

The finished product provides a compelling antidote to the demoralising diet of corporate blandness which seems to dominate the contemporary music scene.

KEVIN BRYAN

Charles Mingus
Mingus At Carnegie Hall
(Rhino Records)
★★★★★

THIS three-disc vinyl album set features the 1974 entire concert — all 125 minutes of it — of Charles Mingus playing Carnegie Hall.

It features Peggy’s Blue Skylight, Fables Of Faubus and Celia, both clocking in at around 20 minutes, and the wonderful Big Alice, written by pianist Don Pullen on which the band get into a “Willie and the Hand Jive” groove with great sax from George Adams and brilliant drums from Danny Richmond.

The second set, a “battle of the saxes,” features John Handy on alto and tenor, Charles McPherson on alto and Roland Kirk on tenor. All are on rip-roaring form.

Taken from the original tapes, with full recording details and notes by Michael Cuscuna, this is a contender for jazz reissue of 2021.

TONY BURKE

Manzanita y Su Conjunto: Trujillo, Peru 1971-1974
(Analog Africa)
★★★★★

THE adage “of the people, by the people, for the people” could not be truer than in the case of Berardo “Manzanita (little apple)” Hernandez and his Conjunto (combo), best spelled out in the joyously pulsating instrumental No Me Marchare (I won’t leave) with scintillating guitar work by the master himself.

The mesmerisingly lyrical Mi Pueblito (my little town), a paean to Trujillo on Peru’s north-eastern littoral, or the exquisite Un Sabado por la Noche (One Saturday Night) entrance, as do the chirpy El Norteno (the northerner) or Lamento en la Puna.

This music reflects the period when the combo regularly played for Lima’s growing population of homesick Andean migrant workers.

Following the 1968 socialist revolution, culture and local traditions were given pride of place and Peruvian cumbia emerged with Manzanita its greatest exponent. Listen to this album and you’ll understand why.

MB

Steve Dawson
At The Bottom Of A Canyon In The Branches Of A Tree
(Pravda Records)
★★★★

THIS subtly memorable offering is the brainchild of the highly regarded Chicago based singer-songwriter Steve Dawson, who has already made quite an impression on discerning punters via his musical exploits with criminally  under-rated outfits such as  Americana specialists Dolly Varden and folk-jazz combo Funeral Bonsai Wedding.

Dawson’s exquisitely crafted solo output repays closer investigation too, drawing inspiration from the eclectic delights  of early-1970s California folk-rock and the smooth melodicism of classic Chicago blues, gospel and soul.

It’s inspiring stuff, and there were any justice in this benighted world the richly resonant charms of stand-out tracks from his Pravda Records debut such as Hard Time Friend, Forgiveness Is Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be and Beautiful Mathematics would be required listening for open- minded music-lovers everywhere.

KB

Various
A Revolution In Sound: Pop Culture and the Classical Avant Garde
El Records
★★★★

THIS four-CD set delves into the influences of modern classical music, free jazz and the avant-garde on 1960s pop music when serious rock artists like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Beatles and in the US Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart searched out new influences.

They include classical composers like Stockhausen, Britten and Ives, free jazzers Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, Ravi Shankar and, in the case of Frank Zappa, 20th-century classical composers Anton Webern, Pierre Boulez and Edgar Varese.

Among the compositions included are Pierre Henry’s Orpheus, Stockhausen’s Gruppen For Three Orchestras, Britten’s Peter Grimes and Private Dreams and Public Nightmares, a collage of voices and sound effects by Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe, which in 1957 radio producer Donald McWhinnie told BBC listeners: “You may detest this programme but I hope you won’t dismiss it. Certainly nothing like this has ever come out of your loudspeaker before.”

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

TB

The Burner Band
Signs and Wonders
(Shed Load Records)
★★★★

LEWIS BURNER and his band are endearing pamphleteers whose musical melange ranges from bluegrass via folk to rockabilly.

The music — banjo, harmonica and guitar-driven — is kept on the straight and narrow by Lewis Beresford on snare drum, though perhaps a little too narrowly at times.

Bouncy, entertaining and political, this is great live music to let your hair down to, pint in hand, but the formula loses much in translation when recorded and feels unvaried.

Some of the great songs like Block Out The Sun, about the Liverpool boycott of the paper in Liverpool — “Don’t want your kind hanging around” — Pray For The Light, Voodoo Queen or Don’t Have To Listen would benefit appreciably from more elaborate arrangements and richer instrumentation that would extend Burner’s sonorous and melodic voice.

Full marks, though, for that infectious enthusiasm.

MB

The Hello Darlins
Go By Feel
(Self released)
★★★

THIS is the eagerly anticipated debut album from Canadian roots music collective The Hello Darlins, with creative mainstays Candace Lacina and Mike Little bringing the experience that they’ve accumulated during a career spent  working with everyone from Shania Twain to BB King to bear on one of the most heartfelt and affecting collections of songs that I’ve heard in many a long year.

The husband-and-wife pairing have assembled a stylish and sympathetic group of  sidemen to underpin their sterling efforts here, with prime cuts such as Aberdeen, Prayer For A Sparrow and Still Waters supplying an eloquent introduction to this exceptional outfit’s heady fusion of country, blues and gospel influences.

The Hello Darlins’ musical vision should continue to expand and develop when normality finally returns and they’re able  to take their material on the road.

KB

Various
I’m A Freak Baby 3
(Grapefruit)
★★★★

PRE-GLAM ROCK rock and punk, rock was dominant and broadcast on the BBC in the evenings and weekends by John Peel and Pete Drummond in an era when there was a gig every night at colleges, underground clubs and pubs.

As with previous I’m A Freak… volumes it’s a heady mix of established rock favourites, including Mott The Hoople, Thin Lizzy, Nazareth, Edgar Broughton, Hawkwind, Uriah Heep, Free, Deep Purple, Procol Harum, Chicken Shack and Spooky Tooth, alongside almost-knowns such as May Blitz and Sam Gopal (with Lemmy), and unknowns like Zior, Leaf Hound and Fuzzy Duck.

There are demos of tracks by Bullfrog and a live pre-Led Zeppelin Yardbird performance of Dazed And Confused from 1968.

With a detailed and annotated booklet, photos, album covers and memorabilia, rockers of a certain age may want to invest in all three sets.

TB