Joan As Police Woman

Joshua Black Wilkins

★★★★

Lemons, Limes And Orchids

PIAS. CD/DL/LP

Interrogations of the human condition from New York’s serial collaborator.

“Oh Joan, what is there to be done?” sings Joan Wasser over a little unfinished symphony on her tenth album. It’s a question that hangs over Lemons, Limes And Orchids, a record that tries to make sense of all the different kinds of human wreckage: emotional, romantic, environmental. As a session player with everyone from Elton John to Lou Reed, you might expect Wasser to have troubleshooting skills, and here – accompanied by a band that includes Meshell Ndegeocello and Parker Kindred – she turns doubt and anxiety into subtly burnished, soulful nocturnes, more sensual than any existential crisis should be. With Hope In My Breath is a full-on phoenix-from-the-flames torch song, while the title track wonders if human beings will evolve to survive, “like a baby giraffe unfolding herself like origami”. Cheetahs might be waiting, but Joan As Police Woman provides a beautiful soundtrack to the fight and the flight.

Victoria Segal

Nada Surf

★★★★

Moon Mirror

NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP

Nothing much has changed in 30 years, and that’s fine.

Three decades and 10 albums haven’t witnessed a huge s hift in either sound or circumstances for New York’s Nada Surf. As the millennium turned, their indie rock stardom seemed nailed on, but not hearing any subsequent songs to match 1996 debut hit Popular, Elektra dropped them and they’ve run largely according to their own part-time plan since. Which is a huge shame because when top Surf dude Matthew Caws hits his songwriting straps there’s a quality to his lyricism that lifts the band’s college rock into the stratosphere. Open Seas could be a Gerard Love-penned Teenage Fanclub hit; there’s a Jason Lytle-like other-worldliness to New Propellor; a punk-ish R.E.M. jangle runs through almost everything else, but especially opener Second Skin and Intel And Dreams. Nada Surf have always been close to greatness, and Moon Mirror Andy Fyfe won’t win new fans, but it is wonderful.

Floating Points

★★★★

Cascade

NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP

Mercury Prize-nominated polymath scratches his dancefloor itch.

Sam Shepherd’s musical nom de guerre is apt. Already established as one of electronic dance music’s more thoughtful exponents, his 2021 collaboration with sax deity Pharoah Sanders and the LSO, Promises, earned a Mercury Prize nomination and MOJO Album Of The Year award. Soundtracks and a ballet score have followed. Now, Shepherd heads back to his roots, where the touring artist’s peripatetic existence compelled him to make Cascade on his laptop. The delicious, Moroder breakbeat thump of Birth4000 and squealing garagey rave of Vocoder (Club Mix) have the swagger and heft to leave club soundsystems wobbling, but also need good headphones for home enjoyment. They’re particularly essential when the modular synth rhythms of Afflecks Palace – a homage to Manchester’s famed fashion emporium, one of several nods to Shepherd’s hometown here – come swirling and eddying. The pull of the dancefloor remains strong, but part of the fun is guessing where Sam Shepherd will float to next.

Stephen Worthy

Robyn Hitchcock

★★★★

1967: Vacations In The Past

TINY GHOST. CD/DL/LP

Psychedelic uncle heads back to his hippy place.

“I fumble for tomorrow like an octopus on speed,” sings Robyn Hitchcock on his latest LP’s title track and lone original song, acknowledging his struggles to move with the times. Now 71, the former Soft Boy has spent his entire career as a psychedelic ambassador, with his recent memoir 1967: How I Got There And Why I Never Left explaining how pop’s great tie-dyed summer rewired him as a teenager at boarding school. Here, he notes the dying of the light show with autumnal retreads of key songs from his annus mirabilis, including A Whiter Shade Of Pale, See Emily Play, A Day In The Life and – maybe toughest of all – Traffic’s No Face, No Name, No Number. His brutal truth: 1967 was 57 years ago and, try as we might, none of us can ever go back.

Jim Wirth

Willie Watson

★★★★

Willie Watson

LITTLE OPERATION. CD/DL/LP

Old Crow Medicine Show founder’s third solo album.

Since leaving Old Crow Medicine Show in 2011, Willie Watson embraced sobriety and kept things low key. Two covers albums tentatively dipped a toe in solo waters, but album number three features just two non-originals: spartan takes on Stan Rogers’ bleak Harris & The Mare and the wry traditional Mole In The Ground. Instead, Watson has focused on his own songwriting, setting his tales of adult sadness and rue (mostly) against his own guitar-picking, although a couple of Punch Brothers and The Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench guest. He swings on Slim And The Devil, but slows down on both Play It One More Time, which owes much to Gordon Lightfoot, and the mostly spoken Reap ’Em In The Valley. The real charm, though, lies in Watson’s voice, plaintive, high-pitched and believable, not least on his own Already Gone, where quiet dignity meets persuasive beauty.

John Aizlewood

BASIC

★★★★

This Is BASIC

NO QUARTER. CD/DL/LP

Despite the name, this Philadelphia art-rock trio turns out to be anything but.

Formed by guitarist Chris Forsyth of the Solar Motel Band, Nick Millevoi (baritone guitar and drum machine) and Natural Information Society’s Mikel Patrick Avery (percussion and electronics), BASIC launched to investigate the lost post-punk highways that opened up when a spate of prog heroes and art-rock thinkers – Robert Fripp, for example – decided to embark on new wave futures. Taking their name from the uptown abstractions and supple percussive experiments of their foundational text, Robert Quine and Fred Maher’s 1984 solo-free instrumental collaboration Basic, Victoria Segal the improvisational trio push their template hard and fast, darkening the blueprint on the lab-grown funk of Versatile Switch, scrawling all over it on the exuberant mutations of New Auspicious. Nerve Time, meanwhile, could be the number one start-up chime in heaven, underlining that this is a fertile area for research. BASIC speak their own language, but it’s not long before their signs and signals unfold into a fascinating new conversation.

Holy Tongue Meets Shackleton

Julien Bourgeois

★★★★

The Tumbling Psychic Joy Of Now

AD 93. DL/LP

Post-punk dub summit with echoes of 23 Skidoo, African Head Charge and ESG.

Formed in 2018 as a studio project by UK producer Al Wootton and Italian percussionist Valentina Magaletti, Holy Tongue became a band proper with the addition of Japanese bassist Susuma Mukai, resulting in last year’s excellent experimental debut Deliverance And Spiritual Warfare. This follow-up with veteran electronic producer Sam Shackleton is a more focused, streamlined affair. The densely layered percussive tapestries of opener Ancient Model and psychedelic dub sonics of Blessed And Bewildered recall the tribal rhythmscapes of African Head Charge and early 23 Skidoo, yet still explore new musical terrains by charting internal/ external emotional states. Best of all is The Merciful Lake, a reverb-drenched futuristic spy theme not unlike the dark, propulsive emissions Andrew Weatherall was making before he passed. More than just some groove exercise, then, The Tumbling… is a dynamic, inspired collaboration which plays to the strengths of all involved.