NEW ALBUMS

Due North

Infectious debut from Jeff Tweedy and Steve Gunn sideman.

By Michael Bonner

ALEXA VISCIUS

WOODSIST/MARE

8/10

DURING lockdown, Liam Kazar found new ways to make a living. With his regular gigs playing in Jeff Tweedy’s live band on hold, Kazar opened Isfahan –a delivery-only kitchen, named after a Duke Ellington song, whose cuisine is inspired by his Armenian heritage.

Such resourcefulness has been evident throughout Kazar’s career so far. As a teenager in Chicago, he was a member of Kids These Days, an eight-piece musical collective whose sole album Traphouse Rock was produced by Tweedy. Since then, Kazar has busied himself as a journeyman guitarist, performing with Tweedy, Steve Gunn, Chance the Rapper and Daniel Johnston. Before the pandemic, he and some friends put together a David Bowie tribute show.

Inevitably, Kazar – born Liam Cunningham – arrived late to a solo career. He finally made his debut solo recording on Uncut’s Wilcovered compilation in 2019, where his version of “Sunloathe” came bathed in warm slide tones that foregrounded the George Harrison influence on the original. Meanwhile, the first sightings of Kazar’s original material arrived last year with “Shoes So Tight”, a sprightly, soulful jam built around Kazar’s core band: Spencer Tweedy on drums, Lane Beckstrom on bass, Dave Curtin manning a punchy Prophet VI and co-producer James Elkington on pedal steel. The video found Kazar in full Pierrot make-up, inspired by Lindsey Kemp – but with his mop of tousled brown hair, he looked more like Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Tour. The song was a terrific calling card from an artist who, nine years after his recording debut with Kids These Days, had at last found his own voice. “I lost a few good years killing time,” he sings on “So Long Tomorrow”, which seems like he’s doing himself a great disservice: Due North might have been a long time coming, but it’s very much the work of someone who’s benefitted from spending a long time watching others do it well. Much like a chef at a pop-up restaurant, you might say – following treasured recipes and putting his own spin on them.

Tweedy, of course, is an influence – but not in ways you might imagine. There’s something of Wilco’s inherent intensity in the thrumming, needle-y guitar intro to “Shoes Too Tight”, and on “On A Spanish Dune”, which recalls the mellow and soulful temperament of Sky Blue Sky. You can also hear Tweedy’s lyrical dryness in lines such as “I hang my coat on any old hook/But I prefer the second from t h e l e ft ” on “So Long Tomorrow”, and his fragile songcraft in lines like “It seems I haven’t changed/Half as much as I let you down” on “Something Tender”.

But instead of Tweedy’s affable, rumpled narrators, Kazar has swagger – even when addressing matters of the heart. “Don’t leave me hanging on the laces of your shoes,” he sings on “Old Enough For You”. But it’s hard to sound anything other than confident when the music swings like this. Spencer Tweedy and Lane Beckstrom provide tight, upbeat backing – everything is lit up, like the  rst day of summer – while Kazar and Curtin’s array of synths provide infectious undercurrents. On “Old Enough For You”, Kazar and his cohorts sound like they’re channelling Talking Heads, while “Shoes Too Tight” boogies along on crunchy, glam grooves.He maintains this wideopen spirit of optimism on “Frank Bacon” – “Keepin’ my feet on solid ground/I’m never gonna let you down” – where Elkington’s slide twangs playfully against Kazar’s layered guitars.

But Kazar has evidently worked hard not just on his songwriting. His arrangements have grain and depth, even on deceptively lighter songs like “So Long Tomorrow” and “Shoes Too Tight”, you’ll hear pianos, synths and multiple guitar lines artfully enter and depart the songs, but they never risk overwhelming their momentum. Even the more reflective songs are richly textured. The soulful grooves of “Give My Word” and spacey expanse of “Something Tender” both find a complementary space between Elkington’s lachrymose slide and the analogue burblings from a Korg. Then there’s Kazar’s voice. He has a slightly theatrical croon, indebted to Bowie and David Byrne, that brings different weights of feeling to the songs. He projects playfulness to the up-tempo strut of “So Long Tomorrow” but also warmth to the wistful “I’ve Been Where You Are”.

Even with lockdown, Due North has taken three years to complete, which suggests that Kazar has taken the time to think everything through. After all, having spent so long at the side of other artists, wouldn’t he want to ensure his debut album was good enough to hold its own in such exalted company. As the final synth whooshes of “Something Tender” evaporate, Due North feels like Kazar coming to terms with his place in the rock’n’roll firmament.

TORRES

Thirstier MERGE

8/10

Mackenzie Scott unleashes her inner joy on exuberant fifth album

RICH GILLIGAN, GAËLLE LEROYER

“I wanted to channel my intensity into something that felt positive and constructive, as opposed to being intense in a destructive or eviscerating way,” says Mackenzie Scott of Torres’ latest. This desire to create joyous intensity is apparent throughout, from the raucous guitar-growl-meetsseamless-pop-swagger of opener “Are You Sleepwalking?” to the grungepop of the title track. Scott’s ability to weave between monster guitar eruptions, refined pop and strippedback moments that allow her voice to soar is a constant. This approach applies all the way until the album’s closing moments, refusing to go out on a delicate note and instead ending on a Nine Inch Nails-esque blaster.

DANIEL DYLAN WRAY

XAN TYLER & MAD PROFESSOR

Clarion Call ARIWA

7/10

Sweet reggae from former Mission Controllers

Fife-based Tyler has sketched an eclectic career, including a successful collaboration with producer Kramer. She first encountered Mad Professor when she and her former partner in Technique, Kate Holmes, contributed to Mission Control’s Dub Showcase. Apart from a couple of dub deconstructions, the Professor keeps it light, pushing Tyler’s sweet, airy vocals to the top of the mix, notably on the delicious “Silver And Gold”. There’s a gentle call for unity on “Clarion Call” but the highlight is an extraordinary cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Be Here To Love Me”, a country lament reborn as lovers’ rock.

ALASTAIR McKAY

U-ROY

Solid Gold U-Roy TROJAN JAMAICA/BMG

6/10

Last will and testament of the legendary toaster

The title suggests a retrospective compilation but although Solid Gold includes remakes of several U-Roy classics, it’s an entirely new album representing his final recordings before his death in February 2021. His vocals – as exuberant in his seventies as half a century ago – were recorded in 2018 by Trojan Jamaica’s mainman Zak Starkey who then overdubbed further contributions from Shaggy, Clash guitarist Mick Jones, Sly &

Robbie and others. Highlights include a thrilling duet with Ziggy Marley on “Trenchtown Rock” and an echoing, dubby take on “Man Next Door” with Santigold, who was born the year U-Roy recorded his original DJ version of the song.

NIGELWILLIAMSON

SUZIE UNGERLEIDER

My Name Is Suzie Ungerleider

MVKA

7/10

The name has changed but – thankfully – little else has

Vancouver songwriter Suzie Ungerleider traded for nearly 25 years under the name Oh Susanna, in which guise she released an impressive catalogue of smart, waspish Americana. Her ditching of her previous identity seems a combination of desire to at once completely embrace her songs and dissociate herself from the less savoury heritage of the Stephen Foster song whose title she’d borrowed. It is no slight against My Name Is… to suggest that it hasn’t made much difference. On tracks such as “Ships” and “Mount Royal”, in particular, Ungerleider remains a superlative scene-setter and storyteller, with a voice managing the rare combination of being at once delicate and careworn.

ANDREW MUELLER

VILLAGERS

Fever Dreams DOMINO

8/10

Immersive fifth from Irish collective

Over five albums, Weller collaborator Conor O’Brien has strived to combine his distinctive but fragile voice with music that applied folky sensibilities to more expansive and busy R&B productions. At its best here, this produces minor masterpieces like the shimmering romance of “The First Day” or “Circles In The Firing Line”, a lithe and bristling combination of John Grant and John Misty, which repeatedly pulls the rug from under your feet with its cheek. The dense and atmospheric “Song In Seven” is another highlight, while “Full Faith In Providence” brings the mood down a notch without reducing impact.

PETER WATTS

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT

Love Will Be Reborn

PHEROMONE RECORDS/COOKING VINYL.

8/10

A welcome return after five years

Wainwright wraps her gloriously unique voice around 11 original songs. Opener “Middle Of The Lake” has a rockier feel than she’s dabbled in for some time, with loose drumbeats and dusty guitar giving her a perfect framework for her bombastic delivery. Elsewhere there’s “Getting Older”, which opens with a slight salsa sound before turning into something the Patti Smith Group would’ve turned their hand to The gorgeous title track, meanwhile, dives into heartbreak and misery and comes up hopeful. Wainwright wrote it in “its entirety within 10 or 15 minutes”, and that fizzing creativity is audible across the whole record.

HANNAH VETTESE

REVELATIONS

VILLAGERS

Frontman Conor O’Brien on “becoming unmoored”

Conor O’Brien finished recording backing tracks for the new Villagers album as Ireland’s national lockdown began in spring 2020. Recording had started in a spirit of collaboration at the end of 2019 as a series of full-band jams but were finished by O’Brien in relative isolation, working remotely with brass, woodwind and string players.

Villagers’ fine sixth LP, Fever Dreams, bristles with ideas that emerged from both stages of this process. “I wanted to feel that collective sense of discovery with the musicians I’d been playing with for the previous few years,” he says of the initial recordings. “I think you can hear the excitement in the recordings. There were quite a few eureka moments – simplifying ‘So Simpatico’ springs to mind, as does sitting at my piano and ‘Momentarily’ spilling out over the course of an hour or two. Jamming ‘Restless Endeavour’ with the band and realising it was becoming something special and unmoored.”

O’Brien is looking forward to going on the road for the first time since December 2019. “I just want to play music in a room full of people again; this crazy year-and-a-half has revealed to me the importance of a shared creative expression. I feel like I’m going to explode with excitement.”

PETER WATTS

WAVVES

Hideaway FAT POSSUM

7/10

Nathan Williams gets reflective and returns to his roots on seventh LP

Returning to his parents’ backyard shed where he made much of his earliest material, Nathan Williams connects back with his origins – as well as the record label that released his 2010 breakthrough King Of The Beach. The fuzz-heavy pop-punk he was making back then still echoes loudly here but by connecting with producer Dave Sitek, the material also sounds crisper. “Thru Hell” is an infectious anxiety anthem that sets the tone for an album rooted in the insecurities of getting older. “It’s been torture existing this long,” he screams on the hard-hitting “Hideaway”. However, Williams has a clear knack of peppering his dread with plenty of pop-heavy hooks.

DANIEL DYLAN WRAY

Tatts off: Wavves

DANIEL WYLIE’S COSMIC ROUGH RIDERS

Atoms And Energy

LATE NIGHT FROM GLASGOW

8/10

Cosmic sensibilities on 1970s-styled seventh from Glaswegian singer

Daniel Wylie had a moment in the spotlight when Alan McGee took the best songs from Cosmic Rough Riders’ two self-financed albums and released them in 2000 on his Poptones label as Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine, a janglepop classic. Wylie quit his own band not long after. Atoms And Energy is his seventh solo album. Basic tracks were recorded in Glasgow in 2019 and completed in lockdown but much of it sounds like a great lost LA singersongwriter album from about 1971, with echoes of CSNY, Love, The Beach Boys and the Neil Young of After The Gold Rush.

ALLAN JONES