Album reviews: Charli XCX | Moby | Mumford & Sons | Matthew C Whitaker
Charli XCX’s soundtrack to new film Wuthering Heights is a tight, focused and intense distillation of a sprawling tale, writes Fiona Shepherd
Charli XCX: Wuthering Heights OST (Atlantic Records) ★★★★
Moby: Future Quiet (BMG) ★★★
Mumford & Sons: Prizefighter (Island Records) ★★
Matthew C. Whitaker: Songs for the Weary (self-released) ★★★★
Charli XCX is not the first musician to be inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic feral love story, Wuthering Heights. Kate Bush’s extraordinary debut single is in a league of its own but the singer/producer born Charlotte Aitchison has run with releasing an entire concept album on amour fou as a soundtrack to Emerald Ferrell’s new film adaptation of the novel.
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Fired up by the project at a time when she was otherwise creatively spent, Aitchison follows up her all-conquering Brat album with a slight left turn. Her soundtrack pairs the unsettling soundscapes of Mica Levi and Johnny Greenwood’s scores for Jonathan Glazer and Paul Thomas Anderson with the perennial popular music expression of ardent love.
Opening track House is the boldest statement on the album, teaming the gnarled narration of Velvet Underground man John Cale with ominous cello, keening metallic stabs and sludge rock guitar before adding her own guttural distorted vocals to create a doomed duet.
Her autotuned waltz-time vocals are paired with dissonant drunken strings on Wall of Sound while Dying For You displays just enough obsession over a palette of strings, synths and beats. “I can’t escape the storm you gave me, constant lightning in my veins”, she proclaims on Always Everywhere while strings swirl around like a moorland storm. On Chains of Love she counts the ways she revels in tortured love while Out of Myself documents an altered state. The languorous legato notes on Open Up speak of ecstasy more eloquently than Eyes of the World, an overblown pop duet with Sky Ferreira.
At just over half an hour long, Aitchison’s soundtrack is a tight, focused and intense distillation of a sprawling tale which works in its own right as a leftfield love album.
Veteran musical polymath Moby has followed his instincts across a forty-year career, taking in such diverse genres as rave, punk and ambient music. It is to the latter he leans on his 23rd album. Future Quiet is a soft suite for piano, synths, strings and occasional voice, conceived as a musical refuge in a noisy world.
An array of guest vocalists keep proceedings from tipping over into Youtube study playlist territory. Gabriels frontman Jacob Lusk adds his haunting tenor to a new version of When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die, enjoying a revival following its use in Stranger Things, while soprano Elise Serenelle fronts the elegiac Estrella Del Mar.
This Was Never Meant For Us features Moby’s own fragile, halting delivery, while India Carney’s breathy soul tones, Brooklyn R&B singer serpentwithfeet and a choirboy chorus make soothing interventions elsewhere.
Mumford & Sons waste no time in following up their fifth album Rushmere. Prizefighter was written and recorded in ten days with Aaron Dessner but is far from punchy. Languorous country lament Here gets a gritty boost from guest vocalist Chris Stapleton, but Hozier disappears into the inoffensive banjo pop of Rubber Band Man.
The Banjo Song is possibly a playful rebuttal of former banjo player Winston Marshall’s admission that the band have “murdered” the instrument in the past. This breezy pop song with a standard I’ll-be-there message is one of the catchier tunes in an otherwise forgettable collection. The title track, co-written with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, is far from pugilistic, while Gigi Perez does what she can to spice up Icarus, trying to mine a spirit which isn’t there.
By night, Matthew C Whitaker is Zpor, the frontman of cosmic synth metal marauders Henge. By day, however, he is an easy listening crooner, evoking the symphonic pop moods of Henry Mancini and Burt Bacharach, adding keening theremin to A Portrait of the Artist As An Old Man and Alabaster DePlume’s smoky saxophone to the Morricone-meets-Weill vibes of the title track of his latest album, For The Weary.
CLASSICAL
Edward Picton-Turberville: Listen. It Is Here (Delphian) ★★★★
The muse for this easygoing anthology of songs by British pianist/composer Edward Picton-Turbervill stems fundamentally from the rosy, melancholic lyricism of early 20th century English art song. Echoes of Quilter, Vaughan Williams and later influences filter through this charmingly expressive album. The composer, on piano, is joined variously by soprano Harriet Burns, countertenor Alexander Chance, mezzo-soprano Helen Charleston and tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas. That’s not to diminish the artistry of genuinely distinguished song cycles, among which are the (translated) Rilke settings of Poems in the Sky and the Impressionistic Two Vedic Hymns for soprano; the reverential purity of To The Old Gods for countertenor; the effusive Songs for A (for tenor) that indulge an unmistakable Britten moment; the whimsical parody (veering on Edwardian parlour song) of I Want To Be A Cow for mezzo-soprano. Picton-Turbervill offers momentary diversion with his solo piano miniatures, Seven Portraits. Ken Walton
FOLK
Ailie Robertson: Echoes from Torloisk (Lorimer Records) ★★★★
Harpist Ailie Robertson’s latest album is a beguiling time capsule, its 18 tracks giving delicately poised airing to music from the Maclean Clephane compiled at Torloisk, Mull, in the early 19th century by sisters Anna Jane and Margaret Maclean Clephane. Hitherto confined to archives, and played by Robertson (with occasional guitar from Miguel Girão) on the same kind of Erard harp as the sisters used, as well as clarsach, these venerable tunes take new flight. Ranging from the delicately hanging notes of Port Gordon to a distinctly Irish-sounding jig, tracks include a series of ten ports – of venerable pedigree in Gaelic harp annals – and also nods to Irish tradition in melodies such as the well-known Elan a Rùn – echoes of what was once common musical exchange across the Irish Sea. Extensive notes wear their scholarship lightly in these “conversations across time”, as Robertson puts it. Jim Gilchrist
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