Album reviews: Teenage Fanclub | Dylan John Thomas | Sheryl Crow

Teenage Fanclub | Contributed

Teenage Fanclub: Do Not Dare to Dream (Merge) ★★★★

Dylan John Thomas: Nothing Here Worth Taking (Believe Music) ★★★

Sheryl Crow: Pick You Up (Big Green Barn/Thirty Tigers) ★★★

The Catburgers: Galashiels (Slumberland) ★★★

Teenage Fanclub are a wistful bunch these days, perhaps more than ever. It’s a trait which has infused their music from the moment Norman Blake sang “you get older every year but you don’t change, or I don’t notice you’re changing” on the suitably evergreen Everything Flows. But now Blake and fellow songwriter Raymond McGinley are firmly ensconced in middle age and perfectly happy to embrace their vintage.

Recorded at the well appointed and idyllic Black Bay Studio on the Hebridean island of Great Bernera, their 13th album, Do Not Dare to Dream, is a gentle but utterly lovely affair which delivers on its wry title. If you’re looking for grand overstatement and extravagant ambition, stick to the latest Muse album; Teenage Fanclub are all about comfort - seeking it and dispensing it - with Blake and McGinley tag-teaming on the songs as always.

There are some subtle tweaks in the old familiar sound. There Was You is more Gallagher & Lyle than Big Star with its folksy charm. Tomorrow People appears to settle for familiar strumming indie pop before a spindly synth solo heralds a folk prog second half led by Euros Childs getting wiggy with it on synths. Over and Over invokes something of the psych folk spirit of Pentangle, with added church organ, while the lush Nashville Sound-influenced whimsy of Be With You Tonight gives off cosmic country vibes, boosted by playfully duelling guitars and delicate orchestration.

The track I Do Not Dare to Dream is not so much negative as skeptical of platitudes, with Blake tapping into the drollery of Ray Davies on the line “I’m the cat without the cream, though it feels like something’s coming but I do not dare to dream”. Instead, they just dare to be themselves, allowing their songs to bear fruit right up to the touching nostalgic benediction of Young and Wise.

Dylan John Thomas | ©conorgaultphotography

Top Scottish troubadour Dylan John Thomas is an old head on young shoulders, relishing the sounds of yore while fashioning a sound which speaks to his peers. He’s big on band performance but attacks his second album with independent spirit, picking up new instruments and getting on with it. The opening title track kicks off with bright, mariachi-like brass and a tub-thumping rhythm. The infernally catchy first single, Got You On My Mind, is a happy, skiffly blast of longing energy and the sheer tunefulness continues on Call It A Day, with handclaps and whistling breeziness contrasting with its downbeat rumination on the fag end of a relationship.

But Thomas is just as adept when he slows the pace on the declamatory yet spacious Heaven Knows You’re Lonely, banjo-led waltz Thinking About You and plangent ballad Sequel and tries out something new, pairing Balearic beats with driving acoustic guitar on Come And Get It and getting gospelly on the Celtic blues-not-blues of All the Days of My Life.

Sheryl Crow | Mark Seliger

Sheryl Crow’s 13th album is a short and sweet collection of soft country rock with MOR tendencies. It’s easy listening start-to-end; Crow even sounds relaxed about impending doom on the symphonic roots pop of Heaven Help Us and delivers the McCartneyesque call to arms Freedom Bus (“whoever said freedom was free? There ain’t a freedom without history”) with laidback élan.

READ MORE: Pussycat Dolls, Glasgow review: 'lots of lady boss poses'

Edinburgh indie kids The Catburgers were active giggers in the late 1980s. They didn’t release any music in their time together but did record their set for posterity - now newly mixed as recovered album Galashiels. It’s a typical time capsule of the era, ranging from the lo-fi punky jangle I’ve Got a Friend to the wistful and wonky Holiday House. Twee paeans to kids’ TV are countered by the dark, sardonic drone of The Summer of Love and the quasi-gothic ballad Darkness Before the Dawn.

CLASSICAL

Prokofiev: Chout (complete ballet) | Symphony No 1 “Classical” (Harmonia Mundi) ★★★★

It helps to have a Russian in charge, musically speaking. In this instance it’s Stanislav Kochanovsky, who took over the chief conductorship of Hannover’s NDR Radiophilharmonie from Andrew Manze two years ago, revealing in this all-Prokofiev album a gut empathy for his fellow Russian’s punchy, pithy satire. The star billing is Chout, a ballet about seven buffoons tricked into murdering their wives. Written shortly after Prokofiev’s 1914 Parisian encounter with Diaghilev, alignment with the Stravinsky-Diaghilev-Ballet Russes axis is potent: riotous grotesquerie, acerbic colourings, slick, no-nonsense narrative, yet warmed by undercurrents of folk-flavoured tenderness. Kochanovsky gives ample breathing space to a performance that nails this rarity’s essentially capricious irreverence. And it sits well with Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, itself softened by sculpted seductiveness in the opening movement, from which the gavotte-like skip of the Larghetto emerges as a brief stepping stone to the breezy Finale. Ken Walton

FOLK

The Occasionals at 40 (Bonskeid Music) ★★★★

One of Scotland’s best known dance bands celebrates its 40th anniversary with a vengeance, assembling as a nine-piece with core members Freeland Barbour on accordion, drummer Gus Millar and guitarists Malcolm Jones and Kevin MacLeod joined by other “occasional Occasionals” including piper Duncan MacGillivray and fiddlers Angie MacEachern and Mairi Campbell. There’s irrepressible zest and peerless timing to their two- and three-steps, schottisches and gay Gordons, combining well-loved standards and recent compositions – particularly Barbour’s. Former Runrig guitarist Jones brings a distinct Gaelic sensibility to two dance sets while guest Northumbrian harmonica player Jimmy Little, at twice the age of the band, contributes added reed power to the Ideal Schottische. Fourteen dances end with a jubilant, pipe-driven strip the willow, heuchs a-plenty testifying to the live nature of this recording, made by BBC Radio Scotland for a special edition of Take the Floor marking the band’s birthday. Jim Gilchrist

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here