Album reviews: The Ship by Brian Eno, I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn by Sandy Denny, Onwards To Mars! by Fanfare Ciocârlia

Brian Eno, The Ship - Warp -4/5

Download this: The Ship; Fickle Sun

Obliquely inspired by the sinking of the Titanic as a metaphor for scientific hubris presaging the industrialised conflict of WW1, The Ship is a strange amalgam of Eno’s familiar ambient approach with poetry - the latter delivered in a sonorous basso profundothat resonates with a sort of looming, warning warmth. “The Ship” itself occupies 21 minutes of unhurried electronic tones and occasional stirring string-synth pads, while the three-part “Fickle Sun” adds descriptive percussion to its depiction of toiling labourers, possibly poor bloody infantry trapped in oceanic “wave…after wave… after wave” of trench warfare. The final part concludes, in epiphanic manner, with a starkly rousing version of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Set Free”.

Sandy Denny, I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn - Island - 5/5

Download this: Who Knows Where The Time Goes?; Autopsy; She Moves Through The Fair; No End; Moments

Compiled to accompany the recent biography of the same title, I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn offers an almost definitive account of the career of English folk’s most mercurial talent, distilled to its purest essence via solo demos and performances. Whether fronting Strawbs, Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, or pursuing her solo threads, Sandy Denny brought an engaging, demotic charm to whatever she sang, which both rendered her own psychologically-charged songs, such as “Autopsy”, grippingly personal, and helped bring more traditional material like “She Moves Through The Fair” vividly to life, ingeniously telescoping the distance separating past from present. At 40 songs, this is a masterclass in music essentials.

Fanfare Ciocârlia, Onwards To Mars! - Asphalt Tango - 4/5

Download this: Trenul, Masina Mica; Out To Lounge; I Put A Spell On You; Fiesta De Negritos

The world’s leading Gypsy brass band, Fanfare Ciocârlia are the kind of outfit that shrinks the world through their music. There’s an appealing balance between ancient and modern, serious and comic in their work, with wry nods to outside influences evident in titles like “Mista Lobaloba” and “Out To Lounge”, but nothing allowed to taint the urgent virtuosity of their Balkan jazz. Tracks such as “Trenul, Masina Mica”, “3 Romanians” and “Fiesta De Negritos” emphasise the pronounced offbeat that Balkan music shares with reggae and cumbia, producing a highly infectious, insidious shuffle guaranteed to start any party. And their version of “I Put A Spell On You” is splendid, a suitably Transylvanian tribute to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Wire, Nocturnal Koreans - pinkflag - 3/5

Download this: Nocturnal Koreans; Internal Exile; Forward Position; Numbered

Although comprised of re-worked leftovers from last year’s excellent Wire album, Nocturnal Koreans finds the band still managing to find new routes to take away from that tightly-focused project. Several concern the contributions of newest member Matthew Simms, whose lap-steel whine wraps around the three-note guitar figure of “Internal Exile”, and adds a ghostly, keening presence to the atmospheric drone and synth soundscape “Forward Position”, an evocative piece which seems much shorter than its five-minute length. As ever, urgent, angular riffing lends an astringent tone to the likes of “Fishes Bones” and “Dead Weight”, while the brittle, staccato groove of “Numbered” eventually gives way, in one of the album’s most effective moves, to akosmische charm akin to the sleek psychedelic krautrock of Harmonia.

The Jayhawks, Paging Mr. Proust - Thirty Tigers - 4/5

Download this: Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces; Lovers Of The Sun; Leaving The Monsters Behind; The Dust Of Long Dead Stars

With its serene harmonies and Byrdsy jangle of arpeggiated guitars, “Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces” heralds the most potent Jayhawks album in ages, with some of Gary Louris’s best songs captured at their sweetest by producers Tucker Martine and Peter Buck - the latter bringing his decades of R.E.M. experience to bear on the project. The band stretch their core approach into new areas - with its angular guitar, electric piano and ambient noise, “Ace” is like the experimental tracks on Wilco albums - but at their best, these are songs brimful of bonhomie, especially the lovely “Lovers Of The Sun”, sweetly tanned enough to have held down a place on The Beach Boys’ Today! album.

Robin McKelle, The Looking Glass - Doxie - 2/5

Download this: Gravity; Brave Love; Get Back Yesterday

Sadly, nu-soul stylist Robin McKelle has abandoned the Southern-Soul focus of 2014’s splendid Heart Of Memphis in order to re-connect with the jazz roots which, she claims, allows her to employ “the texture of my voice in a more intimate register”. It’s a Faustian pact: the resulting inclination towards Seventies-style “guilty pleasure” blue-eyed soul, for all its fond recollections of such as Felix Cavaliere and Hall & Oates, seems underpowered by comparison with her earlier work, while the recurrent theme, in songs like “Gravity” and “Stand Up”, of changing attitude and taking control of your life, is too half-heartedly proclaimed. But the closing “Get Back Yesterday”, with its recognition that “living separate ways ain’t the way to make it work”, offers a pleasing take on reconciliation.