Album reviews: The Golden Tree | Shed Seven | The Hedrons | The Glasgow Barons

Shed Seven: A Matter Of Time (Cooking Vinyl) ***

The Hedrons: Tired of Taking (Last Night From Glasgow) ***

The Glasgow Barons: Made In Govan (self-released) ***

Bobby Bluebell and Grahame Skinner, holly jolly fellows of this parish, dropped their new collaboration into online Christmas stockings over the festive period without a sleigh bell to be heard. Instead The Bluebells guitarist and Hipsway/Cowboy Mouth frontman, convening as The Golden Tree, present a selection box of Scottish Songs Observed, making some excellent cover choices, from 1970s MOR Top of the Pops standards such as The Sutherland Brothers’ Arms of Mary and Gallagher & Lyle’s Breakaway to favourites by 1980s peers such as Simple Minds and Annie Lennox.

All tracks receive similar treatment, slowed down to a stately pace with Skin in moody crooner mode, lashings of echo and the occasional application of strings. The pair can’t resist some mildly martial drumming in the background of a spacious, haunting take on Wild Mountain Thyme. Donovan’s Catch the Wind is dispatched in similarly slow, spooky style, with Skin’s voice pealing out plaintively, while Marmalade’s Reflections of My Life becomes a resonant piano ballad and Texas’s Black Eyed Boy loses its bounce but retains its irresistible melody.

Everything gets a fair stab, from Talking Heads’ Heaven to Orange Juice’s Poor Old Soul and the outliers scrub up well, not least Fiction Factory’s Feels Like Heaven, which suits Skin’s voice, and Jim Diamond’s chart-topper I Should Have Known Better, which gets the torch song treatment.

York indie stalwarts Shed Seven celebrate their 30th anniversary as a band with as much verve as ever on A Matter Of Time, kicking off with Let’s Go, a song so infused with Ramones spirit that it must have a silent exclamation mark. Next, they set their musical sights on the US west coast with the breezy harmonics of Kissing California.

Along the familiar way, they whoop it up with rootsy indie rocker F:K:H, break out the natural jollity of Talk of the Town and keep it cheery on Ring the Changes before dropping the pace on sonorous piano-led number Starlings and the Pete Doherty-featuring ballad finale Throwaways.

Glasgow pop/rockers The Hedrons, fronted by Yvonne “Tippi” Tipping, reconvene for their first new album in 16 years but the vibe remains the same, from the pacey, upbeat indie of The Waters Coming In via the buzzsaw pop of title track Tired of Taking and US punk boogie of Heartache to the thoroughly enjoyable, Stevie Nicks-style melodic power pop of Human.

Govan-based community orchestra The Glasgow Barons celebrate their Clydeside home on Made In Govan, an album of original songs by local musicians and writers inspired by neighbourhood landmarks and lore, from street murals to the district’s deep-rooted tradition of political activism.

Stylistically, the album ranges from music teacher Jennifer Armstrong’s fragrant, soulful folk contribution In Time to Clark Innes’s sunshine reggae number Something Wonderful, from spoken word artist Gus Abbot’s percussive meditation about keeping on keeping on to Call Out The Dead, a gnarly gothic pandemic protest inspired by Govan Old Parish churchyard.

Be The One is a simple folk pop tribute to one of Govan’s most famous sons, Alex Ferguson, written and performed with laidback confidence by 16-year-old Kayden White, while Women of the World celebrates Govan suffragette sheroes Mary Barbour and Isabella Elder and takes up the Iranian women’s chant of “woman, life, freedom.” Govan’s multi-culturalism is showcased by the long-running Musicians in Exile group with their funky meditation Always On the Move (already performed at the Scottish parliament), while MIE graduate Aref Ghorbani celebrates his new home in Farsi and English.

CLASSICAL

Stravinsky: Violin Concerto; Scherzo à la russe; Orchestral Suites 1 & 2; Apollon musagète (Chandos) *****

Precision in Stravinsky is everything, but so is style and character. In this exceptional new disc, dedicated entirely to the worldly Russian composer, the interrelationship of these decisive factors is utterly magical. On the one hand you have conductor Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic etching out the zestful delicacies of the two Orchestral Suites (remodelled by Stravinsky from piano duos) with crisp humour and pathos, the jazzy niceties of the Scherzo à la russe (written originally as a showpiece for the Paul Whiteman Band), and the virtuosic restraint of his 1920s ballet Apollon musagète, producing moments of ravishing warmth and affection. But the real charmer is the Violin Concerto in D, featuring ace Canadian violinist James Ehnes. This is a truly mesmerising performance, Ehnes’ trademark exactitude – surely the most refined in the business – enriching Stravinsky’s tart neo-classicism with intoxicating objectivity, pulsating clarity and irresistible spiritedness. Ken Walton

FOLK

Ciarán Ryan Band: Occupational Hazards (Ciarán Ryan Music) ****

Following his 2019 solo debut Banjaxed, tenor banjo ace Ciarán Ryan leads this gleefuly robust folk-rock collaboration, also doubling on electric guitar, his playing tightly meshed with that of accordionist Andrew Waites, guitarist Chris Waites, bass guitarist Bevan Morris and drummer Donald Hay. The opening title track sets the brisk and beaty tone, with the kind of smartly shifting tempi and textures that continue throughout the album, and there’s mighty tight play between Ryan and accordionist Waite, the latter breaking away nimbly at times, as in the oddly titled, furiously jig-time Domesticated, before the rest of the band roar in. They generate hypnotic spin over growling synth in the likes of Brechin Bad, while the leisurely groove of Barbara’s gathers considerable muscle and momentum. The album (Celtic Connections launch on 26 January) ends with the sprightly bounce of Plunk Rock, given a powerful climax by Waites’s Hammond organ. Jim Gilchrist