Ma Polaine’s Great Decline
Molecules
(OMH Records)
★★★★★

THE good news is that, contrary their name, there is no discernible “decline,” great or otherwise, in Ma Polaine’s wondrous musical visions or indeed the virtuosity in their delivery.

Beth Packer’s versatile voice continues to mesmerise with her extraordinary interpretative skills, where intricate modulations and accentuation wrapped in sensitive accompaniment captivate and delight.

The expeditious life recording may occasionally sound utilitarian rather than inspired but that’s a minor quibble.

The intimate conversation of these narratives contemplates our anxieties, the fragility of relationships, our flaws and frailties.

“And crush the fear, the hate, the spite/ It's your life/ Dance, Audrey/ Dance, Audrey/ You don’t need no man to make you whole,” exhorts Packer as the crescendo of Audrey augments.

Molecules offers tender solace: “If we’re already out of time/ Let’s make this moment last/ A lifetime.” Unmissable!

For May/June tour dates visit www.mapolaine.com.

Bring In the Light: Si Kahn’s Songs of Courage and Resistance
Phoebe Rees
(Strictly Country Records)
★★★★★

THE Oswestry native Phoebe Rees grew up listening to Schubert, Bob Dylan, traditional Bolivian dance music and studied classical viola in Edinburgh and London. She’s also a qualified music therapist.

This collection of songs is certainly therapy with an immediate restorative effect. The moving tribute to country singer Ola Belle Reed or the ode to civil rights activist from Wisconsin Belle La Follette illuminate and edify.

The deceptive simplicity of the arrangements masks exceptional musical refinement of which her warm and expressive voice is an integral component.

“They know your name, they hunt you down,” from In Afghanistan is a perturbing evocation of terror unleashed against women, while the violin-driven When The War Is Done asks poignantly: “What will happen to the rest of us when the war is done?”

Intensely political, lucid and invigorating. Majestic!

Lucien Johnson
Ancient Relics
(Deluge Records)
★★★★★

CAN jazz pamper your grey cells rather than strain them? asks, rhetorically, the Ancient Relics PR blurb.

The answer is blowing in the whirlwind of this sextet’s music: cultured, elegant and yes… dare I say it, immensely entertaining.

The instigator, saxophonist Lucien Johnson, a New Zealander and an adoptive child of the Parisian free jazz fraternity fills his compositions with jazz “heresy” that delights at every bar.

Johnson’s ingenious instrumentation of vibraphones, harp, double bass, drums and percussion might perplex the purist but it imbues the gently pulsating Escape Capsule with bossanova-echoing tonalities and envelops Embers gracefully in dreamy melancholy. 

The uptempo, rhythm section-driven Space Junk wows, while Satellites, with a mesmerising piano passage, will have you free-dancing tout suite. 

The musicianship is collectively sublime with the arrangements allowing each of the six to weave in seamlessly their individual ornamentations. Marvellous.