Album reviews: The Kills, Cat's Eyes, Maarja Nuut and more

Andy Gill reviews this week’s new releases from The Kills, Cat's Eyes, Maarja Nuut, Minor Victories and more

The Kills

Ash & Ice

Domino

★★★☆☆

Download this: Doing It To Death; Bitter Fruit; Heart Of A Dog

Since 2011’s Blood Pressures, Jamie Hince has suffered several injuries which have prompted his adoption of keyboards into the duo’s stripped-down sound, in case his guitar ability was seriously impaired. As it happened, he needn’t have worried: the low-slung elasticity of the riff to “Bitter Fruit”, and his serrated slashes across “Doing It To Death”, are as sharply effective as ever, although it’s a bonus to hear the synth line percolating alongside the skittish drum-machine on the latter. The short but ponderous piano ballad “That Love” is less successful, but elsewhere Alison Mosshart bristles with waspish intent on tracks such as the bluesy “Hum For Your Buzz” and predatory “Heart Of A Dog”, where her promise “I’m loyal, I’ve got the heart of a dog” isn’t entirely reassuring.

Cat’s Eyes

Treasure House

Kobalt

★★★★☆

Download this: Treasure House; Chameleon Queen; We’ll Be Waiting; Teardrops

Save for the closing “Teardrops”, which recalls Julee Cruise’s Twin Peaks anthem “Mysteries Of Love”, there’s a warm retro-Sixties feel about Cat’s Eyes’ second album, rooted in the baroque-pop tones of songs such as “Chameleon Queen”, redolent of the original (UK) Nirvana and a less sombre Procol Harum. It’s an alliance of well-chosen abilities: Faris Badwan’s gently murmurous vocal is beautifully poised over the title-track’s strings and descending harp figure, while Rachel Zeffira is rather better placed applying reed textures over Badwan’s organ in “We’ll Be Waiting” than pantomiming spiteful vengeance for the garage-pop of “Be Careful Where You Park Your Car”.

Maarja Nuut

Une Meeles

www.marjanuut.com

★★★★☆

Download this: Kargus; Kiik Tahab Kindaid; Odangule; Kuradipolka

Estonian singer/violinist Maarja Nuut operates at the point where traditional folk meets contemporary classical music, applying hypnotic, minimalist modes to rustic tales of birds and horses. In “Kargus”, her roughly-bowed violins saw away at their differences, sliding in and out of pitch, while her percussive vocal adds what sounds like the Baltic equivalent of Gaelic “mouth music”; “Sammud” is a flurry of pizzicato and threshing percussion; while in “Kiik Tahab Kindaid”, the droning of telephone cables provides the backdrop for her vocal about a creaking children’s swing. Like much Baltic music, the tone is windswept and snowy, but Nuut’s command of vocal layering throughout prompts comparison with the likes of modernist diva Joan La Barbara.

The Claypool Lennon Delirium

Monolith Of Phobos

ATO

★★★☆☆

Download this: Monolith Of Phobos; Cricket And The Genie; Mr. Wright; Breath Of A Salesman

Pairing Sean Lennon with Primus bassist Les Claypool, Monolith Of Phobos is a full-on old-school psych-rock extravaganza in early Pink Floyd manner, with all that entails. There are quaintly sinister songs about characters like deluded dentist/superhero “Captain Lariat”, after-hours prowler “Mr. Wright” and the hapless “Oxycontin Girl” (“…in a heroin world”), while the title-track builds sci-fi momentum, Floyd-style, from a spacey wasteland of keening ondes martenot and sundry guitar noises. Elsewhere, “Cricket And The Genie” is a two-part monstrosity incorporating chirping crickets, fastidious bass picking, and what sounds like the doomy opening riff to Black Sabbath’s debut album. Heav-eee!

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Soulrocker

Concord/Decca

★★☆☆☆

Download this: Crazy For You; My Lord; Get Myself To Saturday

Michael Franti long since ceased being the radical firebrand who made “Television, The Drug Of The Nation”, but his enduring liberation ideology has rarely been as limply expressed as on Soulrocker, with its ho-hum assertions that he’s “Still Standing” and that “We Are All Earthlings”. The better tracks are the front-loaded pop-soul grooves like “My Lord” and “Get Myself To Saturday”, with their spindly synth hooks and engagingly upful manner; but by the time he reaches the Babylonian critique “Good To Be Alive Today”, things have reached a woeful nadir, with throwaway lines like “Ebola crisis, and Isis is taking their heads off” hardly doing justice to such ghastly events.

Minor Victories

Minor Victories

P.I.A.S.

★★★★☆

Download this: Give Up The Ghost; Scattered Ashes; For You Always; The Thief

For many months, Minor Victories were an indie “supergroup” whose members had never actually met, the participants from the likes of Editors, Mogwai and Slowdive communicating and recording by broadband. The results are shockingly focused, though: there’s a congruence about their inputs which gives this debut a potency sometimes lacking in the dream-pop/shoegaze genre. String washes and synths blend with strident guitars to give the likes of “Give Up The Ghost” and “A Hundred Ropes” an urgent motorik sheen over which Rachel Goswell’s breathy vocals pour like balm. Elsewhere, the buzzsaw guitars and tambourine of “Scattered Ashes” echo The Jesus And Mary Chain, while Mark Kozelek’s sudden appearance on “For You Always” adds an extra dimension to an excellent album.