Album Reviews

Connan Mockasin – Forever Dolphin Love (Phantasy/Because Music B004NWHVVC) £10.99: This is a psychedelic prog-rock record, featuring plenty of phased guitars, winsome vocals and lyrics about unicorns and stars.
By The Newsroom
Published 15th Apr 2011, 15:42 BST

This generous package also features a second CD of live performances which sound more or less entirely the same as their studio counterparts, bar the occasional smattering of polite applause. Despite being endearingly out-there, the album quickly tests the patience. One of the tracks exceeds 10 minutes, yet there is not much to distinguish one song from another. It is sure to secure a loyal cult following, but unlikely to appeal to a mainstream audience. JR

Mike and The Mechanics – The Road (CMG B004IPSTYM) £12.99: Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford has reincarnated his side project after a seven-year break with two fresh vocalists, Canadian singer Tim Howar and British R&B singer-songwriter Andrew Roachford. The band are still strongly old-school rock-pop with catchy melodic hooks, particularly on Hunt You Down and Reach Out (Touch The Sun). Attempts to create an anthemic vibe in Walking on Water fall flat, while the over-earnest, cliched ballad Heaven Doesn’t Care is almost painful to listen to. This album is unlikely to attract a new audience to Mike’s fold.NB

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Shostakovich – Symphonies 3 and 10. (Mariinsky MAR0511) £13.99: More than twenty years – and the death of Stalin – fell between these symphonies. One Russian musician claimed the latter was “a composer’s testament of misery forever damming a tyrant”. Even the third, supposedly in praise of the revolution, is restrained in mood, though not in ideas or form. Valery Gergiev conducts his Mariinsky Orchestra – on its LSO-backed house label – in thoughtful accounts of astonishing detail. The playing – and recording quality – in this important Shostakovich cycle is hugely impressive. RC

Messiah – Huddersfield Choral Society (Signum Classics SIG CD246) £15.99: Those of us in Huddersfield Town Hall last December knew we had heard a Messiah of memorable quality. The choral singing was fleet and flexible, a strong line-up of soloists – Elizabeth Watts, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mark le Brocq and James Oldfield – had been assembled and Jane Glover directed the Northern Sinfonia with that rhythmic vitality which is her hallmark. To everyone’s good fortune the performance was recorded and the result is fresh, vivid and moving.RC