Bridget Hayden and The Apparitions
Cold Blows The Rain
(Basin Rock)
★★★★

BRIDGET HAYDEN hails from Todmorden in the Upper Calder Valley, the same town as the respected Basin Rock label putting out her new album.

From the title to the slow-burning, foreboding music, Cold Blows The Rain seems perfectly suited to the windswept Yorkshire moors.

The set is comprised of stately interpretations of traditional folk songs, including the often covered She Moved Through the Fair, Irish-English song The Unquiet Grave and the title track, which can be dated back to the 1860s. According to Hayden, nearly every one of the eight songs is “about being left in some way.”

Working with The Apparitions — Sam McLoughlin and Dan Bridgewood-Hill — she merges harmonium and violin to create a deliciously dark atmosphere that brings to mind the last record from Irish singer-songwriter Lisa O’Neill.
A daring, deeply impressive set.

Michael Kiwanuka
Small Changes
(Polydor)
★★★★

SINCE releasing his debut longplayer in 2012, Muswell Hillbilly Michael Kiwanuka has been one of the most consistent British singer-songwriters, putting out increasingly impressive music that has achieved both mainstream and critical success.

Small Changes follows on from 2019’s Kiwanuka, which won the Mercury Music Prize. And while the latter was an expansive, musically ambitious concept album, the former is a much more subdued, introspective affair made in the aftermath of a move out of London and becoming a father.

So a slight shift in sound, though it’s still a fantastic listen. Like his previous work his songs echo classic soul songwriters like Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield — check out those gorgeous strings — while also adding modern touches and his own artistry. Apparently Gene Clark’s 1974 masterpiece No Other was a key influence on the set.

Arild Andersen
Landloper
(ECM)
★★★

AS ECM enthusiasts will know, Norway has been one of the key centres of European jazz for many decades.

Having recorded since the late 1960s, bassist Arild Andersen is a core member of his nation’s jazz scene. And while he has supported many of the greats, including Jan Garbarek, Ketil Bjornstad and Terje Rypdal, Landloper is the 79-year-old’s first solo album.

Opener Peace Universal is all slow-build electronics and otherworldly atmospherics reminiscent of Vangelis’s best soundtrack work. But it’s something of a red herring, with the rest of the set taken from a live solo performance at Oslo’s Victoria Nasjonal Jazzscene.

Playing his double bass and creating electronic loops in real time, Andersen covers A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, before ending with an intimate medley of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman and Charlie Haden’s Song For Che.