Bonny Doon
Let There Be Music
(Anti-)
★★★★

WHAT a pleasure this album is – the third from US band Bonny Doon.

Fans of sad white boy songwriters from across the pond like David Berman, Joe Pernice and Frontier Ruckus’s Matthew Milia will immediately feel at home with the warm melancholy created by Bobby Colombo (vocals, guitar), Bill Lennox (vocals, guitar) and Jake Kmiecik (drums).

Like the aforementioned artists, the Detroit-born three-piece trade in a poppy Americana, from the super catchy bar room piano on yearning opener San Francisco to the unlikely positivity of the title track. The tired-sounding You Can’t Stay The Same could be a track on The Jayhawks’ 1992 altcountry classic Hollywood Town Hall.

Imbued with a sweet romanticism (“I love you in that classic kind of way that just doesn’t die”, they sing), there’s no sharp edges here, just superb lyrics and top tunes. 

Speech Debelle
Sunday Dinner On A Monday
(Monday Sessions Records)
★★★

HAVING won the Mercury Music Prize with her 2009 debut Speech Therapy, south London’s Speech Debelle – AKA Corynne Elliot – returns with her fourth record.

Like many other contemporary hip hop albums it’s jam-packed with a huge range of ideas, lyrics and musical styles – reflecting on family, friends and lineage through an afro-futuristic lens.

Food is integral to the set, which is unsurprising when you know Elliot was a semi-finalist on Celebrity Masterchef in 2013 and released a cookbook alongside her previous longplayer. “I’m in my kitchen getting chefy chefy,” she quips on 11:11, while Curry Mutton is a salivating track about cooking the aforementioned popular Caribbean dish, which is detailed enough that it could be followed as a recipe.

Full of wise words, it’s a pleasure to check in with Elliot and hear her latest thoughts on the world.

Jacob Young
Eventually
(ECM)
★★★
 

JACOB YOUNG’S last album as bandleader was 2014’s brilliantly smooth Forever Young, his guitar playing fleshed out by Trygve Seim’s saxophone and Marcin Wasilewski’s melodic piano.

For his new record the Norwegian jazz artist has teamed up with Mats Eilertsen (double bass) and Audun Kleive (drums).  “It was important for us not to go ahead and make ‘just another guitar-trio record,’ but to make it sound fresh, like something we’ve never done before,” Young says in the press release.

Accordingly, the album is more challenging than Forever Young. With its driving drums Schoenstedtstrasse veers towards the jazz-rock of early ’70s Miles Davis, while the languid One For Louis is apparently his take on Roll Over Beethoven. 

This being an ECM album the musical shift is very much one of degree: overall the mood is one of elegance and contemplation.