Nat King Cole
Live At The Blue Note Chicago
(Iconic)
★★★★

RELEASED for the first time, this two-CD recording is taken from a 1953 residency Nat King Cole completed at the Blue Note in Chicago.

Singing and playing piano, the jazz legend is accompanied by John Collins on guitar, bassist Charles Harris and Lee Young on drums.

The sound isn’t perfect but it makes you feel like you are on the front row of the intimate club — you get to hear Cole’s stage patter, song introductions and the reaction and occasional participation, of the appreciative audience.

The set is littered with his hits from the American Songbook, including Nature Boy, Sweet Lorraine and Unforgettable.

The small band gets to swing a little — do also check out his superb 1957 After Midnight album — but it’s Cole’s unique velvet voice that is the real draw, of course. 

A sumptuous slice of jazz history.

Bonny Light Horseman
Keep Me On You Mind/See You Free
(Jagjaguwar)
★★★★

COMPRISED of US singer-songwriters Anais Mitchell and Eric D Johnson (Fruit Bats), along with celebrated musician Josh Kaufman, Bonny Light Horseman felt like a probable short-lived folky supergroup when they started out in 2018.

However, with their third longplayer, a sprawling double album, they come across as an established band with many more miles in the tank. 

It’s a captivating collection of melodic, acoustic guitar-based music — a pub in a coastal village in Co Cork was the location of the first recording session, after which the group returned to upstate New York. 

There is a warm, comforting feeling to the set, though it’s no nostalgia trip: similar in scope and sound to Big Thief’s 2022 double album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, there is a sense of a band fizzing with ideas and top-quality songs.

Frank Turner
Undefeated
(Xtra Mile Recordings)
★★★

HAVING been a musician since his teens, early next year Frank Turner will play his 3,000th gig early next year at Alexandra Palace in the capital.

The British singer-songwriter’s tenth solo album finds him in a reflective mood — “stood in the middle of life, love and loss,” as he sings on the title track.

Ceasefire imagines a conversation with his 15-year-old self (“he judges my decisions/He scorns what I’ve become”), while Nevermind The Back Problems looks back at the promise of the punk scene he started off in.

East Finchley is a terrific, wistful story song about a youthful romance in the summer of ’97, north London being a regular character in Turner’s work.

There’s also plenty of angry defiance and noisy guitars, with opener Do One celebrating the fact he’s still standing despite all the haters out there.