The Scotsman review: Live Today **** by The Glasgow Barons

19/02/2021

Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

What's On

Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler Arab Strap’s rst album in 16 years is a heady mixture of eye-watering poetry and atmospheric soundtracks, writes Fiona Shepherd By Fiona Shepherd Friday, 19th February 2021, 9:30 pm

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

Arab Strap PIC: Kat Gollack

Arab Strap: As Days Get Dark (Rock Action) **** Steg G: Live Today (Powercut Productions) ****

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Alice Cooper: Detroit Stories (earMUSIC) ***

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

Steg G Advertisement

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Come (earMUSIC) *** While their mates Mogwai mark a quarter century of uninterrupted post-rock trailblazing, Arab Strap ride back into town with their rst new album in 16 years, like the exes

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you’ve forgiven but not forgotten. Aidan Mo at and

Malcolm Middleton rst went their separate ways in 2006, beaten down by the commercial slog of the mid-ranking indie out t. Man shall not live by critical acclaim alone but the joy with which their 2016 reunion was greeted kindled the creative res again and As Days Get Dark is the fully realised result, a higherreboot of their idiosyncratic candid confessionals, like a whi a bad habit you don’t want to resist.

from an illicit still, or

Daily online puzzles for active minds. Only f

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For evidence that Arab Strap are older, wiser and utterly unrepentant, listen no further than opening track The Turning of Our Bones, with its stealthy, gothic guitar, squalling saxophone, ominously circling strings and synth handclaps forming a seductive backdrop to Mo at’s narrative “about resurrection and shagging.” The dynamic created by Mo at’s eye-watering poetry and Middleton’s atmospheric soundtracks is more expertly wrought than ever. Heady disco strings soundtrack Fable of the Urban Fox’s parable on racism. Another Clockwork Day’s catalogue of online porn (“wearing nothing but a new postcode”) is teamed with pastoral picking and mournful melodica (is there any other kind?) Tears on Tour ponders the triggers for teardrops from raw, uncomprehending bereavement to “the Muppet movie, Frozen, Frozen 2” over some surprising Mark Knop er-style burnished blues guitar.

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

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The brilliantly titled Kebabylon,

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inspired by the twilight zone of

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rock guitar and Mo at’s sinister

the nocturnal road sweeper, nds them in familiar territory, melding tinny rhythm, postbreathiness, while Here Comes Comus! celebrates the almost

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forgotten art of the wild night out. As lurid as they can be, there is something bittersweet about

these nighttime dispatches from a pre-Covid age. Hip-hop producer Steg G, aka Steven Gilfoyle, also takes to the streets in the company of community orchestra The Glasgow Barons and guest MCs, including Stanley Odd frontman Solareye and rap duo CCTV, for a Glasgow odyssey chronicling 24 hours in Gilfoyle’s native Govan. Daily online puzzles for active minds. Only f https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/album-reviews-arab-strap-steg-g-alice-cooper-bonnie-tyler-3141150?fbclid=IwAR0D-lX1jQ6IilqegzN…

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

Live Today kicks o

with smashing glass on Wee Small Hours, inspired by the

sectarian riots of 2019. Rapper Empress is eloquent as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while Freestyle Master plays a local shopkeeper “slap bang in the trenches” who has seen it all. Mental health issues loom large, from the literal self-re ection of Enemy in the Mirror to the con dence boosting My Destiny (“so I invest in me”), while the soundtrack ows from folky ute and low-slung beats on Then It All Goes Wrong to the bold symphonic soul backing of Space Age Addictions.

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Veteran shock rocker Alice Cooper also looks to his locale on Detroit Stories, an irreverent homage to his birthplace – where “you couldn’t be a soft rock band or you’d get your ass kicked” – which he has recorded Daily online puzzles for active minds. Only f

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

with Detroit musicians including MC5’s Wayne Kramer, Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner and the Motor City Horns, with namechecks for other natives such as Suzi Quatro, and the spirit of Bob Seger all over the rootsy soul number $1000 High Heel Shoes. Bonnie Tyler, meanwhile, inhabits 80s AOR Bonnieland on The Best Is Yet To Come – debatable on these anachronistic terms, though she might have boosted her Eurovision chances with the fun melodrama of Stuck To My Guns. Through a patchy playlist of covers and originals, Tyler is generally better served with an imaginary wind machine in her hair or exing her gravelly rhythm’n’blues vocal muscles on her version of I’m Only Guilty (Of Loving You). CLASSICAL Catriona Morison: The dark night has vanished (Linn CKD 637) **** Advertisement

With songs by the 19th century German composer and Mendelssohn protégé Josephine Lang, the Scots mezzo soprano has given her solo recording debut a unique point of interest. There are also songs by Grieg,

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Brahms and Schumann, which are testament to the rich mezzo timbre that distinguishes Morison’s maturing voice and

interpretational artistry. In tandem with the instinctive collaboration of pianist and fellow Scot, Malcom Martineau, she journeys from the fresh complexions of Grieg’s Sechs Lieder Op 48, through a lavish miscellany of Brahms to the ruminative colourations of Schumann’s Op 90 songs. It’s with the latter two composers that Morison best nds natural vent for her fullest expressive powers. But in Lang’s songs too, crafty and mainstream and lit with daringly personal harmonic adventures, she captures the essential spirit of a woman who battled personal Daily online puzzles for active minds. Only f https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/album-reviews-arab-strap-steg-g-alice-cooper-bonnie-tyler-3141150?fbclid=IwAR0D-lX1jQ6IilqegzN…

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Album reviews: Arab Strap | Steg G | Alice Cooper | Bonnie Tyler | The Scotsman

culties – the early death of her husband – to succeed in what was

predominantly a man’s world. Ken Walton JAZZ Shez Raja: Tales from the Punjab (Ubuntu Music) **** Anglo-Asian bassist Shez Raja has collaborated powerfully with such jazzfusioneers as Randy Brecker, Mike Stern and Trilok Gurtu. Here, however, he travels back to his cultural heartland, his warm-toned bass guitar exhibiting a funky dexterity that leaves space for Ahsan Papu’s bansuri ute and Zohaib Hassan’s sarangi violin to swoop and soar exhilaratingly. Typical is Angel’s Tears, as rolling bass and steadily tapping tabla (Kashif Ali Dani) set an easy gait, Fiza Haider’s vocals and Papu’s ute sounding in unison before Raja embarks on a lightly intricate solo, the querulously microtonal keening of sarangi following on. Adventures in the City of Wonders is one of three improvisations, with introductory vocalising, sarangi and ute hanging magically above a drone before the bass launches a steadily ascending ri . Maharaja develops over terse percussion, deftly ranging bass and an outburst of wah-wah violin – musical tales eloquently told. Jim Gilchrist Advertisement

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