Album reviews: Viola Beach - Viola Beach, Chris Robinson Brotherhood - Anyway You Love, and more

Also DM Stith - Pigeonheart, Purple - Bodacious, and ArchiveX - Some Ungodly Hour

Viola Beach

Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel

★★★★☆

Download: Narcissus Soaking Wet; Forever As The Moon; Ain’t It Hard But Fair; Leave My Guitar Alone; California Hymn

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood may look like a bunch of bleary stoners, and confirm that impression by their colossal intake of weed, but that bohemian attitude is underpinned by a ferocious work-ethic. Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel is their fourth album since 2012, a prolific output that’s testament to the industrious schedule of Grateful Dead-length live shows in which new songs are built and honed. Where other bands struggle to come up with an album’s worth of material every three or four years, the CRB just love to play. And that’s not even factoring in Robinson’s other, more remunerative career as frontman of blues-rockers The Black Crowes, or guitarist Neal Casal’s commitments as a sought-after session player.

It’s Casal that opens proceedings here, sauntering into “Narcussus Soaking Wet” with a subtle wah-wah line before the band settles into a laidback country-funk groove of glistening electric piano and funky clavinet, through which he threads a hot-wire lead guitar break. The phased backing vocals and Robinson’s lyric about “natural magic, mystic ways” suggest he’s still committed to his ideal of “cosmic American music”; though as the album proceeds, the relaxed funk and boogie grooves hint at a subtle shift from the Grateful Dead-influenced psych-rock of earlier albums to something more like the country-funk of Little Feat.

It’s a shift which requires Casal to vary his approach constantly, from the snaking slide guitar of “Forever As The Moon” to the declamatory, chugging riff of “Leave My Guitar Alone”, while keyboardist Adam MacDougall spices the arrangements with jazz and R&B textures. But it’s Robinson’s soul-scorched vocals that hold everything together, his relaxed charm shining through whether he’s engaged in perplexing, mystic narratives or offhand, recreational encouragements to “relax your mind”. It won’t stay like this for long, of course: by next year, they’ll be off on another groove. But whatever it is, it’ll come from the same place: as Robinson sings in the concluding “California Hymn”, “Are you a suspect? Are you clean? Are you like me, somewhere in between?”. Well, aren’t we all?

Viola Beach, Viola Beach

★★★☆☆

Download: Swings And Waterslides; Drunk; Really Wanna Call; Boys That Sing

The wave of sympathetic tributes from Viola Beach’s fellow indie-rockers following their deaths in a Swedish car-crash tragedy in February was unprecedented for a band yet to firmly establish themselves; but not, on the evidence of this posthumous collection, undeserved. Despite a lingering palimpsest of indie influences – particularly in singer Kris Leonard’s delivery, which wavered between Liam-lite Mancunian on their debut single “Swings And Waterslides” to a more raggedy, Doherty-esque bohemian on “Go Outside” – the Warrington quartet was clearly in the process of defining their own sound through the precise, itchy East African-style guitar figures laced by River Reeves and Leonard through the likes of “Like A Fool” and “Really Wanna Call”, both examples of their engaging knack for delivering wan, lovelorn songs with ebullient charm.

DM Stith, Pigeonheart

★★☆☆☆

Download: Summer Madness; Up To The Letters; My Impatience

DM Stith is best known for his work with Sufjan Stevens, and as half of the uncompromising expressionist duo The Revival Hour; this second solo outing emulates both in laying bare the most painful corners of his emotional life, raking over a ruined relationship to a discomfiting backdrop of angry drums, brittle synths and astringent guitars. Only occasionally does the survey of this interpersonal battlefield afford an optimistic light, as with the bricolage of delicate guitar picking and celesta that accompanies “Summer Madness”. And although Stith does, late on in tracks like “Up To The Letters” and “My Impatience”, approach Stevens’ confessional empathy, by that time the tortuous musical and emotional terrain has led one to wonder why, exactly, this clearly agonising situation should concern anyone other than Stith himself?

Cappella Amsterdam, musikFabrik, Gyorgi Ligeti, Lux Aeterna

★★★☆☆

Download: Lux Aeterna; Three Fantasies After Friedrich Hölderlin; Im Gestein

As one of the two Ligeti compositions used in the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the choral work “Lux Aeterna” is probably the most widely-heard piece of 20th century avant-garde classical music. The different metrical divisions accorded its 16 constituent voices blur them into one luminous, polytonal block of sound that seems to float free of earthly concerns and encumbrances, particularly since the high-register tones lose even the anchorage of a definitive source, sounding as if created by strings or wind instruments. There are obvious affinities with similarly smooth, blurred works by Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Morton Feldman, while the complex micropolyphony of the accompanying "Three Fantasies After Friedrich Hölderlin" produces a similarly buoyant effect comparable to Tim Buckley's 16-voice piece “Starsailor”.

Purple, Bodacious

★★★☆☆

Download: Backbone; Mini Van; Pretty Mouth

Texan punk-pop trio Purple’s underlying roots are clearly on display here in tracks like the Jane’s Addiction soundalike “Feel The Low” and the amusing passion-wagon paean “Mini Van”, which is such a Chilli Peppers knock-off it may well be a parody. But they’re delivered with so much raw energy and enthusiasm it’s impossible not to smile. Drummer Hanna Brewer is the star, powering along the anthemic power-pop cut “Bliss” and urgent punk shuffle “Backbone” whilst squealing out Riot Grrrl-style vocals, part snarl, part whine, demanding “You’ve got to get a backbone! A backbone!”.“Pretty Mouth”, meanwhile, realigns punk and reggae in 1977 style, with Brewer’s contention that “No one wants to hear those dirty words coming out of that pretty mouth” echoing the punk-feminist attitude pioneered by The Slits and X-Ray Spex.

ArchiveX, Some Ungodly Hour

★★★☆☆

Download: Pilgrim Of Sorrow; Too Much; Drink The Water; Intermission

Multi-talented solo artist ArchiveX spent a year with a Bay Area gospel choir before making Some Ungodly Hour, and the lingering influence runs like a watermark through its 14 tracks, from the layered acappella moaning and humming of “Hymmmn” through to the gospel references in tracks like “Water From The Well” and “Intermission”. He’s equally adept on piano and slide guitar on frisky blues shuffles such as “Too Much” and “Meltdown”, but it’s ArchiveX’s vocal abilities which dominate, recalling classic gospel quartet voicings on the multitracked “Drink The Water”, while the solo line of “Pilgrim Of Sorrow” resembles Thom Yorke singing gospel. But occasionally his indulgences are counterproductive, as on the meandering piano ballad “No Words”, which floats free of melodic moorings as the vocal wailings proliferate.

Stephen Ragga Marley, The Fruit Of Life

★★★☆☆

Download: Babylon; Thorn Or A Rose; So Strong

The Fruit Of Life is the follow-up to 2011’s The Root Of Life, but where that album followed a roots-reggae path, this one pursues a more American course, its tracks crowded with hip-hop guests like Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes and Rakim, the latter hinting at 9/11 conspiracy on “So Unjust”. Dead Prez and Black Thought lend articulate social commentary to “Babylon” and “Thorn Or A Rose” respectively, but elsewhere Marley’s routine adages are shared with equally offhand contributions from Pitbull, Wyclef Jean and others. Marley’s best performance comes on “So Strong”, which profits from an uplifting Curtis Mayfield sample; but the album only develops a steely ragga rasp in the last few tracks, when the hometown likes of Bounty Killer, Capleton and Sizzla make their presence felt.