Image by: Hanly Banks Callahan

Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.

ALBUMS:

Thibault – Or Not Thibault (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Bettye LaVette – Blackbirds
Bill Callahan – Gold Record
Emily Barker – A Dark Murmuration of Words
St. Ove – County Show
Tricky – Fall to Pieces

SINGLES:

Caitlin Harnett & The Pony Boys – 5am
Daniel Trakell – Come To
Emma Donovan & The Putbacks – Pink Shirt
The Green Child – Low Desk: High Shelf
Grids & Dots – The Great Divide
Skeleten – Mirrored

A little more than a year since his ‘comeback’ Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, Bill Callahan returns with Gold Record: an album about learning to open oneself up to others and become a people person. Where there was a real sense of momentum and structure to Shepherd, his latest batch has more of a looseness and casual humour, as if Callahan were making them up as he went along: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” he sings on ‘Pigeons’, a line so tongue in cheek that you can almost hear Callahan’s smile. But in this impressionist mode, there is still a real gravity to the Callahan’s songwriting – heard in his lyrics and in his baritone voice – that makes Gold Record another essential work from one of the great American musicians.

Fall to Pieces, the fourteenth album from Bristol musician Tricky (aka Adrian Thaws), is a dark, cathartic, and often difficult listen. Written in the wake of the death of his daughter, it’s an album that constantly try to unsettle the listener: Tricky and collaborators Oh Land and Marta sing of pain and self-hatred over sparse electronic beats, with songs rarely reaching a sense of an ending. In the midst of this darkness, however, Thaws is able to a sense of beauty and occasional optimism that sees Fall to Pieces rate amongst his best work.