posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release, Photo by Edward Bishop
Blue Reservoir is the eleventh and latest studio album from Everything But The Girl (above) – the best-selling UK duo formed in 1982 by singer-writer-musicians Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, out on February 19 on Buzzin’ Fly/Virgin.
The album’s first single Young and Dumb and accompanying music video is out now, and more UK live dates in May 2027 go on sale this Friday 30 October.
My thoughts are that Young and Dumb is very much a return to past glories as the song ambles into view, with a languid Spanish guitar anticipating Tracey’s vocal. Her voice has deepened (“yes I’m older and wiser”, she sings) and remains as expressive as ever, dovetailing beautifully with Ben’s backing. “So let’s drink to the future”, they sing together, “let’s drink to just living like we’re young and dumb again”.
I think we can all resonate with that.
Meanwhile, a bit about Blue Reservoir from the album PR:
“Inspired by the pair’s unexpected and unconventional return to live performance in 2025 – a long-running sold-out residency (with thousands each night on the wait list) at Hackney’s intimate 300-capacity MOTH Club – Blue Reservoir sees the duo put aside the sharply-lit electronica of 2023’s acclaimed comeback album, Fuse, and lean into some of their foundational influences and ideas.
“There was an intensity and simplicity to the MOTH shows that took us back to how we started out,” says Thorn. “Direct, rooted in guitar and voice, a few extra colours. We hadn’t been in that world for a long time and it just felt fresh and real.”
Uplifted, Watt bought a Spanish nylon-string guitar in January 2026 to write and perform on: “It is the sound of so much of the music I first connected with growing up, and I’d never actually owned one. It became quite an emotional springboard for me. I found a voice I thought I’d lost.”
Published post no.3,061 – Wednesday 28 October 2026
Colorado MahlerFest 195269164287 [58’46”] Producer Mike Quam Engineer Tim Burton Live performances at Macky Auditorium, Boulder, Colorado, 19-20 May 2018
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Colorado MahlerFest here issues on CD the ‘official’ first instalment of its Mahler cycle with current artistic director Kenneth Woods – The Song of the Earth being heard in a performance whose attributes have been maintained as well as enhanced throughout the intervening decade.
What are the performances like?
Nominally his ‘Ninth Symphony’, Mahler’s uncertainty over so-designating this piece means it is still frequently overlooked in traversals of his symphonies. Launching his cycle thus (the Seventh and Tenth Symphonies, heard at MahlerFest XXIX and XXX, will be given again in the 2028/29 editions), Woods gave notice of his identity with a work he had earlier conducted and recorded in the chamber transcription begun in 1921 by Schoenberg then completed over six decades later by Rainer Riehn (SOMMCD0109) whose virtues seem no less evident here.
Together with Woods, both these performances have in common the tenor Brennen Guillory – his impulsive while never histrionic tenor heard to impressive effect in ‘The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow’, with its constant pivoting between despair and resignation prior to those fateful final bars. By contrast, ‘The Lonely One in Autumn’ has a seamlessness and lucidity duly accentuated by the flowing tempo (rightly) adopted here; mezzo Stacey Rishoi placing equal emphasis on that inward anguish and alleviating rapture as inform this masterly setting.
There is no falling off of insight during the triptych of scherzos – with trios – which follows. Guillory resists any temptation to over-characterize ‘Of Youth’ with its myriad subtleties of orchestration and piquant harmony, then Rishoi brings alluring elegance to the outer sections of ‘Of Beauty’ with its boisterous central section ideally integrated into this setting overall. Its barbed humour all too easy to caricature, ‘The Drunkard in Spring’ evinces wit and not a little pathos as Guillory veers pointedly if always securely between escapism and epiphany.
Whether or not his greatest achievement, ‘The Farewell’ is Mahler’s most personal statement – a ‘scena’ for voice and instruments with his increasing preference for stratified textures and ethereal sonorities at its most potent. At just under 28 minutes, Woods demonstrably has the measure of a lengthy though never discursive span whose settings of fateful anticipation then ecstatic fulfilment are linked, motivically as well as conceptually, by a central interlude with its fateful processional made as tangible as is Rishoi’s serene leave-taking towards the close.
Does it all work?
Pretty much throughout. Many accounts of this work have been affected by less than ideally matched vocalists and/or at least one less than perceptive movement, but the present reading avoids these pitfalls. The woodwind principals are never less than equal to their considerable tasks, and if the playing of the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra has gained during subsequent editions in terms of unanimity and lustre, its underlying commitment is never for a moment in doubt heard in Mackey Auditorium’s close yet never confined or unsympathetic acoustic.
Is it recommended?
It is, not just as an indication of where the association between this orchestra and conductor was headed. No-one hearing their performance could question Woods’s standing as a Mahler interpreter of distinction, or this orchestra’s ability to rise to the challenge of Mahler’s music.
Listen / Buy
For further purchase options, visit the MahlerFest website – and for more information on the festival itself, click here. Click on the names for further information on conductor Kenneth Woods and tenor Brennen Guillory
aJoyful Company of Singers / Peter Broadbent; bFinchley Children’s Music Group / Grace Rossiter with cGavin Roberts, dJohn Evanson (pianos)
Havergal Brian Stars of the Summer Night (1905)a Tell me, thou soul of her I love (1906)a Rondel: In a Fairy Boat (1906)a Fairies’ Song (1908)a Daybreak (1910)a A Child’s Prayer (1914)bd If I had but two little wings (1914)bd Little White Lily (1914)bd Pastoral: The Shepherd (1914)a Infant Joy (1914)a The Lamb (1914)ac Laughing Song (1914)ac The Lost Doll (1914)bd The Dream (1914)ac The Echoing Green (1914)ac The Moon (1914)bd The River (1914)bd The Mountain and the Squirrel (1914)bd What does little birdie say? (1914)bd He was a rat (1914)a The Fairy Palace (1915)ac The Phantom Wooer (1918)a Tell me, where is fancy bred (1919)a It was a lover and his lass (1919)a Absence (1919)ac Pack clouds away (1919)ac Spring, the sweet Spring (1919)ac Introit (1924)a Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame (1924)a Shall I then be spared? (1924)a O Happiness, celestial fair (1924)a Sweet Solitude (1924)a
Toccata Classics TOCC0680 [66’43’’] English texts included Producer Michael Ponder Engineer Adaq Khan Recorded a11 & 12 December 2021, c12 &13 March 2022 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London; b26 November 2022 at St Silas, Kentish Town, London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics rounds off coverage of Havergal Brian’s choral songs (aka part-songs) with a second volume that, as with its predecessor [TOCC0395], underlines the composer’s sheer versatility in a genre which occupied his thinking through almost two decades of his output.
What’s the music like?
It was with choral songs that Brian first attracted attention, settings of Henry Longfellow and James Thomson [tracks 1-3] testifying to his assurance in SATB or double-choir media when combining harmonic richness with a melodic eloquence and a rhythmic subtlety equalled by few of his contemporaries. His settings of fairy-themed verse by Bernard Weller and Gerald Cumberland [4/12], never coy in their whimsicality, show comparable ease writing for upper voices with a streamlined texture that prefigures his choral songs from the following decade.
Those months either side of the beginning of the First World War were to bring by far Brian’s largest number of choral songs – ostensibly as his means of accruing income while financially adrift in London, though the technical finesse of almost all those that survive are indicative of stylistic changes in his idiom also taking place. Much the most frequently encountered poet is William Blake [15-18, 22/23], with several settings from Songs of Innocence and Experience no less insightful or idiomatic than more familiar ones by later composers. By the same token, settings of Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe [10/11, 20] provide a distinctive take on often-set texts, whereas unison settings of Charles Kingsley, Ralph Emerson or Alfred, Lord Tennyson [21, 26/27] have a disarming if never ‘knowing’ naivety that transcends their respective texts.
Two enchanting Cumberland settings were most likely derived from an operetta for children duly abandoned, while those from such diverse authors as Matilda Betham-Edwards, Samuel Coleridge, George MacDonald, Robert Burns or Thomas Heywood [7-9, 13/14] between them tread a convincing path in terms of their suitability for amateur or professional singers. Most fascinating is a group composed during that interim between the first and second parts of the Gothic Symphony: settings of Hannah More [28-30] of a canonic and textural intricacy soon heard on a far more expansive scale, as was the fervency of totemic lines by Alexander Pope [6] and methodical treatment accorded the ‘Amen’ [5]. Settings of Thomas Lovell Beddoes [31] or Laura Richards [32], respectively lurid and sardonic, vividly round off this selection.
Does it all work?
It does, not least with the responsiveness to each song of the two choirs – Joyful Company of Singers resolutely unfazed by Brian’s demands in the ‘adult’ songs, as is Finchley Children’s Music Group in those by no means child-like songs for younger voices. Peter Broadbent and Grace Rossiter have marshalled their forces ably, while Gavin Roberts and John Evanson are not found wanting in piano parts which are often much more than accompaniments. Full texts are included, while John Pickard’s booklet note sets forth a wealth of pertinent observations.
Is it recommended?
It is, notwithstanding that the first volume is the more recommendable to those having yet to encounter this significant aspect of Brian’s output. Those who have done so should certainly acquire its follow-up album (which was recorded at the same sessions) without further delay.
This new album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche is his first in four years. The record explores a dissonance he has identified between the “increasingly dystopian world we live in and finding beauty and peace in your private life”, where “falling in love feels more and more like an act of defiance”.
Acrobats was recorded across no fewer than nine studios, Lerche’s eleventh album completed with long time partners and producers Matias Téllez and Kato Ådland, and Vetle Junker, Alexander von Mehren and Jørgen Trœen. There are orchestral arrangements by Sean O’Hagan of The High Llamas, with a substantial body of musicians from the Stockholm Studio Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and sundry jazz and classical artists.
What’s the music like?
At times, epic – especially in the album’s core, where the songs Love Is All and Follow The River carry all before them. Lerche wears his heart on his sleeve in songs of unabashed romanticism, which works especially well when combined with his penchant for lyrical directness.
The music is pleasingly off-centre, with the urgent How Much Of This Was Planned also showing a carefree side. The strings of Little Kids curl around Lerche’s observations that “there’s cracks in everything”, while his playful side comes out best in Drive Me Away From You.
Love Is All is one for the romantics, beautifully observed and delivered, with an exquisite dialogue between Lerche and the clarinet of Solveig Wang. Meanwhile the chorus of Follow The River – inspired by an encounter with Mahler’s Resurrection symphony – is warm hearted and given with a ‘glass half full’ energy.
Does it all work?
It does, even if the songs sometimes have a lopsided structure. Lerche sings from the heart, and the arrangements are beauties.
Is it recommended?
It is. Lerche does not enjoy the same profile in the UK he perhaps did around 15 years ago, but this album shows his songwriting – and vocal delivery – are better and more meaningful than ever. In many ways he is the Nordic answer to Rufus Wainwright.
For fans of…Rufus Wainwright, Ed Harcourt, The Divine Comedy, Kings Of Convenience, Midlake
Listen / Buy
Published post no.3,022 – Sunday 20 September 2026
Paul Cut has illustrious connections within the world of techno. A keyboard player with Larry Heard, he has also worked with Ron Trent and Chez Damier.
Here Cut, real name Paul Culliver, goes solo for the first time in what appears to be six years, on an eight-track LP of original productions.
What’s the music like?
Cut’s experience of what makes people dance shines through on each track. It is pretty effortless music making, the album unfolding like a DJ set would, building on minimal material for maximum effect.
Shady Nasty is classic Detroit techno, with a simple offbeat riff driving a track full of incident. Next one even better, before On The Rocks cuts up a sample from the Sensi-tize classic Burn Baby Burn. Meanwhile She Comes Around is an excellent, bassy groover.
Does it all work?
It does – very nicely, too.
Is it recommended?
With some ease. Paul Cut’s expertise is clear on an album that frequently presses all the right buttons.
For fans of…Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Kenny Larkin, Chez Damier, Charles Webster
Listen / Buy
tbc
Published post no.3,013 – Thursday 10 September 2026
