Audiophile Digital

Stella Cole
Stella Cole
la.reserve LRD73001

One of the benefits of social media is enabling musicians to bypass record labels and create their own careers, eg, London’s Emma Smith. Ms Cole has been charming fans of the Great American Songbook for a couple of years, and we’ve been clamouring for her first album. It was worth the wait. Her taste is impeccable, covering lesser-known gems rather than the more obvious choices, so alongside ‘Moon River’ and ‘Over The Rainbow’ you get ‘When The Sun Comes Out’ and ‘(Love Is) The Tender Trap’. But the appeal is a voice so gorgeous, so rich, so perfectly employed that her delivery and her phrasing inspire this notion: if it was 1958, she’d be up there with Peggy, Sarah, Dinah, Doris and, indeed, Ella! KK

Sound Quality: 95%

The Boneshakers
Live To Be This
Gulf Coast Records GCRX9064

When a new blues/soul album reminds me, for a variety of reasons, of Janis Joplin’s Pearl, well, I can only rejoice. The Boneshakers have returned with their 11th studio album (in 27 years) and it’s an amalgam of their various influences. For musicologists, then, it possesses the added ‘fun’ element of who’s being thanked. The compositions are all fresh, embracing various flavours of soul, funk and blues – hence the likening to Pearl – while the press release is a ‘cheat sheet’ telling us they’re reimagining Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (one of the best live acts I ever saw), soul diva Betty Davis, Iggy Pop and Ike & Tina Turner. How’s that for a tasty musical stew? KK

Sound Quality: 90%

Jethro Tull
Still Living In The Past
Chrysalis 5021732368409 (five discs + Blu-ray)

With Tull’s catalogue reissued in multi-disc sets which have fans drooling, this just might be the most rewarding. It still follows the formula of the remixed original album plus high-res stereo and multi-channel mixes, loads of bonus tracks, live material and a fat booklet, but this is not simply one of their many studio albums. Here is a hugely expanded reworking of 1972’s highly regarded Living In The Past, originally a double LP collection of album tracks, outtakes and singles plus part of the ‘Live At Carnegie Hall’ performance on 4/11/70. Now the live part comprises an entire concert on two CDs and there are 17 previously unreleased tracks. A feast! KK

Sound Quality: 90%

Doug Kershaw
Mama Kershaw’s Boy + 3
Morello Records QMRLL 114D (two discs)

At one time arguably the most famous exponent of Cajun music and probably its greatest ambassador, fiddler Kershaw has been out of the limelight for some decades, but he should be celebrated for services to Americana. This set gathers together four albums from his prime in the mid-1970s: Mama Kershaw’s Boy, Alive & Pickin’, Ragin’ Cajun and Flip, Flop & Fly. Almost all the tracks are Kershaw compositions including a live version of his classic ‘Louisiana Man’, but the charm is how he adapts such a distinctive genre – that unmistakable screechin’, scratchin’ fiddlin’ – to fascinating covers of The Band’s ‘Rag Mama Rag’ and The Beatles’ ‘I’m A Loser’. KK

Sound Quality: 85%