Latest releases reviewed

RHONDA VINCENT
All-American Bleugrass Girl
Sugar Hill
***

Not surprisingly for a woman prepared to risk a lime-green dress and frosted hair on a sleeve, Rhonda Vincent is not shy about her feelings, particularly her extravagant patriotism. But that doesn't detract from her ability to belt out a good tune and coax her excellent band, The Rage, into dexterous vocal and instrumental moves. Church and state are the mainstays of this album; if Vincent isn't whipping up support for the boys in Iraq (the grating God Bless the Soldier and Til They Came Home) she is hailing her God with a number of tracks, including the sublime Jesus Built a Bridge to Heaven. The menu is completed by love songs, notably a great duet with Bobby Osbourne, and rivetting instrumentals which showcase the band's breathtaking range of skills. In this case you take the good with the bad. www.rhondavincent.com  - Joe Breen

OCOTE SOUL SOUNDS & ADRIAN QUESADA
El Niño y el Sol
Aire Sol Records
***

Members of progressive afro/latin/ funksters, Antibalas and Grupo Fantasma have gone forth and multiplied with this CD soundtrack to an apparently lost movie. El Niño y el Sol is the mother of all chillouts, reeking of a Peruvian Nasca flute, a first cousin (once-removed) of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. And if that sounds a touch too disciplined for your liking, then direct your attention to the blissed out percussive force of Greñudos, which conjures wide open roads and deals going down at dawn. This is an album in no hurry to go anywhere, but its street smarts mark a groove that'd sit very nicely on a Tarantino soundtrack. One to play long and low into the early hours. www.airesolrecords.com - Siobhán Long

RODDY WOOMBLE
My Secret Is My Silence
Pure Records
**

There's a problem somewhere when the best thing about an entire album is the backing singer. Scottish band Idlewild's main man, Roddy Woomble, is an awkward lyricist in the vein of the Go Betweens, but bereft of their wry, slingshot sense of humour. Plodding and effortful, My Secret Is My Silence is an odd ragbag of songs, laden down by a foreboding sense of their own importance. Musically they benefit from the sleight of hand of producer John McCusker and from the levitational forces of Michael McGoldrick's flute, whistle and pipes and Kate Rusby's heavenly backing vocals. Karine Polwart and Andy Cutting also lend crucial vocals, guitar and box to the equation, but still the whole is so much less than the sum of the parts. www.purerecords.net Siobhán Long