Latest releases reviewed

KRIS DELMHORST
Strange Conversation
Signature Sounds
****
This is a remarkable album that flirts with pretension and whistles past the graveyard of the singers who tried poetry for size and found it too tight for comfort. Boston-based singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst was writing a new album when she came across an anthology of poetry. Eureka! She decided to use either the lyrics of the poems or just adapt their inspiration to create the 12 tracks. The result is as seamless and brave as it is brilliantly creative. Delmhorst crafts her music in the sound of Dixie horns and intimate hushed vocals buttressed by warm harmonies and empathic playing by a band at home with the sound turned up or down. Listen to these songs before you read them. For instance, don't let the fact that Virgil and Hermann Broch inspired the title track reduce its deliciously slinky appeal. www.krisdelmhorst.com

PETER MULVEY
The Knuckleball Suite
 Signature Sounds
****
From the same stable, different but equally as good and this time there is an Irish connection. Peter Mulvey spent time here after graduating from college in Wisconsin. Ireland clearly made an impression. References to his stay here crop up repeatedly in lyrics rich with vivid description and sparkling with novel takes on the world and its ways. Though this is his ninth album, Mulvey is still firing on all cylinders, his lived-in voice a model of cool consistency as his music jumps easily from informal good-humoured swing to folk-blues and beyond. The band, marshalled by ace producer and guitarist David Goodrich, is well capable of following Mulvey's curvaceous way with a melody, and when he opts for a cover he turns out a luminous version of U2's The Fly. But it is his own songs - Brady Street Stroll, Thorn, Girl in the Hi-Tops and Abilene (The Eisenhower Waltz) - that are the heart of this very impressive album. www.petermulvey.com