Pop CD reviews: Van Morrison, No Doubt, Beth Orton, Rickie Lee Jones, Krar Collective

Helen Brown and Mark Hudson review the rest of the week's music releases, including Van Morrison and No Doubt.

Rickie Lee Jones in 2012
Rickie Lee Jones in 2012 Credit: Photo: Astor Morgan

Van Morrison, Born to Sing: No Plan B: * *

EMI, £12.99

There’s something so wonderfully familiar about slipping into the honeyed horns, mellow barks and tastefully jazzy piano of Morrison’s 35th album that it takes a while to realise that the songs on Born to Sing: No Plan B go nowhere. You keep waiting for one of them to liven up and turn into Bright Side of the Road or drift into the mystic. In reality – the mildly brooding In Money We Trust aside – these soft shoe shuffles sway up and down the same few notes, with the affectionate embrace of mother of the groom dances. Helen Brown

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Rickie Lee Jones, The Devil You Know: * * * *

Decca, £12.99

Not to everybody’s taste, the wayward boho chick of the Californian singer-songwriter set has developed a croaky, nasal voice over the years: like a woman possessed by the accusatory spirit of a snivelling Victorian urchin. Yet she infuses this crepuscular collection of songs by the likes of the Rolling Stones, The Band, Neil Young and Gnarls Barkley with a compelling voodoo. She doesn’t so much cover as haunt these familiar hits. On Sympathy for the Devil you can almost hear a skeletal handshake reaching from the shadows. HB

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Beth Orton, Sugaring Season: * * * *

anti, £12.99

Folktronica pioneer Beth Orton says that much of Sugaring Season, her first album in six years, was written “in the dead of night, when spiders mend their webs, with an infant asleep in the next room”. But there’s nothing shy or furtive about this mature and soulful record. There are big, purposeful strings, rollicking organs and typically definite and moreish vocals. She’s continued to move away from electronica, but these rich, emotionally sophisticated songs (which will appeal to Cat Power fans) still have a strong rhythmic core. Worth the wait. HB

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No Doubt, Push and Shove: * * *

Polydor, £12.99

Back in the Nineties, Britain’s skateboard parks rattled to the bouncey, pouty sound of this Californian, ska-influenced group and later on, singer Gwen Stefani’s solo career pepped up the pop charts as she yodelled in tartan. But while the band’s first album in a decade has some slickly-sprung beats, sly tempo shifts and finds Stefani on typically wacky form (“Go ahead and stare at my ragamuffin”), I wish they’d gone for a crunchier, more scuffed sound on Push and Shove. Because too much of the record sounds like generic, Katy Perry-esque power-pop. HB

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Krar Collective, Ethiopia Super Krar: * * *

Riverboat, £11.99

Fresh from setting crowds alight on Damon Albarn’s Africa Express tour, this gutsy Ethiopian folk trio pitch into their twisting-turning call-and-response songs with infectious brio and apparent indifference to the expectations of the non-Ethiopian listener. There’s a compelling sense that they would play with the same energy and commitment anywhere and at the drop of a hat.

Mark Hudson

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