Martin Taylor - Kiss and Tell (Columbia) If jazz is music for grown-ups, Scottish guitarist Martin Taylor must be the choice of sophisticates who like the finer things in life.
Smoother than a cappuccino, Kiss and Tell, largely a collection of jazz standards, comes with a dollop of self-assurance obviously more than disc-deep.
That, however, will come as no surprise to aficionados of a man who enjoyed 11 years at the elbow of jazz violin great, Stephane Grappelli. Taylor has been 'on the scene' for 25 years and may be perfectly happy to remain relatively low-key, but a work of this quality screams for a wider audience.
This has a crisp, resonant finish and unlike many rock albums, for example, doesn't need to hide the playing behind layers of production. That's because the playing, not least from Taylor, is simply expert.
The set is short on discordant, meandering bass and sax solos, there are few twiddly bits for the sake of it and no swollen egos pushing any of the tracks towards self-indulgence. What the record does have, besides quality in spades, are quirky interpretations of some familiar tunes.
- Stephen McCarty Ian Brown - Golden Greats (Polydor) He killed off his own band - the legendary Stone Roses - by smudging a comeback appearance with a farcical performance at Britain's Glastonbury Festival. He did time for a serious bout of air rage. His unfamiliarity with sobriety and subtlety has earned him the title of King Monkey. Ian Brown, with his tendency to laying his fate to waste, should never have made it this far in terms of a showbiz career.
A little more than a year after his stint at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, however, the world was treated to Golden Greats, his second solo album after he brought down curtains on the ailing Roses in 1995.
