Perfect Houseplants - New Folk Songs - The Guardian

Perfect Houseplants is ex-Loose Tubes saxophonist Mark Lockheart's sparky quartet including the excellent pianist Huw Warren. Both Lockheart and Warren have followed folk muses as much as jazz ones (the pair have worked extensivelywith singer June Tabor), so the focus of this set is familiar territory for them and their regular listeners. but you still hear plenty of rugged jazz-blowing and a good deal of the nervily sardonic, fidgety melodic concepts that recall old Frank Zappa discs. The latter quality is prominent in the opening Lockheart composition Pageant, with its circling piano figure, blurted sax lines and clattery drumming; on Warren's gentle Holding Back, the groove is more Latin-tinged and sunnily Pat Metheny-like. The Barford Angel (another component of Lockheart's East Anglian suite) is a reminder of the close idiomatic links between this band and the aural landscape of Django Bates; here the instruments swim lazily around each other. The relaxed theme of Bubbles highlights Dudley Phillips's graceful, Steve Swallow-like bass guitar. A pretty agreeable mix on the whole, and with some inventive improvising, though the compositions in this corner of British folk-influenced jazz can sometimes merge into each other a little.