"Even the most hardened of cynics cannot deny the power of performances that robbed Eric Clapton of his reputation as the world’s best guitarist..."
Showing posts with label Album Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Album Reviews. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Album Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Winterland (BBC Music)
"Even the most hardened of cynics cannot deny the power of performances that robbed Eric Clapton of his reputation as the world’s best guitarist..."
Album Review: Art Of Noise - Who's Afraid Of The Art of Noise (BBC Music)
"Remarkably, this debut was accessible enough to spawn hit singles, including Close (To the Edit), arguably the only record ever to include the sound of a VW Golf stalling as its central motif..."
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Album Review: The Waterboys - An Appointment With Mr Yeats (BBC Music)
"It could have been a risky concept – accusations of pretension are never far from anyone who undertakes to put poetry to music – but Scott’s conviction, alongside his years of preparation, ensures that this is a genuinely successful experiment."
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Album Review: A Winged Victory For The Sullen - A Winged Victory For The Sullen (Uncut)
Piano minimalism meets orchestral ambience
It’s been a prolific year for former Devics man, Dustin O’Halloran, with a studio album, live album and film soundtrack to his name. Now he pairs up with Stars Of The Lid’s Adam Wiltzie for seven elegiac tracks of almost oppressive beauty. Like labelmate Ólafur Arnalds or Jóhann Jóhannsson, the duo prioritise atmospheric soundscapes, but features like O’Halloran’s poignant piano melody, immersed within slow moving strings and drifting guitar textures on ‘We Played Some Open Chords’, set this project apart, while the twelve minute ‘A Symphony Pathetique’ is unapologetically moving. Another triumph for the post-classical scene.
Album Review: St Vincent - Strange Mercy (BBC Music)
Will you ever forgive me...?
Monday, 1 August 2011
Album Review: Archers Of Loaf - Icky Mettle (Uncut)
Chapel Hill’s cult college rockers revisited
Despite the preposterous name, Eric Bachmann’s quartet were, for a short time, close to mainstream acceptance as US indie rock looked set to take over the world. Their 1993 debut, remastered by Bob Weston, treads similar ground to Crooked Rain-era Pavement - if less self-consciously clever - with dissonant, spiky guitars piercing surprisingly melodic college radio favourites like ‘Web In Front’ and ‘Wrong’. Bachmann’s Jagger-esque drawl perfectly matches the slacker-punk vibe of absurd, crowd-participation favourite ‘Toast’ - “There’s something wrong with my toast!” – and bonus tracks include the atonal fury of ‘Audiowhore’ (from the Greatest Of All Time EP).
Album Review: Googoosh - Googoosh (Uncut)
Rare Persian pop from ‘Iran’s Daughter’
Actress and singer Faegheh Atashin aka Googoosh was an Iranian heroine silenced by the 1979 revolution until her emigration to the US in 2000. This enlightening collection of lesser-known songs recorded in the 1970s reveals a pre-Khomeini world of Persian traditions and western influences – in 1971 she even recorded in French. The passionate, string-laden lament of ‘Digeh Geryeh Delo Va Nemikoneh’, the sultry, disco-inflected charms of ‘Talagh’ and the Middle Eastern chanson of ‘Mano Gonjishkaye Khooneh’ may be an acquired taste for indie-trained ears, but no one can deny the potent romance of Googoosh’s voice.
Album Review: Various Artists - True Soul Volumes 1&2 (Uncut)
Crate-digging heaven for soul funk fans
While its most famous son Bill Clinton was busy not inhaling, Arkansas’ True Soul label – run by record store owner Lee Anthony – was documenting the thriving local soul and funk scene. Though its output rarely troubled the charts, these 32 tracks, compiled by Stones Throw label manager Eothen Alapatt, are packed with an abundance of righteous grooves and crazily titled gems, especially the pysch-funk of York Wilson’s ‘Psychedelic Hot Pants’. Memphis may have hogged the spotlight, but John Craig’s effortless ‘Doing My Own Thing’ and the laidback shuffle of Thomas East’s ‘Funky Music’ prove Little Rock had a big heart.
Friday, 1 July 2011
Album Review: Felt - Bubblegum Perfume (Uncut)
4/5
Collector’s compilation of cult band’s Creation albums
The kind of band beloved by 80s indie fans who considered The Smiths too mainstream, Felt’s ten albums combined Lawrence (no surname)’s erudite lyrics and Tom Verlaine intonations with ornate instrumentation, often provided by keyboardist Martin Duffy (now of Primal Scream). This 1990 compilation of their time on Creation boasts a revised tracklisting, but highlights the fragile beauty of ‘Be Still’ (from the ‘Space Blues’ EP), the instrumental cocktail jazz of ‘Book Of Swords’ (from ‘Train Above The City’, for which Laurence only named songs) and 86’s breathless, claustrophobic but joyous ‘Ballad Of The Band’ 7”.
Album Review: Digitalism - I Love You, Dude (Uncut)
3/5
Hamburg duo get nostalgic for the 90s
Like Delphic, Jens Moelle and Ismail ‘Isi’ Tuefekci share a love for late twentieth century ecstasy-fuelled euphoria, and their second album sounds at times like the Mancunian quartets’ update of New Order, especially on ‘2 Hearts’ and the Julian Casablancas collaboration, ‘Forrest Gump’. Elsewhere, the Kitsuné endorsed duo lean heavily on The Prodigy for ‘Reeperbahn’ and The KLF for ‘Antibiotics’, while the low-slung crunch of ‘Miami Showdown’ gives Jan Hammer a Chemical Brothers rubdown. It’s far from original, but nonetheless highly effective, and the sweaty, lad-friendly nature of the title betrays its inherent good humour.
Album Review: Gonzales - The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales (Uncut)
The musical prankster goes symphonic
Amidst a flurry of one-liners – one track is titled ‘Shut Up And Play The Piano’ – Gonzales relocates his rhymes to an orchestral setting for his ninth album. What could be a novelty record is transformed into a deeply satisfying and intelligent experiment thanks to the Canadian’s charm, with ‘Self Portrait’ riffing on Dorian Gray references and ‘Rap Race’ a confessional look at his motivation. Frequently self-referential and flippant, he skewers hip hop’s excesses – “No, I haven’t said the ‘n’ word yet” – against a melodramatic backdrop composed by his brother Christophe Beck, albeit more in the style of Danny Elfman than Gustav Mahler.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Album Review: Brian Eno & Rick Holland - Drums Between The Bells (BBC Music)
"Drums… operates within the realms of electronica, ambience and spoken word, full of the kind of subtle studio trickery that has made Eno such an intriguing personality."
The BBC prints more words like that here...
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Album Review: Gonzales - The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales (BBC Music)
He just keeps getting better, and having confounded people with the brilliance of his live two-pianos-and-two-drumkits performances in 2010, he's back with an orchestral rap album that he believes is the world's first. Is it any good? Well, since you ask, "where most rappers would need to reach for their sampler, Gonzales most likely sat down with his brother to hatch the plan over a bag of weed. It certainly sounds that effortless."
There's more on the subject here...
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Album Review: Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver (The Quietus)
Read my review for The Quietus here.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Album Review: Planningtorock - W (BBC Music)
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Album Review: Toby Burke - Mexico City (Uncut)
Horse Stories main man strikes Aztec gold
Now resident in LA after a spell in London, restless Australian Burke’s latest was recorded in one week in a Mexico City apartment. With little more than piano and guitar, its nine songs echo the sparsest acoustics of Springsteen’s Nebraska, Burke’s voice delicate and world-weary, his mood subdued but never defeated. ‘Cantina Crawl’ is an elegiac lament for characters “who smoked like a borrowed car”, and the album is populated by itinerants for whom “home is no place to go”. ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’, its forlorn piano superseded by decaying, distorted guitar, is the exquisite highlight.
Album Review: Gus Gus - Arabian Horse (Uncut)
Immaculately produced techno soul from Icelandic veterans
Fourteen years on from their 4AD debut, GusGus have completed the transition from arthouse electronica to suave techno soulsters, their streamlining from unwieldy 12 piece to trio paying dividends in increasingly explicit club friendly gestures. They remain unafraid of the occasional sleight of hand, however, as the unexpected Balkan polka conclusion to Selfoss proves, and, elsewhere, Eastern themes underlined by the title bleed through an hour of largely euphoric, lushly textured but sometimes interchangeable grooves. ‘Within You’, featuring Hjaltalin’s Hogni Elisson, is more contemplative, but it’s the nostalgic, reverb-heavy house of ‘Over’ that’s most appealing.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Album Review: Adventure - Lesser Known (Uncut)
Dan Deacon protégé trawls synthpop classics
Benny Boeldt was only three when the ‘80s ended but seems to have lived there since. His second album adds vocals to flesh out earlier ‘chiptunes’, its first half ransacking the racks in a Panda Pop-fuelled fashion: ‘Fool’s Paradise’ recalls Technique-era New Order, ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ joins The Human League, while ‘Feels Like Heaven’ could be a remix from OMD’s Junk Culture. Its garish roots are occasionally too obvious, but the album’s later tracks are darker: ‘Rio’ throws in a little M83 grit, while album closers ‘Another World’ and ‘Meadows’ offer a more expansive, psychedelic twist on his sound.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Album Review: Moddi's 'Floriography' (The Quietus)
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Album Review: Nils Frahm & Anne Müller's '7Fingers' (BBC Music)
18 months on from his last album of solo piano improvisations, Nils Frahm is back, this time collaborating with Berlin's own Anne Müller. The first, teeth-fixated fruits of their work can be found on the fine Erased Tapes label, and the BBC asked me what I thought. "Frahm is no more averse to surprises than he is to collaboration," I claimed, "and it’s clear that the inspiration he found working with Müller has led him to focus on more contemporary aesthetics." The rest is here.
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