THE SLEEPY JACKSON Lovers (Virgin)  

He’s sacked two sets of band mates so far, was a boozer who found Jesus, uses his face as a portable bulletin board and he’s responsible for the cheap and nasty looking sleeve art.  So it’s not exactly news to say that the music is a bit bipolar too.  Okay, that’s a bit strong but let me explain.

First, let’s start with what’s good – no, great - about this album.  You may already know Good Dancers, a delicious #9 Dream Beatle-trip with just the right drizzle of the exotic to make it classic but elegantly contemporary.   Then there’s the stunning countryish Miniskirt with the classic line “if I was a girl I’d wear a miniskirt into town”.  Rain Falls For Wind has the most breathtakingly melodic dips and swoops, ethereal and spacey with keyboards and choral effects.  Acid In My Heart is an acoustic, almost alt.country number that would be fairly nondescript if it wasn’t for a whole series of lovely melodic spikes. This Day is another countryish tune with an incredible sandblasted na-na-na-na-na chorus.   But the album smacks of being over-produced; it gets it right on some tracks and oh-so-wrong on others.  Tell the Girls That I’m Not Hanging Out is very 80s in its synth-pop textures while Don’t You Know is a gothic death-fest with doomy synths and choirs, redolent of some Ultravox epic.  Vampire Racecourse, while an energising song, sounds as if it’s three or more sections stitched together from parts supplied by The Pattern, The Who and the Saints, also borrowing from the latter a Chris Bailey sneering drawl.  It changes so often that it’s hard to know where you are sometimes. 

The incoherent tracklisting is reflected in the fractured lyrics.  Most of them sound like they’re devised (badly) using Burroughsian cut up techniques but the prize is taken by the piano, spoken word and cough-filled Fill Me With Apples: “like columns of smoke/ your love is as strong as death/ fill their faces with farms/ make them become as men and women of good spirit”.  Eh?  There’s a great EP in here but it doesn’t sustain an album and Sleepy Luke is going to have to discover one voice, not legions, before they live up to their hype.   

Reviewed by Ged M
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If the Datsuns really were a car rather than just named after one they’d be an oil guzzling Chevvy with torn leather seats.  If The Brunettes had four wheels they’d be a pastel pink bubble car with marigolds painted on the doors.  So whilst fellow Kiwis the Datsuns have plundered the works of 70s monolithic rock monsters, with this album the Brunettes have produced a sixties flavoured elpee of sugar sweet gems.  The name of Phil Spector looms large with little tales of broken hearts and love struck teens littering the twelve tracks.

Picking out moments is difficult because it all sits so well together but defining moments are the boy/girl call and response of Talk to Jesus between Jonathan and Heather, her lines delivered in that soft pleading Shangri-Las style delivery complete with American accent.  Jukebox is another wonderful call and response effort complete with a cute parping organ and Bolan-esq warbling drawl from Jonathan.    Summer Love has a summery Saint Etienne feel for the chorus, simple but lush.  There’s no shortage of musicianship throughout with glockenspiels, Hammond organs and Spanish guitars all flitting in and out at various stages.  It’s a smashing collection of a dozen candy coated nuggets.  Long live bubble gum pop and roll!

Reviewed by Paul M
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If I say this sounds a bit like Hefner on drum machines, sequencers and keyboards that's probably because the duo that is The French are half-Hefner with John Morrison and Darren Hayman (the main songwriter of both outfits).  And they play keyboards etc. This is a good thing.....

Hayman is a gifted lyricist and his distinctive narrative tales follow on from his previous work, such as the opening  'Porn Shoes' ( "She wore gold shoes with diamonte/Like Kylie wore on TV/They kept her feeling sexy/They were what she always wanted" but "He'd have a girl with flat soled shoes/But he wouldn't know what to do/With her...").  Here are intelligent lyrics and stories that tell about the quirkiness of human relationships. And there aren't many of those to the pound, or euro (hoho), and are welcome in these days of second hand sloganeering and posturising (as g w might say). I'd go as far as saying Hayman is the best lyricist since Morrissey (don't give me that Shaun Ryder bollocks Mr Wilson), and it's good to have him back. 

The electronic approach to the music can be seen as a step on from the parts of Hefner's Dead Media (eg Alan Bean) but this is gentler fare, although the instinct for poppiness (a rhythm to tap along to, the quirky sound here and there, melody, harmony and the memorable lyric) is all there and pretty much faultless.  'Lovely' may not sound praise but it is meant to be.  Lovely.

Reviewed by Kev O
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The Mendoza Line’s fifth album is their debut record. No, it really is. Well, to be precise, this is the debut they would have released had their then label bosses at Kindercore not rejected half the material. Hailing from the alternative hotbed of Athens, Georgia (REM, Olivia Tremor Control, Of Montreal etc) these recordings have largely been gathering dust since 1996.

As great lost albums go, this is an absolute doozy. It may be as derivative as hell but their tastes back then were impeccable. Songwriters and surviving members, Tim Bracy and Phil Hoffman, clearly had a catholic education if the early Fanclubesque This Charm and Dollars To Donuts are anything to go by. The latter’s killer closing line of “her heart is not something you break; her heart is something that breaks you” won’t be bettered any time soon.

I Behaved That Way and Wiretapping are prime Yo La Tengo, with a rolling country feel that would go on to shape their future records whilst Comeback lays down a slab of early Pavement. Small Town Napoleons, written about their former paymeisters, grabs a fistful of Foo Fighters and sweetens it with a lump of Sugar.

Any band named after a slang baseball term, with a song inspired in part by a Washington Redskins rookie quarterback, The Seventh Round, automatically earns extra kudos points but this is the most charmingly endearing and scuzzy US indie-rock debut, full of genuine joie de vivre, since the Drop Nineteens utterly majestic ‘Delaware’. The only disappointment is that we had to wait seven years to hear it.

Reviewed by James S
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Essex’s Finlay offer a goody bag of our favourite sounds. Think indie-rock fertilising post-rock: sometimes the quick and melodic sound of Pavement crossed with Urusei Yatsura; other times a screechy blast of the more atonal, scalding tones of Sonic Youth and Mogwai.  Throw in the odd mainstream influence and it becomes quite intriguing. 

The single from last year Little Dancing Solos suggests their debt to Pavement in its experimental oscillations over grinding guitars and melodic guitar pulses.  Current single Home headbutts the memory of Urusei Yatsura out of existence, buoyed along by fab scads of guitars and cheesy organ.  Linked throws in a taste of Blur during their infatuation-with-grunge period.   Sonic Youth’s influence is also writ large; the slo-grind Clouds is a heavier guitar and bass sound while Anna’s Calling has aching voice and detuned guitars picking up a bastard melody through layers of sound, aided by whistle-y keyboards and all the while fighting off operatic incursions.   Those operatic Muse-ings come to the fore again on the mighty The Hours Coming, more detuned guitars causing a bittersweet pain in the verses until it ends in a guitar wigout.   

Maybe there’s nothing especially innovative about this but it wears its influences well and, in The Hours Coming, I’m certain they’ve got a future Peel favourite.  Worth exploring at least.

Reviewed by Ged M
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When I listen to good ska I'm always surprised there isn't more of it about.  Not that it's ever been uncool; there have been several revivals of this reggae-related dance music since its inception in 1960s Jamaica - most notably in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s when bands like The  Specials, The Selector and, of course, Madness were amazingly popular. OK, history lesson over. You want to know if this latest offering is good ska? Well, on the strength of this album I'll say definitely.

At first sight of the CD cover I had a terrible shock and thought I'd been asked to review the Blazin Squad album. But it turns out the similarly large number of members of Stateside Hombres and the fact that they are also British are the only things the acts have in common. The multiple musicians and vocalists involved in this new band all seem to be utilised well, with a varied and professional feel to each track. There are some good catchy tunes here too and the bouncy feel of the album should be guaranteed to get feet moving.

Two of the main three writers have also acted as producers (one of them, Milf, was in early 90s band EMF, fact fans) and they've got things exactly right here. Most tracks have the same fast ska tempo but a variety of different vocal styles (both male and female vocals and a bit of rapping), a use of different instruments and some skilfully restrained Fatboy Slim-style mucking about with drums and samples means your interest is sustained for almost the whole album. Listened to in 20-30 minute chunks it's very enjoyable.
 

Reviewed by Alex M
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How exactly do you approach an album whose title consists of not one, but two crap puns? For the record, I was never a huge fan of all this skiffle lark cherished by the bowl-haircut wearers of yesteryear, so when the opening notes of A Descent into the Maelstrom were unleashed under a dissolving layer of non-sensical distortion and looped samples, it was clear that The Tables’ final record (vocalist Bartelby departed when recording was finished) would not be given an easy ride by my finely tuned ear and viciously spiteful pen.

The perils of rock journalism include having to ‘live’ with the record for a week to fully absorb the musical opus that lays before him. Quite frankly, there is only so much tambourine a grown man can be expected to withstand. Only so many times that he can be expected to hear the lyric “Catch the rainbow in the sky!” sang with the kind of emphatic joy embraced only by televangelists. Only a certain level of sugary flower pop. I feel dirty and violated.

But for all its mop-top-pop sensibilities, Nevermynd is an acid record through and through. The likes of Living Next Door To Alice In Wonderland (about a girl who fried her brains with psychedelics during the 1960’s) and Professor Branestawm’s Pancake-Making Machine (don’t ask) picks up on the childlike simplicity fashioned by early Pink Floyd, but while the LSD-blitzed Barrett was wildly experimental, mixing throbbing bass with guitar played only by Zippo lighter, The Tables’ camp rests much closer to The Wannadies or The Cardigans or a whole host of other bands that just ‘sound Scandinavian’ (you know who you are). Tight melodies and keyboard licks that you can whistle while skipping back from the corner shop with a freshly acquired bag of pick ‘n’ mix (pigtails optional). Not, of course, that this is automatically a bad thing. After all, the band do hail from Norway, and The Mirror in Room 22 and The Girl in the Café contain two moments of seemingly improvised psychedelic brilliance hidden away under a torrent of overwhelmingly joyous nursery rhyme.

In years to come when I am carting around a mondeo full of under tens on the school run, there’s no question that shoving Nevermynd in to the cassette deck will be the perfect way to keep the rowdy whippersnappers entertained, all the while educating them on the lighter side of LSD. In the mean time, a damned long Sepultura is session much needed in order to clean myself.

Reviewed by James B
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It’s a piece of piss this emo-pop-punk lark. Just sing the opening lines over the top of some unexpectedly girly instrument (acoustic guitar, disco beat, bloody church organ), pause…..crash! Let the guitars kick to show you’re not pussies really and gush forth your teenage angst into the sticky sock of rock ‘n’ roll. In case you’ve managed to avoid the inane blatherings of Jo Whiley and co lately, All-American Rejects are due to crash in the Fab 40 any day now with Swing Swing, their ode to what they’re hoping their bollocks will do when they finally drop properly. Rest assured, this stuff comes straight from the annals (heh, heh, sounds like anal) of modern America that’s already spawned the likes of Blink 41, Bowling For Heroes and Jimmy Eat Charlotte.

The name alone suggests that they were the runners-up in a TV reality show to find the next big thing in oversized trousers and carefully coiffured mohicans and the music positively screams it. The two Rejects responsible for this recording actually met at high school but why let the truth get in the way of a good preconception. In truth, it ain’t all bad though. Time Stands Still is the bastard offspring of Weezer and Wheatus, One More Sad Song has a nice stuttering guitar riff creeping through it and Happy Endings is a naggingly insistent disco-guitar cheesefest. With bells on. Literally.Every single song is about love lost and found but, then again, what else is there to worry about at that age? And, hey, it worked for Avril Lavigne so what higher recommendation is there. I still think I’d rather thrust my penis into a warm apple pie though. Or Avril.

Reviewed by James S
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This band are clearly the next big thing if we’re going to recycle things in strict chronological order, sounding early to mid-eighties and somewhere between Duran Duran and Depeche Mode.  Dark and poppy, from a time before synth programmers had to know how to dance, the Faint sound like those bands like OMD who took themselves a little too seriously to be making synth-pop records (anyone remember Belouis Some?)  It’s hard to tell whether they’re shameless trend-hoppers or really mean it, man, but there’s not much here to prove that this hasn’t been found in the Woolworth’s bargain bin in 1985. Thing is, when a guitar band rips off the New York Dolls, say, we just think good luck to them, how post-modern.  But electronica is supposed to be groundbreaking, cutting-edge, driven by experiments with technology as much as fashion.  The problem is that the remixers either fall into the same trap and make everything sound twenty years old, or, like Paul Oakenfold, just bung on some crappy preset 90’s house beats.

Some of it’s still pretty good, though.  80’s disciple Jacques lu Cont gives ‘The Conductor’ a warm and pulsing bass line and digital strings straight out of a Dixon’s sale.  The Calculators bring broken beats and a beautiful vocal from Leila Cusack to ‘Posed to Death’, though it would have been a far better song if they had replaced the original vocal entirely.  Photek give us a filter-frenzied take on ‘Total Job’ and Jagz Kooner’s mix of ‘Agenda Suicide’ is good for the first 23 seconds.  Best track is either ‘Ballad of a Paralysed Citizen’ by Medicine, crackling with a charged atmosphere, haunting vocals, and syrupy bass, or Ursula 1000’s crack at ‘Your Retro Career Melted’ with chopped-up guitars, slap bass and truly stupid home keyboard style percussion - the only track here at ease with the cheese.

Reviewed by Mangusta
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