FRANK BLACK  Devil’s Workshop (Cooking Vinyl)
 

 
When the Pixies broke up there were a few tears shed in the Bananas household. Never fear I thought, I’m sure dear old Uncle Frank will be back screaming his best for the kids like some large walking air raid warning.  Where Teenager of the Year was hard edged pop and askew lyrics, Devil’s Workshop is a more back to basics (dare I say it....) country pop. No, hold on! It’s not as bad as it sounds! This isn’t any Garth Brooks covers album, it’s really quite good. 

The beauty in this album, as with a lot of his previous work, is the interesting and cheeky time signatures and diverse chord shapes that he plays. The tunes sound simple in their construction but they hide moments of pure brilliance. Why use an A minor seventh instead of an A minor? Why? Because the man’s a genius! It’s tiny things like this which set him above others, which make a simple tune sound just different to everybody else. Those sounds are in the mix and you hear them without consciously noticing them being there; layered guitars play counter riffs, one following the bass, the other noodling about the melody; vocals are scream free, but find him singing as well as any previous recording he has done. Everything is there and in the right place, and it’s easy to say that it could have produced itself, but that would probably be doing it a disservice.

Opener Velvety stands out head if not shoulders above the rest. Probably the rockiest track on the album, it has a great guitar sound of an acoustic with light distortion. He could have turned everything up to eleven and got away with it, but chose to keep it reigned in, which it is all the better for. Played live you can imagine the whole place jumping up and down to it. San Antonio Tx has a couple of great guitar licks and bends which would put a smile on the face of even the most cynical of guitarist, whilst Bartholomew is a stripped down slower Nimrods Son which could be built upon but has a solo at the end that makes you chuckle inadvertently. Other track have their merits, but they all fit in with the theme of the album as a whole.  Devil’s Workshop is the sound of a man who is obviously enjoying what he’s doing. At a time when everybody is making albums just for commercial gain, it’s a refreshing change to hear something which you enjoy, but can’t put your finger on why. At eleven tracks and 33 minutes you won’t really get bored listening to it, and it could be the ideal album to listen to on the way to work on a dreary Monday morning. Just be prepared for everybody asking you why the hell you’re so cheery when you get there.

Review by Bananas
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What you should know – Gordon Gano is/was former lead singer of the Violent Femmes (rip). This is his debut solo album.  However, he only sings on a couple of tracks because the majority of tracks have been written by him for other performers who make guest appearances.  It works well – almost too well in fact.

 John Cale is as hauntingly bare as ever: his deep tones complement his lonely piano in Don’t Pretend, whilst another former VU-er Lou Reed does his narrative drawl thing over the funky gtr and rock rhythm in Catch ‘Em in the Act.  Frank Black does his SCREAM and snarl thang in the punk rock through of Run: a bit perfunctory that one but one for the moshpit.   But for me the songs that really work well are the joyful La bamba of It’s Money (“I don’t give ,4, 5, 3 or 2 shits for your problems it’s not what I’m here for”) where Gano duets with Martha Wainwright ; the moody Cowboy Junkies folkiness of Merry Christmas Brother with Cynthia Gaynor (“Merry Christmas Joseph your son has a crown of thorns”) ;  and the doloric acoustic, cello and brush drumming folk of Oh Wonder with Mary Lou Reed.  But the best is saved for last and first – Hitting the Ground starts the album with PJ Harvey doing her Patti Smith influenced whoops over a simple indie rock riff which could have been on/off her last album; it also ends the album with Gordon taking on lead vocals.  There is a slight but appreciable difference in delivery – if these versions aren’t released as a double A side then well, I dunno…..

Think of Hitting the Ground as a soundtrack with a variety of styles in tunes and vocals.  Sure, it can make it rather piecemeal but, oh, what pieces to feast upon. Tuck in my friends.

Review by Kev
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Aaah pop music.  Forget the manufactured dross mimed by pretty boys and girls with their synchronised dance routines (dip to left, left foot forward, dip to right, right foot forward, clap hands, left foot back, head explodes… if only).  I mean real pop music with guitars, catchy choruses, head spinning harmonies and toe tapping riffs.  The Beach Boys knew how to do it, so did The Beatles and with this terrific album, the Apples in Stereo are doing it.  Less psychedelic than its predecessors, Robert Schneider, lead guitarist and frontman, the big Apple so to speak, has finally allowed an external influence to mix their efforts and this is where the new buzzed guitar sound appears to be coming from.

It’s quality not quantity all the way and no room for any bad apples in this barrel so at a mere ten tracks and only thirty minutes total playing time you’ll get backache reaching for the Play button.  That’s if you don’t do yourself a mischief bouncing around the room, whipped up by the power pop tornado from your speakers.   The finest moments are the Ramones in a space rocket Yore Days, the Buggles meet Weezer bubblerock of Mystery, the Dressy Bessy style 60s girlie pop of I Want , the jaunty Monkees-esq Better Days… oh just listen to it, it’s great, it’s the cox’s pippin.

Review by Mawders
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The Butterflies of Love are from New Haven, CT and comprise divinity school graduate and justice of the peace Daniel Greene, his nomadic friend Jeffrey Greene, audio-visual electrician Scott Amore, iron-on expert Peter Jackson Whitney, and art recycler Neil O'Brien.  They play intense, beautifully melancholic pop music with something of the spirit of Galaxie 500 in the low-fi, cool running introspection of the album.  There’s no one ‘sound’ on the album; it’s the product of a group having being marinaded in 40 years of pop music so that you hear a touch of Spector, a rub of the Who, even a pinch of Procul Harum or the Zombies in there, all blended into a mellifluous dreamy pop tone barbed with hooks everywhere.   Over It and Over It is full of reverb guitars and is warm and dreamy.  Wintertime has impassioned vocals (rather than the charmingly droll voices that characterise many of the other songs), lovely power-pop harmonies and 60s sounding wah wah guitar alongside organ washes.  The recent single Dream Driver is immediate and hook-laden with echoey guitars and amazing keyboard flashes while the previous single The Mutation, all organ and jingling bells, leaves you with a warm and organic feeling.  Get Ready! is poppy and soulful with a pure Motown bass line, slightly reminiscent of the classic pop stylings of the DBs while Complicated has a similar soulful feel and rests on a jaw-dropping hook.   The New Patient has a warm, enfolding, honest feeling: just lie back and drift off in the mellow wash of its gorgeous melody.

Review by Ged
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Underworld have pushed themselves towards the top of the league over the past decade with their excellent club/techno inspired tunes. However since their last studio release "Beaucomp Fish" they have lost the services of Darren Emerson, who has decided to concentrate on his record label and the DJing side of things. So how does it match up to their previous efforts? Quite well actually and on the first listen you do not actually realise that Emerson is not there.

The album kicks off with Mo Move, a gliding track with the trademark Karl Hyde rambling lyrics/vocals, complete with the trancelike sounds and noises that Underworld have made their own. Current hit "Two Months Off" is here in its full nine glorious minutes and is possibly Underworld's best single since Born Slippy (Nuxx). The track harks back to the other Underworld effort used on Trainspotting soundtrack, "Dark and Long", with Hyde's hypnotic vocals contrasting well to the deadpan female vocals used throughout.  For the first time on a Underworld release I hear similarities with other bands; "Twist" sounds like those other veterans, Orbital whilst Sola Sistim is a downbeat affair heading towards Massive Attack territory. The album takes in a wide range of styles: "Ess Gee" is a fine classical piece and "Dinosaur Adventure 3D" is a barnstorming thumper of a track complete with ethnic style, and sometimes gibberish, chanting! The album winds down with "Ballet Lane" and "Luetin" which fades out like a dying star.

In many respects this album sounds like typical Underworld and you could say that they were playing it safe since Emerson's departure. Some of his harder techno influences are missing and some of the tracks veer towards a housier style or previous undiscovered territory. Underworld are gathering their forces with this album and no doubt will be off to pastures new with their next release.

Review by Tom
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BOOM BIP & DOSE ONE  Circle (Leaf)
 

It's only very rarely that recordings really deserve the warning "not for the faint hearted" - and this collaboration between left-field DJ Boom Bip and rapper Dose One certainly deserves some kind of health warning.  Like some ghost-train ride from one of your worst nightmares, this album rolls from start to finish down twisted, buckled tracks, passing through weird soundscapes of spooky graveyard noises, jungle rhythms, acoustic, electronic, birdsong, random snaps, crackles and pops, and things that go bump in the night.  The evil, reedy, Scooby-Doo villain voice of Dose One provides the perfect complement to this disturbing sonic environment.  His unsettling, random, wrong-in-the-head stream of consciousness style is delivered at a terrifyingly dizzy pace. Part poetry, part nonsense, part intelligent comment, and 100% the stuff that only makes sense in your nightmares.

There are points where this axis of evil comes together and produces some great hip-hop and in a sense this album pushes the genre forward in a similar way to De La Soul way back in 1989.  For that reason alone it's worth a look.  But be prepared to be disturbed.  This stuff is real Nightmares on Wax.

Review by tl
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From the stables at Warp comes yet another thoroughbred UK act with the red-eyed wizards Nightmares on Wax, and on Mind Elevation it feels they've possibly got the material that will push them into the critical and commercial limelight. After the smoldering classic Carboot Soul and the breakthrough Smokers Delight, George Evelyn (for it is he) has forged a striking balance between lazy hypnotic beats (not a million miles from Lemon Jelly) and some superior infectious soul.

Kicking off with a smile inducing instrumental, Minds Eye, you know where youre gonna be taken...and herbal cigarettes and a bean bag are recommended. Evelyn then leads us through a few potential charters...Say Say, Date with Destiny, and indeed the new single, Know My Name...all worthy of being introduced by Ant or bleedin Dec. Just when you think Evelyn has decided on a formula that is going to get him invited to the Brits, he then, reassuringly, spikes your mood with giddy tracks like Bleu My Mind and Thinking of Omara. Although the album tails off a little at the end, there are further gems...70s 80s is a fab look back to days of Grifters, Madness, Lip Up Fatty and 2 Tone Stay Pressed's....all to a reggae beat...and the well funky BBH instrumental.

A slight diversion with the increase of vocals, soul influence , and certainly a stagger towards commercialism, but that can’t really be levelled as a criticism when the quality is this high. May all your Nightmares be on Wax...

Review by Eggz
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Bristol quartet Halo are hotly tipped, they’ve gigged solidly and Sony are giving them a big push.  Is the hype justified?  With this, their debut album, we have the chance to find out.  From the start we’re in the land of radio-friendly, stadium rock; soft metal with big choruses.  First track ‘Still Here’ reminds me of My Vitriol, who the band have toured with; catchy melodic rock played with muscle and swimming in vocal harmonies.  ‘Shine’ is what might have happened if Simon and Garfunkel had discovered the power ballad and added a touch of Muse.  While we’re on the subject, a lot has been made of Halo’s similarity to Bellamy’s Boys and having heard both bands live and on record, let me say this: they don’t have much in common except for Graeme Moncrieff’s occasionally operatic, but far less dramatic, vocals.  

‘Cold Light of Day’ is the band’s Vitriolic first single and ‘All or Nothing’ starts off slow and acoustic but gets heavier in the choruses and features some screeching guitar.  The first track to break with the formula is ‘Only For You’, slow and brooding, starting with some discordant keyboards, but again gets crunchy in the choruses and there’s some nifty bass work from Steve Yeomans.  Things get heavier for second single ‘Sanctimonious’ but still retain the melodies and feature some of those Bellamy-ish vocals.  There are slow, haunting ballads in ‘Here I Am’ and ‘Feel’, the pounding pop-metal of ‘Incinerator’ which sounds like The Monkees in parts, and new single ‘Neverending’ (very 60s with a ‘Paperback Writer’ sort of feel, but slower).  The heaviest track on the album, ‘Vampire Song’, would have been a good closer, but the band elect to end with the slow acoustic ‘Perfectly Still’, an emotional song with some poignant piano.

As an album title ‘Lunatic Ride’ is greatly misleading.  If you’re expecting hell-for-leather, metal mania you’re sadly mistaken.  As the band name suggests, there’s far more of the angelic than the demonic.  This is all fairly easy listening stuff, though the lyrics are darker than some of the tunes would have you think.  It’s not particularly original but does show promise of greater things to come.  Watch this space.      

Review by Sleezy
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“I’m so modern, everything is pointless”.  Seymour Glass and Miss Black America want you to see the point as they rail against the ranks of the living dead.  It’s an angry and impassioned attack on the ennui of modern life.  They try to do that zeitgeisty thing with their sleeve quotes, from Mother Theresa to Eddie Izzard and William Blake to the guy who draws Calvin and Hobbes.  It’s a mixture of the (often naïve) polemics of the Manic Street Preachers matched with the apolitical power pop of Ash and an occasionally Gene-like delivery.  Sometimes they sacrifice the chorus for the cause, as on Roadkill where the lyrics are just bad poetry, but where they hitch up snotty punk attitudes to frantic rhythms, it all falls into place – a bunch of melodic malcontents.  Infinite Chinese Box is a song you can listen and mosh to: a hurricane of choppy guitars, hypnotic lyrics, a great beat and slightly spacey too.   Scream’s focus is on the song as much as the short lyrics and works brilliantly. 

Miss Black America is full of punk melodies, building slowly and exploding into a frantic jigsaw of scratchy guitars, righteous vocals and  anchored by a brilliant, pounding, insistent rhythm.  On the closing track Montana, they take a risk with an 8-minute song that initially focuses on Seymour’s voice, is then driven by Gish’s exciting, expansive guitar and concludes with rumbling bass and strings, a big U2-like sound without a trace of pomp or stadium bullshit.   The last line of Strobe and Gish’s guitar slogan read “Dead By 30”; age equals entropy in their universe and the album is an urgent attempt to cram in views, politics, riffs, melodies and poetry before it’s too late. They won’t let it lie and neither should you. 

Review by Ged
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Cane 141 play classic, bucolic pop with a slightly experimental feel: there are shades of Saint Etienne, Go Betweens and Stereolab, all mixed into a sweet package.  It’s all pretty laidback, graceful and moody but never simply washes over you.  Eager Boy Comics is a good example: a graceful and mellow Bacharach-like pop song with a bossanova beat accompanied by electronic touches that reinforce its contemporary sound.  By contrast, Me and Michael, is sad and poetic with spacey electronic effects and phoned-in-from-Pluto vocals, in a Flaming Lips style.  In the Sky, The Lucky Stars is a mesmerising and aching song, worthy of the Go Betweens or Belle and Sebastian.  It starts acoustically, embraces you in a warm swirl of gorgeous melodies and then it ends, just when you’re on the point of addiction.  The Grand Lunar is melodic, laidback and warm with a hypnotically catchy chorus.  New Day Parade is a sweet pop jewel, with Nick Drake vocals and, in its pastoral-sounding longings, sounding a little like The Lilac Time (not least in the Julie Christie references).  The wistful, lonely melodica sound is particularly effective and Mark Eitzel guest-vocals on the track, which is also being released as a single.  There are touches of Love’s intense, sorrowful pop in The Party and the Velvet Underground in their quieter moments (Photocredit One).  

Cane 141, daydreamers and romantics to a man, make shimmering and affecting pure pop pearls.  Don’t let them pass you by. 

Reviewed by Ged
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The Mendoza Line is named for the imaginary division in baseball (batting average of .200) between the make-the-grades and the find-a-new-trades (like the Who vs. Hoobastank, Neil Young vs. Will Young, etc).   Fortunately the band aren’t as borderline as their name suggests (thought their press release is so self-deprecating as to almost airbrush them out of history) and their fourth album justifiably demands a listen or seven.

The album is a patchwork of songs and styles, pinned together but not pinned down by a folky, country-rock sensibility.  That variety makes repeated listening very rewarding.  The opening track Damn Good Disguise has a Dylan-sounding delivery over a stagger-swagger that’s like the early 70s Stones under the influence of Gram Parsons.  Whatever Happened to You is Richard Thompson style folk-rock.   On these, and on most of the songs on the album, the lyrics, which are always articulate and poetic, veer from regretful longing to bitter contempt (often the latter).  They have Elvis Costello’s knack of cheerful misanthropy in twisting the knife on another failed love affair (“oh the chorus chimes so pleasantly as you disappear from view” – We’re All in This Alone).  But they write a good tune too: In Your Hands is Antmusic as played by 10,000 Maniacs while It’ll Be the Same Without You is REM-like happy, wriggly dance music despite the lyrics.  While the majority of songs are by the partnership of Peter Hoffman and Timothy Bracy, Shannon Mary McArdle contributes five songs that further mix up the flavours: Way of the Weak is spiritual, doomy and introspective while possibly the finest track on the album, Red Metal Doors, is the opposite: perky indie-pop done in a Kim Deal cool-as-fuck breathy style.   It’s all very knowing and sophisticated without being clever-clever or overbearing.  Definitely not a second string outfit. 

Review by Ged
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Insert 2 x 10p. Coin-Op consists of four hardy, long haired souls from Brighton who signed to Fierce Panda earlier this year. Described by their label as "art-pop-punk", it's hard to disagree with the Panda on this one. At times, we hear the varying sounds of Radiohead, Mogwai, Clinic and even Daft Punk at times. Yes. Even Daft Punk.

Opener Intro, an instrumental, reminiscent of a slightly drunk Mercury Rev jamming in a roadside cafe in Grimsby is fantastic. It rumbles along, the sound almost coming out from beneath the CD player, as it's echoes seem to twist and turn and beckon you in to their murky world.  Democratic is a song you'll be familiar with. You've never actually heard it, but it's Stripes/Strokes/Hives posturing renders it more of the same in todays current rock climate.It features a riff during the verse shamelessly stolen from The Dandy Warhols' Bohemian Like You. And it really is shameless. It was used as the theme to MTV's "The Fridge". Nope. I've never heard of it either. Flex is a far more experimental track. And for experimental read "Self indulgent". Two minutes of dull Daft Punk synths which don't sound as 80's as they should. Flex is a pointless, dull waste of studio time.The Make Up, however, is fantastic - a potential live favourite with the indie/emo kids. You can almost see them now, their Etnies T-Shirt filling with sweat as the pound their spindly little bodies to it in some dank, sad little grief hole in Camden. The chorus is an absolute winner.  Play Pen, were it by Mogwai, would be described as Mogwai by numbers. But as it's not by Mogwai, it's a standout track on this Coin Op album. If you follow.

This is a fascinating, confused, messy, youthful, at times compelling little record. Proceed with caution. But nevertheless proceed.

Review by Joe
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Judging by this album, the band’s second, you would be forgiven for thinking that Imperial Teen have been brought up on a diet of C86 indiepop and Sarah Records. This is a compliment, by the way. In fact they’re a US-based band, one of whom, unbelievably, used to be a member of Faith No More.  Imperial Teen consists of two girls, who comprise the rhythm section, and two boys who probably take it as a compliment to be referred to as boys (we aren’t talking spring chickens…) The band sports a guitar, bass and drums line-up, with Roddy Bottum (the ex-Faith No More member) alternating on second guitar and keyboards.

All members share singing duties, although the lead vocals are provided primarily by the boys. The male and female vocals compliment each other so perfectly, that one involuntarily thinks of a strange hybrid of Joy Zipper and The Pastels. One also wonders why more bands don’t adopt this style, since there’s so much more to be expressed in the way of dynamics.  The music is surprisingly mellow, much more so than their first album, “Seasick”, which featured the Evening Session favourite “You’re One”. Strong on melody, with keyboards given equal prominence as guitars, this album is really quite calming. The brilliance of “City Song” (in which they name-drop their own band!) is reminiscent of The Pastels at their best; why, they’ve even perfected the Katrina-esque female vocals cooing soothingly in the background. “Teacher’s Pet” and “Mr. and Mrs.” feature retro-eighties keyboards, while “Captain” and “Our Time” will happily tie us over until (if?) the next Fountains of Wayne record comes out.

I must admit that because the Imperial Teen camp had been quiet for so long, I thought they had split up. This album has been worth the wait. I guess that in the States they refer to this sort of music as “American college rock”…I really must take up that American college course.

Review by Littlefoot
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Debut album from a Manchester duo, this is one of the most eclectic collection of songs by one group you’ll possibly hear all year.   Its eleven tracks span folk, electronica, techno, drum and bass… and tossing the rule book on the fire they even radically switch styles mid-song.  The folkier numbers are topped with an off kilter drum and bass accompaniment and the vocals are pitched beautifully somewhere between Thom Yorke melancholia and Freddie Mercury camp defiance.   That’s when a vocoder is not being used, a device that rather too easily sees them straying into Cher style irritating novelty disco.   This frequently had me skimming tracks but between that you get the Muse semi operatic rock shifting into Prodigy techno of For Somebody Else and I Don’t Care How You Treat Me and the Radiohead in Cairo of More to Life or Radiohead in Bristol trip hop of Fill My Cup.  A tricky album to pigeon hole, it certainly has its moments, they just don’t involve voice distorters.

Review by Mawders
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What a talented bunch of chappies these Leaves blokes are. Not only do the four best mates play for a third division footie team in their native Iceland, but with their debut offering Breathe, they’ve also managed to create quite an outstanding collection of songs.  Icelandic geysers Leaves may be (boom boom),  but Sigur Ros or Bjork they ain’t. Instead, try Coldplay, but, well, er…better. Much better.

Track one Go Down is a beautiful slow-burner, with singer Arnar Gudjonsson’s (yes, they do all have funny names, titter titter) vocals a mixture of …well, it’s quite hard to imagine, but do try- Chris Martin, Richard Ashcroft and perhaps even a smidgen of Jeff Buckley thrown in for good measure. This is the kind of music you can lie back and wallow happily in forever and ever and ever and ever…Ahem….anyway, moving swiftly along to the insanely catchy single Catch; definitely one of the album’s standout tracks. Believe me, you have heard this song- you just didn’t know who it was. A brilliant, poppy, sing-along-able chorus over a lush orchestral background hook…sheer bliss. Epitaph is another dreamy slow-burner, again using the orchestral background to full effect, while Alone In The Sun is much more upbeat, Radiohead-esque territory, and a wake-up call after all the slushy, slow ballads. This is most definitely Leaves’ forté- the heavier, rockier stuff stands up much better than the acoustic ballad-y type ditties…nice though they are. Suppose sounds musically like a Dylan song- largely acoustically based- though, (thankfully) Gudjonsson sounds more like Richard Ashcroft than Zimmy.  There’s not really a bad track on the album, but having said that, it can become just a tad same-y. Third track Silence is nice enough, but I can’t help feeling I’ve heard it done before somewhere else…like on The Bends, perhaps? But enough of those nasty comparisons…Leaves redeem themselves with title track Breathe, a warm, laid-back guitar ballad (ignore the fact that almost every track is a guitar ballad) with Gudjonsson harmonising beautifully with Hallson…or is it Olafsson..or maybe Grimsson? Oh, my aching head…

Leaves use their instruments brilliantly and much to their advantage with Breathe- in plain and simple terms, absolute good quality indie music. The constant Radiohead, Coldplay and Doves comparisons (oops, silly me...) are a bit unfair, because I sincerely think that these lads can hold their own amongst the big ‘uns…or at least they will be able to do so after their next album. It’s hard to believe that this is just their debut, because it’s a wonderful offering, and will more than likely make my end-of-year top five list. Well worth an investment.            

Review by Neon
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Review by Eggz
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This album has already been available in the US as a bonus CD with the limited edition of this year’s studio album ‘Forever’.  It was recorded at the Chicago Metro in ’99 and so features none of that album, though four of the tracks are included as bonus videos.   

Things get off to a rollicking start with the stomping blues-rock of ‘Seven Days’ from ‘Gentleman’s Blues’, the most represented album here.  The band are tight with some great tub-thumping courtesy of Frank Funaro and swirling keyboards from Kenny Margolis.  ‘The Good Life’ is more contemplative but still rocks while ‘Lonesome Johnny Blues’ is fun uptempo country with some Johnny Cash-style vocals.  Band and audience alike sound as though they’re having a whale of a time. 

Things slow down for the haunting ballad ‘Big Dipper’ but soon speed up again for ‘Around the World’ which starts off with some skanking guitar before turning into a blues rocker and a showcase for the guitars and keyboards.  ‘Teen Angst’ is a barnstormer; ‘what the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head’.  Quite.  It’s exuberant stuff and the closest Cracker get to punk.  ‘Sweet Thistle Pie’ starts quietly with some harmonica before veering off into chugging AC/DC mode for the choruses and ‘The World is Mine’ romps along at 100mph.  ‘Low’ is another slow-burning bluesy rocker and the band encore with Quo’s ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ with screeching guitar.   

It’s uplifting stuff; great musicians, intelligent lyrics, good solid rock music.  Well worth buying.

Review by Sleezy
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This album this sounds frighteningly under produced with little to engage the ear.  The music has no variation in the mix, neither in volume or dynamics. Each instrument has its level set at the beginning of the track, and if anybody tries to touch the slider they’re liable to get a slap off of somebody for doing it. None of the songs build up to anything, you wait for something to happen, but like waiting for a bus in the rain, it never seems to come. As for the tunes, well back to basics metal, with very predictable chord progressions, at best on par with Faith No More, at worst Korn during those quite middle eight’s they do where one guitar plays open chords through a tremolo. There’s the occasional ballad in there with tinkley piano or xylophone in place of the guitars, but these resort to atmospheric special effect like wind and rain noises in the background to create any depth to the sound. To me that’s plumbing the depths of production when you’ve run out of ideas. Couple this with the old sounds like an overdriven valve amp which is cutting out and crackling effect, and frankly I despair.  But where I get actually quite angry is the vocals, which have been compressed to such an extent that it sounds like she’s singing through the cardboard tube you get in the middle of a toilet roll. Again everything sounds the same volume, each intake of breath sounds like tornado, yet when she unleashes her voice in a torrent of screams, it doesn’t sound like she’s unloading a belly full of venom, more like she’s being choked by an electrical flex.

Underneath the appalling mix though does lurk a potentially reasonable album. Her voice has a desperation in it’s delivery, and when allowed to soar has a sweet range. Unleash the beast within and she has lungs to out scream any of her peers. If I had to make comparisons, Nina of the Cardigans doing “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” or “Kick Inside” period Kate Bush, or maybe Bjork’s “Play Dead”. Lyrically it probably means a lot to her personally, but the rhymes and couplets do tend to sound a bit lame and predictable at times, and certain lines do end up being repeated ad infinitum.Put bluntly, a potentially reasonable album, destroyed by lack luster production. I find it hard to believe that the record company saw fit to release this in it’s present guise. Questions should be asked.

Review by Bananas
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