albums reviews                                                           page 1

STARSAILOR Love is Here

James Walsh has one heck of a voice; a wonderful warbling range that you or I would require a fliptop head to deliver.  It more than adds worth to the mixed bag of acoustic/piano ballads offered here.  And herein lies the problem.  It is a great voice but most of these are not great tunes and no matter how much Walsh, probably effortlessly, enunctiates his doleful tales of woe you can't help thinking "I hear what you're saying but erm can you do anything a bit more cheerful?". 

"Love is here" and "Alcoholic" in particular are  sad bordering on depressing but without the benefit of a quality tune to carry it off.   Having said that a few pass the test: debut single "Good Souls", which has most definitely goosed the arse of an old Bunnyman, "Poor Misguided Fool", which is practically a stomper by Starsailor standards, "Lullaby", a nice piano number and the Buckleyesq early B-side "Coming Down". 

All in all, I'd imagine the album will be feted by some desperate to find a tuneful alternative to the American nu-metal invasion.  And whilst I wish them luck in fighting off the pig masked barbarians, I can't help but wish they'd lighten up just a little though I can't see them reaching for a banjo just yet. 

7.5/10 - Reviewed by Mawders

First the short review for ADHD-afflicted kids - If you like Deserter Songs and can get on with Jonathan’s helium-overdose vocals you’ll like this collection of slightly eccentric alt-rockery.  OK, you can go and crayon the walls now.  For the rest of you, there’s a “but” to this album: though it’s worth your hard-earned, there’s nothing of the quality of “Goddess On A Hiway” or “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp”.  If you’re looking for brave new worlds, this is the wrong band to book your trip with.  It’s an album that won’t upset your dad or girlfriend but won’t impress your head friends. 

It’s massively overproduced.  On “Tides of the Moon” a good song gets strangled by all the background gubbins.   OK boys, we’ll take your word that you can play everything from a theramin to a tambourine – you don’t have to prove it repeatedly.  At times, this can be powerful, as on the opener “The Dark is Rising”, with its James Bond orchestration.  Other times, you long for a producer who would curb the band’s tendency to self-indulgence.  The album title is a self-contained review.  The feel of the album is dreamy, moody, evocative.  If this was a fashion collection, it would be called autumn.   It’s an album you play before a séance.  

When it works, it works well.  “Chains” is a real standout, expertly blending quirkiness, alt-rockery and a sense of melody.  “Nite and Fog”, the current single, sounds a bit too calculated for us to really warm to.   Plus it seems to have borrowed sneakily from the theme to Due South.  “Spiders and Flies” is melodic and repetitive and softly soothing though Mr Pretentious ought to have co-author credit on this and a number of songs.  There’s no prog rock on this album though they tread a fine line (a title like “In the Mines of Moria” wouldn’t be out of character as a title for some of their more whimsical offerings and one day this lot will sing about Eric the Friendly Pixie). The one disaster is “Hercules” – I checked my CD at the 5 minute point in this track to make sure it hadn’t been possessed by the unquiet spirit of Peter Frampton, such was the discredited 70s rock-gunge that vomited forth from my speakers.  Having cleaned the CD spiritually, another blast of Chains had me feeling charitable towards them again.   If the ADHD lot have rejoined us, here’s the headline: buy this, shag to it if you’re so inclined but don’t believe in it their dreams

CHARLATANS Wonderland

Blimey, the Charlies, as surely nobody calls them, have had a makeover. They've gone all funky, they've gone all bluesy, they've gone all gospely, they've grown up! The keyboards are still there but they are less cheesey and more dramatic and the bass is deeeeep. Tim Burgess has also either had voice training or feels more confident in his ability to reach those top notes and on "Wake Up" he almost reaches Jimmy Somerville levels.

The album kicks off with a Jagger style "You're So Pretty - We're So Pretty" and the opening few songs, including the single "Love is the Key" are good. It then lapses into a weaker late middle section where you become worried that maybe you've been fobbed off with an old INXS LP - "And if I Fall" in particular is awful. Then just as you think that you've been sold a pup, they rediscover it with "Ballad of the Band" which sounds like a fuller version of one of their back catalogue songs with the startling addition of a Bjorkalikey and then "Right on" which sounds like an updated pumped up version of 70s Terry Jack classic "Seasons in the Sun". No really. And it's brilliant, though as the song's based on a strange dream the lyrics are pretty nonsensical.    

For dismal and uninspired ‘movements’, shoegazing takes some beating.   Droney, moany and monochrome, it was the epitome of the student bedsit.  Ride seemed above all that and were briefly feted by the style fascists of the NME as the next big thing.   This compilation shows that this was pure spin – Ride could do guitar washes and whiney vocals with the best of them.  With the perspective eleven years brings, it’s easy to hear how the guitars try to smother the life out of the early singles, tunes never get out of bed and the vocals – always a Ride weakness – hold up a white flag.     The best of the early singles are Drive Blind and Like a Daydream, which have energy and riffs, and cast a nostalgic glow for those of us who were there, but even they succumb to guitar-wankery before they reach their end. 

The album illustrates how Ride found their feet and the confidence to write songs as they moved into their second album stage, inspired by cult movies and 60s pop-rock.     Twisterella is tuneful and well-balanced, while OX4 and From Time to Time build and sustain a mood.  Keyboards become acceptable!   The decline was sudden though as their muse decides to favour Noel and Liam Gallagher with her easy affections and Ride fall back on tired rock routines.    A cover of the Creation’s How Does It Feel to Feel is the most redundant track on this CD – virtually a karaoke cover of an original Britpop classic.  Things peter out with Black Night Crash – punk without the spunk.  

For nostalgists who want to give their shabby overcoats another airing, this is a pleasant enough time machine trip but the memory is better than the reality.  ‘Better than Chapterhouse’ isn’t much of an epitaph – journey’s over, Ride.        

6/10 - Reviewed by Ged

For a week and a half it was impossible to escape these New Yawk punk rock dudes.  With their good looks, youth and sell out tours, every rag with an ounce of credibility covered the band from the tabloids to the broadsheets.  Even the Ikea in-house magazine had an appraisal alongside trumpeting the merits of its all conquering Blikk potato peeler and Stinkii bathroom scales, fercrisakes!  And then there’s the music.  It’s not that they’re doing anything new; it has hints of the Stooges, Television, early XTC and a whole host of 70s art-punk bands but …who cares, that just shows they have taste.  What does matter is the quality of the songs and fortunately they are, without exception, great; 11 stomping, riff led classics with Casablancas drawling along in a kinda Mark E Smith way, if Smiffy had come from the Queens rather than Bury. 

All the 5 previously released tracks are here, few of the 11 bother trampling over the 3 minute barrier so you’re soon reaching for the Replay button but it’s worth it.   Standouts of the newer stuff’s the magnificent Someday which will be the next single – an uplifting quick shoe shuffling punk pop song with a riff to die for.

Is This It?  Oh yes!  And more!  It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here but for the moment dust off the undersized LJ, slide into the humming skinny fit jeans and green flash trainers and make the most of it.

  SUPER FURRY ANIMALS

Mature in music usually means the same as with cheese – old and stinky.  But the Super Furry Animals have lost the smartarsed-ness that made their previous albums only intermittently brilliant and their fifth album proper is adventurous, confident and defies easy categorisation.  Rings Around the World is a fresh-sounding melange of moods, styles and tempos, and shows a new face with every listen, even though it wears its influences proudly - Beach Boys, Bacharach, Philly soul, German electronica and computer game techno tunes.  With so many things going on, it promises to be as secondhand and bogus as a Fatboy Slim album but SFA marshal their ideas and spit out 13 towering new pop ideas, following Eric Morecambe’s idea of his music: “I’m playing all the right notes, just in the wrong order”. 

The ideas are so plentiful and the orchestration so lush that first hearing doesn’t do the album justice.  This album gains half a point on each listening, is up to 8.5 at the moment and by the weekend might be a classic 10!  Repeated hearings reveal new layers and you owe it to them and yourselves to pay attention.  Songs range from disgust at where Clinton keeps his smokes (Presidential Suite) to the state of the world (It’s Not the End of the World) to love and hate (Receptacle for the Respectable and No Sympathy).  Juxtaposed with U starts like the Blow Monkeys and has a bloody vocoder (a rare lapse on this album) but is saved by a luscious chorus (“you’ve got to tolerate all the people that you hate”).  Run! Christian, Run! is a standout, a sinister gospel-country tale of the Endtime, delivered over a leisurely seven minutes of steadily scarier lyrics, made eerier by its pedal steel and melodica accompaniment.  

SFA are at the head of the pack, showing the rest of the field their spotty Welsh arses at the moment – they reveal their British peers as one-note, no-idea Wonderwailers and their US challengers as retro rich-daddy Richard Hell wanna-bes.   The only revolutionary sound is coming out of Cymru!

  SPARKLEHORSE It's a Wonderful Life

This third aural window into the wonderful/woeful world of Mark Linkous - aka Sparklehorse - opens slowly onto familiar melancholic territory: “I am full of bees/Who died at sea/It’s a wonderful life” (‘It’s A Wonderful Life’).  Oh dear, all is not well in Mark’s den. 

Thankfully.  Because misery is what he does so well.  There’s a sad beauty in every song, from the lethargic Casio waltz of the opening ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ to the slow mutant soundtrack of ‘Babies on the Sun’.  In between there’s the Beatlesy ‘Gold Day’ (the single), the piano note led ‘Eye Pennies’ and the abrasive ‘Piano Fire’ (both featuring PJ Harvey),  ‘King of Nails’ (with Nina Persson) with its Cry Baby Cry riff, and the distorted Trickyesque ‘Dog Door’ (with Tom Waits) which is kinda….jolly. In a way.   Oh, and there’s also the (is it compulsory nowadays?) extra untitled track, which sorta peters out with sad dip of the head.   Sublime.   

Slow songs form the majority of the album.  So, if there’s a downside to all this (ho ho) then it might be that there is little variation in pace.  Sure, there’s the trademark close vocal, drawling out stream of conscious lyrics/imagery over a drawn out melody and there is the odd heightened track (eg ‘Dog Door’).  But it seems less obviously varied and less lo-fi (whatever that means, but you know what I mean) than previous albums: it may be my hearing.  Could be that the production (David Fridmann of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips credits), and the presence of female vocals (including the aforementioned PJ and Persson) add a new dimension.  Whatever, it works and is still very much idiosyncratic Sparklehorse.   Hell, and thankfully it’s Sparklehorse’s private hell, it’s a wonderful album.  Spend some time with it.  What’s the rush? It’s a wonderful life.  

I saw this band supporting the Strokes at the Heaven gig a few months back and was quietly impressed.  It's hardly kick ass rock n roll unlike that gig's headliners but melodic and tuneful enough to tap your foot to.  Whilst "Watching Xanadu", "Animal Cannabus" and "This is Not Who We Were" are upbeat jaunty pop numbers, many of the rest are considerably more intospective and all of the album lies in that Radio 2 friendly pop territory; Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout's natural home.  The strangest number is "Mull Historical Society" which comes dangerously close to something Ricky Martins might parp out; an uptempo salsa tinged number with a chorus of "Come and join us, the Mull Historical Society" which just sounds a bit silly.  The album closes with "Paperhouses", a number that clocks up over 10 minutes and will be appreciated by fans only.

  MUSE Origin of Symmetry

After the quietly confident Showbiz debut, the trio from Teignmouth strive to break away from their Radiohead wannabe label, and succeed, pulling up out of that steep dive before they disappear up their own backsides. The Origin of Symmetry IS a good album, delivering far more than just the bouquet of anthems that have been released as singles.

Kicking off with their exercise in stadium rock, New Born, Muse take hold and don't let go. Bliss follows with its sweeping synths, and that unmistakable Matt Bellamy soaring operatic vocal style....hey, we even have a few Queenesque moments. Plug in Baby, surely a flagship song if ever there was one, leads us to some darker waters in the Fritz Lang nod, Citizen Erased. After a hitting some seriously high notes in the Mael tradition in Micro Cuts, we slow down to a trot with a batch of Spanish guitar laden pieces,
(Screenager, Darkskies) and a subtle swinging blues number, Feeling Good. Finally, an ambling bow at the end of the performance with Meglomania.

Origin of Symmetry is a proud fusion of classical epics, soaring operas and good old guitar grunge...Other bands would have been chastised for the overproduction but Muse get away with it because....well....it is sooooo Muse ! Leave the underplayed antics to the likes of Travis and Coldplay, this is overplayed and it works. The performance has finished, the Muse boys have achieved what they set out to do... Thankyou, you've been a wonderful audience, and goodnight.

Firm believers in unadorned rock ‘n’ roll, Wes and band serve up 13 slices of power pop, averaging 3 minutes a song.  It’s the simple line up of vocals, guitar, bass and drums and devotees of Stiff Records, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker and the DBs, will hear something to please them.  The Costello reference extends to Wes’s delivery and the Joe 90 look, though his lyrics are far less barbed and therefore less effective than Elvis’s.  As for the band, they support Wes as well as The Attractions and The Rumour backed Costello and Parker.  Tracks are well crafted and laden with hooks.  The first three tracks, and in particular Nehi Crush, set a standard that the rest can’t quite match and the album could do with more of a change of pace in the second half.   Though it has a catchy chorus, Weston-Super-Mare for a Brit is just too ridiculous to take seriously; you’ll not find it in the A-Z of cool rock ‘n’ roll locations, Wes.  And while the packaging on the album is very stylish, the photos are anything but.  They falsely suggest that the band is more geeky that the songs reveal and it looks as if Wes buys his shirts from Harry Hill’s tailor.  Still, good to hear a band with faith in pure pop music and their energy and spikiness suggest that they’d be an entertaining live band.      

6.5/10 - Reviewed by Ged