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contents |
albums - reviews page 2 |
Tori Amos |
see previous previous reviews page (#1) An album which lives up to its pedigree – Ken Stringfellow was a member of the Posies and Mitch Easter acts as “recordist” so it’s a well-crafted, cultured and pop-knowledgeable album which is beautifully recorded from start to finish. It starts brilliantly with Down With Me, which is lyrically articulate, intensely melodic and takes off in a chorus of pedal steel guitar. Like a bumblebee, it shouldn’t work but it does and is a song that will replay itself over and over in your mind, as well as on your stereo. It’s all fresh-sounding and eclectic stuff, with some tracks being backed by acoustic guitar, church organ and strings, and he has a sweet voice which never quite dips into whimsy. Uniforms, with its baroque string arrangements is Left Banke-ish in feel and suggests that his pop references are well chosen. Perhaps a couple of tracks are one chorus too long but it’s a small price to pay for all this musical honey. Down With Me was issued as a single in July and is worth tracking down, not only for the A side but also for the elegant, piano-driven cover of Robyn Hitchcock’s lovely, ethereal Airscape. The electronic drums are perhaps the only flaw in an otherwise outstanding cover. A very good album – if not quite touched by the hand of God, at least a cheeky grope by one of his angels. A remix album from the pair frequently described as the new Simon and Garfunkel (well by their PR company anyway). Most of the re-workings aren't that radical, after all it's quiet acoustic stuff to start with so it's merely morphed into something a little more like electronica. A bit like the rebirth Everything But The Girl had a few years ago. Some of the tracks are a little dull (Singing Softly to Me), some of the remixing's a little heavy handed (yes I'm talking about you, Alfie) but there are some gems on here. Four Tet's remix of The Weight of My Words, Toxic Girl (which incidentally sounds a bit like the theme from one of those kiddie's TV shows Camberwick Green or Trumpton) and the truly gorgeous Royksopp remix of I Don't Know What I Can Save You From, are worth the budget price alone. This album may yet end up being the Portishead of 2001, perfect accompaniment to the fondue in Islington. 7/10 - Reviewed by Mawders “…I’m gonna paint the moon for you” (Alan Bean), and Dead Media shows Hefner’s range of colours and brush strokes. Thankfully indie has a broad canvas, so when Depeche Mode spring to mind occasionally let’s remember that they were indie. See, Hefner have been playing with their collection of analogue synths. But Kor(g) blimey, it works. From the funeral drum and synth arpeggio of the opening Dead Media, through the perfect synth pop of the narrative When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines (where Pet Shop Boys meet ‘Mode circa A Broken Frame), to the single Alan Bean which soundtracks the fall to earth (literally and figuratively) of the fourth man on the moon with suitably descending synth. But on Trouble Kid the one finger ‘Mode solo is ably abetted by a glam gtr riff and kicking drum beat to create an upliftingly dumb mover. And there’s also proof that pedal steel can work effectively against (or is that ‘with’?) synths on Peppermint Taste, a Pulpesque tale of first love remembered, and King of Summer, a sort of country-glam hybrid which mutates into Chicory Tip ‘Son of My Father’ type synth backing. I see I’m not doing this justice. Trust me, it works: it’s inspired, not retro. But there are just as many wonderful songs without a sine wave in sight. There’s the gorgeous, slow, softly sung Junk with pedal steel, horns, and ensemble whistling (!), the acoustic driven forlorn love of The Nights are Long, the Harrison/Beatlesy Waking up to You, a straightforward love song, and the tired-festival-feeling Home. Dead Media is a wonderful canvas. Forget the junk in your life, treat yourself to this. 9/10 - Reviewed by Kev
A word puzzle: how many stages to get
from ‘STEPS’ to ‘TWATS’? Answer: just one - Tragedy. Cover versions should gut and restring a song,
giving us a fresh look at something which may have become familiar or make us want to hear
what the original sounds like. But the UK
charts are full of no-marks who’d find it hard to get third spot in a karaoke contest
in a Dundee nightclub. With pop now devouring
the old shite that it crapped out over the past 50 years, it’s hard to be original
and harder to reinterpret an old song in a new way. Husker
Du managed it in their brilliant deconstruction of Eight Miles High and the Wedding
Present/Cinerama have a bunch of cool covers of songs they love but don’t love enough
to rehash them slavishly. Now Tori Amos has
produced an idiosyncratic collection of songs that you might have heard before but not in
these forms. She’s tried to bring out the
female voice in these songs; so much so that, in her re-interpretation, she’s given
all the songs female personalities (illustrated eccentrically in the booklet – she
recorded this in Cornwall and we’d better check what was in her pasties). The first thing you notice is how many songs
benefit by being sung well, unlike most of the (male) originals. The voice/piano duet on Enjoy the Silence rescues
a song from beneath all the plinky-plonk synth fizz of the original. Rattlesnakes is even better, sounding like it
could have been written for her. Her breathy
delivery is perfect for Lloyd Cole’s introverted musing. Real Men is soulful in a way that Joe Jackson
could only play-act. Everyone can do a Lou
Reed song badly but New Age is a fine album opener – lively and rocky but sensitive,
while Heart of Gold salutes the original while maintaining a respectful distance. Strange Little Girl, the single, is melodic and
quirky, even though her interpretation of ‘strange’ in the title is nearer to
‘kooky chick’ than ‘Bjork-bonkers’.
A few songs don’t cut the
mustard. I’m Not in Love and I
Don’t Like Mondays are too familiar to work in new forms; I’d prefer to send
them to the same grave in which hopefully Simon Bates lies a-mouldering. Happiness is a Warm Gun is 10 minutes of
sampling and bland doodling that pays far too much respect to the memory of John Lennon. There’s a weird choice of ’97 Bonnie and
Clyde which is a story of a wife-killer justifying himself to his daughter; narrated by
TA, it highlights the quality of the lyrics but doesn’t make sense. Though on a fat-cat corporate label,
she’s got an independent vision which we need to cherish in these dark boyband days. As the Armenian love-god Aznavour nearly sang,
“Thenk ‘eaven for strange leetle gurls”. 7/10 - Reviewed by Ged Biscuit Boy is a side project for Beautiful South-er, Paul Heaton, an opportunity for him to really break out of the barrel and er hobnob with a different crowd. And crumbs (that's enough biscuit references - ed), some of it's really good. Recent South albums have been very disappointing, overly reliant on Heaton's clever if occasionally irritating wordplay and bogged down with flat trudging mono paced accompaniment. Here he seems to have re-found the knack of writing a decent song and indeed the opening three numbers actually dare to get out of the armchair and wiggle their little butts. 10 Lessons in Love is a clever and frank ditty about one night stands for an unattractive woman ("You keep em busy talking and they probably won't notice your weight. No-one counts the acres in the field when they're swinging on the gate"), Mitch is a cajun romp and The Perfect Couple an uptempo comedy with great breathy harmonies. Heaton also attempts to redress the image of the devout Christian which he created for his Housemartins days with a forceful tirade against the hypocrisy of Christianity ("you'd feed the 5000 if the spotlight gained could make yourself look bloody good"), delivered in a Tom Waits style husky voice. Fat Chance is not perfect, some of the songs rely too heavily on Heaton's puns, but I'd sooner have a Fat Chance than the slim pickings of his other recent work. 7/10 - Reviewed by Mawders
Get Ready turns its back (thankfully) on the Stephen Hague produced electro-dance-pop-programming of 1993’s Republic, and returns to more familiar guitar based rock (perhaps that’s what happens when you get Billy Corgan, Andrew Innes and Bobby Gillespie to help out). In spite of this, there is a feeling of deja vu. Republic suckered you in with the excellent Regret, and then proceeded onto keyboard based songs which were OK but not exactly inspiring. Get Ready opens (arguably) with its best track and single Crystal : a well crafted pop song with simple guitar riff, female harmonies, ‘wowoahs’ and ‘heyheys’, and which you’ve probably heard by now anyway. There on in the tracks tend to follow a familiar New Order pattern - Barney’s thin vocals, rhyming dictionary lyrics, Hookey’s lead bass playing (a distinctive element of New Order sorely missed on Republic) and programme-precision drumming, with embellishments of electronic blips, beeps and so on. The tracks are not individually bad; they chug along, are momentarily diverting and you’ll be tapping your foot while they play, but without much interest. However two tracks deserve singling out: the engaging Slow Jam, with Barney adopting a lower/talking vocal over a slow hypnotic groove, and the acoustic (and atypical) Run Wild which plays out the album with strings and forlorn melodica, exposes an emotional fragility in Barney’s vocal. Overall this indicates a return to some sort of form, comparing it with Low-Life and Brotherhood for example. Having said that it is really hard to get worked up about it: it is an OK album. But I always expect more from New Order. 7.5/10 - Reviewed by Kev |
NEW ORDER Get
ready