Month: February 2017
-
Kreutzer Quartet: Choreography, The Soundtrack
So: you make a film about the importance of seeing music being played, featuring pieces that have a strong visual component (by Stravinsky, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Finnissy). Then you release a CD soundtrack of that film. In other words, this is a CD of music that’s meant to be seen being played, that accompanies a […]
-
Leif Vollebekk: Twin Solitude
Vollebekk is a Montreal singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is/was a fan of Nick Drake. We’d also guess he’s a big fan of David Gray, whose White Ladder this sounds very much like. For older readers, Gray was a singer-songwriter whose fourth album White Ladder was massive, partly helped by a memorable televised performance at […]
-
Lower Than Atlantis: Safe In Sound
This is Lower Than Atlantis’ fifth studio album, which means they’re pretty good at what they do: delivering friendly, accessible melodic rock. The obvious references we can think of are on the pop side: Athlete (on a good day) and even ELO, though maybe a little of Incubus and melodic rock bands like Jimmy Eat […]
-
Amber Run: For A Moment, I Was Lost
Amber Run play atmospheric indie pop of a kind that you’ve heard before, but it’s got a fresh sound and it’s entertaining. It’s emotional pop with soaring harmonies aplenty and slightly falsetto vocals, the instrumentation lush and multi-layered. It starts off well with Insomniac, an emotive tune that reminded us of Longview. Amber Run also […]
-
Frank Carter and The Rattlesnakes: Modern Ruin
A friend in music radio once told us that some pretty decent bands fail because their members are so unpleasant — be mean to venues, music journalists and sound engineers and your career will be short lived. By the same token, Frank Carter must be the nicest man in music. Despite a decade-long career that’s […]
-
Menace Beach: Lemon Memory
The new year is not even a month old (well it is now, but not as we write) and we have already got two albums that could still be favourites at the end of the year. One is Frank Carter (see elsewhere) and the other is this. Menace Beach are certainly confident — they open […]
-
Kenari Quartet: French Saxophone Quartets
This fun album features pieces that used what was still a relatively new-fangled instrument in the classical form. The sax was invented in 1846 by the eponymous Mr Sax, and the pieces on here (from Dubois, Pierné, Françaix, Desenclos, Bozza and Schmitt) were written in the early to mid-20th century. French composers apparently went mad […]
-
The Wintertons Unmuzzled: The Life and Times of Nick and Ann Winterton by Sarah Winterton
Former MPs Ann (Congleton) and Nick (Macclesfield) Winterton are very much Marmite figures. People either detest them for their right-wing views that seem to date back to Empire days (Ann is opposed to gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia), or love them as hard-working constituency MPs who stood up to authority and always spoke their minds. […]