Review Corner

Author: jerobear

  • Boy Jumps Ship: Wake Up

    Opening song Burn on this debut from the British four-piece suggests a heavier rock band than the album delivers; it’s a verging-on-heavy melodic rock tune with some nice solo guitar. It reminded us a little of lamented Norwegian rock band Span, who played accessible heavy rock. But as we say, it’s a fake start; the…

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    Dead Buttons: Some Kind of Youth

    While LUH (elsewhere) try to create excitement by having an existential moment or two, Dead Buttons use rock n roll played fast and loud. It works much better. This is a great album and the first one in ages to make us go “Whoooa!” It’s a bit of of a mish-mash styles, all linked together…

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    Deftones: Gore

    We like Deftones but they’re hard to review: they’re just Deftones. They sound like Deftones and their sound is very Deftones. This new album is like Deftones, but quieter. For those who don’t know, Deftones are nominally metal but it’s a singular metal. It’s like a wall of sound, dominated by singer Chino Moreno, who…

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    Cyndi Lauper: Detour

    We don’t know much about Lauper other than the hits (Girls Just Want to Have Fun, True Colours etc). That aside, though we know she’s had a long and successful career. Given her wacky persona, an album of country covers might not work but this does and it’s entertaining: pop enough for a general audience,…

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    LUH: Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing

    In 2011 LUH’s Ellery Roberts was part of Wu Lyf, a wilfully mysterious band whose self-funded debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain was excellent. The band faffed about being clever with PR and marketing and then split. It was an excellent album, a novel, reverb-heavy mix of indie and tribal beats, “a cosmic soup”…

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    Mudcrutch: Mudcrutch 2

    Mudcrutch is the band Tom Petty was in before he became an American hero. It was formed in 1970 by Petty and Tom Leadon and since it split the other players have all continued to work as musicians, quite successfully until you compare them to Petty. Petty reformed Mudcrutch a while back and an album…

  • Bouche: So Long Solemn

    This Kickstarter-funded debut album from Bouche is slow and with a lot of silence; if you half listen it sounds a bit sedate and quiet so you have to pay attention. The music is somewhere between jazz, blues and folk, though it was the mariachi-style trumpet in The Storm that first caught our ears. The…

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    Kate Halsall: Miniaturised Concertos and Maché

    In the paper, we lumped this together with John Metcalfe’s Appearance Of Colour because they seemed similar but they’re not really. Metcalfe’s album is soothe and calming and reflective of nature, Halsall is angular and unsettling, and more based in hardware. Like Metcalfe, Halsall, a pianist, mixes genres; the album stems from a project started…

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    John Metcalfe: The Appearance Of Colour

    We bought this after previewing a gig he was playing: he’s a violinist who was once a member of The Durutti Column, and has provided string arrangements for the likes of Morrissey, Blur and Bat For Lashes. He sounded interesting. You’ve got to listen closely to this, otherwise it drifts by. The music varies between…

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    New Order: Complete Music

    Music Complete came out last year and was New Order’s first full studio release since 2005’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call, and their first without Hooky. It saw them dump the more dominant guitars for a fairer balance of electronics and guitars. Gillian Gilbert returned. We thought it was their best record for ages, a…