Author: jerobear
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The Coral: Distance Inbetween
The Coral were about 12 (ok, 16) when they started and by 20 were big stars. Their first two albums were very good but they tailed off a bit, presumably while they grew up and got their heads together; they’ve keep popping up on other albums and we’ve lost track of the number of relations…
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Kris Drever: If Wishes Were Horses
We reviewed the excellent Blair Dunlop last week, putting new life into folk. Drever’s day job is with Lau, famed for improvisation and adding electronica and fancy production, also putting new life into folk. This solo album shows that Drever still loves the old stuff, and it’s about as traditional a folk album as you…
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Les Amis de Philippe, Ketil Haugs, Ludger Remy: Anonymous, Six Concertos
This lovely CD goes on the selling point that they’re anonymous works, but good for all that. The music is from the Schranck II, the music collection of the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden. This treasure trove includes many anonymous compositions produced “in creative ecstasy” but omitting the name of the author. Some…
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Just Great Songs 2016
This is so not aimed at the Review Corner. We believe in democracy but this collection’s five number ones, seventeen top fives and 24 top 10s doesn’t mean the record-buying public is right. Forty songs that all sound similar with Autotuning clear in places. Still: it opens with Justin Bieber, and damn, the boy is…
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Shonen Knife: Adventure
We’ve never heard of Shonen Knife, who turn out to be a cult Japanese pop/punk trio who’ve been going for 35 years. Kurt Cobain was a fan and they toured with Nirvana, Dave Grohl helping their drummer with the tech stuff. We know this now but listening in ignorance they came over as a jolly…
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Rusty G’s: Low
This is classic old school rock; we played it through a couple of times and were moderately impressed. Then we learned Rusty G’s is just a duo — James Finch on vocals/guitar and Dan Lopez on drums — and were even more moderately impressed. The downsides first. There’s a naming convention for four-legged bands: White…
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She Drew The Gun: Memories Of The Future
You may well be hearing more of She Drew The Gun: they have won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition, coming out on top of the live finale and seeing off competition from thousands of other acts in the free-to-enter annual contest. The prize is a slot on one of Glastonbury’s main stages and £5,000 to help…
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Blair Dunlop: Gilded
We reviewed Dunlop’s second album House of Jacks and remember thinking he was a British Neil Young, with his intelligent songs and mix of the folk and the rock; the lack of guitar solos possibly suggests he’s more of British Jackson Browne but still: he’s good and several cuts above many “folk” artists out there.…
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The Feeling: The Feeling
According to Wikipedia, The Feeling were the most played band on UK radio in 2006: their four singles received a total of 97,436 plays, which meant that, on average, a song by The Feeling was played 267 times every day, or once every five minutes. Golly. They passed us by — Jamie T, Arcade Fire,…
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Lukas Graham: Lukas Graham
Spending all day listening to new albums we don’t do a lot of radio so we didn’t know that Lukas Graham Forchhammer and his band had scored a number one hit with 7 Years and that everyone has heard of him. Graham seems to be one of those preternaturally talented performers who pop up every…
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