Author: jerobear
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Pet Shop Boys: Super
The secret to Pet Shop Boys’ success (the minor issue of writing some good tunes aside) is that while they always sound the same, they always manage to sound fresh. This is the case but more so on this new album, which seems to reprise their career by sampling a variety of styles. We could…
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The Qemists: Warrior Sound
There are two arguments to make over this album. The negative first: musically this is hugely similar to what Pendulum did a few years back, mixing rock and dance, specifically Dnb, though Qemists have more rock beats. Still, it’s a decade since Hold Your Colour and eight years since the big one, In Silico, so…
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Michael Finnissy: Singular Voices
The Cathy Berberian CD (somewhere on this site) features a soprano, and this CD features a soprano, but that’s like saying Captain Beefheart and Stevie Wonder both play the harmonica. You can stick on the Berberian CD and enjoy it but this is not quite so easy. We were negative about a CD the other…
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Graham Nash: This Path Tonight
With so many rock legends boarding the great tour bus in the sky, the surviving performers can be forgiven existential thoughts. This new offering from the former Hollies/CSNY man opens with the line “Where are we going” and goes on: “I may not know where I’m going/But I’m on this path tonight”. This slightly…
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Phil Collins: Dance Into The Light
We confess to never having heard this album or any of its songs, and it’s possible that even if we had, we’d have forgotten them. It’s all a bit unremarkable, though it’s a pleasant album with several enjoyable songs. The downside is that it’s Collins at his slickest; unmemorable tunes with an unremarkable voice don’t…
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Phil Collins: Hello I Must Be Going
The latest in the series of remastered and expanded Collins reissues is this, his second solo work and follow-up to 1981’s Face Value. While the latter is a pop album, Hello saw Collins adopt a style that was more akin to the music he made with Genesis. Playing it first time through, our main feeling…
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Cathy Berberian: Music of the World
During her life mezzo-soprano Berberian sang everything — as the sleeve notes say — from Monteverdi to the Beatles (the “mushroom heads” as they were called in Germany). She interpreted contemporary avant-garde music composed by people such as John Cage and Igor Stravinsky, as well as works by Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Kurt Weill, as…
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Matt Corby: Telluric
Corby sounds like he should be in a boyband and he appeared on Australian Idol some years ago, so were expecting something a lot less good than this. He’s a handsome surfer dude but clearly works hard — he released five EPs and then went off to learn keyboard, drums and guitar before knuckling down…
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Kano: Made In The Manor
Everything about this says it’s not aimed at the Review Corner: we’re unlikely to use the word “manor” to describe any place we ever lived and we were never the types to pretend we were from Brixton instead of Congleton, and so unlikely to use the words bloodclart, gyal or dem. Still, Kano has a…
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