Review Corner

Author: jerobear

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    Ratworld: Menace Beach

    Someone, somewhere must have said something wise about music constantly reinventing itself and this is the latest incarnation of shoegazy, scuzzy, distorted guitar pop. Teenagers who are new to all this will find this to be exciting and moshpit friendly music; older musos who’ve heard it all before will find Menace Beach entertainingly enthusiastic and…

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    Team Me: Blind As Night

    This is a proper mix of styles and influences: think Arcade Fire covering Kate Bush by way of a generic American pop punk band. The first time we played it through it all just slipped by, but it’s not an album you can half-listen to. We’ve warmed to it via successive plays. Opener Ride My…

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    Aled Jones: The Heart Of It All

    He’s come a long way since Walking In The Air and now he’s almost a national treasure, appearing on Songs of Praise as he does. We’re not being judgemental (and could be wrong) but we’d guess a lot of his fanbase are churchgoers, probably members of the WI or Mothers’ Union, and perhaps their spouses.…

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    Wu-Tang Clan: A Better Tomorrow

    This has met a mixed reception: the general Press has given it good reviews, long-time fans and the specialist writers have been less generous. One long-time fan on Amazon writes: “There are no moments that make you think ‘that was a clever lyric’, that you are listening to a potential single, or even something that’s…

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    Glass Caves: Alive

    We reviewed this a couple of weeks ago, using a faulty CD that skipped a couple of tracks. Now equipped with a fully working download, we’re going to plug them again, as they’re very good. Think Arctic Monkeys with a slick polish and sparkle (which you could read as “Arctic Monkeys having lost their edge”…

  • Kasse Mady Diabaté: Kirike

    We’ve been enjoying this album from the Mali musician, which goes back to the roots of his music, which we’d guess is religious or at least mystical. Tinariwen are also from Mali, and for comparison, this is like an acoustic version of them. Like much of this kind of music, the songs here lay down…

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    Ruby Hughes, Komalé Akakpo, Martin Gester: Venetian Christmas

    Note the title: this is how they celebrated Christmas in Venice, not how we do now. We’d guess there wasn’t carol singing and reflecting on the shallowness of collecting material goods during one’s brief sojourn on Earth. Nope, it would be lavish: draw the Venetian blinds down over the Venetian windows, don the fancy masks…

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    Kill It Kid: You Owe Nothing

    We were expecting some kind of indie pop band from the name. The opening track took revenge for this preconception by beating us around the head with a length of nail-hard blues and dowsing us in spit and sawdust. They’re so hard they make Royal Blood sound like One Direction. OK, perhaps that’s an exaggeration…

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    Ruth Wilkinson, Miriam Morris, John O’Donnell: Handel’s Recorder

    This album is pretty well what it implies: Handel, played on recorder. It’s noteworthy because it features three of Australia’s leading early-music specialists (it was recorded in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), playing instruments made to as closely resemble the ones of the time as possible, tuned as per in their day. The major…

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    Stevie Nicks: 24 Karat Gold — Songs From the Vault

    This is a collection of Nicks’s tunes, the ones she had just lying around and it’s, well, a Stevie Nicks album. Despite the fact that the tracks are from various years (between 1969 and 1987), it holds together well as a body of work. Recorded in Nashville with a group of session players (including Dave…