Author: jerobear
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Majd and Tafreshipour: In Absentia
This CD features music from Fozié Majid (b 1938) and Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour (b 1974) who, as their names suggest, are Iranian — although one lived in England as a child. Tafreshipour specialises in contemporary music that “reaches across time and continents” and has worked with numerous major ensembles, soloists and orchestras. Majd was born…
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Jesse Mac Cormack: Now
It’s always interesting what one album makes you listen to: after this it was Duke Special, aka Peter Wilson, a songwriter from Belfast, we turned to. Duke Special is not a household name; Jesse Mac Cormack, similarly a solo bloke who sounds like a band, with synth supplying percussion and instrumentation, is probably heading for…
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Anton Batagov: Big My Secret (Live)
Batagov is a Russian pianist and post-minimalist composer. Some piece on the internet said of him: “The post-Cagean philosophy of Batagov’s projects eliminates any boundaries between ‘performance’ and ‘composition’ by viewing all existing musical practices, from ancient rituals to rock and pop culture and advanced computer technologies, as potential elements of performance and composition.” Whatever…
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Maren Morris: Girl
Morris plays country pop and it’s hard to criticise this album as, within its genre, it’s flawless. As carefully aimed at various demographics as Ed Sheeran, mind. Morris made her name three years ago with her major-label debut, Hero, which sold by the Ford F-150 load. She comes from Texas but has moved to Nashville,…
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Scott Lavene: Broke
This little gem of an album is a cross between 70s David Bowie, 80s Dury and modern day punk/alt poets such as Beans On Toast or even Frank Turner, with a bit of Sparks thrown in. We’ve never heard of Lavene before: in an interview with musicmusingsandsuch.com he said: “I’m an Essex boy. I make…
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Rival Sons: Feral Roots
This is our first taste of Rival Sons, though they have charted in the UK. They formed in 2009, and this is their sixth album. They’re a big band. They supported Deep Purple on their 2016 European tour and toured as main supporting act for all of Black Sabbath’s The End tour, which marked the…
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Pottery: No. 1
Pottery — who should play Stoke Sugarmill, in The Potteries, as soon as possible — have drums/bass driving the songs along, and all very interesting. They’re the kind of band who’d go down well at the Blue Dot festival — a strong dance groove coupled with psychedelia. Although it’s not particularly innovative, we’ve been enjoying…
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Vampire Weekend: Father Of The Bride
Vampire Weekend were always smart, mixing African guitar and indie, and generally being intelligent. They met at an Ivy League university. Their drummer supports Spurs. So brainy are they perceived that all the reviews we read for this were themselves intellectual; we read several that verbosed at length but never mentioned any music. Here goes.…
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Stevie Nicks: Stand Back, 1981-2017 (Box set)
A bit like Michael Jackson, we can overlook our favourites’ flaws if they turn out good tunes. Nicks not only turned a blues band into Fleetwood Mac but bashed out some good tunes of her own, for which we forgive her the cocaine abuse, the brandy, the champagne and the chain-smoking that ruined her voice.…
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Body Type: EP2
Body Type are from Australia and play scuzzy rock somewhere between the stark indie of Kleenex and the pop of Kim Wilde. The songs are solid rather than sparkling but we have to say we’d cross a festival field to see them live, they’re probably entertaining. There seems to be a lot of bass and…
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