Author: jerobear
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Frank Carter and The Rattlesnakes: End Of Suffering
Carter rose to prominence with Gallows, a punk band famed for their high energy music and even higher energy shows, where Carter would regularly end up covered in blood. He has mental health issues — not so long ago he blamed his “fighting demons” for pulling out of a tour with Papa Roach — and…
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Elephant Sessions: What Makes You
Elephant Sessions’ claim to fame is that they blend trad folk (they’re from the Highlands) with indie rock, which means they have an electric rhythm session, plus electronic dance beats, and mandolin and fiddle. Peak Elephant Sessions is possibly the bit in Colours where it all drops down to an electronic kick drum and ambient…
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Gwilym Simcock: Near and Now
If you like piano and you like the late-night end of jazz, there’s nothing to dislike about this. Simcock is a world-class musician — his day job while he did this was touring with Pat Metheny’s quartet. He’s also playing a world-class instrument: for you piano-heads it’s a Steinway B from 1900, custom-rebuilt by Germans…
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Nils Landgren: 4 Wheel Drive
Landgren is part of the Funk Unit, and this CD sees three equally famous players join him: Landgren on trombone and vocals, plus Michael Wollny on piano, Lars Danielsson on bass and cello, and Wolfgang Haffner drums. It’s mostly covers, the fi rst being Another Day In Paradise from Phil Collins. Landgren’s vocals are gentle…
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Ten Tonnes: Ten Tonnes
Just when you thought landfill indie — disposable tunes from bands with guitars — had gone away, up pops Ten Tonnes. He’s at the posher end of the genre, more The Kooks than Pigeon Detectives, but it’s formulaic. He lifts it above the routine by being bright and breezy, and he (Ten Tonnes is Ethan…
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Nouvelle Vague: Curiosities
Nouvelle Vague the band passed us by, we must confess. Nouvelle Vague to us was an album curated by David Byrne of a new wave of French folk bands, which was excellent. This was still French — from a man who speaks it so well he could write “Qu’est-ce que c’est” in the Psychokiller lyrics…
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Ben Bedford: The Hermit’s Spyglass
This album tells a day in the life of Ben and Darwin the Cat in a farmhouse (“The Hermitage”), a proper little house on the prairie (Illinois). Some of the tracks are short — opener Morning Rise is only 1:20), and he gulps Morning Coffee in the same time. Some are instrumental, such as The…
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Danny Schmidt: Standard Deviation
We thought Standard Deviation was a song about two girls falling in love over a shared fondness for physics but the release notes say it is a “romance set in the multi-dimensional realm of theoretical physics”. Schmidt goes on to say that it “touches on the pushback” that smart women face in traditionally male-dominated arenas,…
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John McCabe: Mountains
This new album from the late John McCabe dates back to 1985. He visited the EMI studios in Sydney to make an album of works by American and Australian composers. The project never materialised, the studios closed, and the masters were presumed lost. Then a cassette copy found among the composer’s papers, and remastered. This…
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Erik Simmons: Jubilee, Carson Cooman organ music vol. 10
Carson Cooman makes Neil Young look a slacker, and many of Young’s albums are from the vaults, not new. Cooman is composer in residence at the Memorial Church, Harvard University, and a prolific composer, the recordings often played by Erik Simmons — this is his 10th Cooman organ album for Divine Art. This latest collection…
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