Review Corner

Author: jerobear

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    The Head: Space

    The most interesting thing about this is the punnery in the title. As for the rest, The Head, brothers Mike and Jack Shaw, joined by Jacob Morrell, all from Atlanta, play the right notes at the right time, and make a noise that approximates to melodic stadium-pleasing rock. Except it’s a bit duller. This is…

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    Tom Hingley and the Kar-pets: May Contain Nuts

    A Christmas present for Inspiral Carpets fans, this is a tribute band by the band’s real singer, similar to From The Jam the other week: the covers of hits sound much better when the voice is familiar. May Contain Nuts is a live multimedia DVD/CD where Hingley and his band the Kar-Pets (presumably the Carpets…

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    Michala Petri and Lars Hannibal: Garden Party

    This is an odd little album, but in a good way. Michala Petri (recorder) and Lars Hannibal (guitar) played their first concert in Andalusia, Spain, in 1992, and 25 years and 1,500 concerts later have selected this programme of some of the pieces they have played live. As the cover suggests, birds loom large and…

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    Pet Shop Boys: Yes

    This is PSB’s 10th album and it’s the latest in a series of reissues that we’ve been enjoying. We were never massive PSB fans, the early singles aside (though we have seen them live, and surely no-one actually dislikes the Boys) but being sent albums to review, we’ve been impressed at the intelligence and diversity.…

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    John Turner: Christmas Card Carols

    This has got to be one of the coolest things: recorder player Turner writes a short Christmas carol each year and sends it to friends and family, not in the form of a recording but as notes written on a card. They’re all musicians, so they play the music for themselves. One recipient writes in…

  • Arcane Roots: Melancholia Hymns

    Arcane Roots’ debut album Left Fire is one of our highlights of the last decade: loud, ambitious prog/math rock with tons of melody. Follow-up album Blood and Chemistry ditched the melody in favour of more complex but less tuneful prog, with some screaming thrown in. This new album reels back on the full-on prog but…

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    Cliff Richard: Stronger Thru the Years

    The title is loosely based on his 1989 album Stronger, and the double CD opens with Stronger Than That, a tight, upbeat pop tune from the late 1980s, with a fast beat and typical 80s sound: we kept expecting Crocket and Tubbs to kick the door in. After that, it’s a compilation of his hits…

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    Engelbert Humperdinck: The Man I Want to Be

    The existence of Engelbert Humperdinck has always baffled us: to whit why Arnold Dorsey, of Leicester, should adopt the stage name of a German 19th century composer of operas. The idea worked, which is more surprising. Even if you don’t know who Humperdinck is (the still-alive one) you’ll know his songs: described as “one of…

  • Timothy Hamilton: Requiem

    Carlsberg have that advert, “If Carlsberg did…” followed by something really good. The best way we can put this is, “If Cliff Adams did requiems…” By which we mean that this modern piece — it was commissioned in 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War — manages to be…