Author: jerobear
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Tigers Jaw: Spin
Tigers Jaw have been going for 12 years. Half the band left a couple of years ago, leaving guitarist Ben Walsh and keyboard player Brianna Collins (both singers). For 2014’s Charmer, the musicians who had left the previous year came back, even though the band was officially a duo. Spin (technically lower case, spin, but…
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Lau Decade: The Best of Lau (2007-2017)
Lau are one of folk’s supergroups and Aidan O’Rourke, Kris Drever and Martin Green have been playing together in this format for more than a decade – the album title notes the period since their first full album release, Lightweights and Gentlemen. This being folk, where the audience connection is strong, they asked their fans…
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The Little Unsaid: Imagined Hymns and Chaingang Mantras
This is our favourite of four albums we’ve had recently, a fact that would have surprised us at first play. Lau are the slick stadium band, Dan Walsh the bloke down the pub providing entertainment, The Little Unsaid offer serious music on serious topics. At first hearing, it’s a little intense but it’s compulsive listening.…
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Hue And Cry: Pocketful Of Stones
In musical terms, we should be saying this is the album of the year. Every time we play it, the quality of the songwriting and the playing, and Pat Kane’s soulful voice, bowl us over with their greatness. Sadly, we’re trivial, superficial, and prefer the latest band with a hot new riff. Hue and Cry…
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Magnus Lindgren: Stockholm Underground
You’re a detective in New York in the 70s and the captain’s asked you to investigate some cats in the hood who’ve been causing trouble. He sends you to Magnus’s, the hip club where the black dudes and white cats hang out. You walk in; it’s smoky with the smell of reefer, lots of people…
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Valentin Silvestrov: Moments of Memory II
This rather lovely, if somewhat melancholic, programme of music combines a traditional sound with the more modern. Ukrainian composer Silvestrov says he does not write new music, instead describing his work as “a response to, and an echo of, what already exists”. This is particularly true with the gentle and atmospheric opening piece, Two Dialogues…
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Johann Simon Mayr: Stabat Mater in F minor
This is a bit of a “what it says on the tin” CD. The music has been restored by Mayr expert Frans Hauk from two manuscript versions. Mayr’s (1763-1845) Stabat Mater in F minor was singled out by a contemporary biographer “for its marvellous effect” and “heavenly beauty”, and he (or she) wasn’t wrong. From…
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Too Many T’s: South City
Opener South City Court is not too promising, and neither is Sixty’s Ford until the chorus comes in, rapping about music, sibilantly swearing that the sixties, C60s and Seasick Steve is not their choice: “So we switch to the Beastie Boys”. Ah, they’re Beastie Boys fans and want to pick up where the Boys left…
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Sugarmen: Local Freaks
A good title for this; as their name suggests they’re from Liverpool and we guess popular in their home city. They may indeed be local freaks, Liverpudlians who sing (mostly) without a noticeable accent and don’t try to sound like any of that city’s other famous bands, which is good. We don’t even have to…
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Gogol Bordello: Seekers and Finders
Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello emerged from the depths of the Balkans (ok so it was Lower East Side of Manhattan but that doesn’t sound so romantic) a good few years ago. We’ve never taken to their raucous brand of punk: it’s good fun and brilliant at a festival, but not something you’d sit and listen…
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