Category: Pop rock
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The Kut: Grit
To be critical of this is a bit like taking a Doc Marten to a kitten; it just seems wrong. The Kut is Princess Maha, a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and PhD (positive schizotypy related research), a double award winner in the UK Songwriting Contest, and awarded Arts Council funding to create the album. She’s not an…
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Surprise Chef: Education and Recreation
Surprise Chef are from Melbourne and play funky soul with some nods to jazz. It’s the kind of music you might find in a Tarantino movie, quirky but sharp, and with a real groove. But it usually makes us think of reggae dub plates, those sparse tracks made for other people to add sounds. Surprise…
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Berries: How We Function
This excellent album is melodic, loud, fast, punky and just the right length. Musically the sound is somewhere between the better end of early punk / indie and early Foals, when math rock was still a thing. There are some nice heavy rock riffs in places, maybe not Black Sabbath but certainly a dark edge.…
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Charlie Bit My Finger: Back and Fourth
This Belgian pop punk band channel NOFX a little (and only a little), from the sound to the jokery with nomenclature – Charlie Bit My Finger is a famous internet video (child bites another) – while Back and Fourth is their third album. The sound is solid, mosh-pit pleasing, sing-along anthems to get sweaty to…
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Rich Jacques: Everything Must Change EP
This is a nice EP, like really nice. Almost too saccharine, but not quite. It’s just about Americana / pop as opposed to folk, although Richy boy has a delicate voice and is often to be found on acoustic guitar; he adds other effects and harmonies to move away from the folk feel. A slightly…
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Neil Young and the Promise Of The Real: Noise and Flowers
Young is churning out his archives at a prodigious rate, some of which are excellent, others for the completist only, as they say. This one is great and if you’ve got a Neil Young fan in the fam, this is one gift you don’t have to worry about for Christmas. The great thing about Young…
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Flevans: A Short Distance To Fall
Flevans is a multi-instrumentalist, DJ and, according to his Bandcamp, with an “accessible style” that straddles funk, breaks, soul and electronica. That really saves writing any review, because that’s about what it is. Still, we get paid by the word so … It’s a really good album, nudging in as our contender for album of…
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Jake Rodrigues: Lucky Spoon
We played this a couple of times before anyone hit the nail on the head, and that was (inadvertently) a grumpy chum, repeating the complaint of the elderly that old music is better, but like a stopped clock occasionally correct, specifically, of Radio Two: “Every song was a reminder of how pop music was; simple…
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The Communards: Red
Bonus tracks can be a bit annoying, a classic album ruined by the bolting-on of outtakes and demos you don’t really care about – but not in this case, the bonus tracks adding gravitas to what might be seen as purely a pop/dance album. The Communards formed in 1985 after singer Jimmy Somerville left Bronski…
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Luke Sital-Singh: Dressing Like A Stranger
We liked Luke Sital-Singh’s early material but found his last album a disappointment, something that in turn was itself disappointing, as he can be good. He said thank you on Twitter for the poor review, and we’re assuming he was not merely being sarcastic but had a wake-up call, and this new album is really…
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