Category: Pop rock
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Neneh Cherry: Broken Politics
Cherry’s fifth album in 30 years take some appreciating, but after a number of plays, we like it a lot. It takes those repeated plays to get into as it’s nuanced, and nuanced can take time. All the songs feature Cherry’s vocals over percussion, although that percussion might be piano, and some of it is…
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Clean Bandit: What Is Love?
Clean Bandit fall in that category of bands who surprise us by getting very famous (when much better bands do not). They’re as brainy as the lovechild of Brians May and Cox: some band members met at Jesus College, Cambridge, while another member was at Westminster School and in a string quartet with the…
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Boyzone: Thank You and Goodnight
Boyzone have managed to exist for 25 years without troubling the Review Corner sound system, but we guess fans will love this. Thank You and Goodnight is a collection of new songs, with collaborations guaranteed to get them lots of airplay and bring in new fans. Ed Sheeran, who was still in nappies when BZ…
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Cilla with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
We have to confess that we didn’t spot this was with the Royal Liverpool Phil — we slapped it on and played it a few times, but Black’s 60s hits sound a little cheesy (see below), so the new orchestral arrangements didn’t initially sound out of place. Black was a singer first and foremost, and…
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Parcels: Parcels
The opening bars of this CD tell you all you need to know: it’s the 1970s, and Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder are the kings of pop. Scintillating guitar, disco beats, harmonies. Despite sounding as old as the Review Corner’s scratchiest vinyl, Parcels manage to be sound modern — they worked with Daft Punk for…
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Tom Odell: Jubilee Road
NME famously gave a previous Odell long-player a zero-star review, calling his music “offensively dull”. The review was itself gratuitously offensive — Mr Odell Snr wrote in and complained — but after listening to this a number of times, we think NME did have a point: it’s not offensive, but it is dull. He’s a…
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Cher: Dancing Queen
If you’re stuck for Xmas presents or even music for your Xmas party, Cher has obliged. Abba wrote some of the best pop tunes in history, Cher is, well, Cher. She knows what’s going to work and she doesn’t muck about much with the songs, so Abba fans — which is basically everyone, in the…
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Josh Taerk: Beautiful Tragedy
Taerk comes across as a performer who’s massive in his home country (Canada in his case) and is trying to crack the UK, but he’s not; this new album is his third and he’s yet to break through. It’ll be unbelievable if he doesn’t: he writes instantly appealing, melodic pop/rock tunes that will appeal to…
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Jess Glynne: Always In Between
And the mystery of Jess Glynne continues. Mystery because the sleeve art and lyrics suggests a deeply insecure woman who battles with failure, yet she’s had seven No1 singles, more than any other British female artist. I Cry When I Laugh, her last album, released in 2015, is still the 51st best-selling album in the…
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Pet Shop Boys: Behaviour / Very / Bilingual
The PS Boys have been re-releasing their albums all year so they’re not out for Christmas but they’d make good pressies — the sleeve notes alone are worth the price, entertaining, indiscreet and informative as they are. This final tranche is albums that came after their heyday but they’re all still good. We might have…
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