Category: Pop rock
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Charlotte Gainsbourg: Rest
Critics generally seem to love this, and it’s selling well on Amazon, top 300 or so in CD and digital. One can only assume it’s people with a fondness for nostalgia as it leaves us a little unmoved, sounding as it does like the soundtrack to a 70s French cop film. The music is mostly…
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Laura Oakes: Nashville Stole Your Girl (Acoustic EP)
The title says it all: Nashville, acoustic. It’s acoustic country pop that sounds like it’ll get played on Nashville easy-listenin’ day-time radio, except that Laura is from Liverpool. If you like pop country, you might have heard of her: this charted at No.2 in the iTunes album country chart on release day. It features four…
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Jim White: Waffles, Triangles and Jesus
White’s story is an interesting one (not that he might agree): influenced in his childhood by gospel music, he has reportedly been a comedian, a fashion model, a boxer, a preacher, a professional surfer and a New York cab driver. He attended film school at New York University but then entered a “deep hole of…
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The East Pointers: What We Leave Behind
We knew where this Canadian folk group were from without looking it up. We visited Prince Edward Island a few years ago to see the owner of the independent paper on the island (Halifax, Nova Scotia is only a five-hour flight from the UK). The omnipresence of Anne of Green Gables aside, it could be…
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Pet Shop Boys: Elysium
This was their 11th album and named Elysium for the place the ancient Greeks sent their Gods for a blissful afterlife. It’s chilled and for a dance act, low key. That’s not to say the album lacks variety. Not as good as Very, reviewed last week but it has the comfort of the familiar, a…
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Squeeze: The Knowledge
Younger readers might not have heard of Squeeze, famous for hits such as Up The Junction and Cool for Cats; witty, insightful lyrics coupled with catchy pop tunes. In latter years they’ve reformed and toured but not achieved the same status as Madness or even some of the 2-Tone bands still touring. It was never…
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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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Aretha Franklin: A Brand New Me
This is pretty good. Some digital boffins have got Franklin’s original vocals from her classic Atlantic masters, hired the Royal Philharmonic, booked Abbey Road studios — which always sounds good in a Press release — and then mixed the new music and old vocals, with added backing vocals from Patti Austin. What you get is…
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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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