Category: Pop rock
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Starsailor: All This Life
Starsailor were one of those bands that did well for a time when melancholy indie was popular, a time when Keane could mysteriously sell millions of records and vapid clichés (musical and lyrical) were enough to get a number one album. Starsailor sounded like they knew who Coldplay were and what rock was, they just…
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Fantastic Negrito: The Last Days of Oakland
Xavier Dphrepaulezz (pronounced De-Frepple-Ez) is about the most interesting musician you could come across, and now he’s got a successful enough album that it’s out on a major label, after an initial release a year ago. Last Days is out on Cooking Vinyl, after coming out on Fantastic Negrito’s own Blackball Universe. The UK label…
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Black Grape: Pop Voodoo
Surprisingly this is really good and captures the groove of the excellent Black Grape debut, 1995’s It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah. The opener Everything You Know Is Wrong—Intro sees Mr Ryder give the listener both barrels of his endearing daftness as he monologues about the world: “Hillary’s an old bird who —-s up on her…
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Jocee: Just Love
Jocee is living the dream whether or not anyone buys this. She already makes a living with a residency at the Blues Kitchen in Shoreditch, ran an acoustic music night for emerging artists with Pixie Lott for three years and is a member of the Urban Voices Collective. She has worked with Paloma Faith at…
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William the Conqueror: Proud Disturber Of The Peace
William the Conqueror, aka Ruarri Joseph, played the Just So Festival at Rode Hall last year and his show was so impressive that he and it are tied together in the Review Corner collective memory. He was so good we bought two of his solo albums, second hand. In his youth (he was taking his…
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Danny and The Champions Of The World: Brilliant Light
Danny and The Champions are one of those bands that make you shake your head at the fickleness of music: they should be playing big venues but last year (?) they played Biddulph Up In Arms; prestigious as that is, it’s not Manchester Apollo or even Band on the Wall. The last album was more…
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Klyne: Klyne
We’ve waited a long time for an electro/dance/pop album as good as CagedBaby’s* 2005 Will See You Now … and we’re still waiting. We had high hopes for Klyne, as the early tracks we heard were good. Like Cagedbaby, they were pleasant pop tunes played electronically and with edge and coolness. Obviously, the early tracks…
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Wendy Bevan: Rose and Thorn
Bevan sounds like she’s from the 80s but isn’t. She writes electronic pop that’s rooted in the electronic pop of the late 70s/early 80s, the kind of stuff the geriatric part of the Review Corner bought from A&A’s indie-band shoebox. The sound of early Human League, or even Visage; too arty to be New Romantic…
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Art of Noise: In Visible Silence
Art of Noise were momentarily big in the 80s, partly because they had one good song, Close (To The Edit), which the Review Corner bought on a 12” picture disk that looked like a piece of candy Willy Wonka would peddle to small children. They were odd even then, the label ZTT’s contribution to art,…
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Joseph Parsons: The Field / The Forest
This is a hard album to review. It’s not an album to write about; it’s an album for someone who buys one album a month and takes time to savour it, getting to know all the songs and developing favourite moments. Parsons is a singer/songwriter, but has a full band. He’s in the same ballpark…
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