Category: Pop rock
-
Luke Sital-Singh: Time Is a Riddle
Luke S-S’s debut came out three years ago and we’d forgotten what a lovely thing it was, a rich, folky-pop album with a lot of soul. He has a very nice voice. This new album is different, but just as good. It’s like he spent the three years listening to Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac;…
-
Sheryl Crow: Be Myself
After at least one album (the last one, anyway) of commercial country music designed to be played on a car radio on an open American highway, Sheryl Crow has gone back to the acoustic-based country pop-rock of yore. Also designed to be played on a car radio on an open American highway. It’s good, in…
-
Erasure: World Be Gone
Donald Trump is obviously a terrible president but it’s not all bad: the media ratings are up in the US thanks to the trail of chaos he leaves behind, while Erasure seem to have been inspired by the state of the world when they wrote this (and that was before Theresa May teamed up with…
-
Dua Lipa: Dua Lipa
This is not the kind of album we would normally listen to, slick RnB pop by the latest young person with a decent voice, but as she is walking out with Mr Chris Martin and thus now fodder for the Daily Mail sidebar of shame, we thought we’d give her a serious listen. The whole…
-
James House: Berwick Street
We thought House was a young up and coming singer, but it turns out he’s 62 and a veteran, writing both country and western: he co-wrote Grammy-nominated country song of the year Ain’t That Lonely Yet for Dwight Yoakum and A Broken Wing for Martina McBride, as well as Diamond Rio’s number one In a…
-
Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie (self titled)
Tango In The Night was pretty much Buckingham / McVie —Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood were banished to a mobile home because of drugs issues, John McVie was off drinking — so we had high hopes for this. Oh well. Buckingham / McVie are talented songwriters who’ve been doing this for donkey’s, and Buckingham is…
-
Various: Music from The American Epic Sessions
We thought Old Crow Medicine Show doing Blonde on Blonde live in Nashville was pretty cool but this is even better. The backstory is that it’s a television documentary on the early days of music. In the 1920s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies took to the road to find new…
-
Alvarez Kings: Somewhere Between
After the recent review of the harmless-but-fan-friendly Scouting For Girls’ re-issue of their debut after a decade-long career, we’ll be more charitable to formulaic pop bands for a while. Alvarez Kings make a sound that’s somewhere between Coldplay/U2 (stadium-filling Marr-ish guitar and muscular ambient synths) and poppier fare, and sing songs about love, and the…
-
Will Joseph Cook: Sweet Dreamer
We can see young Will (he looks about 12) carving out a nice career among people who like well-crafted tunes from cool singer-songwriters; the kind of act that fills Manchester Apollo without bothering the charts much. A nice living if you can do it. The songs are all neat and crisp, well produced but not…
-
Van Morrison: The Authorised Bang Collection
Yet another three-CD re-issue for Van fans, and this is pretty good. Although some tracks have knocked around as bootlegs, and Morrison clearly had issues with Bang at the time, he writes the sleeve notes and says Bang owner Bert Berns (who wrote Here Comes The Night) was a genius with soul. Berns met Morrison…
Review Corner 