Category: Pop rock
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Richard Hawley: Hollow Meadows
Hawley treads a thin line between sublime songs that are works of art – as good as any music you will hear, anywhere – and more pedestrian tracks that are just ok. Although his earlier solo albums were mostly gentle, anachronistic crooners the last was more psychedelic and this new one is a mix between…
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Tom Robinson: Only the Now
We suspect people who remember Tom Robinson back in the day will like this, while younger listeners will find it harder to digest. While the Tom Robinson Band did have some good tunes, the music was often second place to the lyrics, which were never less than entertaining. Songs were either just songs about nothing…
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Squeeze: Cradle The Grave
We wanted to use the word “genius” in the Rudimental and Richard Hawley reviews but couldn’t, because we also had Squeeze to write about. And they are: genius. Despite buying Squeeze’s first three singles (Take Me, I’m Yours, the fairly terrible Bang Bang and Goodbye Girl) we never bought an album either then or through…
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Peter Andre: Come Fly With Me
It’s easy to forget that Peter Andre was a singer before he became part of the vacuous Katie Price industry, a rather unfortunate facet of 24-hour rolling news that we try and ignore. An outbreak of Ebola that attacked only Z-list celebrities could wipe out every one of these people and make no difference whatsoever…
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Duran Duran: Paper Gods
Simon Le Bon makes it so easy to mock Duran Duran, so much that we (generally as a nation) forget what a good band they are and also (we specifically, in the Review Corner) that Save A Prayer, one of our favourite tunes, is from as strong a pop album as you’ll get Rio. If…
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Iron Maiden: The Book Of Souls
Despite having only 11 tracks, this is Maiden’s first double album and has a total running time of 92 minutes. We’d guess Maiden’s fans all died a little when they first heard that news. As non-partisans, we guess it marks the start of a new chapter in Maiden’s career, with over-achiever Bruce Dickinson bouncing back…
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Erasure: Always: the Very Best of
This is a box set, deluxe edition, limited edition. It’s not the first hits package but presumably it’s the biggest and moreover the closest to Christmas 2015. We’ve only got one CD of three, which has got all the hits you can shake a stick at. For completists, the album includes a new version of…
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Caravan Palace:
We wish this sort of music — electroswing — was more popular, in the same way that we wish more men wore trilbies and more people called each other Ma’am and Sir as they do in the US. The world would be a more civilised place. Mr Scruff had a dabble with electro swing, with…
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Jess Glynne: I Cry When I Laugh
We put off playing this for a couple of weeks because we didn’t think it would be up to much; chart-bothering female vocalists compared to Emeli Sandé don’t really do much for us cynical Review Cornerers. But we must confess to being pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable this album is. The interweb reports she had…
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John Dhali: EP
Dhali is from Congleton and this is a most impressive EP, with no sign of that “local artist, budget production” thing going on. The sleeve is nice and the music even better. Dhali has a folky troubadour style, somewhere between Willy Mason and Jake Bugg, with a splash of Jeff Buckley on the vocals. Opener…
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