Review Corner

Category: Pop rock

  • ,

    Mew: + –

    It’s a week of bands we don’t know much about, Death Cab aside. Mew have apparently released a number of albums, though we’ve never come across them before. Plus Minus is an odd mix of sounds: it’s prog but on the subtle side, with none of the thundering complexity so beloved of some bands in…

  • ,

    Andrew Montgomery: Ruled By Dreams

    Montgomery was in a brit pop band called the Geneva, who we’ve not heard of. Sometime reviewer CNM, who has the memory of an elephant after intensive memory training on Memory Island, doesn’t remember them either, so it’s safe to assume they weren’t big. What he’s been doing since then is a mystery — he’s…

  • , ,

    Meadowlark: Dual EP

    Anyone who listens to new music on a regular basis will know that feeling when you play a track and know it’s going to be your must-play record for the next week. It doesn’t happen very often but was the case with the first track on this lovely EP from Meadowlark, which we’ve been playing…

  • ,

    Ghostpoet: Shedding Skin

    He hit fame and fortune (well moderate fame and probably not much fortune) after being Mercury nominated a couple of years back. His signature sound is gloomily spoken lyrics over equally gloomy electronic music, though it’s quite pleasant to listen to. We’re missing out a whole layer of intellectual input with that thumbnail. On this…

  • ,

    I Am Kloot: Live – Hold Back The Night

    We think it’s true to say that we were staggered about how good this album was. It’s maybe not Elbow but it was certainly as good as them in parts and reminiscent of Sniff And The Tears. They particularly reminded us of an Irish band called Aslan, who are big over there but not so…

  • ,

    Thomas Truax: Jetstream Sunset

    Truax (pr True Axe) came out of the antifolk movement in New York in the late 90s — according to Wikipedia his contemporaries included Beck — but Truax seems to have avoided fame and followed a steam punk route. He decided that his USP (a terrible Apprentice acronym he would probably never use except ironically)…

  • ,

    Various: WW 2.0

    We like a lot of the classical CDs we review — particularly the modern classical — simply because they are interesting. This electronic album is equally interesting and shows that the line between classical and pop is a thin one; indeed it closes with a piano piece. It’s a compilation from WW Records and over…

  • ,

    The Overtones: Sweet Soul Music

    The Overtones do for music what Disney does for Gothic slasher movies. This is the finest soul music, created by people with, well, soul, and put through The Overtones rinsing machine to become bland albeit beautifully presented pop. As entertainment for people who want some nice tunes, we can’t fault it. They all have nice…

  • , ,

    Purple: [409]

    Purple are a band we can imagine going to see at the Sugarmill, getting there to find the venue packed with young people who know every word to every song and mosh madly down at the front while the band goes bonkers on stage. It would be a short gig, as this is their only…

  • ,

    Nadine Shah: Fast Food & Denai Moore: Elsewhere

    Female singers with exotic names are like buses: you wait ages for one and then, well you know the rest. We’ll start off with Shah, as she’s the one about whom there’s a bus, sorry buzz. We’ve seen her compared to PJ Harvey but she’s more reminiscent of Siouxsie and the Banshees, at least the…