Category: Pop rock
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Basia Bulat: Are You In Love?
This is a decent pop album that, without being great, manages to wriggle its way into your affections. The chief appeal is her voice, which manages to be throaty and powerful without being too dominant, and while sounding calming. She’s got deep-ish vocals and the sound is slightly wistful, while also being bold. Wistful is…
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Smoke Fairies: Darkness Brings The Wonders Home
We’ve never really warmed to Smoke Fairies (Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies), who’ve been going for years, releasing music every now and then, but this is solid, comforting indie, with injections of goth and blues. The vocals may be your decider, as they’re bold, powerful and to the fore. The album opens with On The…
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Littlemen: It’s a Beautiful Thing
If ever an album hid its delights in its opening bars, it’s this. The start of opener The Girl With The Red Blouse sounds something like a country take on Wet Wet Wet’s Something In The Air, a gentle, slow pop tune with soft vocals, no indication of what’s coming. Then it builds in power…
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David Gray: White Ladder (20th Anniversary Reissue)
Long ago there must have been genetic mutation that made it impossible for humans to dislike David Gray’s White Ladder. A final joke from the Neanderthals, maybe. Statistics show that every house in Ireland owns at least one copy, and many have dormer extensions made solely of White Ladder CDs. We vaguely remember the era…
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Lil Pump: Harverd Dropout
Ah the States: first they give us Donald Trump, now it’s Lil Pump. All our scatological dreams are coming true. Sadly no musical ones with this debut from Pump. His schtick is that he’s really smart but dropped out of “Harverd” to rescue rap. He’d probably have been better going to college and doing some…
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Mike Batt: The Penultimate Collection
Mike Batt’s long and varied career is celebrated on his new Penultimate Collection double album, with 35 tracks highlighting his work as performer, composer, arranger and key British musical figure — but especially as performer. Not only does it feature Batt’s original solo material — including his international solo hits — but also his own…
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Skylark and The Scorpion: Weather The Storm & Melanie Martinez: K-12
You wait ages for a multimedia concept involving film and music to come along, and then two arrive at the same time. Weather The Storm is accompanied by a 10-part short film set against the Jurassic coastline of the Shetland Isles. Musically, it’s heartfelt and gentle folk; it’s on Guy Garvey’s record label so think…
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Green Day: Father of All…
At last: after unicorning around with rock operas and pulp-rock three-cd novelty releases, Green Day return with a strong album. It’s punk rock ‘n’ roll, albeit sanitised by producer Butch Walker, whose CV includes Taylor Swift. Opener Father Of All … kicks off with drums and riffs that echo Hendrix’s Fire but then becomes more…
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Squirrel Flower: I Was Born Swimming
One might expect some kind of fey folk frippery from a person (Ella O’Connor Williams) who calls herself Squirrel Flower, but this is pretty decent. Squirrel’s got a deeper voice than might be predicted and a fair few of the songs are decently beefy, the guitar playing sturdy in the vein of Dinosaur Jr, albeit…
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Bombay Bicycle Club: Everything Else Has Gone Wrong
Bombay Bicycle Club are cursed by the same, er, curse as Foals: everything they do is good, but you expect that, so it’s hard to assess.Their quality control is just really high. We’ve long thought Foals and Bombay Bicycle are the best bands in the UK so we were doubly pleased when both released new…
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