Category: Rock
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Bob Webb: Tree Of Life, A Thirty-Year Anthology
The music industry (like books) is propped up by massive-selling stars — one Adele will keep an entire company in profit. (Beggars Group saw total operating profits jump 229.2% to £16.68m in 2015, courtesy of Adele’s 25, while 2011, when Adele’s 21 was released, saw the firm turn over £86.2m in revenue, with an operating…
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Letlive: If I’m The Devil…
We’ve not come across this band before. From what we can tell from other reviews, their previous albums have mixed raucous punk with soul; singer Jason Aalon Butler is revered by fans as a genius, and this new album is either brilliant or terrible. One website had two reviews, one good one bad. We can…
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John Brown’s Body: Fireflies
We’re guessing this is modern reggae; they’re from Boston and call themselves “future roots music”. We like a bit of reggae but it’s (obviously) a tight genre, so we asked our local reggae fiend and he said they’re “making waves, an up and coming band”. They’ve actually been going 20 years so we guess this…
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Disturbed: Live at Red Rocks
Disturbed are led by David Draiman, a man with a loud voice and impressive showmanship, to the fore in this live show; he sounds as if he should be doing voice-overs for carpet or double glazing adverts. This live set reels off all the crowd-pleasers and, given that Disturbed has found a winning formula and…
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The Courteeners: Mapping The Rendezvous
We caught The Courteeners on an early tour at the Sugarmill and thought they were going places, but while they’re making a good living, they’ve never taken off as we thought they might. “Lad rock” is too harsh but they never matched the sound they had in singer Liam Fray’s head. You can see the…
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Empire of the Sun: Two Vines
This is the third album from Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore and continues the two men’s contribution to classy pop. Steele is the genius behind The Sleepy Jackson while Littlemore is bit of an over-achiever, having co-written for The Sleepy Jackson, been the frontman of the electronic duo Pnau, a member of the art-rock band…
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Joan As Police Woman and Benjamin Lazar Davis: Let It Be You
The Guardian review of this says it “doesn’t quite do the pair justice” but we think they’ve not listened to it enough. It takes a number of plays for its charms to become apparent, but they are there. The album sees Joan Wasser link up with New Yorker Benjamin Lazar Davis, a multi-instrumentalist, for a…
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Seasick: Steve Keepin’ The Horse Between Me And The Ground
This is undoubtedly Seasick Steve’s best album; the title aside it has no music hall showmanship about it — or at least no back of the cowboy wagon showboating — and it’s got depth and subtlety. Maybe Mr Wold is as sick of Seasick as we are, though it’s been an excellent career move. Though…
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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree
Cave has been getting progressively more ambient (or at least playing more atmospheric, dark piano ballads) for a couple of albums, possibly because of the time he devotes to soundtracks. This new album is no different, and there’s a companion film, One More Time With Feeling. Clearly this one is different: while the album was…
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