Category: Singers
-
Phil Collins: The Singles
It’s Phil Collins. It’s the singles. What more do you need to know? Avuncular Phil has drawn a stickman (sticksman?) playing drums on the cover to pretend it’s not just a hits package coming out before Christmas. The collection shows why Collins is vastly under-rated as a talent: if the Press hadn’t mocked him so…
-
Idina Menzel: Idina
If you’ve got small children, you’ll know all about Menzel: she’s the voice of Queen Elsa in Frozen and of course sings Let It Go. Oh, how parents wish they could. Before being Frozen she rose to fame playing Maureen Johnson in the Broadway musical Rent. She won a Tony award nomination in 1996 and…
-
Amy Duncan: Undercurrents
This is a gentle and refined pop/folk album that seems to go on too long. If you like her voice, you may find it caressing your ear throughout and never tire, but otherwise the good moments are left stranded between the overly saccharine or bland. She’s a talented musician: she plays guitar, piano and double…
-
Robin Sarstedt: Tu
There’s going to be a lot of people who like this — people with a fondness for acoustic guitar and singer-songwriters doing it well. There’s nothing laboured about Sarstedt’s music, no shoe-horning words to the tune or trying too hard. It may not be breaking any new ground and despite skirting around topics one might…
-
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…
-
Kate Jackson: British Road Movies
Jackson was in The Long Blondes, one of those bands we always thought we should listen to more but never did; slightly worthy indie. This solo effort, coming eight years after songwriter Dorian Cox’s ill health caused the Blondes to split, is much more appealing. A reasonable thumbnail of this would be a UK indie…
-
August Wells: Madness Is The Mercy
August Wells is a duo, the Dublin vocalist and songwriter Ken Griffin and John Rauchenberger, a New York pianist. They’re one of those bands with cult superstardom written over them, thanks to the sumptuous arrangements and Griffin’s distinctive voice (baritone?). Griffin is of Irish bands Rollerskate Skinny and Favourite Sons, the former apparently being popular…
-
Elizabeth Hilliard: Sea To The West
There’s no use pretending this is an easy album to get into, though it is beautiful and calming in places. It’s an album of contemporary works for solo voice with occasional electronics, six works by four composers, all written for the solo voice. If it was purely an electronic album it would be out on…
-
Jonathan Antoine: Believe
Possibly the best-named person to come from Chigwell, and predictably called the “teenage Pavarotti”, Antoine rose to stardom through Britain’s Got Talent, the rare exception of someone with real talent appearing on the show. Antoine has a fantastic tenor voice and on this album he sings a selection of popular classics, both old and new,…
-
Oxfam presents Stand As One — Live At Glastonbury 2016
Good cause, average album. It’s raising money to tackle the refugee crisis and in memory of MP Jo Cox, with profits split 75-25 between Oxfam and the Jo Cox Fund. You can also sign a petition Fair play to the artists, who have donated the songs from their Glastonbury Festival set to this live album.…
Review Corner 