Category: Singers
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Selah Sue: Reason
Belgium produces some great music: we bought a stack of quality indie CDs (Boy And the Echo Choir, Nox) from a shop in Brussels (near the weeing nipper, if you’re over). Rock band Triggerfinger are from Lier, and we had to buy tickets to see the Rolling Stones to catch them live in Hyde Park.…
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Cyndi Lauper: Detour
We don’t know much about Lauper other than the hits (Girls Just Want to Have Fun, True Colours etc). That aside, though we know she’s had a long and successful career. Given her wacky persona, an album of country covers might not work but this does and it’s entertaining: pop enough for a general audience,…
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Meadowlark: Paraffin EP
Meadowlark’s last EP Dual is one of our favourite releases in the 15 years we’ve been writing reviews. It’s lovely, mainly because of Kate McGill’s voice, but her bandmate Daniel Broadley’s minimalistic guitar and synth arrangements complement her rather elfin vocals to perfection. They produce nuanced and textured sparse tunes, to which the word…
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Lydia Kakabadse: Cantica Sacra
This album of sacred choral works for the 21st century is a delightful CD, with some surprises as far as its background goes: Lydia Kakabadse has her roots in Greece, Austria, Russia and Georgia, but was born in Southport and grew up in Altrincham. Clearly a compulsive over-achiever, she started composing at 13 and after…
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John Illsley: Long Shadows
“Low key Dire Straits” would be a thumbnail review of this new album from bassist Illsley. We saw him live a while back and don’t remember him as being so Dire Straits-ish but the guitar work and overall sound on this suggests that the signature Straits sound was as much his as Mark Knopfler’s.…
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The Croutons: No Nonsense Monkey Business
The Croutons are Bill Ollier from Goostrey and Chris Wood from Congleton, who met in 2005 and so have been writing and playing together for a decade. We imagine the songs tell the story of the band: early hopes of becoming the new Simon and Garfunkel abandoned when they realise it’s more fun to play…
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Dave Dove and Amy Wakefield: The Players
This opens with You Ask Me, sounding like a Whitest Boy Alive song, with clean acoustic guitar and double bass, before the vocals come in; it’s clear we’re in home-made territory though in a good way — we once returned from Shetland with a boxful of CDs from local musicians sounding like this. It’s endearing…
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Highasakite: Camp Echo
If you’re going to name your album after a camp in Guantanamo Bay and then call yourself Highasakite, you’d best not be offering a stoner’s view of American politics. “It’s bad stuff, man.” Happily, Highasakite’s Ingrid Helene Håvik says Camp Echo is “more a state of mind”, and we know what state that is: chilling…
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John McCusker: Hello, Goodbye
Charming is the word for this solo album from fiddle player McCusker: he’s celebrating 25 years as a professional musician but as he joined the Battlefield Band when he was still a nipper (well 17) he’s still a comparative stripling. As well as the Battlefield Band, he’s played and produced with Kate Rusby and Heidi…
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Underhill Rose: The Great Tomorrow
This is not a ground-breaking album or anything new but it’s appealing and while it sounds modern they have a traditional sound too, with banjo, fiddle and pedal steel in there. It’s more to the folk side of country than the rock. Having said that, opener Our Time Is Done is the full band playing…
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