Category: Singers
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Phil Collins: Dance Into The Light
We confess to never having heard this album or any of its songs, and it’s possible that even if we had, we’d have forgotten them. It’s all a bit unremarkable, though it’s a pleasant album with several enjoyable songs. The downside is that it’s Collins at his slickest; unmemorable tunes with an unremarkable voice don’t…
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Phil Collins: Hello I Must Be Going
The latest in the series of remastered and expanded Collins reissues is this, his second solo work and follow-up to 1981’s Face Value. While the latter is a pop album, Hello saw Collins adopt a style that was more akin to the music he made with Genesis. Playing it first time through, our main feeling…
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Cathy Berberian: Music of the World
During her life mezzo-soprano Berberian sang everything — as the sleeve notes say — from Monteverdi to the Beatles (the “mushroom heads” as they were called in Germany). She interpreted contemporary avant-garde music composed by people such as John Cage and Igor Stravinsky, as well as works by Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Kurt Weill, as…
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Matt Corby: Telluric
Corby sounds like he should be in a boyband and he appeared on Australian Idol some years ago, so were expecting something a lot less good than this. He’s a handsome surfer dude but clearly works hard — he released five EPs and then went off to learn keyboard, drums and guitar before knuckling down…
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Kano: Made In The Manor
Everything about this says it’s not aimed at the Review Corner: we’re unlikely to use the word “manor” to describe any place we ever lived and we were never the types to pretend we were from Brixton instead of Congleton, and so unlikely to use the words bloodclart, gyal or dem. Still, Kano has a…
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EPs – Meadowlark, John Parry
Meadowlark: Paraffin We’ve been doing this reviewing lark man and boy for 15 years or so and Meadowlark’s last EP is one of our favourite releases over that period. It came out last year but rarely a week goes by without us playing it. It’s an aural relaxant; nice melody but chilled and the dreamy…
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Jeff Buckley: You And I
Poor old Jeff: died too young after rashly going swimming in a big river with his boots on, leaving us with one album and memories of a fantastic voice. That lone album Grace contains his cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, one of the finest tracks ever recorded. Never mind scouring the world for inspiration, Nasa…
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Deltino Guerreiro: Eparaka
Guerreiro is from Mozambique and while you could call this world it’s actually pop, Guerreiro drawing in influences from a variety of musical cultures. It most reminded us of Moonflower vintage Santana, which combined the energy of Brazil with tribal rhythms and western rock. Guerreiro developed his sound travelling from the north to the south…
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Poliça: United Crushers
You wait ages for one moody electronic album to come along and then you get two. Christine and the Queens (published shortly, or above, depending when you read this) is poppier than this, which combines the sparse electric feel of The xx with something meatier; Portishead perhaps (though the female vocals made us think of…
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