Category: Uncategorized
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Blair Dunlop: Notes From An Island
All Dunlop’s albums we’ve had in the past have been good – you’re always guaranteed quality with Mr D – and we have seen him move from folk to pop, and Notes From An Island sees the move continue. It’s now more pop than folk, and more commercial. The tunes always seem simple (but aren’t…
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Barbara Jackson and Jill Owen: Mysterious Marks at Little Moreton Hall
Leek historian (and former Chronicle deputy editor) Doug Pickford writes books that make the reader stop and think about how our ancestors see the world. We say “get on the A34” or “turn left by the Red Lion” but mythical beings rarely come into it (unless you count the Mr Tree Face in Alsager). Yet…
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Anne-Marie: Speak Your Mind
This is everything that’s right and wrong about modern pop music. Wrong, because it’s as formulaic as they come – EDM beat, X Factor-style vocals, lavish production but little melody (it’s all about the beat, man….) — but right because it’s impossible not to enjoy it, and it’s cheerful. Anne-Marie can sing: Wikipedia reports she…
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Andrew McCormack: Graviton
Nominally jazz, if only for the instruments used, this ambitious album takes in everything from prog to bop. On his website McCormack explains that gravitons are tiny particles that carry the force of gravity. “It is what brings you back down to Earth when you jump,” he says, though how this applies to the album…
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Calypso Rose: So Calypso
Calypso Rose is 78 and a calypsonian (a new word on us). She started writing songs at 15, and has composed more than 800 tunes and recorded more than 20 albums. Born Linda Sandy-Lewis, she grew up on Tobago, the birthplace of calypso. This new one is a follow-up to her 2016 platinum seller Far…
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The Handsome Family: Through The Trees
This re-issue — it’s 20 years since The Handsome Family first released it — is bloody marvellous. Its basic sound could be 100 years old, a couple of (rather sinister) folks with beards and overalls making country music on a porch, but it’s got a modern feel and the lyrics are heartfelt; in fact, that’s…
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Hinds: I Don’t Run
When 2016’s Leave Me Alone came out, Hinds were the new super-cool indie band. We found its ramshackle garage charms, well, charming, but they had one sound and that charm faded as the album played through. It would have been a good six-track EP. Wikipedia reports that it only debuted at 47 on the UK…
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Dave O’Higgins: It’s Always 9.30 in Zog
If the title alone doesn’t want to make you buy this — it’s surely the coolest album name ever — the sleeve, evocative of the old Blue Note house style, should. O’Higgins is a Birmingham-born jazz saxophonist, who has recorded 19 albums as a leader, so while he’s new to us, proper jazz fans must…
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My Indigo: My Indigo
Dutch singer Sharon den Adel is better known for leading Within Temptation, a symphonic metal band; it’s a genre that is less than huge over here, but is massive in Europe, where the band has shifted millions of albums. She wrote this to deal with personal problems. The album is probably okay for Europeans who…
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Port Cities: Port Cities
Unlike Hinds (see here), who are all quirk, Port Cities are not quite quirky enough; as those ghastly people on The Apprentice say, they have no USP. That’s not to say this is a bad album: Port Cities can turn in a good tune; the type Fleetwood Mac or Tom Petty fans would hear on…
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