Review Corner

Tag: Congleton Chronicle Series

  • Every Time I Die: Low Teens

    This is one for metalcore/hardcore fans only, though it’s one of those frustrating albums where non-metalheads wish the band would stick to being melodic and avoid the screaming. On the plus side, it’s a varied album, with sounds from brutal metal to heavy rock and into grungier stoner rock, with bands including Kyuss and Black…

  • ,

    Jaws: Simplicity

    Jaws are a cross between shoegaze, stoner rock and The Cure. They have the same kind of upbeat tempo but downbeat sound that The Cure do well; it’s possible they know this because the opening couple of bars of the first song are almost a Cure-clone but it’s the most Cure-ous moment on the album…

  • ,

    Bruno Mars: 24K Magic

    We obviously know of Mars but never realised how good he was (100m records sold can’t be wrong). This new album is so good it stops you dead. Some of the reviews we read referred to new jack swing as a reference, but Mars is no more or less than Michael Jackson; a couple of…

  • , ,

    The Membranes: Inner Space/Outer Space

    We were going to say we’d never heard The Membranes but looking on Wikipedia we have — they are a post-punk band formed in Blackpool in 1977, and their first release was the Flexible Membrane flexi-disc in 1980, which we bought and still have somewhere. The band included John Robb, who we always think of…

  • , ,

    Randall Thompson: Requiem

    We should have played this sooner: it’s superb and would be a great recording for early Christmas morning (or late Christmas Eve). The sleeve notes say that more than 30 years after Thompson’s death, several of his choral works are performed “with regularity”, and Alleluia (1941) at one point had more copies in print than…

  • Andrew Riverstone: Sunny Monday

      Riverstone played in Alsager recently and his promoter sent us a review of his album, which is easy listening (in a good way) blues. Riverstone’s music pays homage to classic artists from the 60s and 70s and, having worked as a session man, he’s a fluid and expressive guitarist. Live, Ed Sheeran-style, he layers…

  • , ,

    Two Door Cinema Club: Gameshow

    We bought Two Door Cinema Club’s debut album and saw them live supporting someone or other when they first started; they were a decent indie band. Next thing we know our pet teenager is a big fan and Two Door are selling out tour dates. So we were pleased to get this new one, and…

  • ,

    James Weeks: Signs of Occupation

    Avant-garde composer Weeks is trying to make mundane, minimal music. “Occupation” is used in the sense that Weeks occupies our time by filling that time with music, and occupies the musicians, filling their time by giving them something to do, rather than asking them to play actual music. Landscape, occupied by man in another meaning…

  • Busted: Night Driver

      The surprise is not that this is pretty good but the fact that they’re still going — a pop band whose debut came out in 2002. Charlie Simpson has gone into metal and acoustic pop and is now in the band Once Upon A Dead Man while Matt Willis released a decent solo album…

  • ,

    Tori Amos: Boys For Pele

    If you’d have asked, we’d have pretended to know about Amos, based on a recollection of a hit single or two and a woman playing the piano. We’d have been wrong: first time through we hated this 20th anniversary re-release of one of her classic albums, what with the Kate Bush-esque wailings and shoutings, and…