Review Corner

Tag: Congleton Chronicle

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    Phil Collins: Face Value / Both Sides

    It’s not quite up there with Blackadder going over the top or Del Boy missing the bar and falling over, but one truly great television moment was the opening episode of Miami Vice: Crockett and Tubbs drive down a waterfront road in a Ferrari Daytona Spyder, racing to a show-down. The soundtrack that made it…

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    Johnny Cash: Man In Black Live in Denmark

    The highlight of this CD is possibly not the Man In Black himself but a tune that later featured in Quentin Tarantino’s best film. This CD (it was originally part of a DVD) was recorded in 1971 for Danish television, which explains the self-censoring line “son of a bleep” at the end of Boy Named…

  • Percy Grainger: Music for Saxophones

    This isn’t what you might expect from Grainger, at least if you only know Percy for his jaunty arrangements of sea shanties that are played at the Last Night of the Proms. There’s a little bit of said jauntiness towards the end but mostly the sound reflects Grainger’s fondness for folk songs and early music.…

  • Eternal Summers: Gold And Stone

      We don’t like being negative about music — to write even a half-way decent tune is very hard — but this pop indie album did nothing more than fill us with apathy. There’s nothing to set it apart from any other indie album from a band with jangly guitars and a female vocalist. We’re…

  • Terence Charlston: Mersenne’s Clavichord

    This pleasant album is more important for scholars of music and keyboard buffs than your casual listener, though it’s a nice enough collection. Early-music specialist Terence Charlston is playing Mersenne’s Clavichord, a clavichord built according to specifications left by Marin Mersenne – no examples of an original French clavichord survive. Wikipedia reports that Mersenne, a…

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    Metric: Pagans In Vegas

    We should really like this Canadian band (whom we’ve not heard of before): Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw perform with Review Corner favourite Broken Social Scene, and Haines has guested on albums by artists such as Stars, both of which are quality indie. This album lacks the appeal that Broken Social Scene have, and despite…

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    BBC Radio 1: Live Lounge 2015

    Yet again it’s that annual exercise in making us feel old as, despite listening every single day to new music, the teenage associates of the Review Corner make it clear that this what da kids (or at least a lot of them) listen to. Our problem is that we like bands and musicians who make…

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    EJ Moeran: Folksong Arrangements

    We’ve been enjoying this collection of folk tunes, which doesn’t sound as you might think, neither stuffy nor reminiscent of a bearded man in sandals with one finger in his ear. A modern equivalent — CDs are like buses — is the Beans on Toast album (review next week); that band’s Jay McAllister being an…

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    Postcards From Jeff: Modern Language

    We quite liked Postcards From Jeff’s EP last year; we thought they were American but now discover they’re from Manchester (so know “quite liked” means “really liked”). This full-length collection of tunes sees us part happy and part a little disappointed: they create dreamy indie rock/pop and do it well but they don’t wander much…

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    Ian Mitchell: Isn’t This A Time? American Music For Clarinet

    This avant garde CD features Ian Mitchell, who (so our notes tell us) is one of the leading exponents of contemporary music for clarinet. As its name suggests, the album features work by American composers. These include jazz legend William “Bill” Smith, co-founder of the Dave Brubeck Octet, and Merle Travis, whose Sixteen Tons, recorded…