Review Corner

Tag: Congleton Chronicle

  • ,

    Rudimental: We The Generation

    Thanks to the lateness of this arriving, it was already number one in the album charts (and it’s 40 in music on Amazon), which tells you as much as a review could ever do. People like this stuff. Rudimental appear to have become the house band for new talent (though they write the tunes too).…

  • , ,

    Richard Hawley: Hollow Meadows

    Hawley treads a thin line between sublime songs that are works of art – as good as any music you will hear, anywhere – and more pedestrian tracks that are just ok. Although his earlier solo albums were mostly gentle, anachronistic crooners the last was more psychedelic and this new one is a mix between…

  • ,

    Sons of Kemet: Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do

    Winners of the MOBO best jazz award for their debut Burn, Sons of Kemet play jazz that’s not got much to do with the clichéd image of earnest men playing long trumpet solos in a dingy clubs. Possibly apart from the dingy clubs bit. For a start, much of the bass and motion in the…

  • ,

    Moores Symphony Orchestra: Fortmann, Nelson, Lieuwen and Grainger

    We can’t work out what links these four interesting pieces except the Moores Symphony Orchestra performed them between 2008 and 2013. It seems to lack a central theme and varies in tone and mood, but it is interesting. It’s an hour or so’s entertainment rather than a CD with a set mood. Admittedly, all four…

  • , ,

    Tom Robinson: Only the Now

    We suspect people who remember Tom Robinson back in the day will like this, while younger listeners will find it harder to digest. While the Tom Robinson Band did have some good tunes, the music was often second place to the lyrics, which were never less than entertaining. Songs were either just songs about nothing…

  • ,

    Squeeze: Cradle The Grave

    We wanted to use the word “genius” in the Rudimental and Richard Hawley reviews but couldn’t, because we also had Squeeze to write about. And they are: genius. Despite buying Squeeze’s first three singles (Take Me, I’m Yours, the fairly terrible Bang Bang and Goodbye Girl) we never bought an album either then or through…

  • ,

    Peter Andre: Come Fly With Me

    It’s easy to forget that Peter Andre was a singer before he became part of the vacuous Katie Price industry, a rather unfortunate facet of 24-hour rolling news that we try and ignore. An outbreak of Ebola that attacked only Z-list celebrities could wipe out every one of these people and make no difference whatsoever…

  • ,

    Duran Duran: Paper Gods

    Simon Le Bon makes it so easy to mock Duran Duran, so much that we (generally as a nation) forget what a good band they are and also (we specifically, in the Review Corner) that Save A Prayer, one of our favourite tunes, is from as strong a pop album as you’ll get Rio. If…

  • Michael Janisch: Paradigm Shift

    As we slotted this into the Review Corner CD player we wondered: “Will this CD change our lives?” It looked that kind of music. The answer was no but it’s still a very powerful CD that a fortnight’s playing and a short review can’t do justice to. Bad news first: the downside is that (at…

  • ,

    Iron Maiden: The Book Of Souls

    Despite having only 11 tracks, this is Maiden’s first double album and has a total running time of 92 minutes. We’d guess Maiden’s fans all died a little when they first heard that news. As non-partisans, we guess it marks the start of a new chapter in Maiden’s career, with over-achiever Bruce Dickinson bouncing back…