Review Corner

Tag: Congleton Chronicle

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    Erasure: Always: the Very Best of

    This is a box set, deluxe edition, limited edition. It’s not the first hits package but presumably it’s the biggest and moreover the closest to Christmas 2015. We’ve only got one CD of three, which has got all the hits you can shake a stick at. For completists, the album includes a new version of…

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    Caravan Palace:

    We wish this sort of music — electroswing — was more popular, in the same way that we wish more men wore trilbies and more people called each other Ma’am and Sir as they do in the US. The world would be a more civilised place. Mr Scruff had a dabble with electro swing, with…

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    Jess Glynne: I Cry When I Laugh

    We put off playing this for a couple of weeks because we didn’t think it would be up to much; chart-bothering female vocalists compared to Emeli Sandé don’t really do much for us cynical Review Cornerers. But we must confess to being pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable this album is. The interweb reports she had…

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    John Dhali: EP

    Dhali is from Congleton and this is a most impressive EP, with no sign of that “local artist, budget production” thing going on. The sleeve is nice and the music even better. Dhali has a folky troubadour style, somewhere between Willy Mason and Jake Bugg, with a splash of Jeff Buckley on the vocals. Opener…

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    Natalia Andreeva: Russian Piano Music (Vol 11) Galina Ustvolskaya

    This double CD of piano music is for people who like a touch of bleakness to their listening. Galina Ustvolskaya was a shy and introspective composer known, according to the sleeve notes, as “the lady with the hammer” because of her unrelenting rhythms. The sleeve notes talk about her distinctive notation, which as far as…

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    Cliff Richard: 75 At 75

    We were going to say that Cliff’s best career move would have been to choke on an olive in about 1964, then he’d be remembered as that cool rock ‘n’ roll singer who never fulfilled his potential (for lachrymose Christmas songs). But listening to CD1 on this collection, he was never cool in the first…

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    George Crumb: Voices from the Morning of the Earth; Complete Crumb Edition, Vol 17

    More Crumb (it’s about the third this year — we’ve quite become fans) and the opening piece on this, the title work, has the strapline American Songbook VI, which is an early warning for avant-garde takes on popular tunes by the likes of Bob Dylan (Never mind “Judas” when he went electric!). It’s a hypnotic…

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    False Advertising: False Advertising

    We’ve played this a lot in the past couple of weeks and despite its charms it’s just failed to hit the spot. We can’t make a connection with it in the way you do with albums you really like. False Advertising are from Manchester and play grunge; you could add “indie punk” to that description…

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    New Order: Music Complete

    We can’t have been alone in wondering how New Order’s first new album without Hooky would sound and here’s the answer: a classic. We remember Hooky talking about Waiting for the Sirens’ Call and his basic critique on any track was how much of his bass there was. He’s an iconic player but any band…

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    Stimmwerck: Flos Virginum, Motets Of The 15th Century

    As far as we’re concerned you can’t go wrong with heavenly voices from the 15th century (at least, modern musicians singing heavenly music from the C15th), and this is about as good as it gets. Admittedly there’s not a lot of variation but Stimmwerck, a German vocal quartet, prove that the human voice is the…