Tag: rock
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The Orwells: Terrible Human Beings
The Orwells occupy the ground somewhere between landfill indie and genius. Landfill indie, for those lucky enough to have forgotten, was a guitar-based rock of the lowest common denominator, designed to appeal to young lads on lager and with lyrics to match. The Orwells’ sound is that, and every song sounds a bit like something…
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Dutch Uncles: Big Balloon
This is Marple band Dutch Uncles’s fifth album. We thought we’d missed some early ones but it turns out we heard their first two, Dutch Uncles and Cadenza (both good, particularly the latter), and it was the next two that slipped under our radar. Not surprising: while Cadenza was quirky and charming, O Shudder (the…
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Laura Marling: Semper Femina
We’ve missed a couple of Marling albums; she was always good but if this new album isn’t her best, we must have missed some crackers. The music is slickly delivered but intimate, and slightly downbeat. It takes in several genres; some parts are country, some folk, some jazz, a mix of English folk and 60s…
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Fleetwood Mac: Tango in the Night
You should all have heard this, or parts of it. It was the Mac’s second-best selling album after Rumours and some of the tracks are as well-known as the Rumours classics — Seven Wonders, Caroline, Tango in the Night, Little Lies and Family Man among them — so there’s not much to say on the…
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Jarrod Dickenson: Ready The Horses
Good as Laura Marling is, she’s beaten into second place by this superb album from Dickenson. From the moment it starts playing, it’s a joy. Hailing from Waco, now living in Brooklyn, Dickenson has a honeyed, soulful voice and writes semi-acoustic soulful blues and country tunes. Like Marling, the music is reflective and mature, and…
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Heroines of Love and Loss
The way things work in general is that classical albums take a couple of plays to get into, whereas it’s the pop/rock tunes that have instant appeal; until now, we’ve never had a classical album with that “must play every day” thing you get with a catchy pop tune. Until now; Not that a collection…
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Jim Parker: Travelling Light
The title says it all: Parker writes light music, and the collection takes the listener to different parts of the world. (He also wears his talent lightly, the sleeve notes being witty and self-deprecating). You might not know the name of Jim Parker but you’ll know his music; he has written for television and his…
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Stormzy: Gang Signs and Prayer
We can see why people love Stormzy, the first grime artist to land a number one album; he’s got charm and intelligence. The aging musos in the Review Corner haven’t got much in common with a black man from London, but even as young dogs we’d not have gone down the Tip Café to meet…
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Nick Cave: Lovely Creatures
The titular lovely creatures are the songs, and as Mr Cave told us in a Press release: “There are some people out there who just don’t know where to start with The Bad Seeds. This release is designed to be a way into three decades of music making; the songs we have chosen are the…
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Hackney Colliery Band: Live
Whenever we’re down in the dumps in the Review Corner, we often play Rock With the Hot 8, by The Hot 8 Brass Band, a New Orleans outfit that blend hip-hop, jazz and funk. It’s not brass as you might expect if you’re a fan of Foden’s Band, and nor are there eight of them,…
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