Review Corner

Tag: rock

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    Alpines: Another River

    Alpines’ debut Oasis was released two years ago, well-made electronica pop/dance with an upbeat feel. Another River is similar but more downbeat in sound, with more slower tracks. There are no real standouts but it’s a nice mood album, good for late night or early morning. Rather than standouts there are nice moments: the charged…

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    Letlive: If I’m The Devil…

    We’ve not come across this band before. From what we can tell from other reviews, their previous albums have mixed raucous punk with soul; singer Jason Aalon Butler is revered by fans as a genius, and this new album is either brilliant or terrible. One website had two reviews, one good one bad. We can…

  • Terry Wogan: A Celebration Of Music

    This is in aid of Children In Need and Sir Terry is a lately deceased national treasure, so it is impossible to say anything bad. It’s a double CD collection of Sir Terry’s favourite tunes. There are some proper classics on here, and some very talented people, but the tone of the songs is the…

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    Johann Joseph Fux: Concentus musico-instrumentalis

    This isn’t really a Christmas album but it’s baroque (with a feel of early music). It’s the kind of music you’d have playing while you imagined you lived at Chatsworth House, freshly-scrubbed  servants singing carols out in the hall and wood, gathered by minions that morning, burning merrily on an open fire on Christmas morning.…

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    Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou: Madjafalao

    This is surely going to go down as a classic in world music. It’s ace. Poly Rythmo are from Benin and play afrobeat, funk, soukous and other styles, often based on religious music rhythms. They formed in 1966 and recorded around 500 songs between the late 1960s and early 1980s. We came across them via…

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    Trainspotting: OST

    Trainspotting was a hit film in 1996, both the film and the Britpop soundtrack summed up the state of the UK at the time. Britpop was never our cup of tea, with a few exceptions; rock stars shouldn’t hobnob with prime ministers either. Pulp and a few others aside, there were loads of rubbish bands…

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    John Brown’s Body: Fireflies

    We’re guessing this is modern reggae; they’re from Boston and call themselves “future roots music”. We like a bit of reggae but it’s (obviously) a tight genre, so we asked our local reggae fiend and he said they’re “making waves, an up and coming band”. They’ve actually been going 20 years so we guess this…

  • Peter Hope: Wind Blown

    Hope is best known as a composer of light music — his Ring Of Kerry is palatable and easy to listen to, so easy that it was used as test card music back in the day (you can find anything on YouTube). Petit Point is similar, the kind of music Monty Python would use in…

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    ZZ Top: Tonite at Midnight

    Some live albums undergo more than a little studio engineering before hitting the shops; as one might hope with ZZ Top, they seem to have pressed “record” and what they played is what you get. The mix on opener Got Me Under Pressure sounds a bit raw and if a drum fill starts a fraction…

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    Phil Collins: Dance Into The Light

    We confess to never having heard this album or any of its songs, and it’s possible that even if we had, we’d have forgotten them. It’s all a bit unremarkable, though it’s a pleasant album with several enjoyable songs. The downside is that it’s Collins at his slickest; unmemorable tunes with an unremarkable voice don’t…