Eurovision Rubbish 2007

The title is actually a little harsh because it actually only refers to the six shortlisted UK entrants revealed publicly today.

The competition itself, while hardly a trend-setter in the wider world, goes from strength to strength and a record forty-two nations have registered to take part in 2007 (the 52nd time the Eurovision Song Contest has been staged) and twenty-four of them will contest the final in Helsinki's Hartwall Areena, more usually used for ice-hockey, on 12 May 2007. The Eurovision Song Contest can throw up the odd surprise, as Lordi proved in 2006, but I'd rather bet on any entry than those shortlisted as the UK hopefuls.

My accusation is that they are the flotsam and jetsam of the UK pop world.
The artists themselves are however only part of the problem because the song choices are almost unimaginably dire. It is, perhaps not coincidentally, the same kind of music that the French in particular still think we like - as I discovered when on holiday recently. We generally (but certainly not this blogger) think that French music has never had anything to offer and in return they unsurprisingly retaliated by playing the likes of Boney M's Rasputin.

At least as far as Eurovision entries are concerned this is actually a good thing because, to be quite honest, the would-be UK entries are firmly rooted in late 1970s and early 1980s music. That would possibly be fine if only they had anything new or truly original about them and had not simply focussed on all the most dated aspects of that time, which was however the era when the UK last enjoyed Eurovision success. Even the forthcoming TV voting show - that will determine which of the six will go forward to Helsinki (assuming the UK makes through to the final twenty-four as there is now a pre-contest) - carries the theme; it is called 'Making Your Mind Up', the title of the the song by UK act Bucks Fizz, that won the contest in 1981.

In 2003 the UK entry Jemini, with the song Cry Baby, plumbed the depths and came last out of the twenty-six entrants with, you guessed it, nul points. It seems that the lesson has not been heeded! My verdict is that we will get what we deserve in 2007 and nul points would actually be quite a good result.

How do you solve a problem like ... Caroline's A Victim?

This clearly has nothing to do with the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of "The Sound Of Music", but it does concern the sound of music. The "problem", in so far as there is perceived to be one, concerns this single that is one side of a double 'A-side' on 7".
If you want the 7" you are going to have to search for a copy but you can also download it here.

A certain amount of effort has gone in to posts claiming that she is "this year's Lily Allen", and indeed she herself has given Kate Nash her full backing, but listen to Caroline's A Victim and you will likely be left wondering why this particular song has any relevance to anything on Alright, Still. You are forgiven that because the answer is that it doesn't!

This is exactly why this single is a double A-side and Birds will seem more accessible to those expecting a modern urban narrative largely backed by semi-acoustic sounds (which she mostly plays herself).
The choice of Caroline's A Victim as the lead single has been questioned by many a reviewer already. I like it and think that it may be a statement of intent given that this is her first commercial recording (it is released on independent label MoshiMoshi [MOMO4]), and it is also a very interesting development. The track itself consists almost entirely of thundering bass and heavy drum parts, plus of course the vocals, and beyond the obvious is heavily influenced by ska, post-punk and a great deal more besides. It is also very curiously addictive and the versatility that it demonstrates is alarming in the context of a 7" single, but the ambition to take such a strange course is actually quite explicable, and maybe even logical. The major labels are circling, but she is holding out and she recently said:

"I'm really stubborn... if I want to write an eight minute song then I'm gonna do it.
I want my album to be eclectic."
(The Fly - February 2007)

In some ways this reminds me of the devil-may-care attitude to music genres that (2007 Brit Award Winner for Best Foreign Female) Nelly Furtado has deployed across her three albums to date. Don't worry if it's folk, funk or whatever else; if it works use it and if it doesn't then consider adapting it so that it does - just as she did quite spectacularly for the 2006 single Maneater, which sampled the Hall and Oates 1982 disco "classic" of the same name taken from the album H2O.
It was a huge hit - including four weeks as UK #1- but it could hardly have been predicted given the content of her second album Folklore, released in late 2003, which somehow managed to split opinions all ways: some people thought it was too folky and not enough pop, while others argued that it was not folky enough to be credible - but even so it has now sold to the tune of 2½ million copies, and counting, worldwide.

The problem is that to do this successfully requires a wide spectrum of musical influences but, based only on these two tracks, it would be unwise to rule Kate Nash out of any equation. Apparently still unsigned, she is currently recording her début album and it could just be very interesting indeed - with or without that eight minute song.

Never judge the artist from the album cover...

I'm taking a week off, starting tomorrow, and I've just decided that - as a matter of principle - I'm not going to take any music away with me! What I hear over the next ten days or so will almost entirely be that which a French ski resort (Les Arcs, as it happens) serves up in one way or another and that could be quite instructive but I rather doubt much of it will be of French origin. To be honest you'll probably find more of that here on this blog but it is said that 'a change is a good as a rest' and, at the very least, it will be interesting to see which artists they have picked up on.

My disappointment earlier this week with Not Too Late, the new album by Norah Jones, served to remind me that (and it was something I had stupidly forgotten for a moment) often the best things are not the ones that come with the biggest hype.
Somewhat obscure albums are good escapism as you are unlikely to be asked your opinion of them, unless of course you choose to offer it, and foreign language ones are even better because as long as they sound good there is no real need to analyse, or even really listen to, the lyrics. Or you even could try both at once but I find ignoring the lyrics hard to do nonetheless - even if they are incomprehensible!

There is some bleating at the moment that the UK chart music scene is stagnating but even if it is there is no excuse whatsoever; it is more easily changed by public opinion and marketing than it has ever been.
This is slightly more contentous: there has been much hubris on message-boards in the last year or so about the methods that certain artists (possibly helped by labels) have used to position themselves, firstly on My Space (Lily Allen, and others) and more recently on You Tube (Mia Rose is this week's bête noire in this respect) but it is just a case of new medium, old tactics; something that seems utterly lost on the "new moralists" of the internet forums (sic) who have, we can only assume, never illegally downloaded a single song between them!

As for the perceived lack of diversity in music, well I'm not having a word of it! If you can't find something of interest then you simply aren't trying hard enough!

The album below was included, strictly on its own merits, in my 'Top 10' of 2006 and if you think that The Pipettes are a strange throwback - three girls (l to r; Rosay, Gwenno and Becki) singing cleverly constructed faux early '60s pop, backed by their four-piece male backing band 'The Cassettes' - then you are taking the polka dots far too seriously. The lyrics are often so very NOT pop circa 1961' and you need to check out their 2006 début album We Are The Pipettes released on CD and 12" vinyl by Memphis Industries (MI), along with several 7" and CD singles, in 2006.

You might reasonably think that the blonde one, Gwenno Saunders, is just a 'pretty face' as she was recruited (at a gig where they were support to MI label-mates Go!Team in Cardiff) after one of the original members left in the early days of The Pipettes and because she had already appeared in Welsh language soap Pobl Y Cwm and, slightly later, as a presenter on BBC Wales.
Well maybe, but she had also already released two solo EPs on CD and they are both mainly sung in Welsh, with the exception of a few tracks sung in Cornish or English. The first of them was Môr Hud, released by Caernarfon-based CRAI Records (CRAI CD086) on 5th September 2002.

It is still available at a reasonable price but might take a little finding. The second, Vodya (CRAI CD089), was released slightly later but can equally be found and this time the title track is sung in Cornish.

Not too late... maybe the dinosaurs can adapt?

I got this album today. My local supermarket had priced the DVD/CD version as the normal one and s0 I had to buy it there and then! The good news ends here and because I generally don't do negative posts I hope this is as near as I will get in 2007. I fear, however, that it may not be so.

There is nothing wrong with the audio content of this album, which I believe is exactly the same as that on the regular release (I haven't yet watched the DVD content that also came with this version) but as far as I can tell far it has fewer truly memorable tracks than "Feels Like Home". Maybe people who like "Come Away With Me", which I still like less than 'Feels Like Home', will prefer it to her last album?

She has a great voice, and the album might well grow on me in time, but I seriously wonder if it will win her many new converts. EMI were also playing down its likely success last year and, particularly worryingly is that it was then still pre-release in the US. If they can't appear to be confident in an established artist in their home market what is the point in their existence?

Track 2 Sinkin' Soon has the following lyric:

In a boat that's built of sticks and hay
We drifted from the shore
With a captain who's too proud to say
That he dropped the oar
A tiny hole has sprung a leak
In this cheap pontoon
Now the hull has started growing weak
And we're gonna be sinkin' soon.

It is not a bad album but I can't help thinking that it could have been so much better. I wonder if the lyric above has something to say about the industry?
It is true that she has to worry about offending the strange sensibilities of a major label. That is hardly something an artist should have to worry about but it seems to me that this album is a result of playing rather too safe. Maybe she would be better off elsewhere?

A Hand Full of Hurricanes...

Plangent is a word I didn't expect to use in a review, or indeed elsewhere, any time soon but this album delivers as good a working definition of it as any dictionary could provide.

• Loud and resounding.
• Expressing, or suggesting, sadness; plaintive.

The two meanings may seem contradictory but, at least on this recording, they are not; the ambiguity of the lyric does however often make up for this.

"Terror is a great way to enforce your rules and we've lost control"

This is possibly as directly threatening as the lyrics get but the inspirations and implications clearly run far deeper and darker than that. It is also remarkable for the cunning use of her own vocals and instruments, used on a loop pedal (on Tiny Flower for example), combined with real, but almost always electric, guitar and vocals.

• 'A Hand Full of Hurricanes', the full début album by Rose Kemp, is released by One Little Indian on 5th February 2007.

In late 2006 it was preceded by a single, Violence, taken from the album and c/w non-album track Fire In The Garden, which was only available on 7" format (500 copies, all pressed on red vinyl).

While the music is quite different, when it comes to performance it may come as no particular surprise to learn that Rose Kemp is the daughter of Maddy Prior and Rik Kemp both of whom were members of the legendary Steeleye Span.

Harpo's Ghost - Thea Gilmore

I have had this album since it came out last summer - to no great commercial fanfare unfortunately - and I've been meaning to review it for months but it is a uniquely difficult prospect.

It named for Harpo Marx, who only expressed his on-screen personality via music, and had it been a début album such a gimmick could have been regarded as just that. In this case it can't!
Although Harpo's Ghost is her first album released on Sanctuary Records - and it comes after a break of 2½ years - it is not her second commercial release but her seventh; she released her first six in little over four years and even now she is only 26 years old! Most of them can still be found fairly easily, though The Lipstick Conspiracy (2000) is probably an exception.

Thea Gilmore got married in 2005 and had a baby in November 2006 but in the meantime she wrote, released and then toured this album around the UK and only this week she has announced a 26-date UK tour from February - April 2007. It does perhaps help that her husband, Nigel Stonier, is also her producer and occasional co-writer but it is still a considerable achievement.

Harpo's Ghost is quite special as it is an album full of influences from folk to early pop, rock and blues, but they are never hammed up or too obviously reverential and while it references Americana too, as Gilmore has also toured extensively throughout both the US and Canada, it is never in danger of becoming in awe of it. Sandi Thom, who has today been nominated for a 'Brit Award' for her first album Smile, It Confuses People, writes great songs but listen to these two albums back to back and you can soon spot the difference!

If the world were a fair place Harpo's Ghost would have been nominated for at least one 'Brit Award' tonight, but then nobody expected it to be and of course it wasn't. The world is patently not a fair place - a theme that is at the heart of this album - and she frequently rails against the music industry, but never against the music or the musicians, and also often the politics that underlie it and almost everything else.

While many labels despair at the slow output of their cherished artists - Michael Jackson only released five studio albums in the 20 years or so before his fall from grace - don't ever expect her to sign to EMI! Do however expect to hear more new songs soon (not least on the forthcoming tour) as she has recently blogged that during the aforementioned 2½ years she continued to write songs at the usual rate and that the result, by her own admission, means about three albums worth of songs ready to record!
It is hard to choose any favourites, but the 'hidden track' on the CD is a splendid closing salvo to a really rather persuasive, yet uncompromising, album.

I don't need triggers and I don't need a sword
There's a tool of revolution there in every single chord
I've got an old Neil Young record and a bottle of red
And I know he'll still be saying just what needs to be said.

If you like it, then I suggest listening to her 2004 album Rules For Jokers next.

The first UK album chart of 2007...

Five years ago it would have been dominated by US music, and while these things change this would have been quite unthinkable even a year ago...

These are the top-selling albums of the first full week of of 2007:

5: The Fratellis - Costello Music
4: Take That - Beautiful World
3: Snow Patrol - Eyes Open
2: James Morrison - Undiscovered
1: Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

The diversity is perhaps unremarkable - two indie pop/rock bands, a revived 1990s 'boy band' and two very different solo artists, one male and one female - but the fact that all of them are British acts certainly is.
What is more Amy Winehouse has finally reached the top of the album chart, three months after Back To Black was released, despite being both as mad as a box of frogs and also twice mentioned (1) (2) in this blog! She is a real star, and a natural performer, who just happens to be able to sing like no one else - see her live and you will know exactly what I mean.

On the make? The sweet price of failure...

Someone apparently on a downward career path is Alain Levy, chief executive of EMI's recorded music business. The division is performing poorly, particularly in the US market where it had not one album in the 2006 top ten sellers, and he has been fired. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever as regards his current plight.

It is true that he 'carries the buck' and has paid the price for what are essentially long-standing corporate management failings that have been blindingly obvious for ages. He could however have acted swiftly to fix them and he was paid (handsomely) presumably to do just that? My humble opinion is that if he couldn't see a way to do it then he should never have accepted the job in the first place.
It started boldly enough: Levy rescinded Mariah Cary's recording contact on his arrival at EMI. (She then promptly signed the biggest live performance contract in music history - basically to belt out her hits in Las Vegas forever!)
The artists are not, for the most part at least, at fault but the bloated self-justifying management structure certainly is and he has utterly failed to tackle it. It is amazingly easy to end an artists' contract but, strangely enough, not those of executives.

So what has redundancy cost M. Levy?
It would seem about £7 million ($14 million) --- paid to his bank account. That is reported as being the aggregate of a year's salary, bonuses already agreed (for doing what?) and the buying back of his share options. Oh - the sweet price of failure!

Try selling that line to aspiring artists and bands that work their a**es off touring, with nothing more realistic than the hope of modest success. The 'majors' still don't learn from their mistakes and wonder, with incredulity exceeded only by their astounding arrogance, why new talent is increasingly opting for the far more modest deals offered by the 'independent' labels. Once again the 'majors' have proved themselves to be their own worst enemy - and it also fails their many passionate employees as well as artists - but it is the one thing they seem to be unfailingly good at!

My first purchase of a genuine 2007 release...

Almost all UK new releases come out on a Monday and as Monday 1st January 2007 was a Bank Holiday in the UK this just added to the general sense of awfulness that Christmas "pop music" brings; it being all too fresh on the mind. It is therefore hardly surprising that this was a week that was another absolute non-starter for UK new releases. Buying a genuine 2007 new release this week was not actually as easy as it may seem!

I have had one in particular on my list for some while however - and it was a result of my searches across both genres and labels. My first 2007 album (well strictly it is an EP, but who is to quibble when it is this good) is Station Life by Anne Bacheley, a French singer-songwriter born in 1977 and then variously resident in Caen, Vannes, Paris, Cambridge and Nantes, but now settled in Poitiers.
While not actually her first release, the Mixtape Babies EP of 2004 probably has a claim to that, this is her first real solo release that has everything: a screen printed sleeve, booklet and everything else one might want - in short all that might lead you to think that she has been snapped up by a major label.In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Station Life, for all the glory of its packaging and the truly minimalist cover art (also by the artist), was actually released on the tiny French Indie label MIMIKAKI on 01/01/2007 and it is limited to just 133 copies.

I haven't yet mentioned the best thing about it - the music.
This varies widely; from the slightly stabby acoustic guitar and tambourine of opener 'Good Luck Dear' to the beautiful warm vocal and flute-laden 'Lost Weekend', plus everything and more in between. 'Elastic Girl' starts as an almost normal guitar and drums track (it is none the worse for that), then temporarily metamorphoses part way through as if in a dream, only to return slightly changed as a result.
For those of you that might worry about such things, or even the small matter of language, this EP is actually all sung in English but the really important thing is that it all works - absolutely!

All copies of Station Life are individually numbered and, for as long as they remain available, this 6-track CD costs just €10 (port payé dans la UE) and it is an unmissable bargain.

BUY IT WHILE YOU CAN!

Dne Na Ot Emoc Sgniht Doog Lla Od Yhw - melody matters!

The title to this post might seem like complete jibberish and no, it is not sung in Welsh or any other slightly obscure language!
Some songs are instantly recognisable in just a few seconds, if it takes that long as merely just a couple of notes are enough if one knows it well. That is a fascinating reflection on the way the human mind has developed to distinguish sounds by nuances such as pitch and timbre. The above "song title" is simply spelt backwards but it is hard to spot that in a similar time, just as samples of well known songs often are when used as sampled elements in remixes of songs of a completely different genre and style. and this is often the basis of "phone-in" quizzes on the radio. I have for some time subscribed to the theory that the best clues almost always lie in the melody, if that is present in the sample, as it tends to survive in a recognisable form almost regardless of genre and style.

The above title is that of a recent (late 2006) UK single release that is quite recognisable from the melody even when the song is played backwards and once I have worked out how to add such content to my blog I'll add clips from the song, played in both directions, so you can see if you agree with me!
The melody writer might also be apparent, even though he does not sing on it (well not on this version at least) though it rumoured that it is to be re-released to be shortly and, this time with the aforementioned on backing vocals.

Live music in Britain...

What is currently making the UK the place it is? Not actually the few dozen bands and artists that can sell tens of thousands of seats in a morning but rather the very many hundreds that can pack out a pub or other small venue almost anywhere in the country and on any night of the week they choose!
The former of course almost always come from the ranks of the latter and, as long as there are plenty of promising new bands, there is almost certainly little to worry about. Currently there are and some are already signed to labels while others, such as pop/punk/indie five-piece Bi-Polar Baby , here seen live in their home city of Birmingham in December 2006, are not.

Welcome, 2007!

So 2007 is here - and what might we expect from it? One thing that most seem to agree on is that, as the last months of 2006 showed, there will probably be a resurgence of dance music (possibly in the form of euro-trance) and electro-pop. The latter has been bubbling under the surface for a while and, as the two are not incompatible by any means, both might become mainstream again in 2007. If that is true then it will be likely led by Scandinavian and German influences, as both are traditionally strong here.
If it takes a British turn then this might also involve 'trip-hop' and other 'ambient' dance, which would certainly not be a bad thing either, and with the current penchant for French lounge-jazz, and also the sexy pop-rock that Latin America now does so very well (both of which it borrowed from, heavily from the former and tacitly from the latter, before their recent resurgence) , fits well with this theory and the pan-European success of Brazilian band CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) in 2006 was therefore probably no fluke.
Returning to UK music and one theory has it that 2007 spells doom for the recent spate of male singer-songwriters that were so prominent in 2006 ... James Morrison, Jack Johnson, Paolo Nutini, and James Blunt amongst others; that concept will be tested to the max when James Blunt releases his second album and there will no doubt be others too. Another lament of 2006 was that there was a surfeit of female singer-songwriters and, while I don't see it as a problem myself, it looks likely to remain as such for those that do in 2007.
Two UK artists - Natasha Bedingfield and Joss Stone - that have been away for some time, both successfully doing the near impossible by conquering America, are likely to return with new albums. American singer-songwriter Norah Jones is set to release her third album, Not Too Late, in the spring.

It might do something to redress the trans-Atlantic balance that could otherwise have been be upset by the release of Lucie Silvas' second album, The Same Side, at about the same time.

As yet largely unknown in the US, but unlike Norah Jones already rather more so in Japan, she can belt them out like Koda Kumi but in English and she also happens also to be a rather good pianist and song-writer (often for other artists). She was once a backing vocalist and occasional keyboardist for Judy Tzuke and now her sister Mia does the same for her.

The one thing that is certainly not going to change in 2007 is the ascendancy of all forms of live music and all the above-mentioned are well-capable of that. From pub-bands to major festivals, and everything else in between, it is an area in which Britain excels! The Japanese may buy more music per capita than anyone else but, measured on the same basis, the UK not only records more of it but plays it live too!

Goodbye, 2006!

Everyone has their own view of the music that made 2006 unique - these are my first thoughts and I hope they look forward as much as back. In some ways I think that 2006 was the year that proved that 2004 and 2005 weren't simply some fluke of nature!
It is not generally disputed that the music industry entered the new millennium in a state of largely self-inflicted malaise - having convinced itself that managing its own gradual decline was the best that could be hoped for. I'm afraid that the principal blame here must go to the major labels in the US as they duly responded - in perhaps the worst way possible - by axing most of their promising, but as yet unprofitable, artists mostly in favour of aging "bankers".

It was a veritable "Night of Long Knives" and the repercussions were also felt across Britain and Europe as those same labels also controlled most artists here too. It was the best thing happen in a very long time - BUT the commercial ineptitude that it displayed simply beggars belief! With new technologies making recording, releasing and promoting music ever easier, surely the last thing to do is to release all your carefully signed, nurtured and contract-bound new talent as free agents on a ready and willing market?

Too right - and that is why we are where we are now! Why not add a comment or criticism now? ~R

Few albums could be so strange...

It has been a British joke for a very long time... that there is no such thing as a good French pop album, let alone a good French artist and, perish the thought, one that sings in French.

Now there is and she also 'sings' many of the instruments too - welcome to the curious world of Camille Dalmais! She is perhaps best known for singing with the band Nouvelle Vague that covers classic punk and new wave songs in a French lounge/bossa nova style, to great effect and critical acclaim, but in English.
That is not all she does however: her two solo studio albums are arguably even better, certainly far more original. That said she is at her best live and 'Live au Trianon', recorded over two nights (17/18 October 2005) but not released until autumn 2006, is one of the finest live albums this side of anytime!

Three from one... Helios, Goldmund and Sono.

It is hard to tell what music in 2007 will bring; it looks set fair for another good year and live music of all kinds is likely to remain prominent. It seems unlikely that 2007 will be dull, whether or not my predictions are correct, as there is just too much going on at the moment for it to be any other way.
There may be some subtle changes and I can imagine that some dance music - perhaps pop-trance in particular - will return from its recent slumber. A slightly longer bet would be that 'ambient' and 'chill' will also make a comeback along with 'down-beat electronica' and perhaps 'trip-hop' too.

The title says it all - Keith Kenniff is Sono, Helios and Goldmund and he has released under all three monikers in 2005/6.
The results range from Bjork's Hyperballad, re-worked as a harp-led piece on a 10" single (Sono), to the electronica-plus-acoustica of Eingya (Helios) and the rather more piano-led and acoustic-based Corduroy Road (Goldmund) but all three are entirely instrumental. They are however far from dull and the two albums alone amount to almost 90 minutes of quite pure and surprising beauty.

Those 2005 albums... (part 2)

Tour advertisement from 2005.

Following on from the last post, and if a swirling background of electric guitars is more your thing, then this might be to your liking. London based five-piece The Duke Spirit have been around since at least 2003 and while their early vinyl stuff is hard to find the 2005 album Cuts Across the Land is the obvious place to start. There is the 13-track standard version, available on CD and vinyl, and a 'Special Edition' CD that also includes an additional 10-track CD that comprises demo versions and live session recordings. Buy the former for the glory of the cover artwork and the fact that it is vinyl, the latter for the mainly very worthwhile additional recordings and because heard even live-by-proxy 'The Duke Spirit' are simply awesome!

They should be touring again in Spring 2007 and in the meantime they have released a very limited edition 7", Covered in Love and it features two tracks by recently deceased artists that they hold as influences. The tracks are Desmond Dekker's '007 (Shanty Town)' of 1967 and the Arthur Lee track 'A House Is Not A Motel' from the 1967 'Love' album Forever Changes; both are sung by Liela Moss with the band providing their signature sound.

Those 2005 albums... (part 1)

Well I said I'd get back about this subject sooner or later...

I have finally got around to thinking about the 2005 albums that I still listen to on a regular basis. This is no order of merit - it is just what comes to mind here and now - but 'Sons and Daughters' 2005 album The Repulsion Box remains right up at the top of the listening list.
Why this band has not been more successful beats me; their 2004 EP Love The Cup was almost as good too. They are signed to Domino Records and both the EP and LP mentioned above are readily available on CD and also, with a little bit of searching, on quality vinyl. So are the singles - the pick of which is probably Dance Me In c/w Drunk Medicine - but without a moment of doubt 'Sons and Daughters' is truly an "album band".

They fuse elements of punk and folk with dark and often quite surprisingly brutal lyrics and all accompanied by some seriously martial percussion. The vocals are never less than fantastic - Scott Paterson has a great Glaswegian growl - and when Adele Bethel is angry, as she often seems to be, there is no mistaking it!
If you want to try the slightly less intense, lyrically somewhat more ambiguous, side of 'Sons and Daughters' then I recommend starting with the Love The Cup EP and it is never better demonstrated than on the closing track Awkward Duet.

Thank God for 'Take That'...

No joking, damage limitation is the best we can hope for in the run up to Christmas and so this was never going to be the greatest week for UK music. Few would have expected otherwise but when the chips were well and truly down today only the reformed Take That, the butt of so many boy-band jokes more than a decade ago, came like King Arthur and his Knights to the rescue of the UK Singles Chart in its time of greatest need!

With all other heavyweights opting out of releasing singles in the UK during the Christmas madness only they were likely to be able to stand between Sir Cliff Richard and the #1 spot (it would have caused him to have a UK #1 in six successive decades and thus be in the record books for at least a billion years) but they proved well able to hold the line, keeping their 9th UK #1 on top for a fourth week. The release on Wednesday of the single by 'X-Factor' winner Leona Lewis should ensure the threat of a back-lash is minimal.

Behave

I'm supposed to be telling you about the albums of 2005 that I still frequently listen to, and in a bit I will do so, but I have just been reminded of a splendid solo album from 2004, Grey Will Fade by Charlotte Hatherley. She was then still lead guitarist with Ash, but as of early 2006 she has been a solo artist. Her first new release, on 'Little Sister Records', is out on Monday 17th December. There is a four-track download EP and also an extremely limited 7" release of first single Behave.

Luckily I already have the vinyl version on pre-release and a fine thing it is too. Just like Grey Will Fade it is full of strange twists: some are lyrical but most are musical. Grey Will Fade is still one of my favourite albums of 2004 - and few would attempt the kind of key and time changes to be found on it.
The 'B' side of the 7" is a remix of Behave and I generally have rather mixed feelings about such things. This particular one I really like however - I'm not sure quite why but it just "works". It presages her second solo album The Deep Blue, which is due to be released in March 2007.

Another week, another cover version.

Lily Allen has been big news in 2006; recently her third single 'Littlest Things' appeared. There is a limited vinyl 7" release of this single and the 'B' side is a surprise, to say the least! It is a cover, largely played on guitar but also with keyboards, of Keane's Everybody's Changing from their first album. Keane memorably don't do guitars - it is their defining statement!
I think this works very well however - it is less gloomy than the original, but not by much - and her voice is actually not too far from that of Tom Chaplin and her vocals sound far less strained! Many myths surround Lily Allen's music on vinyl and are they often misleading:

The singles, excepting the 200 copies of 'LDN' c/w 'Knock Em Out' that accompanied the original "download only" release (below, bottom left), are not that rare. The vinyl single of its second release (below, bottom second from right) was c/w 'Nan, You're a Window Shopper'. The latest single 'The Littlest Things' (below, bottom right) has as its 'B-side' the cover mentioned above.


The album 'Alright, Still' is widely claimed, if one believes much that is written on the internet, not to exist. Exist it does, but I believe only to the extent of 800 copies worldwide; three of which are pictured above!

2006 - My 'Top Ten' Albums

The reason these choices are in alphabetical order is that they are just my current 2006 favourites.

Amy Millan - Honey From The Tombs
Bat For Lashes - Fur and Gold
Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
Hafdis Huld - Dirty Paper Cup
Ilya - Leaving Sans-Souci
Lily Allen - Alright, Still
Nerina Pallot - Fires
Shakira - Oral Fixation (Volume 2)
The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
Yeah, Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

I could easily have added half a dozen others and the order is merely determined by my mood at any particular time. I have likewise also excluded several very recent additions to my collection as they have an insufficient listening profile for me to have formed a proper opinion of them. Corinne Bailey Rae and Karen O (of Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs) could however hardly be more different in vocal style but are both on record as being a big fan of the other. I have also just noticed that, although these albums span a wide spectrum of musical styles, there is not a male vocalist in a predominant rôle on any of them!

Two of these albums should in truth be excluded. Shakira's album was due for release in the UK and Europe in November 2005 but was postponed for three months. Genuine 'European' copies were however avilable from Singapore from mid November and mine is one of those. Nerina Pallot's album was also released in 2005, on her own label 'Idaho', but frankly nobody took much notice until it got a major label release on '14th Floor Records' in 2006. This was a re-mixed version - as the artist put it 'more spangly'; the version I have is the original one.

I'm pretty confident I'll still be listening to all these albums this time next year. This begs an interesting question - which albums that I bought in 2005 do I still regularly listen to?

X-Factor - the world waits and wonders... but does anyone really care?

To be quite honest I couldn't care less who wins 'X-Factor', or any other reality pop-production for that matter. They haven't had a good record when it comes to enduring winners - in fact often the second best have done far better in the longer term. Two exceptions come to mind - Will Young (the first 'Pop Idol') and Kelly Clarkson (the first 'American Idol') - and they both continue to have success on either side of the Atlantic and elsewhere. The 'Idol' and 'X-Factor' formats are however examples of UK TV ideas that have been exported to the US with massive success.
The winner of 2006 X-Factor is almost certainly going to be Leona Lewis - the chosen song is one of Kelly Clarkson's earlier efforts and it certainly won't suit the male vocalist that is her only rival. The big issue is that it doesn't really suit either of them, and was also one of Clarkson's least impressive songs. This despite the fact that she was one genuine find; she has a powerful voice and an impressive range as she finally showed on her multi-million selling second album "Breakaway".

For now at least it seems that real stars are going to have to make it to the top the hard way, as they have almost always had to do. Which brings me to thoughts of memorable albums of 2006, and also what made a lasting impression - the albums of 2005 that I still often listen to, for example.

Ice Cream Is Nice (monsters are not)

For some reason the most wanted items always take the longest time to arrive and never has it been truer than with this CD. It has been several years in the making and then two different Amazon Marketplace sellers let me down on this one (the only two times this has ever happened to me and so I’m not planning to dwell on it). When it finally arrived this morning I hardly dared listen to it. I had high hopes based on the single ‘Tomoko’, (available on vinyl and which I have) but what if it was to prove an overall disappointment after all the waiting and the effort to get it? I can’t tell you what might have been but I can say that it is far better than I dared hope for.
This is an album that proves ‘pop’ is not a dirty word after all and also that the genre is far from exhausted! Better still, but rather unfairly as it deserves a wide audience, you’ll probably have this gem almost to yourself at least for now be that for your own listening or for confounding your friends.

Dirty Paper Cup is an odd name for an album but then its maker is called Hafdis Huld Thrastardottír, though she drops the last name for stage purposes. She is Icelandic, was formerly a singer with the nine-piece-collective Gus Gus, and that is probably all you need know about her back catalogue as this album is totally different. It is basically acoustic/electronic pop with more than the occasional strangely un-pop lyric (her shoes used to be a crocodile - Tomoko) all sung in a voice that ranges from a rather characteristic tuneful loud whisper to a sweet if slightly husky soprano. It is also much more than that for the arrangements are often as sparse as they are beautiful.

The ‘Dirty Paper Cup’ of the title is explained in track 7, in case you were wondering, and the very curious title for this review comes from track 8. I might be suffering from a case of track 6, but it is that kind of album: 13 tracks packed into 42 minutes and only one makes the four-minute mark. Not one even tempts me to make the effort of skipping it, which is the defining moment for a really good album. The final track, the short Sumri Hallar, is sung in Icelandic.

The penultimate track Who Loves The Sun? is indeed a cover of the Lou Reed song, which was the opening track on the 1970 album Loaded, the fourth studio album by the ‘The Velvet Underground’ but never before did it sound like this (this track in particular reminds me of Isobel Campbell's solo stuff) and I haven’t come across a cover of such an old track that really works since Vanessa Carlton covered 'The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black on her 2002 début album Be Not Nobody but the same song was also covered (in Japanese) by Utada Hikaru on her 1999 album First Love.
That said Nothing Else Matters was ingeniously and quite shamelessly covered by Lucie Silvas and it appears - as a piano ballad - on her 2004 début album Breathe In. Many of her fans didn't even realise that it was a cover of a track originally written and recorded by 'Metallica' and taken from their eponymous first album that was released in 1991.

So this is Christmas! Five weeks and counting…

Welcome to Christmas and a music industry hiatus! It is seemingly inevitable - almost any artist who is worth anything avoids releases during the second half of November and all of December. It is the season to be jolly disappointed and it merely provides a parade of 'greatest hits' and truly dire 'seasonal compilations'.
Perhaps it is now time to drop hints about all those albums that you have wanted but never quite managed to acquire during the last year, or even just to listen properly to those you did get but then failed to pay enough attention to because of a lack of time; it cannot be said that 2006 has been remotely short of noteworthy albums.

The weekend papers are hotly debating the merits, or otherwise, of his very recent solo album (I haven't heard it so I can't comment) but he has without doubt been busy this year.
The former Pulp songwriter (and lead singer) Jarvis Cocker has joined forces with Neil Hannon (ditto and formerly of Northern Irish band The Divine Comedy) to write lyrics for music composed by French electro-traditionalist duo Air. It is true that Pulp, and even more so The Divine Comedy, were surprisingly popular bands in France, but would the album be any good and, importantly, who would do the vocals?
The answer to the first question is yes - the songs themselves are good, very good in fact - and 5:55 is also a surprising album: the lyrics are sung or sometimes barely more than spoken by Charlotte Gainsbourg but always perfectly match the accompaniment or more likely vice versa.

For far too long French 'pop music' has been something of a standing joke. While the above album is almost entirely sung in English, if you like it I suggest that you listen to 'Camille - Le Fil'. It is sung almost entirely in French and is another real highlight of 2006!

Lithium - the third element.

Bring Me To Life was the first UK single released by Evanescence, a band from Little Rock AK, and it spent five weeks at the top of the UK singles chart in 2003. That was good work from a new goth-rock band from small-town America, especially given the timing in the UK, and even then all was not well within the band…
When they were in only a few months into touring their first album, Fallen, which went on to sell 15 million copies worldwide in just two years, co-founder Ben Moody (credited as the main songwriter) quit the band and went into rehab. He very soon reappeared however - but now writing for the likes of Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson.

If he thought that in so doing he had left Evanescence to founder under the stewardship of his former girlfriend, Amy Lee, that was to prove a serious misjudgment. It afforded her the chance to take full control and pick her own band; they then toured the album for another 18 months. On balance it seems to have worked out quite well because, while it is not in exactly the same style - and I'm inviting all kinds of adverse comments in this review - I think the second album The Open Door is actually as impressive as Fallen!
It has been criticised by several reviewers due to the fact that the songs here sound fairly similar to one another, and I can understand what this is about, but to me Fallen had one, albeit minor, flaw in that it sounded slightly disjointed: a product of two talents at war, who could never quite agree on exactly what they were trying to achieve.

To a degree that tension probably inspired Fallen and I must admit that The Open Door doesn't have anything quite like My Immortal, but it couldn't last. However, putting the 'goth' imagery aside for a moment, My Immortal is basically a very good piano ballad accompanied by very distinctive and inspired rock vocals and arrangements. There is no shortage of either on this album - both being Lee's home territory. With new songs written, and a band far tighter than ever, would such inspiration return on the second album?

Here is my current view:
Taken in general terms The Open Door is musically slightly less heavy than Fallen but it is also sometimes lyrically far darker. It does indeed reach the previous heights (or are they depths?), with a vengeance, on the track Lithium. It makes one wonder who this song is about but what it is about is fairly obvious. While it may be mere coincidence, like My Immortal, it is the fourth track on the album.
Lithium is however, despite what several reviewers have claimed, certainly not a cover of the Nirvana song of the same name although (were he still around to listen) Kurt Cobain might have approved of the sentiment if not the song!

Negative reviews are fine, but...

As the title says negative reviews are fine by me although, mainly out of necessity, I tend to only review my likes.
Why however, and it is very evident on amazon.co.uk , are reviewers who post a negative review of something almost always disinclined to suggest things we might like instead (and thus make a really positive contribution), while reviewers posting a positive review seem far more likely to suggest other things we might like as well?

Coming soon, reviews of:
Imogen Heap - Speak For Yourself
Thea Gilmore - Harpo's Ghost

and perhaps things you can't even imagine! If you don't like this idea then you should send me some suggestions...

Amy, Amy, Amy!

It is Halloween and, perhaps appropriately, Amy Winehouse is Back To Black...

The album is out and it is amazingly good - as all top music reviewers have been saying - but what is it about this album that makes it so different to Frank in 2003? Yes it is slightly more polished, and it is certainly more consistent in style (but see below) and perhaps also better produced, but is it really such as a big departure from Frank?
I think not, and I'm rather pleased too. Frank was critically praised, nominated for a '2004 Brit Award' and even won her an 'Ivor Novello Award' for songwriting in 2004. It was regarded then as something slightly off the mainstream, and it didn't sell in vast quantities (though enough to have recently gone 'platinum' in the UK!), but the concept had much promise. Island Records clearly agreed and didn't attempt to fix anything that wasn't broken. In fact it seems they allowed the fixing of the few things that were, mostly by interfering less and in particular by not meddling with the album's production. This appears to have been a big issue with Frank and she claims that, although she loves to perform the tracks from it, she can't stand listening to the album. Having heard Amy perform live I can believe that; Back To Black sounds much more authentic and this may also account for it's consistency.

There is I suspect also a bit of duplicity involved. Popular taste has been moving in the direction of her music, indeed live music in general, in the intervening time and both the label and the magazine reviewers have responded accordingly:

The Voice of 2007. There's none better. - MOJO and Contender for 'Album of the Year' - NME.

That all seemed fairly obvious to me three years ago, hence my post last week that included my review of Frank from 2003, but what do I know? I feel vindicated as I have just had a look on amazon.co.uk to see how 'Back To Black' is selling.

Even I was shocked and stunned - Back To Black is currently #1 in Music! Here she is looking quite normal.

Knives Don’t Have Your Back…

If you like the band Metric (of which she is the lead singer) or Haines’ work for the Canadian collective Broken Social Scene (notably vocals on ‘Ballad For a Seventeen-year-old Girl’) I can’t, in all honesty, say whether or not you are going to like this album at all!

The nearest this album gets, musically, to anything on Metric’s Old World Underground, Where Are You Now is probably The Lottery. It reminds me ever so slightly of Calculation Theme but even that connection seems tenuous.

On this album Emily plays piano and sings – that is basically the deal here. There are also other musicians involved of course, drawn from the firmament of Canadian talent that currently seems almost unstoppable, but this is a very personal recording and it is hard to reconcile this album with her Metric persona. Released by Last Gang Records, it is presented in a quite splendid digipack including full lyrics. My current favourite tracks are 'Crowd Surf Off A Cliff', 'The Lottery', and 'Reading In Bed' but that could well change with repeated listening.

It is difficult still to see how this album fits in, until you delve in to the background of both band and artist, when some of it really starts to make sense - particularly if you can find a copy of her 1996 release "Cut In Half And Also Double".

Looking Forward to Listening to...

There are now several albums due for imminent release that I really want to listen to but, far more than any other, it is 'Back To Black' that I want to hear and it is reckoned to be even better than her début. That the first single, Rehab, from the forthcoming album, which is released on 30th October, entered the UK singles chart today at #27 on download alone is rather promising but ever since she released Frank, back in 2003, I have believed that Amy Winehouse was a star simply awaiting her place and time. I reviewed Frank back then, and I still stand by everything that I wrote almost three years ago, so here are my comments newly retrieved from amazon.co.uk!

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

***** I'm wasting my time. You can only listen..., 4 Nov 2003

I wouldn’t have thought this album to be my kind of music at all. I was intrigued by the reviews I had read in the press and so I bought it anyway. I was disappointed; but only by what I had read, not what I heard.

One of my favourite tracks, ‘Cherry’, is not even on the sleeve play-list.
Tacked on after ‘You Sent Me Flying’, it is short, sweet and devastatingly brutal. Comparing a love to her new guitar, Amy sings...

“Maybe we could talk ‘bout things
If you were made of wood and strings.”

No one gets off lightly on this album - she doesn’t spare herself on ‘What Is It About Men?’ and ‘Amy, Amy, Amy’. The lyrics are thoroughly modern; the music is a stunning blend of jazz, blues and things… Somehow it doesn’t seem false or contrived as she can make it all sing, and then some.

This album will surprise you: and keep listening beyond the Outro as there are a couple of bonus tracks there.

Is This The Price We Pay For Progress?

It is a good question, never more relevant that at the moment. One thing that is quite certain is that South Yorkshire has been providing a very diverse and persuasive soundtrack recently. No sooner had the Kaiser Chiefs highlighted the slightly less salubrious side of Leeds than the Arctic Monkeys served up a fine riposte from Sheffield replete with the hazards of a night out on their town!

Leeds soon replied, on a completely different front, with the very different but equally successful sounds of Corinne Bailey Rae. Maybe Sheffield has retaliated and I simply haven’t heard about it but it is certain that Leeds has struck again!

It is rock, but not remotely like the zeitgeist tendencies of the above bands. The album Progress.Reform is quite different to any of the above and consisting of just seven tracks it might even be regarded as an EP but I see good reasons to not to do so - just for a start the subject matter is often erudite, eccentric and a world away from the modern, even if the music isn’t.
The first track, Terra Nova, is about Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1911-12 and the third track, Rook House For Bobby, is about the descent into isolation and eventual madness of chess player Bobby Fisher. This is not normal subject matter on any album and what is more they have a liking for using genuinely old recording equipment and performing live, shrouded in steam and wearing BR uniforms from circa 1960! Stainless Steel is rather different to the tracks that have come before: it starts gently, with a plucked guitar, but gradually builds – and there is more than 8¼ minutes of it in which to do this – into a rock epic of surprising proportions.

While there is, as such, no title track to this album its alter ego duly arrives at the very end and it is sung in the first person supported by a rather surprising indie backing 'choir': this song is The Beeching Report - the band is iLiKETRAiNS.

For those that like the slightly offbeat, eccentric even, this album comes highly recommended.