I’m always a bit wary of when record companies release albums by people who are no longer around, so it was with cautious eyes (and ears) that greeted this as it came through my letter box. A year after his death, 'From a Basement on the Hill' proves itself to be an album of two halves. The first is nine songs that are a real delight to listen to, reminiscent of the songs on 'Figure 8', a catchy mix of ‘Hour of Bewilderment’ era Badly Drawn Boy (‘Coast to Coast’ and ‘Lets get lost’) and the sentimentality of Ed Harcourt (‘Don’t go Down’), the strummy guitar of ‘Twilight’ is Smith at his intimate best whilst ‘King’s Crossing’ are but two of the albums high points.
From then on the album loses its way slightly, the songs suffering from being a tad too samey for my liking. Maybe it’s a case of giving them a few more listens, the exception being ‘The Last Hour’ at which point Smith seems to have ditched all but his acoustic guitar and we are once again reminded of this man’s confused inner emotions. It’s a touching little melody that is marginally let down by some noticeably poor (but easily forgivable) production followed by ‘Memory Lane’ and the final track ‘A distorted reality is now a necessity to be free’, which, the title says it all about this man’s frame of mind at the time of writing.
At times deceptively bleak yet equally engaging, it’s tempting to hail this man as some kind of sorely missed song writing genius. The talent is clearly there in abundance, but had it not been for the last handful of tracks, this album would be near classic as opposed to just great. Definitely not just one for Elliot Smith fans, everyone should get a healthy chunk of the Elliot Smith pie and this is as good as a last taste as you’re going to get.
Review by Bevis Man
Promotional Material usually doesn't give much indication of the quality of a CD. Only a very stupid band would include an objective set of information. So upon reading 'this NYC trio didn't just pop off the return-of-the-garage band assembly line' I presumed that was exactly what they'd done. Assumptions more often than not tend to be hideously wrong. 'Caught In NYC' proclaimed as the albums strongest track, or at least it's the only one licesenced to a TV station for New Yorks fashion week, gives a fair indication of The Bamboo Kids. Landing somewhere between The Rolling Stones and The Mooney Suzuki. A big problem I have with garage rock bands whether they're off the assembley line or not is it's incredibly difficult to stop every track sounding horribley samey. The Bamboo Kids run into this problem with each songs fushing indecipherably into one another. This is the kind of music that will more than likely impress live but unavoidably when transferring to record the interest seems to dimish. It takes a special band to make this work and the Bamboo Kids aren't really that special.
Review by Barry Bennett
Sum 41 are on their 4th album already, to me it seems like only yesterday I was dancing madly to the catchy riffs of "All Killer No Filler", their 2nd album. Their first album "Half Hour of Power" was brilliant, coming in at just over 40 minutes long, I'm suprised it wasn't more successful. Then, after those 2, came "Does This Look Infected?", a heavier offering, yet still it had the element of 'Fun' about it, which is why I found them so appealing.
And so we come to their 4th album, "Chuck". I had already heard "We're All To Blame", and was expecting an even heavier album. Boy was I right. Gone are the catchy riffs and memorable choruses, instead they have been replaced by what sounds like hair-metal band on copious amounts of speed.
Don't get me wrong...it's not terrible, infact it's bordering on average. Maybe I'm being so harsh because I absolutley loved them when they were happy go-lucky and loveable. But when you compare this album to their previous three, you can't help but feel they're just, well, faking it. It sounds like "Does This Look Infected", but heavier, and without it's charm.
One song that stuck out for me was "No Reason", I don't know why, perhaps it's beacuse it does have the catchy melodies and guitar riffs, or maybe it's more because it has echoes of the earlier albums in it.
The guitar riffs are there, the vocal melodies too, but gone are the charm, and most importantly for me, the fun. If you're a fan of heavier stuff, you may like this, if you're a fan of Sum 41, the chances are you won't.
Review by Jackie Barker
Anyone who has heard either of the band’s last two albums, 2003’s ‘The Vertigo of Bliss’ and their debut ‘Blackened Sky’ will know that Biffy Clyro aren’t your bog standard rock band. What makes them unique is their brilliant unpredictability that up until now had made them the masters of the stop-start quiet-loud slow-fast formula that they’ve perfected on previous records, and although the album sticks closely to this tried and tested method, ‘Infinity Land’ is by no means ‘The Vertigo of Bliss’ part two. Gone are the elaborate string sections, leaving us with an album that is admittedly quite hard to listen to initially but more varied in its approach. The initial disappointment of not being able to find any decent melodies amongst the seemingly huge sprawl of each song was overcome eventually after a good ten listens or so. Its not that the album is lacking in good melodies, it’s just that it makes you work hard to uncover them. Really hard. But once you get there, ‘Infinity Land’ transforms into a truly exceptional record. With its hugely satisfying bass line and subtle layering of instruments, recent single ‘Glitter and Trauma’ is like a lesson on how every rock album should start, ‘My recovery Injection’ is classic Biffy Clyro, taking you all over the place yet still somehow managing to hold itself together before its raucous chorus kicks in. Meanwhile ‘The Atrocity’ sees Biffy Clyro at their most introspective to date, a piece distinguished from the other tracks by its lonesome piano and melancholic tone (‘I don’t want to die, don’t expect me to die’), whilst ‘Wave upon Wave upon Wave’ is a song devoted to the monotony of life and proves to be yet another album highlight. Screaming emo/hardcore, lyrics to die for (the fading lines of ‘do you believe in magic’ are sublime); you name it the song (probably) has it. Then there’s ‘There’s no such man as crasp’ which is a gospel like chant, ‘The kids from kibble and the fist of light’, turns out to be as beautiful as it is lengthy in title and has a second half, with its breezy trumpet, that dares you not to hum the song to yourself on the bus, whilst album closer ‘Pause it and turn it up’ finishes the album on a more morose feeling, with its haunting line of ‘All I ask’ easing proceedings to a close.
At times teetering dangerously close to the fine line between outright chaos and hectic melodies, not since Muse has a trio of musicians managed to make such a glorious racket and made it sound so good. A big round of applause for Biffy Clyro for making music exciting again.
Review by Bevis Man
The Vacation play a frantic adrenelin pumped brand of snotty garage rock that only America bands seem to pull off with such success, you can just imagine the sneers as they recorded 'Band From World War Zero'. The band offer up nothing new, they just mix up The Ramones, The Clash and even a bit of The Rolling Stones into a sonic equivilant of bubble and squeak, satisfying enough but you would not want it every day.
'White Noise' kicks the album off at a hundred miles an hour and the pace is kept up by 'Make Up Your Mind' but the third track 'Spiders' slows the dirty grooves down a little so you can catch a breathe. 'Cherry Cola' is possibly my favourite track of the album with its brooding nu-wave sound and sexual double meanings but album closer 'Trash' runs it close and owes the biggest debt to sixities era Stones or Kinks. If you like your garage rock full of greasy bass and drums, slicing guitar and snotty vocals The Vacation are worth a listen but if you are into more edgy stuff they might just be a little too polite for you. 4/5
Review by Darren Bunting
In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 is a concept album based around a graphic novel produced by Claudio Sanchez who provides lead vocals and guitar for Coheed And Cambria but do not let that put you off, this is no flabby prog rock throw back to the seventies (though saying that I would still probably like it) but instead you could call it 'emo-prog' or not if you did not want to make a fool of yourself.
When listening to this album you can hear big swathes of At The Drive-In noise mixed in with A Perfect Circle like melancholy melodies and some cracking heavy guitar riffs that someone like P.O.D. would be proud of. The overall feel of the album leans toward the dark and gothic mixed with some alternative heaviness but it never becomes overbearing or too heavy metal even though they appeared on the Concrete Jungle stage at this years Carling Festival. 5/5
Review by Darren Bunting
Nomadic club-kids get Prince drunk at the indie disco… In a good way!
Freeform Five is the musical brainchild of Geordie multi-instrumentalist Anu Pillai and his assorted band of co-conspirators. They apparently bonded over a shared-love of “the three Ps” – Prince, P-Funk and the Pixies. It’s the Prince influence that looms largest, though. Opening track 'Electromagnetic' sounds like Prince being fellated by a Scissor Sister whilst Andre 3000 looks on approvingly. (Nice image, hey?) Come to think of it, The Artist Formerly Known As Good would sell his stack of bibles to sound this lascivious.
'Losing My Control' oozes pop juice from every orifice. Chubby sicko Har Mar Superstar doesn’t even sound this good in his wet dreams. Get the idea? It’s basically sex music. Barry White would be turning in his grave … only if there was a JCB digger at hand – fat dead fuck. I know what you’re thinking: it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well it is. The album quickly descends into some kind of gloopy electroclash stew, and as we all know, that kind of thing can get everywhere. Make sure you take your shoes off, otherwise you’ll traipse it all round the house... Equally, the limp ballads scattered across the album do them no favours at all. You’re right, it is confusing.
Freeform Five. Mates with Freelance Hellraiser and Gary “Snow Patrol” Lightbody; remixers to Sir Elton and N*E*R*D; purveyors of none-more-purple perv-pop … Freeform Five – there’s only four of them. You do the math.
Review by Tom Leins
St. Austell’s very own Chinaski take their name from Charles Bukowski’s drunken anti-hero Henry Chinaski. If Bukowski wrote about the people that nobody wanted to be – the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad – then Chinaski sing their songs. Recorded in the legendary Sawmills Studio in Cornwall, Drug This Nowhere is a literate, cerebral, downright off-kilter mini-album that recalls alt.rock luminaries like Therapy?, Faith No More and Sonic Youth in tone and inventiveness. Boisterous opener ‘Claque’ twitches and twists in all of the right places whilst at just over two minutes, ‘Half Of More Than Most’ offers a dizzying headrush that doesn’t outstay its welcome and leaves you wanting more.
‘In Spite Of You’ slows the breakneck pace right down. One for the slow-dance at the end of the night … Chances are though, that when the lights came on you’d find the hairiest one out of Therapy? brandishing a broken bottle trying to ram his tongue down your throat… ‘Eye Beef’ is positively euphoric, and closing track ‘Daddy-Oh’ is louder than bombs, heavier than Heaven : the noisy truth. Believe me, someone, somewhere will be playing this song the day that they finally decide to bomb the fuck out of Heaven. On repeat.
The sooner you buy this CD, the sooner they can leave St. Austell. Fact.
Review by Tom Leins
God-fearing Americans bunk off bible classes to listen to At The Drive-In albums…
Just what the world was waiting for : religious emo. Nope, me neither. To be honest I find it a bit creepy when devoutly-religious types like Motion Picture Demise throw deliberately-obtuse hardcore shapes in order to sell records to naïve emo-kids. Me, on the other hand – I don’t miss a trick. They’ve even got a track called ‘Paper Thin Deception’ which seems fairly ironic under the circumstances.
Anyway – alliterative
bible-belt hardcore heart-throb Travis Tucker sounds, like, really pissed
at God, man. Maybe he spilt beer on his backpack? Or scratched his favourite
At the Drive-In album …?
The music? Shop-soiled At The Drive-In posturing. They’ve got a
fair grasp of the dynamics, but they lack the flair that made At The Drive-In
so special. + when Travis (or whoever) starts screaming it made me feel
really queasy.
The lyrics? In a word : wordy. You want titles? Try ‘Admit It, You Lost Yourself In Him’ for size. I bet God never reckoned on intense young chaps in college sweaters writing confused screamo songs about him when he did whatever he did. Then again, he probably never reckoned on Creed’s Scott Stapp either, did he? Motion Picture Demise sound nothing like Creed. For that we should be eternally grateful.
In conclusion:
Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam. He probably wants Travis Tucker
though.
58%
Review by Tom Leins
Ronald Eldon Sexsmith – to give him his full name sings songs about imaginary friends, crystal balls, wishing wells, fairy tales and dandelion wine. He’s the kind of guy who gives Keane sleepless nights – regrettably not in a dragging-them-out-of-bed-in-the-early-hours-and-torturing-them-in-new-and-inventive-ways-for-crimes-against-music way. And more’s the pity.
Apparently, chubby depressive Sexsmith, 42 spends a lot of time hanging out with Chris Martin – doubtlessly listening to Radio 2 and singing along to their own awful records. I’ve been reliably informed that Sexsmith’s songs are all over Radio 2 like a particularly bland rash. Figures.
In a fair world, Sexsmith would have imaginary listeners as well as imaginary friends. We don’t live in a fair world, though, do we? Ron Sexsmith is a very, very rich man. At one point, Sexsmith moans “when will the truth prevail / to clear away all the smug and smirking juveniles?” What!? I guess that’s me off his Christmas card list at any rate…
43%
POST SCRIPT: Ron dedicates Retriever to Johnny Cash and Elliott
Smith. Do yourself a favour and buy' x/o' or 'either/or' by Big Dead Elliott
instead. You won’t regret it.
Review by Tom Leins
I’m no expert on urban music, but it’s fairly obvious that this guy’s no Dizzee Rascal. Hell, he’s not even a Justin Timberlake. Whereas Timberlake gets deep, down and dirty with The Neptunes, Raghav samples Chaka Demus and Pliers. Seriously.
Raghav looks like a cross between karaoke TV also-ran Darius “Can you feel the love in the room?” Danesh and middle-aged Coronation Street lothario Dev Alahan. The music is terrifyingly average British R ‘n’ B. One track ‘Bad, Bad, Bad’ features the following lyrical delights: “From the moment I saw her she had to be mine / There’s just something about her so awesomely right / She’s not decked out in Prada, or drippin’ in ice / She’s got natural beauty and sensuous eyes …”
There’s nothing ‘awesomely right’ about Raghav or his music. This is possibly the worst album I’ve ever listened to – and I’ve listened to a lot of awful albums in my time. But, then again, why does Raghav care – he’s probably laughing his way to the bank to cash the big, fat cheque that V2 gave him. Idiots.
Review by Tom Leins
If you walked into a pub or shop and heard this you might be mistaken that Richard Ashcroft had a new album out but on closer listen you will realise that you were mistaken and that it is in fact a bad imitation. When you look at the cover you also might be mistaken that it’s Richard Ashcroft on the cover but yet again you would be mistaken, on closer inspection you see that it’s just another graduate from the Northern music scene.
Each song just sounds like he wants to sounds like Richard Ashcroft, the music is lazy, has nothing new to say, completely unoriginal and for me it’s just wannabe music. You get the impression that his ultimate ambition is to be in Oasis or another band from that era. The best thing he could do is become a Verve/Richard Ashcroft tribute act, then he could do us all a favour and leave us alone to listen to decent, original music.
Review by Sonia Pagliari
How can I describe this music to you? It's unobtrusive yet engaging, the songs are straightforward yet different and the mood is tinged with sadness though it does not make you feel sad. This is akin to someone who is visibly dissapointed with you, though rather than shouting, they don't say anything at all. They know that there's no point, as nothing will change. However Cake do say something, they do not hesitate to voice their opinions, and you get the impression they already know how you will respond.
'Pressure Chief' then, sees the band bring together a mass of contradictions, with political undertones to make an accomplished album which runs smoothly into a territory of good singalongs and pleasant melodies that could be widely welcomed by all. The material is slightly less kooky than previous work, such as 'Sheep go to Heaven', which is a shame. Though this is one of only a few flaws on the album, the other being the shortness of it. Clocking in at little over half an hour, and feeling much briefer, one minute you are putting the cd into your stereo and the next you find that it has mysteriously and suddenly ended. At least you can play it repeatedly, as the songs aren't irritating, however many times you hear them.
Overall 'Pressure Chief' is a decent record, it's not too demanding, it's heartwarming and will hopefully find it's way into many homes.
Review by Nathania Hartley
Originally a grunge band, Facequake’s latest self-titled album sees a complete change of generic style for this Swedish quartet. Claiming bands such as Mötley Crüe and Pantera on their album thankyou/acknowledgement list, it’s clear that they have a deep-rooted metal background. However, Facequake have somewhat tamed this heavier side and mixed it with a softer, more melodic (dare I say…pop?) element. Whether this meets with approval or not, it certainly blends well and works as a musical style.
The result of this infusion is a respectable medley of adrenalin fuelled, passionate, angst-ridden songs. Sara Kreft (vocalist/songwriter) has a startlingly powerful, strong, husky voice, perfectly suited for a rock band. Her voice is deeply reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan, front-woman of The Cranberries. However, this could also dangerously verge onto Avril Lavigne territory. Indeed, there is a certain similarity but Facequake have a more sophisticated sound and more mature take on life.
Consequently, this is a band with attitude and catchy, melodic tunes. However, there is nothing to distinguish one song from another and this album is the same sound repeating itself over and over again. Lyrically, it is obvious that Kreft is writing from her heart about events that have occurred in her life, but these thoughts aren’t necessarily original. It’s all about boys, love, engagement, finding the one etc. This brings to realisation that even angsty rock chicks who act like they don’t give a dam are just like any other Bridget Jones retard and want to get married. This is best expressed in track six, ‘Shoeshine,’ perhaps the weakest song on the album. The line “Your tornado meets mine, the whole town starts to shiver and shake,” is a wee bit twee and “But its pretty nice if its you I’m going to marry,” is soooo girly! However, there is the odd lyrical gem such as track nine, ‘New Blues,’ with “So don’t give me that shit about how I am different and you never met a woman like me, cause when you say those words, you’re smiling with your pants down at your feet.” Charming!
‘Stalker,’ is a great end song. A little acoustic number which has a sweet slow melody, bursting out in a deep rock crescendo before fading out and ending the album. Not bad.
Reviewed by Helen Thornton
Imagine the more desperate tracks from Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains but without the often incomprehensable vocals and you would be close to where Marcey Playground are at on the first few songs on MP3. They have an edge that keeps you listening to their angst fueled songs with singer John Wozniak often sounding like he is just about to let lose his inner demons onto the world and we better watch out. By track three, No Ones Boy, I was sold on the band and their distorted melancholy but then the next song Hotter Than The Sun gets all acoustic and laid back Beatles like before then stomping into a section that Soundgarden would have been proud of.
But even with all this distortion flying around they still have room in their musical songback to throw in a nu-wave song like Rock And Roll Heroes which sounds like a track The Cars would have been proud of or the piano led and strings augmented Jesse Went To War.
Quite how a band can pack so many musical styles into the first six tracks of an album is amazing but what is even more so is that every track has the bands stamp on it and does not sound like a pastiche of someone else. The remaining eight tracks continue the bands musical journey into modern America's musical heartland and their sonic experiments with as much success as the opening six tracks salvo.
By the end of MP3 the band that most came to mind was REM and their joy of experimenting with musical ideas and lyrics and even though at times Marcey Playground do have a hint of them in musical style it is more in the attitude than the actual songs themselves. I can imagine this CD being played regulary by me and I am know going to embark on a search for their previous two CDs Shapeshifter and Sex And Candy. 5/5
Review by Darren Bunting