This is a lovely 12 track album of gentle, warm songs. He cited a wide range of influences on his website, from Nick Drake to commercial trance 1998 to 2000. On listening to this though, you can tell he has been absorbing a lot of Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. Sweet melodies, soothing vocals especially on track “Star, Star, Star” and “Thief in the Night”. “The Lust Weekend” tells the tale of a dangerous woman who he feels powerless around. The only time he breaks from the formula is on 'Ethan Kitch Parts 1&2' where he experiments with playing the track backward a la Stone Roses. If you like the current crop of wistful solo male acoustic singers, then give this a try.
This is an enjoyable, pleasant listen and as he says on the inlay card “thank you for listening, email me and let me know your thoughts” He has my thoughts, why don’t you do the same?
Review by Sonia Pagliariwww.angelfire.com/theforce/jamieboyer
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The first offering from the Edinburgh band since 2002’s impressive American English proves, without a trace of irony, that the boys have indeed not been Idle in that time.
The opener, recent single 'Love Steals us from Loneliness' is as pessimistic as ever, but it’s not necessarily a signpost as to the route the album takes. Which is no tragedy in this reviewer’s humble opinion. Clashing, distortion driven, third track in, ‘I Want a Warning’ stamps an acknowledgment of their rougher edged roots onto the album, although thankfully this time round, with audible lyrics. However, some songs just come along and hug you when you least expect it, but feel like you most need it, which is one way to describe the deceptively country and western inspired style of the penultimate track, 'Disconnected'. Ignore the likeness to REM if you must, but this song gives something of an insight into Scotland’s broken landscape, a pipe dream for something better, “through a bedroom window I was anyone / every street I looked upon could be a runaway.” The final track, 'Goodnight' is a real treat, a funeral song if ever one was written.
The truth is this album is not one packed with the frenetic guitar licks of their debut 'Captain'. It doesn’t even seem to point towards a new direction for Idlewild as such. It’s simply not as contrived as that, it’s the sound of a band finally finding its feet after five albums and ten long years.
'Warnings / Promises' is one of those albums that doesn’t instantly connect with the listener, but when it does, it connects spectacularly and communicates something gorgeously truthful. The songs take your hand and travel with you through your best and worst memories. You might just possibly wonder where it’s been all your life.
Review by Mary Young
www.idlewild.co.uk
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I was lucky enough to catch lead singer Frank Turner at the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham performing an amazing acoustic set, which consisted of a mix of songs from new album Harmony No Harmony and covers as diverse as Queens ‘I want to Break Free’, ‘Hanging Around’ by Counting Crows and Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’. Not what you’d expect from one of the UK’s best upcoming hardcore rock acts but a truly magnificent performance. Afterwards I spoke to Frank who assured told me that playing in front of 60,000 people at last years Download festival was a walk in the park compared to donning an acoustic guitar and entertaining a room full of about 60 people above a pub in Clapham.
But anyway back to the new album ‘Harmony No Harmony’ which is released on May 16th through Xtra Mile records. This is a great release, it gets the mix of heavy and harmonic just right and when it does venture into the heavier realms it does so delightfully. Franks voice sounds even stronger than on their debut as do the songs which have progressed no end, of which my favourite and in my opinion the best on the record, Living the Dream. All 14 songs however bring a little something and combine to make it the record that it is, from the slamming ‘Plan B’ to the choir on ‘To Whom it may Concern’.
It’s a tough job describing the sound of Million Dead but it’s a bit of a mixture of Idlewild being sodomised by At the Drive In while Hundred Reasons keeps watch, yes that sums it up nicely.
So if you like your guitars loud, your vocals delicate yet aggressive and your bands first-class, I urge you to check out Million Dead, you won’t regret it.
Review by Robert Bassettwww.milliondead.com
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Anyone who likes their art-rock a bit messy, a bit spacey and a bit atonal would do well to check out New York’s Schizo Fun Addict. Schizo Fun Addict have been flogging their hazy Velvet Underground-making-out-with-Sonic Youth wares for some time now, but this is the first time I’ve come across them myself. They basically play what can only be termed neo-psychedelic lo-fi and remind me variously of Brian Jonestown Massacre, Royal Trux and The Pastels. They’re not always on particularly good terms with Mr Tune, but in ‘The Atom Spark Hotel’ they’ve produced an inventive, interesting album full of sonic surprises (they even layer the later tracks with beats that any self-respecting electronica-merchant would be proud of). I recently came across a story that claimed that singer Jet Wintzer stopped speaking at the age of four after being visited by angels in a dream who told her never to raise her voice except in song. Hmm. Well, I guess conversation’s loss is drone-rock’s gain…
Review by Tom Leins
www.myspace.com/schizofunaddict
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Two factors contribute to this
album's downfall, one being the words. While the (brilliantly named) lead
singer Arty Shepherd has the requisite hardcore guttural scream, he seems
happy using it to spout vacuous, empty slogans and unfocused diatribes.
Take the opener 'Great' for example- over an unoriginal if perfectly serviceable
rock backing he simply shouts "it's the time of my life so let's
get started" and more worryingly, "I'm so fucking great".
Aside from proving that his confidence is more than in check, the track
seems to say nothing more than 'this is the first track on our great album',
a statement which you start to believe less and less as the album progresses.
Elsewhere the lyrics veer between unfocused rage (see the particularly
unsubtle 'Pissed Me Off Again') and cloying self deprecation (like 'I'm
Dead's pay off line- "in the end I've found you lose when you
give").
The few instances when the lyrics do hit the spot are when Arty lashes out at specific targets. 'Your Punk Sucks' and the hilariously titled 'Death to the Four Car Garage Band' are venomous attacks on the mall punk likes of Good Charlotte, featuring deliciously spiteful lines such as "trust funds and post punk hair are doled out to the millionaires" and "safe suburban thought rebellion your sad compromise". It's an admirable attitude but one that is unfortunately rendered pointless by the album's other big failing, the production.
On the basis of the two previously mentioned songs, Instruction seem to want to present themselves as an alternative to the pop-punk currently clogging up the charts, but this stance would be a lot more convincing if the music they made wasn't so over-produced and glossy. The presence of old hand Bob Ezrin on production duties hinders rather than helps, as this is the man who previously added his customary sheen to the rock dinosaurs like Kiss and Alice Cooper. In the case of Instruction, he disappointingly turns an album of competent if average punk songs into a vapid exercise in airbrushed angst rock, the songs predictably falling into two camps- the mosh-friendly rocker ('Lean on You', 'Are You Happy?', 'Great') and the more reflective moments like 'I'm Dead', 'Breakdown', and the truly awful token ballad'Feed the Culture' which shockingly enough features, I shit you not, sitars and a distinct Indian influence. On a punk album. The rest is kind of hard to take seriously after that.
Maybe it's not Instruction's
fault, maybe their mega bucks record label Geffen had a hand in the high-gloss
production, or maybe I just don't understand the whole post-hardcore emo
scene, but to me 'God Doesn't Care'
sounds disappointingly like an album made by a half decent punk band who've
simply had a too much cash thrown at them- unfocused, empty, commercial,
and ultimately as much a part of the problem as their apparent sworn enemies
Good Charlotte.
Review by Ian Viggars
www.instruction-music.com
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Bands shouldn’t fit comfortably into unoriginal pigeon holes. Progression throughout a career is crucial; no one is interested in the same album 4 times over with the smallest variation. The National built a reputation of making beautiful, timid americana. This however, was blown out of the water when they released the first single from ‘Alligator’. ‘Abel’ thuds and snarls with drums that never drop below 1000 miles per hour with guitars that swirl and encompass the vocals while all the time conveying the feeling of their minimalist past. Although this new direction is prominent throughout, The National haven’t completely lost their ability to conjure songs that touch something deeper than just a pleasant tune. On ‘Looking For astronauts’ and ‘Daughters of the Soho Riots’ Matt Berninger’s vocals swoon to romance so far that I find myself unable to concentrate on anything other than the music, totally fixated. This is what I look for, no, what I need in a band and The National have aplenty.
Review by Barry Bennett
http://www.americanmary.com/
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I just went to make coffee to try and shake my Hal Wrestling resentment and my coffee machine blew up. That really annoyed me, I bought it with my student loan. It's like I have finally said goodbye to uni....I left 3 years ago....that coffee machine was all I had left. Ideally I would be tucking into a bit of Joy Division right now wallowing with Ian Curtis in the urban trough convincing myself that everything he hated about Manchester has a direct correlation to things I hate in Nottingham (and my broken ponchy coffee machine). But instead I am about to listen to Hal, the sleeve looks like something out of a Brian Wilson scrap book. I can smell the West Coast sea breeze, it smells happy. They drag me kicking and screaming, headphones are stapled to my head, I don't want to listen to happy music....no.....stop.....argghhhh!
As it begins sunshine pours out of the speakers like thick treacle. It's good, very compentent but it's just so glucose sounding. By the end of the first song "What a Lovely Dance" I feel like I have eaten too many Haribo. Various comparisons have been made to them sounding like the Thrills and the Beach Boys. The reality is that the Beach Boys are an untouchable entity that have inspired various bands and movements. Years down the line this has inspired the Thrills, Hal and a host of others. While some of these "West Coast" style bands are clearly cash-ins on a genre, I do at least get the impression that Hal are genuine.
The majority of the songs just didn't do anything for me apart from induce slight nausea. "My Eye's Are Sore" sounds like a bit of a waste of a string quartet with it's only saving grace being it sounds a little bit like Art Garfunkel, but then it quickly committs suicide by morphing into the soundtrack to Bugsy Malone. With regard to "Fool By Your Side" I just don't have enough words in my vocabulary to describe how umoved I was by it and then there's "I Sat Down" which has an unfortunate 'man sings like Tori Amos' sound. "Keep Love as Your Golden Rule" and "Don't Come Running" are my favourites I think, nice verses.
I read somewhere else that this album is Pet Sounds for the 00's. No
it isn't. Two reasons why:
i) Pet Sounds has never made me feel sick, even on the 14th listen on
the same day.
ii) Pet Sounds can always without fail haul me out of the deepest mind
trench even when I don't want to be cheered up. Hal don't have this power,
well not today anyway.
This is not Pet Sounds. They clearly have talent so it would just nice to see them trying more of their own thing than reharshing the past. The songs and harmonies are delivered with conviction and they are clearly good at what they do but essentially this is a watered down late "we all got fat" Beach Boys album sung in the style of Van Morrison.
At least if this review makes me enemies I doubt that the band will be able to do much damage if they come to rough me up, unless of course they were one of the lucky ones who got their hands on a copy of Hal Wrestling. Then I've had it.
Review by Jamie Boyerwww.halmusic.com
Hal Wrestling - http://image.allmusic.com/00/agg/screen250/drs100/s112/s11261lekba.jpg
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Disclaimer AKA Chris Willie Williams comes across like some kind of madcap post-Gen-X Leonard Cohen, but not as good, obviously. Like Cohen, though, Williams also has a penchant for almost ruining his own songs with reductively-daft instrumentation. The result is pretty strange – akin to listening to a downbeat troubadour minus the acoustic guitars or Emo without the punk/Morrissey fetish. Like I said - pretty strange. Nevertheless, Williams has an undeniable way with words and there are a handful of lyrical delights scattered across the CD. Choice lines include: “The contrast burns, being feted, fellated, and then filleted”; “I wish we could be erased and taped over with porn” and “There’s a pile of broken-necked angels below my window. Their kamikaze raids won’t let me sleep”. However, for the most part the lyric sheet reads like a bitter, tear-stained love-letter to an ex-girlfriend. Anyone who has ever been unreasonably/unceremoniously dumped will be impressed by his knack for summing up universal feelings with witty one-liners. The thing is, although specifics are thin on the ground, the record soon grows tedious to anyone who isn’t Chris or his ex-girlfriend. I don’t know whether or not she took him back after hearing this record. I hope so for his sake, but it seems unlikely. They never do, do they? She’s probably fucking her smug ‘best friend’, listening to tapes I made for her. Bitch. [Dry your eyes, mate…]
Is The Explosion really necessary? This question can be applied to many American pooh pop-punk acts but for this particular piece the question mark falls over The Explosion. Is another chart demolishing artificial modern mass adored rock band for the teenhood really what we need? Probably not but somebody at Virgin Records thought it necessary to infect our ears with it so here’s a brief synopsis on what’s The Explosion’s debut album, 'Black Tape', is all about.
A few weeks ago I went to see The Ordinary Boys on a belly full of wine. We collapsed through the fire doors in the middle of The Cribs set and found out later by fingering a gig timetable that we’d missed a little known band of the same loosely onomatopoeic name as that at the top of this script. I can’t say that I’m disappointed in hindsight now.
'Black Tape' opens as it so gracefully and arrogantly means to proceed. With a predictable feedback screech into waves of drums that change their pattern very little throughout the whole of ‘Deliver Us’. Otherwise it’s a simple recipe for this Offspring copycat act: Uncalled for larynx destroying yelling, needless swearing, high treble guitars, unimaginative drum sequences, themes of love and loss and words of self-gratifying ego boosting almost put them in the same league as Hell Is For Heroes. Although Hell Is For Heroes have a much more poetic way with words and metaphors that doesn’t make them sound like a complaining bunch of victorious high-school drop-outs.
Griping isn’t creating.
There are no stand out tracks here. There are no revolutionary uses for the instruments here. No new lyrical techniques are employed. Everything is familiar and in the most emphatically unsatisfactory way. Maybe this is because I’m a fan of The Mars Volta’s angular music, a keen explorer of the music landscape always looking for something new and more compelling than the last tuft of musical genius. There’s very little on this album for the avid guitar music fan.
Rebelling isn’t rebuilding.
This is an album all about growing up and naturally with growing up in America you feel compelled to rebel. To revolt against the school system, your trust fund and those members of the opposite sex who go round in their skirts and green eye liner messing with your brain. All these themes are old and worn. There’s no freshness here…nothing that will leap out and clutch your balls and demand it be heard. These are songs of very little relevance to anyone and for them to all sound so alike it’s no wonder I’m now listening to another artist while pounding these letters out with a degree of malice on my distressed keyboard.
Ridiculing isn’t replacing.
There’s probably not much in the way of a niche for these guys to fill. Yet that undoubtedly won’t stop them for striving for some form of vulgar unjust fame. We’ve got a Green Day and we’ve got a Rival Schools and we’ve got numerous more Yank bands that long to be ten years younger and re-live their mistakes again and they do it in a much more tasteful fashion. A manner that’s not so gut wrenchingly false and cradles much more feeling. The Explosion won’t be replacing anyone in our hearts or our CD collections. How on Earth did they bag a support slot with Ordinary Boys?
Review by Dean Samways
www.theexplosion.net
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Ex-Bridgewater not-quite-resident Joe Strummer once said of the “UK’s 44th crappest town”: “It’s a fantastic place. It’s like Moss Side in the West Country.” Dubious tribute aside, if it’s good enough for Joe, then it’s good enough for me. The superbly-titled (Iron Maiden-baiting) “Bring Your Daughter To Bridgwater” is a drive-by-pop-attack of a regional compilation pieced together by Somerset’s Sedgemoor Contemporary Music Group; but is it any good?
Yes and no. When it’s good, it’s very good, when it’s not, it’s pretty ropey. Luckily there are no real stinkers, and the wheat comprehensively outweighs the chaff. The stand-out track is easily ‘Drowning’ by The Get-Outs – quite literally the shape of punk to come – the manic missing link between Refused and Supergrass. Awesome. Other highlights include: Squad 69 ‘s irresistible scuzz-drenched goth marriage between Petula Clark and the Jesus and Mary Chain; Arctic Beard’s nightmarish experimental big-top shenanigans and even Revolver’s daft, squelchy funk-rock tribute to the incorrigible king of funk in ‘James Brown’ sounds good in a Black Crowes-meets-Chili Peppers kinda way. Elsewhere numerous singer-songwriters do their thing with aplomb, which is always nice to hear.
At the end of the day: a formidable musical showcase from one of the UK’s least fashionable towns. Bonus scene points for managing to unite such a diverse set of musicians and other noise-makers to achieve a common goal, as well. Other provincial towns take note.
Review by Tom Leins
www.midnightmango.co.uk
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