Hutch Demouilpied - Otherness
Some albums seem split in two. While this one may come with a remixes disc, the divide doesn’t appear here.
No the fault-lines in the album run through every song, and every “remix”.
Easychord - Not In My Family Tree
Someone out there is clearly pining for a Tangerine Dream cover album. Otherwise I can’t see a reason for easychord to exist.
Monks of Mellonwah - Stars Are Out EP
Monks of Mellonwah, while not suckling the be-socked “teat” of Anthony Kedis and Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers fame, seem to want to get laid. Really badly it seem. So much so they’ve invested their time in putting together a cod(-piece?) -funk/rock band - assuming that this is definitely the best way to find themselves balls-deep in, well, in.
Whistle Peak - Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls
I like an album which wants to play hide and seek with you. Radiohead used to do it a lot and Elbow’s first album is a great example of it; melody, sound, texture all hidden or unexpected. It’s a bit like a series of lovely ambushes on your ears. It lets you come back to the album again and again, there’s unpicking to be done after all!
Paul Newman & The Ride Home - The Importance of Being Earnest Hemingway
Paul Newman & The Ride Home are a Baltimore pop-punk combo who want to ruin your afternoon.
There’s only so much flat vocal delivery you can take in one album. It’s mainly a problem for “serious” pop-punk bands. The trap which always closes steel tooth’d around the ankle of these bands is the chorus.
The Petter Seander - Til Death Do Us Apart
If you were going to write an album cynically with the intention of having your songs played on BBC Radio 1 16 months ago there would be few better blueprints than The Petter Seander’s “Til Death Do Us Apart”.
Slightly buzzy guitars and straight-up beats pervade throughout. Lyrically uninspiring, but hitting the right buttons to be played during lunch-time on Radio 1.
GLEAM - Lady Psyché And Her Heart Mechanix
GLEAM are an interesting duo in their way, swinging from broad pop-rock choruses which wouldn’t be out of place on a U2 or ToTo album (please contain your vomit, chipmunk-like, in your cheeks for the moment) to Jarvis Cocker mumble-verses, angular Talking Heads-esque breaks, and Zeppelin-like drum-drum-tumbles. (Yes, you can swallow that chunky vomit back down now, save it for another time).
Big Eye Family Players - Family Favourites
Instrumental pop music falls roughly into two groups: one side represented by grand and epic post rock sound-mangle wankery and the other a focused soundtrack-esque narrative strain.
Big Eye Family Players are the second kind of cunts.
Like the Go Team without that feeling of a narrative arc they fling their pleasant enough Americana-tinged classical/jazz-trundling into your ear-brackets. It’s not bad, but it is mundane. Each song feels like a small emotional crescendo in a film, just after the reveal the hero or heroine walks somewhere in the rain, after the break-up they stare out the window and look bloody miserable - each song raising itself up and coming to a kind of needlessly undercut climax.
And then it happens again.
Naturally this gets a little tiresome as seemingly unconnected vignettes flip from one to the other.
The stated aim of the group is to allow the head-man a chance to explore “the soundtrack” amongst other things. Why then does this feel so devoid of narrative? It’s not like they haven’t “got me” with a few of the more sentimental moments dripped forth - had an arc been applied to this, had I been able to listen to the whole album with a sense of movement and place then I think this would be a very different review.
Silver Tongues - Black Kite
Silver Tongues’ debut really felt like they wouldn’t disappoint; a stomping intro with some claps, a little funeral organ in “Highways” and interesting but familiar texture to the thing - a bit like David Sylvian/Japan - except sung a little off; showing not inadmirable weakness. Then I realise it’s not really Japan being channelled here, it’s Matchbox fucking 20.
Barry - Yawin’ In The Dawnin’
Some would accuse this site of being one filled with endless pessimism; the glass is always half empty for us. With this in mind there has never been a more fitting EP to land in our inbox than “Yawnin’ in the Dawnin’” by Barry, a folk-rock four-piece. They feel like a capable band cracking out tunes, but they need their glasses topped up - with more whores whiskey and probably lime.
