Rock, Pop, Dance
Abs
Abstract Theory
BMG
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He looks like a dweeb. He has a snigger-worthy name. The album title is really quite bad. The album itself, however, is not a complete disaster, and maybe all that Britain's-answer-to-Justin-Timberlake stuff is vaguely justified.
It's a little all-over-the-place and goes big guns with the inevitable cheeky sampling and genre-hopping - a cricket test-match theme tune here, a puerile dabble with reggae there. On Rain he sounds like a Craig David carbon copy, while on Angel it all goes a bit PM Dawn.
If you're still mourning S Club, and you secretly loved Five, you'd find it hard to dislike Abs. For anyone else, the only point of interest here is to ponder what on God's earth made Richard Breen change his name to Abs. Unforgivable, really.
Abigail Wild
Various
The Green Man Festival
(Double Snazzy)
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The Green Man festival earlier this week was billed as ''12 hours of Folk and Folktronica in the Brecon Beacons'' and this compilation is a fine representation of the event.
There are 17 tracks of strummy, hummy, chiming, and delicate acoustic pop/rock tracks, from the reasonably well-known (James Yorkston) through to the obscure, and beyond. It is the first record I have heard which opens with a Druid's Prayer from the Archdruid of the Secular Order of Druids, for example. There is much to recommend the recent upsurge in nu-folk, folktronica, folkadelica, the New Folk or whatever it is called this week. The profound and beautiful world of classic British folk melodies and lyricism is beginning to be mined by rock acts again. Indeed, Scottish acts have led the way in recent years, with Appendix Out, and the latest incarnation of the Telstar Ponies.
Here, Byrne's Greener is a gleaming sheen of aural greenery, while Christopher Rees is plangent on Swan Dive, and best of all is the cracked, haunting Gravenhurst of Damage (ii). Interesting, arresting, occasionally gorgeous, I suspect
this eclectic snapshot will repay frequent listening.
Phil Miller
Chris T-T
London is Sinking
(Snowstorm)
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London is sinking? If only. Chris T-T has Londinium's swirl of the beautiful and profane, ugly and elegant running through him like the twist in stick of rock. From his clipped accent to his occasionally agile poetic observations, this is music which tries to dissect the sinews of modern life in the capital in a manner akin to The Streets, albeit with less sonic invention.
There is probably a good thesis to be written one day about the recent upsurge in obsessional, mainly dreary singer-songwriters while the charts suffers the hegemony of R&B and hip-pop, but it would be unfair to lumber the Mr T-T in with dross such as David Gray and the rapidly declining Badly Drawn Boy.
If a little monochrome and limited in palate, his musings on the drowning of a baby (I think) on Battersea Bridge Baptism are effective and in general he maintains an aura of intelligence and occasional musical invention. Not bad, but there is nothing here to inspire anyone to move to the Metropolis.
Phil Miller
The Raveonettes
Chain Gang of Love
(Columbia)
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IF pop must eat itself (and it seems compulsory) then this is the sort of chowin' down I want to hear. Danish duo Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo are possibly the least original phenomenon in current rock 'n' roll. They make The White Stripes sound like Naked City. But if the notion of the gorgeous offspring of the B52s and the Jesus and Mary Chain after a party gone out of bounds appeals (and why wouldn't it?), then the duo's full length debut disc will assuredly be for you. Actually it is a considerable leap forward from the Whip It On mini-album, with a broader range of textures and sounds, some of them dangerously modern in a 1965 kinda way. Vintage stuff.
Keith Bruce
Anjali
The World of Lady A
(Wiiija)
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She of the under-achieving mid-1990s group Voodoo Queens is back with an energetic, if a little flat, follow up to her solo debut.
For the most part, this sounds like a rather exciting, jittering album being smothered by a really embarrassing one. It's alarmingly desperate to be sexy, Anjali Bhatia's breathy lounge-room half-singing being a bit too close to Skye from Morcheeba/Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to the president for comfort. The Mission Impossible theme tune soundalikey - Turn It On! - is a real duffer.
When it's momentarily grandiose, moody, brave or orchestral, it's better but, all
in all, the world of Lady A is a drifting aimlessly into space.
Abigail Wild
Jazz
Colin Steele
The Journey Home
(Caber)
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Trumpeter Colin Steele's second album for Caber shares many of the features of his debut, Twilight Dreams, not least the coolly elegant melodic lines that Steele has made his trademark. But it also goes deeper into the leader's Scottishness, Steele's quintet individually and collectively giving as convincing evidence as anyone needs that Scottish musicians can call unselfconsciously on the tones, airs and dance measures of their native traditional music - just as their American counterparts do with blues or gospel inflections - to create jazz of an international standard. Pianist David Milligan once again makes a telling contribution both as instrumentalist and co-arranger and the recently installed Scotsman, saxophonist Julian Arguelles is perfectly attuned to the folk forms on this cultured, grooving hymn to the homeland.
Rob Adams
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