14 July 2008

Primal Scream – Can’t Go Back
The seminal band have had gone through a myriad of musical changes but this returns to their halcyon days via Bobby Gillespie’s drugged out androgynous vocal skimming across the surface of the psychedelic guitars. Surprisingly there’s even a dance floor chorus. 

The Hair – Half Cut
A band from the north with a taste for off-putting band names this just about saves itself with it’s thorny insouciance but no one can have any idea how they managed supporting bands like Crystal Castles. The bar snack flavour of mid nineties pub indie.

Chris Bathgate – Restless
This has got folk running through it like free flowing flood water engorging it with a tangible emotion. Chris is at the vanguard of the American folk scene and will probably stay there.

Passenger – Things You’ve Never Done
Be aware of the encroaching shadow of David Gray creeping up on this Handel sampling ballad that makes you picture some windswept Irish landscape and a farmer going out of business. When the strings kick in it does have the required uplifting effect.

Winona - Without You
Composer Craig Armstrong has spread open his wide influential arms and roped in an ethereal voiced French actress and a smattering of other musicians to create a comedown track for the next chocolate commercial. Not even some seductively European spoken word can salvage it. 

Leila – Deflect
More or less a showcase for guest star Martina Topley Bird who drawls the track with her trademark jazz club purr while a neat acapella section in the middle allows her to whisper like the smoke from a discarded cigarette. Leila appears absent.

Neon Neon – I Told Her On Alderaan
Swiped from the incredible concept album that tracked the Delorean's (that’s the car) rise and fall, this belongs in the make out sequence of an 80s movie with Eric Stoltz and Molly Ringwald. A shoulder-padded classic.

Sparkadia – Morning Light
It seems heavily significant that this Australian band toured with Vampire Weekend because they share that buoyant winking joie de vivre and so they probably wear annoyingly preppy outfits and sing everything with a dentist pleasing grin.

The Thirst – My Everything
The Brixton four-piece come with gushing recommendations from the likes of Ronnie Wood and Pete Doherty and they do have a talent for making uncomplicated rock 'n' roll with the vocal nuances of Paul Weller. The subject matter concerns relationships ending. Yawn.

The Brute Chorus – Grow Fins
Lamentable harmonizing indie for the remedial class with some face hiding lyrical couplets from a sparsely populated poetry group. For people who like dunce music and dance through parks like a never released advert for a sugary drink.

The Arusha Accord – Nightmares Of The Ocean
You can tell by the swirling vine like tentacles on the band logo that this six piece make music for Goth funerals and the kind of death metal barrage that would terrify even the ravens circling above.

The Humour – Momentary Moment
Bands will keep naming themselves something that gets a heartfelt round of applause at a moron convention but it actually sounds like an embarrassing aside when someone asks who’s playing tonight. Balls out rock and roll to stir some a Stone Age man.

Albert Hammond Jnr – GfC
The third interesting member of The Strokes is the most productive and this is taken from the second album he’s recorded while hanging around waiting for the rest of the band to finish leather jacket shopping. This is a cut above a side project and has a slick guitar line scything it in two.