Mark Ronson - Uptown Special - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Admirably a total music-head, Ronson's earlier efforts oozed a certain charm and level of cool. However, after discharging questionable covers of indie-pop classics originally written by the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, The Zutons and The Jam on the album Version and returning to songwriting for his last rather patchy full-length set Record Collection, the snappy-dressing producer lost his credibility with 'the kids'. Album four is something of an improvement and makes use of some talent you'd otherwise see performing with the sort of bands 'the kids' love. Tame Impala's Kevin Parker turns out to be the star of the show on Uptown Special - his boyish vocals grace two understated gems in Daffodils and Summer's Breaking - while Miike Snow's Andrew Wyatt delivers a soulful lyric on Crack In The Pearl. Oh yeah, there's some bloke called Stevie Wonder doing his harmonica thing on the bookending tracks, Uptown's First Finale and the reprise of Crack In The Pearl. Of course there's Uptown Funk to steer past and a few duds here and there but overall Ronson's lighter (sorry) approach has, for the most part, provided a decent, if unspectacular, experience.
Various - 12345 Meda Fury - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
For an imprint that's barely 12 months into its lifespan, R&S offshoot Meda Fury has already laid down some pretty nifty 12". Here they are chronicled for your convenience (digital only, sadly) , starting with the absolute MONSTER of a bassline that is, OL's Lum Edit. It throbs like a generator and has a low-end deeper than a dolphin's flipper, a seamless masterclass in deep minimal eccentric funky house. And so it goes on. Further music from OL, Hazylujah, D-Ribiero, Damon Bell and Takuya Matsumoto demonstrates why just about every dance-label in the country should throw its template out of the window and sign up some proper clubbing treasures like these.
Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
You could be forgiven for copping an earful of the Hertfordshire bawler's opening gambit on The Midsweep and thinking that here's another change in direction, this time towards '90s synth-rock a la Senser or later, Pendulum. But no, Enter Shikari possess all the tenacity and ferocity of old by the time the following track The One True Colour truly kicks in, while Anaesthetist bullies your eardrums with hefty industrial beats and much shouting. The Mindsweep isn't a jolly boys outing by any means - as you'd expect from the Shikaris, it's an apocalyptic soundscape presented here with standouts including Myopia and the epic Dear Future Historians, arguably the band's Muse moment (it's jammed full of pianos and exceeds six minutes), as well as the book-ending parts of The Appeal and the Mindsweep. Remaining tracks are a rather more typical amalgam of intelligent screamo and power-pop.
Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
The band's eighth album in twenty years is actually their first studio collection for a decade and if Sub Pop have been nervy about getting any sort of return from these ladies, they needn't - No Cities To Love sounds like a serious contender for year-end round-ups and long-lasting heroine-worship from all and sundry. What sets this album apart from many peers are the riffs - from Price Tag to Fangless right through to the concluding Fade, in a bass-line free world, lesser bands would make their guitar-powered art sound like a fuzzy wall of meh. Sleater-Kinney turn bricks to dust with stealth and subtlety, NOT rock-posturing, just merely knocking a great tune out and doing what the marvellous Bettie Serveert used to do and what the Breeders stopped doing after two albums. Well worth the ten-year wait.
Aqualung - 10 Futures - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Five albums in and songwriter Matt Hales' alter-ego continues to dabble in adult-pop a la Keane, Coldplay and David Gray, without troubling chart compilers anymore. His last album Magnetic North was something of a sleeping success that displayed his strongest talent - melancholia and arrangements. For 10 Futures, he's drafted in some guests - Lianne La Havas, Luke Sital-Singh and Sweet Billy Pilgrim are just a handful involved - and discovered a change in approach on some of the songs. New Low sounds distinctly LCD Soundsystem-esque with its motorik clattering percussion while the opening Tape 2 Tape boasts nu-soul chops not unlike Sohn or Purity Ring. If anything, 10 Futures is a far more varied beast, braver even, than his previous works yet suffers from being inconsistent. Seventeens and Clean retain Hales ear for a tune (even a hit), yet a sizeable minority of songs dip below the memorable radar all too often.
The Decemberists - What a Beautiful World, What a Terrible World - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Rough Trade can expect much interest in this outfit - billed as a less 'toffy' alternative to our own Mumford and Sons and a more commercial prospect than the not dissimilar Stornoway or Bellowhead, The Decemberists deliver a diluted folk-rock experience that neither offends nor excites to any huge degree. Much of this seventh album is pleasing enough - the strident Make You Better is bursting with singalong qualities demanded of festival audiences and Cavalry Captain is likely to incite drunkenness in droves. There's certainly an element of R.E.M. within these musical walls - Easy Come Easy Go could soundtrack an eventual Michael Stipe solo album and Mistral sounds like a misfit from New Adventure In Hi-Fi. Whether What a Beautiful World will repeat the chart-topping success of its predecessor The King Is Dead remains to be seen.
Belle and Sebastian - Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Not so long ago, Glasgow's feted storytellers could cause palpitations among sensitive souls with a string of collectable E.P.s and strong albums. Nowadays, after a plethora of indifferent releases and indifference among reviewers, save for the excellent The Life Pursuit, B&S find themselves at something of a creative and critical crossroads once again. Things aren't looking too brilliant after the two opening efforts on this their ninth studio-album - fairly straightforward mid-tempo observational trademarks abound on both Nobody's Empire and Allie - before the party starts in earnest. The Party Line to be exact. Remember that ace Saint Etienne album Words and Music, from a few years ago? This could well have been its bastard son - Stuart Murdoch goes disco, in the loosest sense, not once, not twice but three times. Enter Sylvia Plath also borrows from Pet Shop Boys et al, with its pulsating synth-bass and trippy hi-hats, while Play For Today isn't a million miles away from Love Is In The Air if it were written by The Lightning Seeds. Those seeking gentle solace can immerse themselves in the rest of this generally fine album - a welcome improvement.
Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
From a blueprint stamped Drake and Mitchell comes L.A.s latest songwriting export, armed with a unique vocal style and an elbow dipped into the hot whirlpool that is, erm, psychedelic folk. Lighter in mood than the aforementioned Joni, Vashti Bunyan and Joanna Newsom but still possessed of an unexplainable and sombre darkness in the vein of Kirsten Hersh or Laura Veirs, Pratt's voice might divide onlookers but she's got something. A hybrid of mermaid and troubadour, Jessica draws you in with gently eddying string-play and descriptive word-play on Wrong Hand and Strange Melody before slaying you with atonal chord-changes on I've Got a Feeling and a song so good it could have been written by Tim Buckley - Moon Dude, superb. Some songs might benefit from a spot of colouring in - a violin here, a gently brushed snare there - but on the whole, On Your Own Love Again is crisp.
Dengue Fever - The Deepest Lake - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Talking of utterly out-there vocals, how about a Los Angeles psych-rock/world-fusion outfit fronted by an ex-karaoke singer from Cambodia, best known for getting a song included on splatter-drama True Blood and for fusing psychedelia with Khmer vocals? Yes, thought you'd say that. It's an odd combination that works a treat for the most part. Opener Tokay is as infectious as you can get, while both Taxi Driver and Deepest Lake On The Planet exude slinkiness and grooviness normally associated with Gorillaz and the like. Previously signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World label, it's ironic that a couple of albums on, Dengue Fever have found their footing on the world-music stage with a likeable, if topsy-turvy, seventh full-length set.
Admirably a total music-head, Ronson's earlier efforts oozed a certain charm and level of cool. However, after discharging questionable covers of indie-pop classics originally written by the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, The Zutons and The Jam on the album Version and returning to songwriting for his last rather patchy full-length set Record Collection, the snappy-dressing producer lost his credibility with 'the kids'. Album four is something of an improvement and makes use of some talent you'd otherwise see performing with the sort of bands 'the kids' love. Tame Impala's Kevin Parker turns out to be the star of the show on Uptown Special - his boyish vocals grace two understated gems in Daffodils and Summer's Breaking - while Miike Snow's Andrew Wyatt delivers a soulful lyric on Crack In The Pearl. Oh yeah, there's some bloke called Stevie Wonder doing his harmonica thing on the bookending tracks, Uptown's First Finale and the reprise of Crack In The Pearl. Of course there's Uptown Funk to steer past and a few duds here and there but overall Ronson's lighter (sorry) approach has, for the most part, provided a decent, if unspectacular, experience.
Various - 12345 Meda Fury - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
For an imprint that's barely 12 months into its lifespan, R&S offshoot Meda Fury has already laid down some pretty nifty 12". Here they are chronicled for your convenience (digital only, sadly) , starting with the absolute MONSTER of a bassline that is, OL's Lum Edit. It throbs like a generator and has a low-end deeper than a dolphin's flipper, a seamless masterclass in deep minimal eccentric funky house. And so it goes on. Further music from OL, Hazylujah, D-Ribiero, Damon Bell and Takuya Matsumoto demonstrates why just about every dance-label in the country should throw its template out of the window and sign up some proper clubbing treasures like these.
Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
You could be forgiven for copping an earful of the Hertfordshire bawler's opening gambit on The Midsweep and thinking that here's another change in direction, this time towards '90s synth-rock a la Senser or later, Pendulum. But no, Enter Shikari possess all the tenacity and ferocity of old by the time the following track The One True Colour truly kicks in, while Anaesthetist bullies your eardrums with hefty industrial beats and much shouting. The Mindsweep isn't a jolly boys outing by any means - as you'd expect from the Shikaris, it's an apocalyptic soundscape presented here with standouts including Myopia and the epic Dear Future Historians, arguably the band's Muse moment (it's jammed full of pianos and exceeds six minutes), as well as the book-ending parts of The Appeal and the Mindsweep. Remaining tracks are a rather more typical amalgam of intelligent screamo and power-pop.
Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
The band's eighth album in twenty years is actually their first studio collection for a decade and if Sub Pop have been nervy about getting any sort of return from these ladies, they needn't - No Cities To Love sounds like a serious contender for year-end round-ups and long-lasting heroine-worship from all and sundry. What sets this album apart from many peers are the riffs - from Price Tag to Fangless right through to the concluding Fade, in a bass-line free world, lesser bands would make their guitar-powered art sound like a fuzzy wall of meh. Sleater-Kinney turn bricks to dust with stealth and subtlety, NOT rock-posturing, just merely knocking a great tune out and doing what the marvellous Bettie Serveert used to do and what the Breeders stopped doing after two albums. Well worth the ten-year wait.
Aqualung - 10 Futures - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Five albums in and songwriter Matt Hales' alter-ego continues to dabble in adult-pop a la Keane, Coldplay and David Gray, without troubling chart compilers anymore. His last album Magnetic North was something of a sleeping success that displayed his strongest talent - melancholia and arrangements. For 10 Futures, he's drafted in some guests - Lianne La Havas, Luke Sital-Singh and Sweet Billy Pilgrim are just a handful involved - and discovered a change in approach on some of the songs. New Low sounds distinctly LCD Soundsystem-esque with its motorik clattering percussion while the opening Tape 2 Tape boasts nu-soul chops not unlike Sohn or Purity Ring. If anything, 10 Futures is a far more varied beast, braver even, than his previous works yet suffers from being inconsistent. Seventeens and Clean retain Hales ear for a tune (even a hit), yet a sizeable minority of songs dip below the memorable radar all too often.
The Decemberists - What a Beautiful World, What a Terrible World - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Rough Trade can expect much interest in this outfit - billed as a less 'toffy' alternative to our own Mumford and Sons and a more commercial prospect than the not dissimilar Stornoway or Bellowhead, The Decemberists deliver a diluted folk-rock experience that neither offends nor excites to any huge degree. Much of this seventh album is pleasing enough - the strident Make You Better is bursting with singalong qualities demanded of festival audiences and Cavalry Captain is likely to incite drunkenness in droves. There's certainly an element of R.E.M. within these musical walls - Easy Come Easy Go could soundtrack an eventual Michael Stipe solo album and Mistral sounds like a misfit from New Adventure In Hi-Fi. Whether What a Beautiful World will repeat the chart-topping success of its predecessor The King Is Dead remains to be seen.
Belle and Sebastian - Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Not so long ago, Glasgow's feted storytellers could cause palpitations among sensitive souls with a string of collectable E.P.s and strong albums. Nowadays, after a plethora of indifferent releases and indifference among reviewers, save for the excellent The Life Pursuit, B&S find themselves at something of a creative and critical crossroads once again. Things aren't looking too brilliant after the two opening efforts on this their ninth studio-album - fairly straightforward mid-tempo observational trademarks abound on both Nobody's Empire and Allie - before the party starts in earnest. The Party Line to be exact. Remember that ace Saint Etienne album Words and Music, from a few years ago? This could well have been its bastard son - Stuart Murdoch goes disco, in the loosest sense, not once, not twice but three times. Enter Sylvia Plath also borrows from Pet Shop Boys et al, with its pulsating synth-bass and trippy hi-hats, while Play For Today isn't a million miles away from Love Is In The Air if it were written by The Lightning Seeds. Those seeking gentle solace can immerse themselves in the rest of this generally fine album - a welcome improvement.
Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
From a blueprint stamped Drake and Mitchell comes L.A.s latest songwriting export, armed with a unique vocal style and an elbow dipped into the hot whirlpool that is, erm, psychedelic folk. Lighter in mood than the aforementioned Joni, Vashti Bunyan and Joanna Newsom but still possessed of an unexplainable and sombre darkness in the vein of Kirsten Hersh or Laura Veirs, Pratt's voice might divide onlookers but she's got something. A hybrid of mermaid and troubadour, Jessica draws you in with gently eddying string-play and descriptive word-play on Wrong Hand and Strange Melody before slaying you with atonal chord-changes on I've Got a Feeling and a song so good it could have been written by Tim Buckley - Moon Dude, superb. Some songs might benefit from a spot of colouring in - a violin here, a gently brushed snare there - but on the whole, On Your Own Love Again is crisp.
Dengue Fever - The Deepest Lake - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Talking of utterly out-there vocals, how about a Los Angeles psych-rock/world-fusion outfit fronted by an ex-karaoke singer from Cambodia, best known for getting a song included on splatter-drama True Blood and for fusing psychedelia with Khmer vocals? Yes, thought you'd say that. It's an odd combination that works a treat for the most part. Opener Tokay is as infectious as you can get, while both Taxi Driver and Deepest Lake On The Planet exude slinkiness and grooviness normally associated with Gorillaz and the like. Previously signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World label, it's ironic that a couple of albums on, Dengue Fever have found their footing on the world-music stage with a likeable, if topsy-turvy, seventh full-length set.