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COUNTRY
Emmylou Harris
Spyboy (Grapevine)
at: we )5:
Although Daniel Lanois is not heard on this live CD from Emmylou's Spyboy quartet, his influence permeates the band’s approach to all of the music here, and not just the selections from their collaboration on Wrecking Ball. Anyone who caught her Scottish gigs With this band Will know what to expect — Harris’s spine-shivering (if occasionally strained) vocals set against a shimmering instrumental soundscape driven by Brady Blade’s electrifying drumming and Buddy Miller’s guuar, both in atmospheric LanOis-like mode and a more rocking country Style. The songs are drawn from right across her career, and Will do nicely until she gets herself back in the studio again. (KM)
BONKERS
Grasshopper And The Golden Circle
The Orbit Of Eternal Grace
(Beggar's Banquet)
wk ‘5." air it
First Blur's Graham C0xon temporarily goes his own way with a solo album and now a somewhat less lauded bonkers gunarist, Grasshopper, gets fed up waiting for his band Mercury Rev to produce their fourth lunatic
album and teams up with Rev flautist Suzanne Thorpe for an offshoot offering which serves as a sort of fish course before the main event. There isn’t much to separate this from fully- fledged Mercury Rev psychosis apart from a tendency to kick back and float on balmy arrangements more often, Elsewhere it’s business as usual — manic psychedelia and cosmic disturbance. (FS)
Volume All*star
Close Encounters Of The Bump And Grind (Too Pure) er if: e.- Seattle-based duo Volume All'star employ the same battery of loops, beats and burps as Grasshopper to come up with a debut album of cut and paste shuffling which slacker king Beck would probably reject as too somnambulent. Lady Mallard's ghostly
Out 24th August 1998 Froni: new album “Fort Lake”-'bit now.
7“ AD 8015 Al Can't always be loved (radio 03:28) A2 Cam‘t wait forever (ti-truck 01:41) Bl Wish I luul u wishing ring: (first. one 04:09)
CD. BAD 8015 CD
01 Can't always he loved (radio 02:28)
02 Wish I had ii wishing); ring (uncut 17:14)
Exclusive 'I‘raurks
109 THE LIST 20—27 Aug 1998
group Th’ Faith Healers. However, more ’exploratory’ tracks like 'Mouse', an interminable grey guitar workout, can only just about be bothered to crawl to the finishing post. In fact, a good third of this overlong album could be lopped off without making any quality concessions. (ES)
POP Josef K
Endless Soul (Marina) new”?
German label Marina continues its crusade to uphold the reputations of Scotland's post-punk dudes with another compilation of rare material. This time the musical saviours are Josef K, possibly the coolest operators on the Postcard scene. Serious musicians and critics just love those funky-yet- spiky guitars jangling ferociously away behind Paul Haig's splenetic vocals. Their legacy is all the more worth preserving because the quartet had the good sense to quit while they were
Josef K: postcards from the past
monotone over trippy backing is on a par with the works of fellow US space cadets His Name Is Alive, but a whole album which sounds like the woozy distorted interludes The Beastie Boys sandwich between album tracks is never going to make for fulfilling listening, despite the pleasantly mellow
vibes. (FS) ahead after only one proper album. - This compilation lifts only a couple of Qu'd‘space tracks from The Only Fun In Town,
Precious Falling (Kitty Kitty) >2 we One of several bands who occupy Stereolab's hypnotic slipstream, Londoners Quickspace USuaIIy give a good account of themselves and there are compelling moments on Precious Emotion but there are no obvious Falling such as the Morriconesque successors in today's pop firmament. Synth soundtrack of ’Goodbye Precious (FS)
Mountain' or the insistent minimalist groove of 'Walk Me Home' which recalls guitarist Tom Cullinan's previous
salvaging more from the unreleased Sorry For Laughing and a Peel session and singles for Postcard and other labels. Their sound was echoed by underrated 80s types like That Petrol
REVIEWERS THIS ISSUE: Kenny Mathieson, Fiona Shepherd
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