Reviews
INDIE ROCK
DESERT HEARTS Hotsy Totsy Nagasaki (Gargleblast Records) 0...
Once upon a time indie- bands had ideas and balls. But the current trend for nadger- crushingly tight jeans seems to have put a stop to that.
Giving a slap to stage school rockers and banning the keyboards from the rehearsal rooms are Belfast trio, Desert Hearts. Like LA trio Autolux. they're not afraid to mix sensitivity with volume. OK. so they’ve heard a Pixies record 0r two but amidst the throbbing bass lines. pounding drums and serious distortion. there's originality like. Mariachi horns on 'Black Albino' and accordions on ‘Bone Song'. A song, which we should add, is in no way about balls.
(Andrew Bonhwick)
GARAGE BLUES LITTLE BARRIE Stand Your Ground (PIAS) COO
Little Barrie's Edwyn Collins-produced debut We Are Little Barrie proved a low—key. Cult album. better received outside the scene fetish of the British Isles. Here. the three-piece returns with a change in line-up. a noticeably higher profile and an altogether tougher attitude. Out with drummer Wayne Fulwood go the loose harmonies and soaring choruses, in comes a tougher blues swagger touched previously on singles ‘Long Hair' and ‘Burned Out'. This is
much more lead singer Barrie Cadogan's album. a brief and aptly titled collection of tight soul struts with often simple lyrics and a self-assured defiance that doubtless owes something to stateside jaunts and straight-ahead hip hop production.
(Mark Edmundson)
FOLK EDDI READER
Peacetime (Rough Trade) ooo
I tilll MAUI-R PEACFTlME
After her triumphant homecoming with the best-selling Sings the Songs of Robert Burns. this new collection finds one of Scotland's best voices continuing to mine the traditional vein in the company of folk heroes like John McCusker, Phil Cunningham and Donald Shaw.
It's all lovingly arranged. performed and produced — and in terrible danger of drowning in the warm Syrup of 21 st-century world music production. Reader's is not a gritty voice at the best of times, and the album's disappointing edgelessness is compounded by a dose of the sort of Boo Hewerdine-led pallid pop that gets people campaigning for greater national separation. (Ninian Dunnett)
JAZZ
NATIONAL YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA OF SCOTLAND Scotland Suite (NYOS) ooo
The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland's associated Jazz Orchestra has been around now for a decade. and issued a CD featuring the music of pianist Nikki Yeoh seven years ago. This second disc features two suites by Scottish composers at opposite
ends of their careers. interleaved with arrangements of two familiar jazz standards. Malcolm Edmonstone is the co-director of NYJoS with Andrew Bain, and his specially commissioned Scotland Suite features his co- director on drums. It not especially memorable. his settings of old Scots songs from the McGibbon collection are nicely put together and capably played by the young band. Veteran trumpeter Duncan Lamont's brassier and more dynamic Carnival of the Animals provides a contrasting approach to big band writing across its six colourful movements. (Kenny Mathieson)
ECLECTIC TECH VARIOUS
Tronic: New Wave of Electronic Sounds (T ronic) 00
TROI'IIC
A compilation featuring artists tied to Glasgow‘s show-and-teli tech club of the same name. Tron/c Volume 7 is an earnest endeavour championing a host of local electronic projects. but also proving more than just a little bit dull. Opening fairly strongly. things soon tail off into the kind of numbing beats and Synth loops that send the listener directly back to mid-90s bargain bins — where l imagine a number of these tunes might feel quite at home. Unquestionably exciting in the live club arena. the drag of home listening reveals either the sound's slow progress or premature
resurgence. (Mark Edmundson)
CHEERY SCOTTISH ECLECTICA
VARIOUS
Get While the Getting’s Good (Aufgeladen und Bereit)
If this is the future of Scottish music. then it has a big broad smile on its face. Often it may be a broken one (such as in Jock Scot's barroom brogue of Barcelona). sometimes it's the scary kind with the thousand yard stare (the brass band bonkers of The Pendulums' ‘New Song') but mainly it's of the chirpy variety. Listen to 'l Should've Known' by the Metro—Gnomes or 'Tears for Affairs' from Camera Obscura and try not to grin like a love- sozzled fool. Rarely does this collection of new Scottish music dip into the darker recesses of our soul with the bleeps and buttons of Automatons & the Ons' filling that particular brief. (Brian Donaldson)
AMERICAN GOTHIC MARISSA NADLER Songs Ill:
Bird on the water
(Peacefrog) 0000
To the uninitiated Nadler's faraway. gothic sensibilities and haunted. sirenic voice can be oft-putting to say the least. As in previous outings morose balladry. velvety vocals and intricate guitar work are the order of the day here. albeit with an occasionally fuller arrangement that breathes just a little
Kate Nash
inevitable.
Singles? Downloads! Seeing as 2007 is the year when MySpace makes it really big. so much so that your mum and dad will be using it to check out that fun new pop act they heard on Joo/s Holland, let's celebrate new music. Without wishing to bark in your ear like Zane Lowe. there's a preponderance of great new stuff lurking in Singlesville this half-month. Please. allow us to dingy the same old. same old likes of Snow Patrol and the Chili Peppers in order to share.
But first, a couple of great and worthwhile singles by bands you will have heard of. There's Bloc Party's ‘The Prayer’ (Wichita) 0000 a strident. doomy paean to being the life and SOul of the party built on what sounds like a mournful backing chorus of praying monks. The Long Blondes' ‘Giddy Stratospheres' (Rough Trade) 0000 , meanwhile. is just a righteous piece of catchy, fun-loving indie-pop that grabs you by the ears and won't let go. In a good way.
It wouldn't be a Singles and Downloads column without a bit of the best of Scottish. so how about Popup’s spiky, downhome, refreshingly Glaswegian-accented ‘Chinese Burn/Stagecoach (Art Goes Pop) 0000 . or Errors with the bleepsome and strangely very danceable ‘Saluti France’ (Rock Action)
0000 ? One name you're going to be hearing a lot more of is Dumfries' Calvin Harris. whose five—track ‘EP' (Fly Eye/Columbia)
is sublime eighties-oriented electro-pop. which makes the Mylo comparisons all-but-
Coventry’s The Enemy would Quite like to be Kasabian. it seems, but the skyscrapingly shouty ‘lt‘s Not OK‘ (Stiff) oooo better. In the end. they take second spot in the race for Single of the Fortnight to the sublime Kate Nash - think Lily Allen with an acoustic guitar — whose AA-side ‘Caroline’s a Victim/Birds’ (Moshi Moshi) 0000 begins with already the most irritating song you'll hear this year — the title. sung in a snotty. overdramatic. spoiled little girl voice over a minimal synth beat. She redeems herself. though. with 'Birds'. one of the most wondrous and original acoustic love songs of ‘07, and we’ll hopefully be seeing her down the front at the Brits in '08. (David Pollock)
is quite frankly loads
colour and warmth into the spooky. spectral folk-cumAmericana. There is something at once magical. timeless and yet easrly dismissible about Nadler's work. While
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perseverance rewards the listener the sheer oddness of the path trodden make this another challenging album and by no means one for all tastes.
(Mark Edmundson)
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