Music Record Reviews
SINGLES & DOWNLOADS écééificxa
Animosity (Beerjacket) ”00
album, Fits hold holds together remarkably well, largely due to the perfect pacing that alternates between gentle and ferocious.
back in 2002
The recording comes from the opening night of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival in 2006. and captures the energy and
Be a Familiar
(Miles Fielder) invention of the band UV I i POP and soloist Brian Kellock _ : W BROWN in Smith r: 238?: new whgjfeel the badnds , j Travelling Like the arrange, $9 0 Borg? 8“! '0 outings 0nt . 3 Light Gershwm s Rhapsody In qune reflect the full ; (Island) .. Blue. 'Arrangement' measure of their on-
hardly does it justice - expanded to three times the length of the original, full of imaginative new writing and superbly played by all concerned. it is a major work in its own right, and the recording allows us leisure to pick up on much that was missed in the whirl of the live ouflng.
(Kenny Mathieson)
stage performances. and if there is a slightly i formulaic feel to their approach at times. they serve it up with ; maximum conviction. ' The band’s usual combination of fiddle. pipes, guitar and an excellent jazz-derived horn section is I underpinned by ' keyboards, bass and ' drums. Piper Peter I Morrison provides the ' majority of the compositions. augmented by a couple of tunes from fiddler Adam Sutherland. As
Like an iron fist in a velvet glove. acoustic troubadour Peter Kelly has wrapped powerful lyrical sentiment inside a delicate musical framework for this stripped-back-to-basics album.
And what an album it is. with whispered vocals. plaintive harmonies and nimble fretwork that could give Bon Iver or Elvis Perkins a serious run for their rnoney
Armed with just a guitar and a tambourine.
Time was that the onset of summer beckoned a slew of novelty singles, courtesy of cartoon pop ingenues. often replete with carefree dance moves. You know: The Vengaboys' ‘Going to lbiza’; Los del Rio's ‘Macarena'; Whigfield's ‘Saturday Night'. Ah, happy days.
No such sunny revelry this year, alas. on the evidence of this crestfallen booty bag . . .
The nearerst we can manage is Smoove and Turrell, who are clearly trying their level best to avoid being a lbiza lloorfilling conga inspirer by planeing down their Wigan Casino lite adventures ‘Don’t Go'l'Hammond" (Jalapeno) ooo but managing some cheery elastic grroves. Whether the latter is an
Underneath W Brown's
forward roll fringe and glossy grin beats a rockabilly heart. Hyped as a ‘girl most likely to'
in 2009, its kind of‘a JACKIE'O balloon burster to find MOTHER- her pop'n’roll debut FUCKER
doesn't match up to her Bauads of the striking, wholesome-hot Revolution
INDIE SPACE-ROCK
unsubtle tribute to the reckless smout from Top Gear goes unconfirmed. We'd very much like to think so.
Sure, Lady Gaga looks the part on the cover of sub-Aqua laser ballad, 'Paparazzi' (lnterscope) oo — all Eurotrash posturing and PVC corsetry — but a croon about stalking a bloke in jeans does not a holiday classic make. Peaches’ superior electro-lament, ‘Lose You' (XL) oooo has an equally dejected undercurrent - all paranoid, throbbing and lovelorn.
Ladies! It's summertime! Less of the heartbreak!
Said plea has clearly fallen on deaf ears around Optirno's gaffe: the latest conscripts to their esteemed imprint go by the jovial designate of Divorce. Their eponymous debut EP ooo does, however, give cause to carouse: it's livid with West Coast noise-rock - or, as the fervid five-piece would have it, “Nae Wave“. And hence a new, excellent, genre was born . . .
One for bolting aural pigeonholes is Biffy Clyro's Simon Neil — rawk totem by day and dance star by night — if the latest ovation from his moonlight pursuit Marmaduke Duke is anything to go by: the pattering, electrifying love-pop of ‘Silhouettes' (14th Floor) om is awesome.
Another dude fleeing his bygone coop is cocktail dandy Mr Hudson — ere of The Library — now aurally conjoined with Kanye West for club—land titan 'Supernova' (Mercury) 00 . lts melodic constellation may delineate H-l-T but all the same, a point of order: Cher's ‘Believe' ushered the vocoder’s apex and death-knell. Leave well alone.
Trumpets, on the other hand, are eternally welcome. Wide-open arms, then, for Be a Familiar — a joyous, Glasgow-based assorted-rock seven-piece whose Postcard guitars and boy-girl carnival render ‘You'd Make a Great Ghost' (self-released) 00000 Single of the Fortnight. It's a glorious Scottish dog day anthem. And hell, if its shimmering snares and playground fanfares aren’t ripe for a boogie routine and a Balearic remix, then I’ll eat my Fast Food Rockers picture disc. (Nicola Meighan)
66 THE LIST 9—23 Jul 2009
his introspective lyrics veer from pugnacious to frank self -deprecation. and singing of how ‘a sleeping king will lose his crown' on ‘Evil Air', it's a record proving that its creator can stake his own worthy claim at joining acoustic royalty. (Emma Newlands)
ROCK
WHITE DENIM Fits
(Full Time Hobby) oooo
The Texan trio who hit the ground running a year ago with their impressively disparate debut Workout Holiday are back with an even wilder polyphonic follow-up. Appropriately titled Fits, this schizoid record veers from avant punk to psychedelic funk, 605 garage to 70$ Brazilian pop, acid rock to altfolk. free jazz to rhythm and blues and c0untry.
The 12 tracks invoke acts as diverse as the Minutemen, Funkadelic and Randy Newman, but — incredibly — White Denim have stamped their own sound on the whole thing. Although it's a monster of an
good looks. (She’s already signed as a Select model.) Musically, the synth, trumpet and guitar player updates reggae. Phil Spector and doo wop ditties with Super Mario bleeps and punk- Iite riffs, but the frantic “Monster Mash' rhymes meets popgeisty Amy Winehouse vocals left this reviewer feeling a
wee bit like she'd just
sat through a fashion show of the emperor's new clothes.
(Claire Sawers)
JAZZ
SNJO
Rhapsody in Blue Live (Spartacus Records) oooo
it has been a source of regret that so little of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra's mighty achievements of the past decade and more have made it onto commercial CD release. This is only the second disc they have been able to issue (although Tommy Smith records just about everything they do. and must have a huge archive of gems awaiting funds), and follows the now distant release of Miles Ahead
(Fire) ”00
2 LI :1. Now 15 years formed and with a plethora of studio (and live) albums to their name, Portland’s JoMFs produce yet another mind-blowing, psychedelic trip. Sounding like a hybrid of Butthole Surfers, Spacemen 3 and Red Red Meat, lead-guru Tom Greenwood and co (namely fuzz-guitarist Joanne Robertson) create improv lo-fi melancholia, too wigged-out for the un- stoned and, er, too stoned-out for the un- wigged! Feel free to wave your hair in the air via ‘The Cryin Sea' the folk-ish ‘A Mania' and opener ‘Nightingale'. Pass me my noodles! (Martin C Strong)
FOLK PEATBOG FAERIES
Live
(Peatbog Records) ”0.
The Skye-based fusion outfit never let up in energy or intensity in the course of this first live recording, taken from concerts in Edinburgh and Durham last year. It will surely satisfy those
usual, they touch a lot of bases in stylistic terms in the course of the disc, a propensity that is neatly symbolised in the variety of idioms squeezed into the 18 vibrant minutes of the only non-original selection, 'The Dancing Feet Set“.
(Kenny Mathieson)
WORLD KELETIGUI ET SES TAMBOURINIS
The Syliphone Years (Sterns) oooo
Look no further: the sultry. sensual dance sounds the summer demands can be found right here. Sterns are riding high on the back of their recent digital remastering of Mali’s Rail Band (Salif Keita. Mory Kante) and TPOK Jazz. and now give the same treatment to Guinea's Keletigui Traore.
One-time Guinea president Sekou Toure's post-colonial
I authentic/re Cultural
vision saw indigenous music fused with classic song influences from revolutionary Cuba. Featuring several orchestras as well as