Music RECORDS
R&B/POP KELLY ROWLAND Here I Am (Island) ●●●●● Out in the US in July, Kelly Rowland’s latest album hits the UK, presumably in a not-in-any-way cynical attempt to cash in on her X Factor fame. Frankly, most sounds like it has been hastily assembled in about three days, using a computer programme of R&B and club beats and whichever Lils and Bigs were available to shout ‘Kelly Rowland’ into a mic. It opens auspiciously enough with ‘I’m Dat Chick’, a Destiny’s Child-type number about female empowerment, and looking ‘fly’ and being able to afford your own jewellery. The rest is made of danceable David Guetta tracks and musings on love for people who spend a lot of time in the VIP sections at clubs. It works best in its clubbier moments so that’s probably quite fitting. (Rachel Devine)
LO-FI/INDIE ROCK GUIDED BY VOICES Let’s Go Eat the Factory (Fire) ●●●●● It was only a matter of time before GBV got back together and made a new record. Responsible for 16 albums in 24 years and led by a guy (Robert Pollard) credited with over 1000 songs, expecting them to curtail their prolificacy is like suggesting a vasectomy to Rod Stewart. It’s a typically warts and all offering from the Ohio lo-fi cult heroes, who reformed in their ‘classic’ 93–96 line-up last year. The unpolished gems of scuzzy melody – ‘The Unsinkable Fats Domino’ and ‘Chocolate Boy’ being standouts – are totally beguiling. To unearth them you may have to dig through 22 tracks of ADD brevity and vocals that sound like they’ve been recorded through two tin cans joined with string, but certainly no other band does glorious shitness as unmistakably. (Malcolm Jack)
NOISE FORDELL RESEARCH UNIT The Illusion of Movement (At War With False Noise/Braw Music) ●●●●● Following the textured nuances of his Pjorn 72 label’s Songs For Dying compilation, Edinburgh noise auteur Fraser Burnett joins forces with Muscletusk’s Grant Smith for a relentless exercise in metal machine minimalism. On what sounds like four variations on a theme, each piece is drilled through with the same building site/goth night churn that wouldn’t sound out of place in Silence of the Lambs. Such rawness channels the bass backing track of ‘The Gift’, Lou Reed’s grisly short story for The Velvet Underground’s hardcore White Light/White Heat album. Put through a blender and spewed into a megaphone, it barely muffles the sound of suffocation. (Neil Cooper)
POP STANDARD FARE Out of Sight, Out of Town (Melodic) ●●●●●
Sheffield’s Standard Fare are putting their childhood rehearsal sessions in their grandparent’s living rooms to fruitful use in adulthood. They have become a loveable power-pop trio (Emma Kupa, Danny How, and Andy Beswick) whose second album, Out of Sight, Out of Town, is a raucous and thrilling indie ride.
Emma Kupa (daughter of Bella Donna, bassist in 80s anarcho- punks Poison Girls) is a compelling vocalist – by turns laidback, heartbreaking and riled – and Standard Fare’s songs are equally ardent, as evinced by the brassy swoons and brawny guitars of ‘051107’, the laid-back alt-rock of lead single ‘Darth Vader’ and the au courant axe-pop of ‘Older Women’. Ace. (Nicola Meighan)
CHRISTMAS ALBUM REVIEWS
Now, more than ever, the discerning music fan has about as much reason to look forward to Christmas as a poor Primark employee looks forward to the stampede of burly, booze-breathed horrors thundering through them at opening time on Boxing Day, en route to the super- discounted pants. Although, as a sprinkling of genuinely very good festive releases from the likes of Low, Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens have proven over the years, there are occasional crackers to be pulled from among the usual blizzard of over-sincere schmaltz, novelty nonsense and TV talent- show turkeys, and this season’s no exception. Beginning a round-up working on a rough scale from bah-humbug to yo-
ho-ho, it’s the Glee cast’s latest dispatch of cash-in Christmas crap, Glee the Music: The Christmas Album Volume 2 (Epic) ●●●●●, and Justin Bieber’s Under the Mistletoe (Mercury) ●●●●●, a set that will leave some young ladies puckered with joy and the rest of us harbouring a burning wish that we could have been the one to break the hopefully still raw news to the precocious wee cheeser that Santa’s not real. Should either of these yuletide hot logs turn up in your stocking this December 25th, lament not – where once such records were for life and not just for Christmas, now you can have them sold on Amazon by December 26th. Yo-ho-ho.
Seasonal standards sung in a jaunty West Country farmer accent? No, it’s not Mumford and Sons’ Christmas album, god for-fucking-bid, but The Wurzels’ The Wurzels Christmas Album (CIA), which gets a charitable ●●●●● because it’s that time for goodwill to all men etc (except Mumford and Sons), and because we’ll take an album suitable for kids’ parties above one sung by an overgrown child any day. That means you actress-singer lady Zooey Deschanel, and She & Him’s nauseatingly twee A Very She & Him Christmas (Domino) ●●●●●, deluxe editions of which come with an exclusive pair of mittens and a winter cap. What’s that you can taste? Yes, it’s yesterday’s mince pies.
The pairing of the singer out of Editors and the former drummer from
Razorlight, Smith and Burrows’ Funny Looking Angels (B-Unique) ●●●●● mostly comprises covers, some of an obviously festive bent and others less so (Black’s ‘Wonderful Life’? Tenuous.) It finds both mid-table indie men sticking largely to type – (Tom) Smith with the likes of a very literally bleak reading of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, and (Andy) Burrows with the Elliot Smith- style ‘As The Snowflakes Fall’. It’s less about the fairy lights and tinsel, and more so about ‘reflective winter evenings,’ as they put it – think the soundtrack to a solemn Christmas lunch of Tesco’s turkey and stuffing sandwiches and warm lager. Tis the season to be jolly, however, and for that reason we’ll pick Emmy
the Great and Tim Wheeler’s This Is Christmas (Infectious) ●●●●● as our festive favourite – even if they did maddeningly decide against putting this album out under the laughing-all-the-way moniker ‘Sleigher’, and even if they do look so pint-sized adorable in their knitwear and cosy hats on the cover sleeve it’s frankly a bit disgusting. (Check them out, above.) The fun’s turned up to 11, on an album mostly of originals warmly embracing styles from Spector pop for rocking to in your socks, to twinkling electronica and cuddly fireside duets. Would any other indie power couple have imagined the comic book horror rock of ‘Zombie Christmas’ (‘I don’t wanna have my last noel, we’d better kick those zombies back to hell’), or mixed and matched Christmas legends to come up with the resplendently nonsensical ‘Jesus the Reindeer’? It all adds up to an album with the rare distinction of being one you might even dig out again next December. (Malcolm Jack)
96 THE LIST 15 Dec 2011–5 Jan 2012