Album Reviews

Jon Fratelli – Psycho Jukebox (Universal/Island B004QGVXC8) £13.99: Jon Fratelli has been busy since his band decided to take an indefinite break in the summer of 2009. Having released an album as one half of Codeine Velvet Club in December of that year, the Glaswegian is now going it alone. The result is a new Fratellis album in everything but name, from the bolshy rock sound, to the infectious riffs and sing-along choruses. There’s more than a hint of Elvis Costello in tracks such as Magic and Mayhem and Oh Shangri La. The Band Played Just For Me and 1960s-sounding Give Me My Heart Back McGuire are other highlights on a strong debut. AC
By The Newsroom
Published 8th Jul 2011, 11:40 BST

Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Vol 3, States Of Being (Cooking Vinyl B0051BYP7M) £11.99: If the songs on this album sound wonderfully familiar, yet eerily different, that’s because they are. The tenth studio album from the American singer-songwriter features re-workings of some her well-loved tunes. The overall tone is cool and reserved – due in most part to the stripped-back folk style. When Heroes Go Down, originally from her 1992 album, 99.9F°, highlights this – the original’s tinny drums and electronic piano replaced by a lone guitar and soft vocals. New track Instant Of The Hour After fits in perfectly. S0

Amy LaVere – Stranger Me (Archer B0052SNNZE) £12.99: The third album by American artist Amy LaVere is delightfully diverse. Damn Love Song is a feisty, grungy opener with a jangly 1960s guitar sound, while A Great Divide features a jazz funk groove. Red Banks has a country feel which appears to borrow more than a little from Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and she lifts almost directly from the surf-style guitar sounds of Chris Isaak on upbeat Stranger Me. Though celebrated as an upright bass player, her instrument is barely audible on the album apart from on Candle Mambo. Closing track, Let Yourself Go (Come On) is a bluesy, sensual, love song. TM

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Awolnation – Megalithic Symphony (Red Bull Records B004ZGYDIK) £10.99: The debut release from Awolnation features a mish-mash of styles, making the American group difficult to classify. They may have featured on the same bills as Weezer and MGMT, but tracks such as People and Kill Your Heroes are more Scissor Sisters than indie rock. Lead singer Aaron Bruno has a tendency to shout the lyrics unnecessarily and unfortunately this results in the vocals grating after a while. Singles Burn It Down and Sail are two of the stronger tracks, but at 12 minutes long, Knights Of Shame is one to avoid.AC

Frank Bridge – Piano Music (Somm CD017) £11.99: The third volume of Mark Bebbington’s survey of Bridge’s piano music comprises a sequence of miniatures including his first work, the Berceuse of 1901, and his last, Gargoyle of 1928. In between we hear the emergence of a European progressive: tentative in the Three Poems, bolder in the Winter Pastoral, liberated in Gargoyle. These are fine pieces played with a sense of excitement, discovery and affection for a composer who was too long lazily dismissed as Britten’s teacher. The recording is brilliantly clear. RC

Haydn, The Seasons. LSO Live (SACD LSO 0708) £13.99: Sir Colin Davis’s 1969 recording of this oratorio for Philips was considered a landmark, so it’s interesting that, 40 years on, he has revisited it with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Haydn produced a work of tumbling invention and touching humanity that transcends the bucolic text, and Davis directs with evident relish. Soloists Miah Persson, Jeremy Ovenden and Andrew Foster-Williams bring the changing seasons to vivid life and the LSO plays with typical grace and superb colour from the woodwinds. RC

Related topics:American