Album Reviews Archive
Album Review: Garbage ‘Not Your Kind of People’
June 18, 2012
Not Your Kind of People is a hell of a thing to name an album, but it works for the same reason that wearing a lot of black and keeping one’s head down can be a surprisingly good way to meet people. Not a lot of people, but a few, and of them you can
Album Review: Marilyn Manson ‘Born Villain’
June 10, 2012
Born Villain is a self-proclaimed return to form for Marilyn Manson, or at least a back-to-basics approach on a personal level. He moved to live and work in less affluent conditions during its recording, and tried to further recreate the conditions of his earlier work by listening to the albums which inspired him when he
Album Review: Scars on 45 ‘Self-Titled’
June 9, 2012
Scars on 45 is an English rock outfit with their sights set on the coveted crown of agreeable, pleasant rock, in the vein of Coldplay or Travis. They have released a pair of EPs over the past couple of years, and their self-titled debut has been eagerly anticipated by many who want to see just
Album Review: John Mayer ‘Born and Raised’
June 5, 2012
“John Mayer is an asshole.” This is the rather blunt statement I heard from a lady between sets at the Beale Street Music Festival. Strangely this seems to be the popular sentiment leveled on the beleaguered singer-songwriter since his epic implosion within the pages of Playboy and Rolling Stone. He got caught up in the
Album Review: Norah Jones ‘Little Broken Hearts’
May 31, 2012
‘Good Morning’ is the perfect forward for an album about a breakup. The pain of lost love is strongly felt as Norah sings of giving in, giving up, and moving on with her life. It’s a quick and gentle coo of resignation, and if the rest of the album had a similar perspective on breakups,
Album Review: Neon Trees ‘Picture Show’
May 26, 2012
I was momentarily excited that Picture Show would be an album for synaesthetes, with musical landscapes creating vivid imagery and allowing the listener to lose his or herself in its kaleidoscopic wonders. Not so much. A more likely reason for the title is that they were inspired by the cinema, and if you listen to
Album Review: M. Ward ‘A Wasteland Companion’
May 26, 2012
M. Ward is one of those consummate and prolific songwriters who doesn’t miss a beat, and for whom the art of crafting a deceptively simple and quietly brilliant tune for the guitar seems to be completely natural. Like most who could warrant such a description, he tends to go relatively unnoticed, often choosing to take
Album Review: Jack White ‘Blunderbuss’
May 13, 2012
Jack White is one of the best rock singers and guitarists in the world. Not because of any degree of technical skill, though he does have that by the gallon, but because he embodies the spirit of the music perfectly and knows just how to exploit the most indulgent cravings of your ear. It’s simultaneously
Album Review: Bonnie Raitt ‘Slipstream’
May 12, 2012
One of the most defining things Bonnie Raitt ever said, for me, was on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder back in 1999, when she said that what made her get into making music was noticing the difference between Little Richard and Pat Boone’s versions of ‘Tutti Frutti’. She said “It’s just got that
Album Review: fun. ‘Some Nights’
May 11, 2012
From the introduction of the title track–beginning with a simple piano melody and polite applause, and building quickly into a raucous space cabaret channelling Queen–it’s absolutely clear that Some Nights is not going to be an album that will hold anything back. When the song proper begins it surprises again, with tribal rhythms and gospel
