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Album reviews
Your potted guide to this week's CD releases.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Benjamin Wetherill
Laura
Five stars
Maybe it's the quiver in his voice as he sings lines like "I once had a lover, so green were her eyes/She broke all my fingers and laughed at my sighs" or the light-as-a-feather guitar, string and woodwind arrangements he and producer Jeremy Barnes conjure up with such apparent ease, but there's something very special about the debut album from Leeds folk singer Benjamin Wetherill.
Yes, there are echoes from the past – Nick Drake, Bridget St John, Roy Harper – in Wetherill's very English pastoral folk songs but there's a central European element too, courtesy of Barnes's connections with the group A Hawk and a Hacksaw, who specialise in a kind of Romany-meets-klezmer updating of Hungarian and Czech jazz.
Opener For All the Headlines has the delicacy of Nick Drake's Bryter Later while a woozy clarinet and trumpet combo lend Ada a haunting air. It's the central pairing of Kissing Under The Poplars and A Willowing that linger longest though – the former a murder ballad made all the more unnerving by Wetherill's cut-glass delivery, the latter a showcase for his nimble finger-picking and Sari Kovacs' lark-song flute playing.
"The effect is startling," says the accompanying press release. They're not kidding.
Red Deer Club
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Unkle
End Titles: Stories for Film
Three stars
A compilation of tracks written for films, documentaries and videos rather than a new album proper from James Lavelle's ever-fluid UNKLE project, End Titles is actually the most intriguing record the band have released since their 1998 top 10 hit Psyence Fiction.
Half vocal and half instrumental, it's strong on atmosphere and often epic in scope. Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, Chris Goss of Masters of Reality and folk singer Gavin Clark hop along for the ride – and there's even a guest appearance from film director Abel Fererra (Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant) on the anguished Open Up Your Eyes. Pick of the bunch though is probably Clouds, a moody electro ballad featuring hip Canadian indie rockers Black Mountain.
Surrender All
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Jenny Lindfors
When The Night Comes
Three stars
A devotee of 60s and 70s acoustic folk, Dublin singer-songwriter Jenny Lindfors has fashioned her debut album in the style of her idols Cass Elliott, Joni Mitchell and Sandy Denny. Her songs are pleasant rather than groundbreaking but there are touches of African percussion, cello and ukelele that show she's not averse to experimenting every once in a while. Those little innovations give songs such as Night Time, Voodoo and 2x1 a warmth and freshness; she really shines, however, when she stretches her voice in the David Crosby-esque Let The Seas Calm.
Flock
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Scars on Broadway
Scars on Broadway
One star
Electronica, Sixties pop and nu-metal make uneasy bedfellows on the debut album by Scars on Broadway, an offshoot of the multi-million-selling US hard rock group System of a Down. One minute all gruff vocals and slashed guitar chords, the next sequenced keyboards and nagging hooks, it's a schizophrenic mix more likely to bewilder than beguile the innocent listener. Then there's singer and guitarist Daron Malakian's lyrics. No matter how well-meant, is there any excuse for lines like "If we're gonna kill each other, how we gonna live forever?" or "Maybe I don't know how many people are starving/In this world long gone"? The snickering juvenalia of Chemicals takes the biscuit, though, with its crass references to drug-taking and rape. Only the Turtles-go-metal melody of Funny saves this from being utterly pointless.
Interscope
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The Blakes
The Blakes
Two stars
Garage rockers with a pop bent, the Blakes are a three-piece from Seattle with a line in short, punchy numbers that have excited comparisons with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Strokes.
There's little that's subtle about their eponymous debut album but if you're yearning for big, stomping guitar riffs and howling tomcat vocals then the 13 songs here are definitely for you.
At their best – Magoo, Modern Man, Don't Want That Now and Two Times – The Blakes certainly rock; whether they're distinctive enough to sustain a career beyond this album is another matter.
Light in the Attic
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Friday 25 May 2012
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