Music, Brian Donaldson

A Toys Orchestra - Technicolor Dreams

13 Mar 2008

ROCK POP (Urtovox) Written rule in music number 14: Europeans of the continental type make horrible, horrible pop music. Of course, there are a few examples which dilute this tenet (ABBA and, um, A-ha?). And when it comes to Italians and pop, you can…

Various - What the Folk Volume 2

13 Mar 2008

FOLK (Butterfly Recordings) Following up Butterfly’s acoustic-only debut compilation of 2006, 15 funky folksters set about proving that it’s not just musty fiddling men and wizened warbling dames who can cut the folky mustard. At times, the jumpers…

Malcolm Middleton - Sleight of Heart

28 Feb 2008

INDIE (Full Time Hobby) On the public face of it, ex-Arab Strapper Malcolm Middleton may not be getting any happier, but it’s difficult to come away from one of his collections without wiping a grin off your face while the inevitable tear dampens your…

Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

28 Feb 2008

FOLK POP (4AD) While it might be cruel to say that John Darnielle and his Mountain Goats might be trying for a kind of Sufjan Stevens vibe but end up a bit too Jasper Carrott for comfort, that’s still the overriding impression given by Heretic Pride.

Surrounded - The Nautilus Years

28 Feb 2008

POP (One Little Indian) Surrounded, we are told, are ‘Sweden’s answer to The Flaming Lips.’ It’s a distinct possible that never a truer statement has been typed onto a music press release and while this is fine up to a point, that point arrives rather…

Talk - Reset Start Again

14 Feb 2008

ELECTRONICA (Fortune & Glory) You know that when a band are trying to create a ‘coherent mix of both digital and analogue without ever sounding disjointed’ that we may well all be in trouble. Whatever happened to writing a song from the heart rather…

Anthony Reynolds - British Ballads

4 Jan 2008

ROCK (Spinney) Being big in France with his former band Jack may have kept him warm at nights, but it seems that Anthony Reynolds could now care less about having anything remotely like a hit. Creating records that smell of ‘abandoned cathedrals…

Kevin McDermott - Wise to the Fade

4 Jan 2008

POP Wise to the Fade (Spinney) Having been in the biz since the early 80s and witnessed the inexorable rise of the corporate mindset, you’d think Scots muso Kevin McDermott would have shot his bolt long ago. But no, he’s still making his mark whether…

Various - The Cake Sale

13 Dec 2007

CHARITY COMPILATION (Oxfam Ireland) It is, of course, the very nature of compilation CDs that they are a mix of the good, the bad and the pointless. While The Cake Sale is a perfectly laudable charity collection, that doesn’t make it exempt from…

Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

29 Nov 2007

ROCK Good Bad Not Evil (Vice) OK, so it’s patently obvious that Black Lips forgot to bone up on any of the many thousands of records which came along after the day ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was released. That’s probably unfair; they’ve obviously listened…

DJ Vadim

15 Nov 2007

HIP HOP The Sound Catcher Extras (BBE) When The Sound Catcher came out last year, some reviewers believed that DJ Vadim, the original White Russian, was not interested in inventing sub-genres, but simply putting his stamp on the music he was in…

Torche

15 Nov 2007

ROCK In Return (Rock Action) More terrifying than Cradle of Filth coming to your house to do trick or treat and heavier than a sack of Ozzy’s spuds, Torche at least have the common decency not to take up much of anyone’s time, clocking this…

Devendra Banhart - album review

Folk rock

4 Oct 2007

The Devendra Banhart live experience is akin to watching over-excitable teenagers being left in charge for a bank holiday weekend. Listening to him in your home is like being left out of someone else’s joke. While his folkiosyncratic ways have given…

Valgeir Sigurosson - album review

Electronica

4 Oct 2007

Already this man deserves a medal having worked with Björk in the engineer’s capsule for almost a decade and staying patient with Lars von Trier on the soundtrack for Dancer in the Dark, a project which must have felt ten years long. Now he’s branched…

Belly of a Drunken Piano

16 Aug 2007

When Stewart D’Arrietta takes to the stage beneath the cloak of darkness, he emits a tone-perfect Waitsian growl. There’s no doubting that this Australian troubadour knows and loves the songs and gets a kick out of being grumpy at a mobile going off and…

Records - Clinic

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Apparently, Clinic’s motto is ‘ignoring the tenets and trends of the music industry’. Admirable sentiments, but not really enough when your brand of stomping voodoo surf punk sounds as old as the hills, and feels just as mucky. This b-side…

Paul Hartnoll

Album

18 Jun 2007

ELECTRONICA For those wondering what Paul Hartnoll has been up to since Orbital split in 2004, he has been hard at it in his Brighton studio, figuring out how to produce something far removed from his past output: ‘It just took time to discover what…

Ulrich Schnauss

Album

18 Jun 2007

ELECTRONICA When a creative force is raised in a boring little armpit such as Kiel, it’s perhaps inevitable that the only reaction is to try and make something gorgeous from the tedium. With his third album, both the banal and the beautiful are…

Jeff Buckley

Album

21 May 2007

ROCK For those of us who are not paid-up apostles in the Church of Jeff, this collection, marking the tenth anniversary of his tragic drowning, contains everything that was great and galling about him. Not for nothing does his immense cover of Lenny…

Willy Mason

Records

26 Apr 2007

FOLK POP Wee Willy Mason launches his second tasty platter, with a voice that still sounds way beyond his tender early 20s. This new set of songs makes his acclaimed debut, Where the Humans Eat, seem like a slab of raw meat, with lush production…

Records - Sister Vanilla

Sister Vanilla

9 Apr 2007

POP ROCK As soon as the hallucino-vocals kick in, your ears will transport you a pair of decades back in time. The almost bored tones of little Linda Reid signal this first leg of The Jesus and Mary Chain reunion-of-sorts to be cemented when the…

Records - Pomegranate

Pomegranate

13 Mar 2007

ELECTRO POP With a background in futuristic theatre productions and distant cinematic electronica, Pomegranate (duo Stef McGlinchey and Vanessa Rigg) certainly know how to put a layered, nocturnal soundscape or two together (not for nowt is the…

Records - The Aliens

The Aliens

13 Mar 2007

ROCK POP After two songs of the Aliens’ debut long player (an outdated description, but at 72 minutes, a justified one), you might be praying for invasion by some little green ones to take you away from it all. The hackneyed and tuneless 60s funk…

Endrick Brothers - album review

ENDRICK BROTHERS

13 Feb 2007

POP ROCK (Hypertension) Wearing your heart on your sleeve has always sounded like a painful and messy sacrifice to me, while displaying your musical influences like a big clanging medal round the neck is nothing short of a grave mistake. So…

Various - Get While the Getting’s Good - album review

Various

29 Jan 2007

CHEERY SCOTTISH ECLECTICA If this is the future of Scottish music, then it has a big broad smile on its face. Often it may be a broken one (such as in Jock Scot’s barroom brogue of ‘Barcelona’), sometimes it’s the scary kind with the thousand yard…