Toolbar blog

Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:54:00 +0000

Craig Finn describes himself as the kind of writer who sits in the back seat of the car driven by his characters, taking notes. For the sake of his sanity and general health, this is doubtless a good thing. On Lord, I’m Discouraged, a song from The Hold Steady’s 2008 album Stay Positive, the Minnesota-born resident of Brooklyn profiles an unrequited love whose life is sliding into the despair of drug addiction. "The sutures and bruises are none of my business / She says that she’s sick but won’t get specific," he sings, later adding: "I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine / So I mostly just pray she don’t die."

To say that Finn is a lyricist of uncommon humanity, not to mention one possessed of a fine attention to detail, is to understate the case. On Clear Heart Full Eyes, he shrouds his tales of foolish people lost on long wanderings on the inexpensive side of the tracks with music that is less dense than that offered by The Hold Steady. That band has been described by American Psycho author and alt-punk expert Bret Easton Ellis as being the finest group in the United States; their sound is a tough one to better. Fans of the group will identify with Finn’s solo flight in no small part due to the distinctive treble-heavy voice and narrative style, but songs such as the sparse Apollo Bay – which sees the narrator drunk on similarly treble-heavy Victoria Bitter in Australia – and the gentle Not Much Left of Us offer something different from the author’s usual work.

But as fine as the music on offer here happens to be – and often it’s very fine indeed – it is Finn’s sense of humanity in lyrical form that really sets this album apart. "From the way you picked up the phone, I could tell you weren’t going to die / February is as long as it is wide," is the opening sentiment of No Future, and an early contender for couplet of the year. Elsewhere figures as diverse as Freddie Mercury and John Lydon are thrown into the mix, characters listen to Ozzy Osbourne and KISS in studio apartments, as well as a whole host of city-dwellers whose lives are led on the serrated edge that separates good people from bad. It is these people, and the fact that their creator has sufficient skill to humanise them and have the listener care about their fate, that makes Clear Heart Full Eyes a work of understated beauty.

Craig Finn - Honolulu Blues

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© BBC Music

Howler - America Give Up

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:42:00 +0000

It would make it easy for lazy critics if Howler proved to be a real dog of a band, causing pre-release naysayers to howl with laughter. But the tipped Minneapolis mob has delivered a succinct and energetic debut album that casts aside any doubts as to their qualities.

Having turned heads with a series of fiery (and fleeting) live shows, frontman Jordan Gatesmith’s crew have wasted little time in realising an album of thoroughly contagious, albeit fairly derivative, Strokes-flavoured gutter-rock. These 11 tracks zip by, dashing from start to finish in a breathtaking 32 minutes.

There may be a paucity of original ideas across this set’s running time, but it will stir within listeners memories of great moments in gutter-rock history. When Gatesmith sings, "I scrape my kneeeeeeees," on America it sounds like Lou Reed has temporarily stolen his microphone. Elsewhere, Back to the Grave’s macabre but fun lyrics – "I want someone to take me out tonight / We’ll go back to the grave before we turn out the lights" – could easily be lifted from a lost Ramones tune.

Scientists have yet to convincingly prove that writing killer song titles automatically enhances your chances of sexual and financial success but, if they do, Howler are in for a sweet future. Another (perchance rotten) peach of a title, alongside Back to the Grave, is the album’s opener: Beach Sluts. Its riffs are reminiscent of The Drums or The Vaccines, but it also has handclaps aplenty, and it’s this palm-on-palm percussion that carries the track towards greatness.

Too Much Blood (another great title) slows down the outfit’s punkier tendencies to hiss and snarl like The Jesus and Mary Chain, while Free Drunk (yet another marvellous moniker) is this debut’s greatest moment. Its chorus melodies might be stolen from Tom Petty, but here we find Gatesmith’s most widescreen and windswept vocal, impressive atop feedback and riffs that feel like dirt underneath your fingernails. Top stuff.

There is one moment of (unintentional?) hilarity on the album: the third song is called This One’s Different, but anyone expecting a panpipe version of Cotton Eye Joe will be disappointed. Instead the song’s riffs paint pictures of whiskey-swillers in leatherjackets, just like every other song here. But what better way to fight off the dull winter?

Howler - Back Of Your Neck

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© BBC Music

Beverley Knight - Soul UK

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:47:00 +0000

The covers album is a noble tradition: a chance for an artist to pay tribute to their roots, to avoid writing any new material, and to present their listeners with songs that everyone knows they like already, because they’ve heard them. From Bowie to George Michael, John Legend to Paul Weller, a covers set is a chance to tell people where you’re coming from and, often, to pause for breath while you work out where you’re going to next.

Beverly Knight is a brilliant soul singer, who grew up at a time when black British music wasn’t as united as it is in these days of grime riding high in the pop charts. High quality dance and soulful pop acts struggled to have more than one hit single, and very few – Rod Temperton’s Heatwave and Jazzie B’s Soul II Soul are notable exceptions – were able to maintain albums success and international fame.

Both those acts are referred to here on Soul UK. ‘Soul’ in this insistence is a fairly broad church, referring to the (generally brilliant) soul pop made in Britain over the last 30 years. As a testament to the often-overlooked music made in the days when RnB still meant Big Joe Turner, not Beyoncé, Soul UK is remarkably effective. The songs covered here are wide-ranging, from the Prince-like rock pop of Roachford’s Cuddly Toy to Heatwave’s gorgeous ballad Always and Forever. Knight’s memory and taste are impeccable – it’s nothing but a joy to hear Junior Giscombe’s Mama Used to Say or Princess’ Say I’m Your Number One again.

If there is a criticism of this album – which is certainly a record you’d be enormously hard-pressed to dislike – it’s that Knight doesn’t always find it easy to impose her personality on these well-known tracks. On the great Apparently Nothin’ – and despite an excellent rap break – she doesn’t add anything particular to the Young Disciples original. But when the arrangements and the vocals are given a touch of freshness, as in the Motown’ed-up cover of Cuddly Toy, Knight’s version breathes and her versatility is given room to roam. More of that (and a cover of Linx’s awesome Intuition) would have been nice here, but this is a good record.

Beverley Knight - Cuddly Toy

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© BBC Music

The Little Willies - For The Good Times

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:55:00 +0000

Two albums in eight years might not sound like a particularly great level of productivity – but The Little Willies are no ordinary band. A collective ostensibly fronted by Norah Jones, albeit with ample vocal support from Arden-born folk singer Richard Julian, this outfit came together in 2003 to jam out some much-loved country cuts at New York’s Living Room venue. A debut, self-titled album emerged in 2006, featuring tracks penned by the likes of Kris Kristofferson (Best of All Possible Worlds), Townes Van Zandt (No Place to Fall) and, perhaps inevitably given their chosen moniker, Willie Nelson (I Gotta Get Drunk). For the Good Times follows the formula of its predecessor, offering up a selection of the band’s favourite numbers as well as a jaunty original, the near-instrumental Tommy Rockwood, written by gifted guitarist Jim Campilongo.

There’s plenty of care taken with these covers, the players evidently keen to not tarnish their own memories of the songs in question. Lovesick Blues, the Cliff Friend and Irving Mills show tune that Hank Williams made his own in 1949 when it topped the stateside country chart, is beautifully delivered by Jones and Julian, whose vocals intertwine atop a sparse acoustic backdrop, percussion minimal but just powerful enough to drive the piece forwards. Johnny Cash’s Wide Open Road is given a rather sunnier disposition than the 1950s original, more suited to a swinging barroom than any backwater barn dance. And Jones shines on Loretta Lynn’s 1968 chart-topper Fist City, making it clear that she’s as comfortable with this style as the softer-edged output she’s collected so many Grammy Awards with.

While not all of these selections are familiar to the fair-weather country listener, the closer certainly will be. Dolly Parton’s Jolene was a major international hit in 1973, and appears at number 217 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 songs of all time list. With Jones on vocals and piano, and little else imposing itself prominently onto the mix, the version here is a striking take that swells like a persistent lump in the throat until it’s guided to a close by Campilongo’s gently sighing, delicately twanged guitar work. It’s a downbeat end to what is, predominantly, a wonderfully rousing collection; but it’s an end that, one hopes, points the way to a third instalment of The Little Willies’ refined reinterpretations.

The Little Willies - For The Good Times:

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© BBC Music

Green Day - 39/Smooth

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:16:00 +0000

In 1995 Billie Joe Armstrong wrote a song about a scene populated by people he once considered his friends. 86 appeared on Insomniac, its authors’ tightly coiled and deeply troubled fourth album, which itself succeeded Dookie, the multi-platinum release that had the world telling Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool that while their band was cute its music was not punk.

The fact that just three years prior to their elevation to Millionaires’ Row the Oakland-based trio found themselves on a tour of European squats that saw their frontman contract body lice was neither here nor there. Following their decision to sign with the Warner Music Group-owned Reprise Records, at home the group were disowned by the militant Berkeley punk magazine Maximum RocknRoll and banned from playing at that city’s all-ages not-for-profit venue Gilman Street. "Exit out the back," sings Armstrong on 86, "and never show your head around [here] again."

It is worth repeating that, prior to the success of 1994’s Dookie, American punk rock was not a genre that sent cash registers ringing to any kind of crescendo. Green Day were the first to manage this, and prior to this achievement their genre credentials were impeccable. Released on the tiny Lookout! label, 39/Smooth (pictured/listed) and Kerplunk are early efforts from a band who no one at the time predicted would rise above their modest station. Indeed, their first album, 39/Smooth, was recorded for just $700. Even here, though, one is reminded of drummer Tre Cool’s assertion that seeing Armstrong write a song is the closest thing to magic one will ever witness. Barely 17 at the time, a track such as the magnificent Going to Pasalacqua showed anyone who cared to listen that here stood a writer of already rare talent.

But it was with 1992’s Kerplunk that Green Day really came to the notice of more people than their pay grade suggested possible. Featuring songs of the quality of 2,000 Light Years Away, Christie Road and Welcome to Paradise – a track the group would revisit on Dookie, to devastating effect – with no promotion whatsoever, and with its creators touring in a converted mobile library, Green Day were soon able to draw up to 2,000 people a night in whatever city they visited. To the wider world, the group’s success in 1994 may have appeared to have arrived overnight; but in reality the rumblings of the underground heading upwards had begun in style, some years before.

Green Day - 39/Smooth (Full Album):

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© BBC Music

Toolbar issues

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:16:00 +0000

We are aware of a small number of issues affecting the latest generation of our toolbar and are working hard to produce a fix.

Fixes will be released over the next two weeks addressing the problems that we have received.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience.
Many thanks for your patience.

Amy Winehouse - Hidden Treasures

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Amy Winehouse performed, wrote and lived with a seductive and startling blend of confidence and vulnerability. Her early death may not have been a huge surprise to anyone who had an interest in her life, but it shocked her beloved Camden and far beyond because she was one of us. She may have had an exquisite voice redolent of broken hearts and lost weekends, but even when Amy was selling millions of records she could be found shooting pool and downing drinks in north London pubs.

Less than six months after her premature passing, fans now have Lioness: Hidden Treasures to remind them of what they’re missing. This release comprises alternate takes, rarities and unreleased tracks, while regular collaborators like Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi have been involved with compiling the album. The question persists, though: would this material have surfaced if Amy had lived?

Jazz standard Body and Soul, recorded with Tony Bennett, has already been released on the latter’s September 2011 album Duets II, and as a single. It was Amy’s last recording, is beautifully produced and poignantly sung throughout. The same is true for covers of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and The Girl from Ipanema. The ’68 version of The Zutons cover Valerie is a languid shuffle compared to the energetic single release, and an earlier recording of Tears Dry on Their Own soothes but never catches fire like the version found on Back to Black.

Amy’s tender, torn and devastating voice always impressed on record, but it was her lyrics that really mattered. Like Smoke, an excellent collaboration with Nas, is calm but opens with a typically dramatic Amy line: "I never wanted you to be my man / I just needed comforting." Musically it’s a cousin of Fine Young Cannibals’ The Flame, while its blend of wry rapping and heartfelt nostalgia adds up to the best thing here.

Elsewhere, Between the Cheats, with its sad title, doo-wop melancholy and lines like "I would take a thousand thumps for my love," recalls the darkness in Amy’s life. Just as sorrow crept in to her best songs, cuts like You Know I’m No Good, it’s here in spades. But no one ever expected Walking on Sunshine from a woman who battled through troubled relationships and addictions so publicly.

In the end, the best a posthumous album assembled in this way can offer is a welcome and dignified reminder of an artist’s abilities. Lioness manages this, but also leaves listeners sadly wondering where a less-troubled Amy might have been able to take her incredible talent.

Amy Winehouse – Valerie:

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© BBC Music

Are you up to date?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:16:00 +0000

There has been some recent improvements, and bug fixes made to your Streaming Internet Radio toolbar. Are you up to date?

Our toolbar versions currently stand at:

IE - Version: 10.4.1.25
FF - Version: 10.5.0.42
Chrome - Version: 10.4.2.114

To check which version you have installed, please visit our version checker page. If your toolbar is out of date, please consider upgrading.

JLS – Jukebox

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:41:00 +0000

It's tempting to rattle through the stats – a pair of multi-platinum albums, five number one singles, a couple of BRIT awards – but this lot's success can be summarised in a single merchandising masterstroke. Three years ago Aston, JB, Marvin and Oritsé were trilling Boyz II Men covers on The X Factor; now they have their own range of branded condoms, Just Love Safe.

They may be more popular than Simon Cowell could possibly have imagined – he turned them down twice, you know – but JLS are no musical innovators. Actually, it's pretty appropriate that they've called this third album Jukebox, because the songs here invariably recall recent electro-RnB hits from their chart contemporaries: Taio Cruz, Chris Brown, Usher, even Britney Spears. You know the drill by now: there's a generous sprinkling of European cheese on the club bangers; the mid-tempo cuts come complete with Umbrella-style vocal hooks; and the lyrics offer coruscating observations about boys and girls on the floor, hands in the air, and drinks, um, in the cups.

In fact, even the record’s relatively adventurous tracks can't help but bring to mind other artists. Both glitchy and glossy, So Many Girls is what an unlikely bunk-up between Justin Bieber and Major Lazer might sound like, while Innocence has the sinewy elegance of a vintage Timbaland ballad: Justin Timberlake's What Goes Around… Comes Around, say, or Madonna's underrated Miles Away.

But while it's easy to sniff at JLS's slick and derivative chart missiles, it would be unsporting to be too dismissive. There's a decent pick'n'mix of ear candy here, especially the Hi-NRG lead single She Makes Me Wanna and a future smash called Do You Feel What I Feel?, which will get the kids bopping from Basildon to Bradford. As if to prove the point, the album ends with Shy of the Cool, a paean to teenage growing pains that the lads apparently penned before they appeared on The X Factor. Well-intentioned but clumsy ("She's authentic, so unsuspecting / This girl can go to school and be respected"), it's a welcome reminder of what a polished pop combo JLS have become.

JLS - Do You Feel What I feel:

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© BBC Music

Grooveshark App updates

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:18:00 +0000

If you are a regular user of our Grooveshark App, you will be aware of the changes that have been implemented by the team behind the app.

The app has been given a cleaner interface. Search suggestions are given to help you find what you are looking for. You can also see feeds from your friends – to see what they are listening to.

Discover new music
Create playlists
Save to favourites
Share with your friends

If you are new to Grooveshark, simply launch the app, and search for your favourite musicians – listen to free music on your journey around the web, with the Streaming Internet Radio toolbar.

FREE: Twitter App

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:47:00 +0000

We have beavering away on a updated Twitter App, and have now added it to your toolbar. The App allows you to see in near real time, the number of Tweets awaiting your attention.

The App also enables you to Tweet directly from your browser, from ANY webpage. This is a great way to share content without having to return to Twitter! Best of all, the app is completely free.

To get our Twitter App in your browser, please download our free toolbar.

The Wanted – Battleground

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:56:00 +0000

They lack JLS's pecs appeal or the Bieber-ish barnets of One Direction, but The Wanted are the all-male pop combo you could toddle down the pub with. Affected or not, this ‘lad band’ shtick has served the Anglo-Irish five-piece surprisingly well: their debut album, released last year, has shifted 400,000 copies and they've already notched up five top three hits.

This follow-up set seems primed to maintain the group's forward momentum. It finds the boys bouncing between the trancey dance-pop of their recent singles – the best of which is the almost melancholy Gold Forever – and bombastic mid-tempo ballads in the mould of Ryan Tedder, OneRepublic frontman and producer of Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love. For the most part, Battleground is the pop LP equivalent of turning up at a traffic light party in a tight green T-shirt: neither subtle nor original, but it gets the job done.

Of course, it's also the second album from a successful and ambitious manufactured pop group, so that ol’ devil called ‘credibility’ inevitably rears its self-important head. Sundry band members nab writing credits on six of these tracks and there are attempts to at least peek outside the box. Lie to Me wouldn't disgrace itself on a recent Take That setlist; I Want It All recalls A1's guitar-strumming phase; and I'll Be Your Strength is a pulsing rave ballad on which Girls Aloud's producers, Xenomania, give the lads a lesson in self-restraint: once in a while, save the heavy pounding for the final minute, because sometimes it pays to work up to that explosive climax.

The result is a solid pop platter that's not lacking in personality – even if the latter does manifest itself in a smattering of lyrics clunkier than testing day at the seat belt factory. Really lads, does any likely lass want to be told "I'll make you sweat like you worked out"? The ribbing they'll get down the pub for that one will be entirely deserved.

The Wanted – Glad You Came:

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© BBC Music

Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:09:00 +0000

Florence Welch’s debut album of 2009, Lungs, lived up to the hype of a music press that had been utterly seduced by her harp plucks and tribal drum riffs, her otherworldly sensibility and her arresting vocals. She pushed us through fairy-tale dreamscapes and catapulted us through life’s dramas with anger and beauty, her voice as strident, sharp and strong as a deftly brandished scimitar. Visceral, raw and passionate, Lungs was aptly named.

And so too is the follow-up, fittingly released on Halloween. The arrangements here are even more richly layered and majestic; they surge with strings and arrive backed by choristers, while the narratives are darker and prioritise the spirit over the corporeal. Lead single What the Water Gave Me, issued as a standalone cut in August, is brooding and windswept, its harp twinkling eerily in the ether. As Welch mournfully sings of being laid down with "pockets full of stones" before the track swells to a choir-bolstered climax of Emily Brontë ’n’ Kate Bush proportions, images of her as John William Waterhouse’s doomed, red-headed Ophelia can’t help but swim before your eyes. It is magnificent – so it’s hardly surprising that, despite not having a physical release, it managed to chart.

But as a taster it is misleading, for little comes close to either its elegiac splendour or its subtlety. The disturbing, discordant Seven Devils, with its lyrics about being "dead before the day is done", is at least as sinister. It resembles Heavy In Your Arms (perhaps this is a Twilight – or, bearing in mind those familiar scales, should that be Twilight Zone? – soundtrack waiting to be commissioned), but is as intense as a blow to the head with a broomstick. Forthcoming single No Light, No Light – drum-chased, harp-gilded and hook-jawed – recalls the likes of Cosmic Love, but its epic proportions are too much; while the anthemic opener Only If for A Night, a mix of bombast and ballast, is too ponderous.

Ceremonials, which sees Lungs producer Paul Epworth return but ignore all restraint, offers the pomp, but somehow not quite the power, of Welch’s debut: this is all grandeur without any grace. The more weight and length (the average is five minutes) given to the songs, the less impact they have and the more wearied they leave you – it’s probably best not to listen to the 20-track deluxe edition in one sitting. Having established herself as Florence, the songstress of craft and great emotion, it’s a shame she’s now allowed her machine to take over.

What The Water Gave Me

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© BBC Music

Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:49:00 +0000

Don’t Coldplay love their Xs and their Ys? And their enigmatic album titles? After 2005’s X&Y and 2008’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends comes Mylo Xyloto. Well, it beats Coldplay 5. But any title that needs a pronunciation guide (it’s "My-lo zy-letoe") sounds like it’s trying a bit too hard. Maybe Chris Martin still yearns for something that infers the depth and gravitas of a Bono or Thom Yorke. The album is apparently a concept work, "based on a love story with a happy ending," Martin claims, and inspired by old-school American graffiti and the anti-Nazi pacifist White Rose Movement: "It's about being free to be yourself and to express yourself among negative surroundings." But the lyrics are still typically Martin’s life-affirming, anthem-forming and plain-speaking as ever, more ABC than MYLO XYLOTO.

The same goes for the music. Bassist Guy Berryman said in 2009, "It's time to take our music down different directions and really explore other avenues," and, in name alone, this set suggests Coldplay might finally do an Achtung Baby; they might rip it up and start again, in the presence of said U2 LP’s producer Brian Eno, who also worked on Viva la Vida. If the addition of electronic undertows, instrumental snippets (the title-track, M.M.I.X., A Hopeful Transmission) linking many of the tracks and the presence of Rihanna on Princess of China count as "other avenues", then job well done. But Mylo Xyloto is much more a brilliant, shiny and emphatic reinstatement of the euphoric hooks and cuddly ballads that have served the band so well. Case in point: Paradise, where melting strings and church organ feed into a brilliant chorus line that equal parts Fix You and Viva la Vida’s title-track. But the main vocal chorus doesn’t arrive until over two minutes in, building the tension; the pay-off is both simple and devastating. It’s the equal of Yellow, and when Coldplay return to Glastonbury it will take the roof off the sky.

Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall goes one step further than Paradise by lifting Vida la Vida’s "who-hoa!" hook, suggesting Coldplay can’t truly comprehend new avenues. U2-shaped echoes still run through the deep and wide canyons of their landscaped sound – Major Minus features The Edge-patented guitar chatter, but it’s nevertheless a triumph. Charlie Brown has one of those Coldplay-patented sun-breaking-through-clouds moments; Us Against the World (the sentiment that unites the graffiti and anti-Nazi camps) is the key wistful/cuddly ballad alongside Up in Flames, a successful grafting of soul onto the Coldplay model, helped by an understated falsetto and the simplest of piano parts (echoes of Parachutes’ gorgeous Everything’s Not Lost).

The closing Up With the Birds, which samples Leonard Cohen, is a serene finale that shows Coldplay understand the change of dynamics more than the dynamics of change. Better this than the nominally Euro-disco bent of Princess of China, where Rihanna’s presence feels more of a marketing tool than a creative necessity, and there’s yet another "who-ay-oh-oh!" chant just in case Coldplay were straying too far from their remit. This appears to support Martin’s message of expressing the freedom to be yourself under negative surroundings – not to change just because critics of the band tell them they should. Mylo Xyloto may have an oblique title but it’s a triumph because the music is anything but.

Coldplay: Paradise

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© BBC Music

Ash - The Best Of

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:24:00 +0000

It's fair to say things haven't gone as Ash might have hoped when they emerged back in 1992 from the backwaters of Downpatrick, so young their parents had to sign their record contract and so fresh they practically invented pop-punk.

Fast forward and these days they spend much of their time denying an imminent split and, as if bored with the second tier, keeping themselves interested (and interesting) with such innovative ideas as an A-Z Tour (which, yes, was a tour which started in Aldershot and finished in Zennor, in Cornwall, taking in towns in alphabetical order along the way). Oblivious to the way the singles market is going, the band also released one every fortnight from October 2009 to September 2010.

Their problem is what happened in-between. For all the joy of their Ramones-like singles, they were overly dependent on Tim Wheeler as (almost) sole songwriter. Moreover, they never quite managed to build on that first flush of fresh-faced excitement, they never quite managed to make an unambiguously fantastic album, and they never quite managed to export their revolution. Tellingly they decided to stop making proper albums after 2007's knowingly titled Twilight of the Innocents failed to break the UK top 30, and this new set is actually their second best of. For the record, 11 of this collection’s chronologically sequenced 19 tracks, plus a pointlessly re-recorded version of Jack Names the Planets, appeared on 2002's Intergalactic Sonic 7"s, which also included a disc of B sides and rarities.

This new release's carrot to Ash completists is Teenage Wildlife, an Ewan McGregor-narrated documentary of their hedonistic early years – it’s featured on a DVD alongside all their music videos. But from an exclusively musical perspective, these tracks offer reminders of just how close they came to cracking it, especially early on. Girl From Mars, Goldfinger, Oh Yeah and Shining Light are pure pop pebbles of the highest order, with walloping scarf-waving choruses, taut verses, all infused with the sheer thrill of music making that has never quite departed.

Even so, an understandably and not entirely artistically destructive weariness seeps into the later material, notably the self-explanatory You Can't Have It All and the string-laden Twilight of the Innocents, but their more rueful side suits middle-aged Ash well. This may be a study of what might have been, but what Ash actually were (and are) wasn't bad either.

Ash – Shining Light

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© BBC Music

Noel Gallagher - High Flying Birds

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:29:00 +0000

Songwriters who listen to too many records can struggle to come up with fresh ideas for their own. They’re too cowed by their own taste, too aware of pantheons and precedence, and too easily influenced by old and dusty sonic blueprints.

It’s hard to say whether this is a greater problem for the artist or the listener. Certainly it would be easy to provide a list of reference points for Noel Gallagher’s pugnacious solo debut, some of which come from his old band – two songs reference Wonderwall. But that’s missing the point.

Which is: Noel’s got his confidence back. After years of watered-down Oasis albums, where anyone with a band membership and a silk scarf could throw an authentically scuffed tune into the pot, this is not a tentative recovery, nor does it bluster and huff. It rests on a bed of quiet authority, that sense of calm over turmoil, which comes from Noel’s mournfully bullish voice. Or to put it another way, this is the sound of a man who no longer has to give a stuff what the rest of the band thinks.

You can divide the songs into three categories: one, the jazzy shufflers – Dream On, The Death of You and Me, Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks. Two, the Oasis throwbacks – If I Had a Gun, AKA… Broken Arrow, (Stranded On) The Wrong Beach. And three, the big rock anthems – Everybody’s on the Run, (I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine, Stop the Clocks. The exception is AKA… What a Life, which takes Noel out of his traditional comfort zone and into a disco, albeit a very lean and spartan sort of disco. It suits him well, and he knows it.

Jazzy interludes aside, there’s nothing particularly new here, and certainly nothing that will change anyone’s mind about the music of Noel Gallagher: he’s listened to a lot of records and he knows what he likes. But, finally freed of the burden of his old band, their hot streak and their lead singer, he can concentrate on making enjoyable records for other people to enjoy.

AKA… What a Life (Acoustic version)

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© BBC Music

REVIEW: Björk - Biophilia

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:13:00 +0000

Ever the inventive artist, for her eighth studio long-player Björk also turned inventor, commissioning the construction of specialist instruments to compose these 10 tracks upon. Among them, the gameleste – a fusion of gamelan and celeste – which can be heard, a persistent twinkle in the mix, across this set’s lead single, Crystalline. The Icelander also turned to rather more modern hardware for this album – certain tracks are partly recorded on an iPad, and the intention is for each of these tracks to emerge as an app, as well as via traditional album formats.

Impressively 21st century stuff, for sure. But while her commitment to composition away from typical means – she doesn’t play piano or guitar, so seeking new options is both a necessity and a novelty – is commendable, experimentation is nothing without accessibility, especially for a musician with an audience as sizeable as Björk’s. Thankfully, Biophilia serves as wonderfully as a ‘standard’ album as anything else – a plus, given that interest in her app series is, one imagines, slightly on the wane (it certainly is in this writer’s household). Conceptual in the sense that each song is associated with a readily presented theme – typically of either an earthbound or extraterrestrial nature, from lunar cycles (opener Moon) to tectonic plates beneath our feet (Mutual Core) – it doesn’t overload the listener with powerful ideology. If desired, one can detach from the lyrical message and dive into a most rewardingly singular din – again, Björk has crafted sounds which are entirely hers alone.

Over the years her voice has mellowed – now, rather than fly off the scale to the occasional detriment of the music around it, it’s a controlled presence, complementing perfectly the whirrs and clicks, static and choral highs which surround it. And the music flits from the sublime to the strikingly brutal – the aforementioned Mutual Core slips from blissful ambience into bombastic electronic percussion, leaving the senses reeling, only to fade back into a comforting lilt; and Crystalline’s jungle-flavoured breakdown come its climax (part-Aphex Twin, part-Reprazent) is one of the best jaw-on-the-floor moments in 2011 pop so far. Closer Solstice is a mellow affair which recalls the sounds of a non-Björk app, namely the relax-into-this puzzler Quell and its Steve Cravis soundtrack. Elsewhere, there are echoes of albums past: Hollow is a dark, menacing relation of the delicate fare that dominated 2001’s Vespertine; Cosmogony commands brass into action, bubbling beneath heavenly choral backing vocals; and Thunderbolt initially stirs unlikely thoughts of The Anchor Song, from 1993’s Debut, before progressing into something multi-layered and magical.

Focusing on the genesis of Biophilia is an unfortunate inevitability given how much attention has been placed on both its writing process and its newfangled method of distribution. But this is far from a folly, an endeavour designed to flog touch-screen tablets to the singer’s fanbase. It’s a mesmerising album which confirms that Björk can weave dumfounding wonders from Silly String – whatever’s placed before her, she can turn to her advantage, taking her audience on a trip the likes of which no other contemporary artist is capable of planning, let alone embarking on. In a word: amazing. Again.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
© BBC Music

REVIEW: Art Of Noise

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 07:36:00 +0000

There’s a telling moment during the bonus material included on this long-overdue reissue of Art of Noise’s 1984 debut where, interviewed by the BBC’s Richard Skinner during a live session, Paul Morley, the band’s director, advises his colleague Anne Dudley: "Don’t tell the truth!"

Art of Noise were all about mystery: the five-piece, normally photographed behind masks, were formed as an ‘abstract’ group by ZTT masterminds Trevor Horn and journalist Morley (credited as playing "paper") alongside ZTT studio mainstays Anne Dudley, JJ Jeczalik and Gary Langan. Their music was essentially a collection of sound collages built from samples processed by the brand new Fairlight synthesiser, including such diverse sources as Horn’s former band Yes and recordings of a car engine. The artwork they employed – the ZTT aesthetic taken to its extreme – was also deliberately bewildering, with, for example, lyrics included for what is essentially an album of instrumentals. With Art of Noise, you see, the magic wasn’t in who made the music, or how they did it: the magic was in the not knowing.

Remarkably, this debut was accessible enough to spawn hit singles, including Close (To the Edit) – arguably the only record ever to include the sound of a VW Golf stalling as its central motif – and Moments in Love, soon afterwards employed by Madonna for her wedding to Sean Penn. Both still sound remarkable: the synth tones may be overly familiar, but the bravado of Close (To the Edit) remains intact, as does the strange allure of its disembodied vocal samples; and Moments in Love – in all its 10-minute splendour – may be one of the most romantic tracks of the 1980s (rather than, as Morley describes it, "the sex song of the 20th century").

Beat Box, too, had proven influential in the development of hip hop when released in its original form a year earlier, but elsewhere Who’s Afraid… was a fascinating but dizzying rush of ideas and noises adorning a largely familiar pop framework, a smuggling of avant-garde ideas and technology into the mainstream. Richard Skinner’s enthusiastic questioning underlines just how inventive it was for the times, and one can only wonder what contemporary pop-pickers, lured into Art of Noise’s world, can have made of the frenzied cut-and-paste of the title-track or the deeply atmospheric How to Kill, built around little more than sound effects and a voice repeatedly intoning "It’s stopped". A bonus DVD confirms the brazen attempts at disorientation extended beyond the records themselves, with different versions of promotional videos, Morley’s attempt at a live performance to compensate for Dudley, Jeczalik, and Langan’s departure from the ‘band’ two weeks earlier, and Kenneth Williams providing voiceovers for TV advertisements. It’s provocative and playful, even a quarter of a century later. After all, who needs truth when you have the Art of Noise?

New Look Toolbar

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:48:00 +0000

You might be aware that we have been Beta testing a new look, Streaming Internet Radio toolbar. Things are progressing pretty well, and we are aiming for a ‘final’ release soon. In the meantime, why not upgrade?

The toolbar has similar features, but is much improved. The radio player has been given a new look, and is fully searchable. Find your favourite kind of music, and store it in the new Favourites section.

As well as searching for stations, you can also browse by genre – there is something for everyone! Don’t forget to add stations that you love to your favourites for future reference!

A new email notifier!
Our new look email notifier still notifies you of new receipts to your account, but you can also preview messages before going to your inbox.

Compatible with IE & FF
Our new look toolbar is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox. To upgrade your installation, please click here.

Are you up to date? Visit our version checker page.

Internet Explorer: v.10.4.1.25
Firefox: v.10.4.1.24

If you are new to the Streaming Internet Radio toolbar, and would like to install, please download now. Tell your friends about us!

REVIEW: Kasabian

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:18:00 +0000

"It’s been 15 or 16 years since the last truly classic album, but I think we’ve done it," Serge Pizzorno claims of Velociraptor!, which is exactly the kind of bullish boasting which, along with their boorish interviews and boozy gang attitude, have made it easy to pigeonhole Kasabian as the Leicestershire Oasis. This is unfortunate, as their actual music has always been much more interesting and eclectic. From the start, their ease with club beats and electronica suggested that – unlike the Gallaghers – they had some awareness of which decade they were in. And while Oasis became duller and more conservative with each new record, Kasabian have – so far – grown more adventurous.

June’s teaser single, Switchblade Smiles, certainly suggested that Velociraptor! would take up where 2009’s West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum left off – completely out there, and completely off its face. A remarkably uncompromising opening salvo, it begins as a dreamily buzzing Eastern mantra, before a dinosaur-sized dance beat crashes in and the song spends the next few minutes zig-zagging wildly between club stomper and blissed-out space rock.

Fortunately for fans fearing Kasabian have completely left Planet Rock, the rest of the album plays it safer, shifting restlessly between growling garage and psychedelic reveries. Days Are Forgotten is built on a filthy delta blues riff, and boasts a trademark vowel-murdering, stadium-shaking chorus. For sheer catchiness, it’s only rivalled by the splendidly silly title-track, with its grimy guitars, absurd lyrics and air-punching chorus. Festival-goers should learn the words "Velociraptor / He gonna find ya / He gonna kill ya / He gonna eat ya" now: you’ll be hearing them a lot next year.

Of the slower songs, the meandering Acid Turkish Bath (Shelter from the Storm) revisits the Eastern influences of Switchblade Smiles but dredges up unpleasant memories of Kula Shaker, while Goodbye Kiss is agreeable but unremarkable, sounding like a cast-off from Alex Turner’s understated Submarine soundtrack. Far, far lovelier is the closing Neon Noon, a reverb-drenched slow-burner which intertwines analogue electro, acoustic guitars, sighing strings and a subdued, mournful melody. It may be the first genuinely moving Kasabian song, a truly welcome new development.

Velociraptor! is neither the classic Pizzorno insists it is, nor the numbskull stadium rock cynics will presume it is. It sounds like a band still uncertain of exactly where they want to be, but determined to make the way there interesting.

REVIEW: Laura Marling

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:56:00 +0000

Bob Dylan had barely put miles on his 23rd year when he wrote My Back Pages, his gleeful kiss-off to finger-wagging folk turning on his political idealism, its key lines: "But I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now". Laura Marling is only 21, but the Hampshire-born starlet shows no sign of reversing the ageing process with A Creature I Don’t Know, her third album which picks up where the meandering, lips-pursed folk of 2010’s I Speak Because I Can left off.

On the one hand, that means we’re in for some familiar, portentous metaphor-wielding and detours into the sort of windy country ploughed by her once-beau Marcus Mumford and his figurative offspring. On the other, she wears her furrowed brow with a grace and stoic humour well in advance of her nu-folk peers; combining the sort of winking stoicism that was once the preserve of commie-sympathising, flinty-faced menfolk with the supple, jazzy tones of idol Joni Mitchell.

The Muse is a fine and fleet-footed introduction to the one of the album’s central themes – muse as victim of the artist’s psychic vampirism and/or beastly intentions – unfolding around a jaunty, circling guitar figure and even finding time for a brief banjo solo without losing its considerable cool. I Was Just a Card strays a trifle too close to plodding mum-rock territory but Don’t Ask Me Why continues the airy, restful tone even as our protagonist is found "looking for answers in unsavoury places".

Salinas sounds like a bloated monument to the lyrical confusion at its heart ("there are no answers"), all breeze-blown acoustic and lurching, overlaid electric guitar. And The Beast is a rain-lashed monster of a tune, its descending chord sequences sinking, Rosemary’s Baby-style, into some infernal bed: "Tonight I choose the beast / Tonight he lies with me".

Night After Night is a classic, folksy pick that allows Marling’s voice to revel in its own beauty, while Sophia spends about a minute in search of a tune before hitting on the line, "I’m wounded by dust", and it’s like the curtains have been yanked open as her vocal comes flanked by a heavenly choir and softly echoing guitar line. Then it segues into full-on country territory, talk of the judgement day and all, and you’ll want to laugh but you won’t be able to; such are its author’s subtle charms.

Ending with a cathartic, skirt-swishing burst in All My Rage, A Creature... is another fine release from Marling, lyrically dark but skewing in the main towards an increasingly sunny, sophisticated sound. Her worldly-wise tone can still come over a little smug but give her time – she’ll grow younger than this yet.

REVIEW: Bombay Bicycle Club

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:01:00 +0000

It’s okay if you’re a little irritating if you’re also annoyingly good. Bombay Bicycle Club, young and fey when they pedalled onto the scene four years ago and now looking even younger and acting even more feyly, may still not be embraced by those who feel the post-Belle and Sebastian school of anti-rock merits a good slap rather than a hug and an exclamation of "aw, bless", but it’s getting increasingly difficult to deny their talent.

Yes, they’ve been given more encouragement, nurturing and backing than most bands receive in a lifetime, but they’ve now released three albums of bravely different styles. Their debut was dynamic indie-pop, while top-10 follow-up Flaws lurched across to soft folk territory with a perversity that only seemed opportunistic with hindsight. Now, thankfully electing not to go the full Mumford, they return with something that’s beautifully hard to categorise. A bit Italian house, a bit Animal Collective (Ben Allen is among the producers, as is 21st century tyro Jim Abbiss), a bit Talking Heads and a lot flush with giddy enthusiasm and sunshine, it’s very indie and very fey – but in a good way.

Lead single Shuffle provides pretty much a microcosm of the album’s feel. Building a gentle, hooky pop song over a looping, dance-inducing piano sample, it’s, like all the best late-summer sounds, 75% exuberant and 25% melancholy. What You Want and Bad Timing waft in on similar breezes, but with less definition, more ambivalence. Lights Out, Words Gone is as close as they come to the realms of the epic, fostering a stabby white-funk riff until it blows off science (they’re warmer than Foals) and stumbles happily onto something not a million miles away from soul.

Guitars are understated throughout, and singer/co-producer Jack Steadman’s penchant for making bedroom-electronica off duty has permeated these grooves without smothering them in ‘blub-’ or any other kind of ‘step’. Yes, the videos still display awkward, cringe-worthy naivety that could inspire the next The Inbetweeners movie, but this music is a mature mix of jaunty and jaundiced.

Free App: Coupon Buddy

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:06:00 +0000

From time to time, we recommend free apps to our users that are available on the Conduit Marketplace.

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REVIEW: Barbara Streisand

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:53:00 +0000

At an age when many singers would be content to re-record earlier hits and package the end product as a ‘new’ release, Barbra Streisand has here produced 10 wholly new recordings of material featuring words by lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, a duo with whom she has enjoyed a long and successful partnership, on both disc and film.

Throwing down the gauntlet, she begins by singing the first verse of one of their best loved songs, The Windmills of Your Mind, unaccompanied. It’s a daring move, but one that she pulls off thanks to her innate artistry; though it’s notable that even her peerless technique can’t quite disguise the greater effort required in sustaining the extended vocal lines. Many of the more familiar Bergman titles previously tackled by Streisand, like The Way We Were and You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, can be heard on the second disc contained in the deluxe edition of this CD.

For the single-disc version, though, Streisand focuses on new recordings, and she has roamed far and wide reintroducing songs that were written for Fred Astaire (That Face) and Frank Sinatra (Nice n Easy) – the latter a song so tailor-made for Ol’ Blue Eyes that it could well have been written by his house songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. Both arrangements include swing passages that show off the expertise of the orchestra. Other songs are romantic and frequently nostalgic in tone, including many titles from well off the beaten track. Some come from the world of jazz, including compositions by Johnny Mandel and Dave Grusin, and from the cinema with credits for John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. So Many Stars, a gentle bossa nova from Sergio Mendes, rounds off the composer credits.

Something New In My Life is a real highlight. A rarely heard piece by Michel Legrand, composer of The Windmills of Your Mind, it brings out a new expressive vein in the Bergmans’ lyrics. Fans of John Williams will note his inimitable harmonic touch and lyrical style in The Same Hello, the Same Goodbye, originally composed for an enraptured Sinatra. The state of the art recording ensures that this is another unmissable feast of song from an artist seemingly unstoppable in her continuing quest to present something new to her worldwide audience.

REVIEW: Darius Rucker

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:45:00 +0000

Before he became the first African American to top the US country charts since Charlie Pride in 1983, Darius Rucker was best known as the voice of Hootie & The Blowfish, the bizarrely-named rockers whose 1994 debut album sold a staggering 16 million copies. Rucker’s decision to launch a full-time solo career in 2008 has meant a hiatus for them, but continued success for Rucker, who as a child of South Carolina, says he’d always felt frustrated with not being able to pursue a more country sound.

Charleston, SC 1966, a reference to his place and date of birth, is actually the third disc of his solo career, which commenced in 2002 with the R&B-tinged Back To Then, and turned towards country with 2008’s Learn To Live. Every one of the 13 tracks on this album are co-writes that he’s had a hand in, but all the same, a certain autobiographical tone predominates.

"Sometimes I wanna be George Jones/Sometimes Charlie Pride," he sings on In A Big Way, a memorable closing track that deals with his need to step out of the fast lane and touch base with domesticity. Actually, he sounds closer to George Strait, another of his idols, who also gets a namecheck on Might Get Lucky. This finds him listing the ways a married man might "get lucky" with his wife if he "treats her right". But this old-fashioned take on ‘new man’ values falls right off the porch during I Don’t Care, a boozy duet with Brad Paisley. Meanwhile, Southern State Of Mind finds him musing on northerners’ reactions to his southern manners and habits, but doesn’t mention Jim Crow or the KKK.

Elsewhere, there are few surprises on offer; this is a thoroughly mainstream effort, which takes few risks and relies largely on well-worn country clichés. Rucker’s rocker roots are evident right from the stomping opener This, and while Love Will Do That touches on bluegrass, with the help of some nifty banjo from Béla Fleck, Whiskey And You and Things I’d Never Do both find him straying into power ballad territory. One suspects that just like Hootie & The Blowfish, and numerous contemporary country outfits, that ole’ Atlantic crossing is a bridge too far.