This album sounds like they’ve taken an upbeat album and just slowed most of it down. The tempo goes from slow and boring to dull and boring and back again. It sounds at though they forced Goldfrapp to do an indie rock album.
The female singer seems to have been told to make her voice as whiny as possible, shrieking along with some of the most tedious guitar I’ve heard for a while. There’s no variety in any of it. They all seem to be playing and singing the exact same notes throughout, meaning no harmonising, no depth, and no interest from me.
The first song that is actually worth listening to the end of, comes 8 songs in, with ‘Golden Web’ which actually has some depth, and although there is still little change in the pace or tone of the song, this song actually seems to have something that works. It’s a shame that they put the song so far along the album or I wouldn’t have already have lost all patience with them. It’s like someone putting an old mattress down to try and cushion the impact of a jumbo jet crashing into the ground.
From here on, it’s just more wailing and shrieking and I long for either the end of the album, or the end of the world, whichever comes first.
Oh wait…what’s this?
It’s the ‘Off’ button.
Thank god for that!
Listen to this album, but make sure there are no sharp objects that you might stab into your ears.
Album that contains the lyrics “You’re still picking your nickers from your arse, like you’re playing a one string harp” will instantly be a hit with me.
Bell X1, are Irish and they play music that will make you chuckle along to the imaginary that they present you with, the example above being one of them. Think Mouldy Peaches meet the Hoosiers and you might have some idea of what to expect.
Bell X1 play music that is kind of minimal soft rock that is very word based. they are not a band that will make you want to dance or cry or rebel or anything like that, but they do seem to touch a nerve inside of me that really endears me to them and I end up wanting to go and hug the band.
I listened to this album mainly while walking too and from work and it made a really nice soundtrack to everyday life. I’m listening now while writing this in my bedroom and it doesn’t sound nearly as effective. Blue Lights on the Runway has a kind of gritty realism that allows their sideways glance at the world but it’s not too heavy with it.
This kind of poncey rock music is a genre that some people would dismiss quite quickly and I tell them, “Don’t” and they should listen, because this album is nice, the sounds sound good and the lyrics are funny and interesting. There could have been a bit more variety on the album, the songs all fit quite a similar pace and style, and this may cause me to bore of the album quicker than some.
Bell X1 have something, I think, that’s a bit new within a genre that has been dragged by it’s bollocks for far too long, but Bell X1 seems to have picked it up, dusted it off and given it a new set of clothes. It’s a nice amendment to my collection.
I have just flicked through youtube, for some songs from their other albums, and none that I have heard are a patch on anything from Blue Lights on the Runway.
Listen to this album: And experience a real, but not too troubling slice of life. Rating: 84%
More music from people who never seem to be happy about anything. Oasis are starting to become the kid at school who are always moaning about something, and to begin with you are interested about their heartfelt dismay, but after a while you begin to tire of it and wish the kid would go away.
This is what Oasis has become, for me. Been there, heard that, got the t-shirt.
I really enjoyed this the first time I listened to it and heard it from beginning to end, then immediately went back and listened to the whole thing again. I thought it was very enjoyable, solid and entertaining.
Do you notice how the above is written in the past tense?
The album quickly becomes boring, because while there is talent and ability there, the whole thing comes with a huge dollop of contempt, and it all becomes a little too Oasis for my liking.
Like a cheese omelette that has too much cheese in it.
This is not just me wishing for the heyday of Britpop, although I do, and yes, one of the iconic songs from my youth was an Oasis song, so I do feel as though I owe them something, but this album is dulL (with a capital L)
Maybe I am a little harsh on them. This is a lot better than every indie album that has come out since 2002, but that isn’t that hard of a task, and there’s a lot of good in here, there isn’t a bad song on the album. If you are under the age of 13 and like indie music, you should be worshipping this album as your new god.
It’s just that Oasis have seen better days.
Maybe, for you, the initial joy that I had for this album will be sustained, and you will get a lot from this album, but for my, it will drift down from my ears and out of my arse.
Listen to this album: Sporting a grimace.
65%
Extracts from ‘Bag it up’, ‘I’m outta time’, ‘Ain’t Got Nothin” and ‘Soldier On’
This album is just annoying. The whining of the singer, the guitar sounding as if they’ve let a three year old get hold of the guitar and the drumming sounds like they’re using dead babies as drumsticks. This album just plain sucks.
It’s like they’ve played 2 Rolling Stones and Pixies songs to some eight year olds and then told them to go ahead and make some music, a strange pong emanates from my headphones and I’m almost certain that it’s the music making that smell. That may just be me though.
I look at the playlist and groan with despair as I see I still have 6 songs to listen to on this album and I’m just plain fed up with this band, and I think they should Maybe? get their tiny pretentious arses out of my ears and Promise me that they’ll stick their instruments up there instead. Any band that has punctuation in their name (incorrectly used) should shut up and go back to school and learn something of use, as I predict that they’re not going to be bothering me for much longer with music. Maybe? they could be a tramp’s PA or something.
There is one promising part to this album and that’s when it ends.
It’s not that this band are just another generic indie band, because they’re not, and that’s an insult to generic indie bands. Although I do commend them for trying something, even though it fails on a huge level. This band should be aspiring to be ‘just another indie band’.
The songs are too repetitive. The songs are too repetitive. The songs are too repetitive.
And Boring.
They songs are also too long, although I think that this is only as a result of time slowing down when this album is played.
Listen to this album: If you want your head to feel as though it is being pulled, slowly but firmly upwards.
Rating: 52%
Extracts from ‘Modern Love’, ‘Full Moon’, ‘Disappear’ and ‘Promise’
Until hearing this album, I was on the ‘NOT’ side of the impressed scale for Death Cab for Cutie, I thought that they were bland and pointless and stupid. There are songs on this album, that still fall into this category. After an interesting start to the album, I do not want to turn it off and am being sucked into this album, like a pea in a black hole, they decide to turn the suction to reverse with the rest of the album. At first I was hopeful, and thought that I was going to get some interesting variation on the standard indie by numbers format, especially when reading that the producer of the album say ” “thus far it’s pretty weird and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It’s creepy and heavy…” I was really expectant, but all I am now is thoroughly disappointed and think that producer, Chris Walla is a liar.
There are some interesting points to the album, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ and ‘Grapevine Fires’ are different and refreshing in a dessert of never-ending blandness. I must admit, this is better than a lot of the indie that is around at the moment.
Listen to this album: While eating sand.
Rating: 69%
Extracts from ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’, ‘No Sunlight’, ‘Grapevine Fires’ and Long Division’
The Ting Tings are a band that I had heard in passing and disregarded as annoying, but listening to the album it’s actually a lot of fun and I have totally rethunk my perception of them. Although they are still a bit annoying.
It’s simple, and nothing particularly new, but they are unashamed of doing something that’s fun and a bit stupid, but still has integrity.
Lead singer, Katie White sounds like she’s been educated to the age of 11, and then let loose in a theme park and made to write music. She also sounds like she can’t really form words properly and that the time she’s singing the words is the first time she’s seen them, but it’s an innocence you can’t really dislike, but at the same time, you don’t want to have to deal with it all the time.
It’s like when you’re looking after someone elses child and they’re chatting all the time and you humour the kid, and it’s okay, but if you actually had to deal with it all the time, it would get old, fast.
There is a sufficient level of diversity in the album, to keep your attention from one song to the next, and although the surface moves around throughout the album, it retains the foundations of the music throughout.
The best songs on the album are in the first half. They are catchy and fun and amusing, but ultimately annoying. Whereas the last part of the album is tedious and lazy, but not as annoying.
Listen to this album: Pogoing in quicksand.
Rating: 76%
Extracts from ‘That’s not my name’, ‘Fruit Machine’ and ‘We started nothing’
Slow, calm and soothing, Bon Iver put something different into my ears and I like it. It’s like if Pink Floyd had been an acoustic indie singer songwriter, there’s some beautiful tunes on this album.
I had come across some of the songs while listening to this week’s releases on shuffle and had quite quickly turned them off, but when I actually sat down and listened to the album in full, I was quite taken aback by what was hidden in this album. Interesting, artistic and thoughtful, the album is very well composed and the development of the tracks through the album really take you on a journey through the music.
The moving vocal talent is pitch perfect and is supported by some quite minimalist, but very effective guitar playing and not much else. Brief drum encounters and bass sightings are reported, but I’m not sure if they are really there, as the glances are few and far between.
Overall, I really enjoyed this album, but you must give it time to develop. I made a mistake by listening to a small amount at a time.
Listen to this album: While floating down a river on a raft.
Rating: 85%
Extracts from ‘Lump Sum’, ‘Skinny Love’, ‘Team’ and ‘Re: Stacks’
It’s quite hard to listen to this album and not feel optimistic. If you’re in the depths of autumn, you know that winter is coming but this album reminds you that spring is just getting it’s wellies on. The only exception to this is the song ‘My name is despair’, which, as you can probably tell, is less about the optimism and more about despair but don’t let this worry you, there’s still a pinch of optimism in there.
It’s a nice, safe album that wraps you up in a familiar blanket and puts you to bed with a drink of hot milk.
The tidy guitars and the soothing vocals surround you and give you a cuddle and a kiss on the forehead. The drums tuck you in at night and the bass keeps guard outside the door to protect you from anything scary and unfamiliar.
The album is very well presented and should be a good companion for you.
Listen to this album: Tucked up in bed.
Rating: 82%
Extracts from ‘Mis-takes’, ‘A day for letting go’, ‘My name is despair’ and ‘This is the end’
The general genre of this music is cute female singer songwriter. There’s plenty of them out at the moment and they are all quite similar and it really is just based on personal preference which ones you like and which ones you loathe. Gemma Hayes flops lazily into my loathe tray and refuses to move, The music is quite heavy in weight and is very demanding, being really quite flat and uninteresting. I prefer my female singer/songwriters to be cool and quirky and Hayes fails to meet my very specific requirements.
There’s a lot of noise in the songs and this gives me a bit of a headache, it’s not clean, it’s not crisp, it’s just saggy and unappealing. At one point in ‘Out of our hands’, I had to pause the music, to make sure that there wasn’t something else making noise on my computer and mixing with the album, creating a frightful din. It turned out it was just the song.
It also sounds like it was recorded in someone’s living room, which I would have forgiven, had the music been good.
Listen to this album: With your head in a carrier bag.
Rating: 59%
Extracts from ‘This is what you do’, ‘Out of our hands’, ‘In over my head’, ‘Don’t Forget’, and ‘At Constant Speed’
You know when somebody gets turned into an insect on TV and it shows the world from their perspective, and everything sounds like it’s coming from far away and muffled and slightly strange. Well that’s the effect this album has on you. It’s like they just stuck a tiny microphone in the ears of various different insects,and recorded the sounds that came through.
This mess of noises was then fed through a synthesiser and stripped down to it’s most prominent noises and slapped on CD and shipped off for people to listen to. If you listen carefully, you might just hear that conversation you has with your mistress the other week, you thought nobody was listening, but there was a literal fly on the wall that overheard.
All the songs on the album, are quite slow and boring, with glimpses of interesting material in the background that if you listen closely, you’ll just be able to hear, but it seems like too much hard work for such little content.
Listen to this album: Crawling in the grass.
Rating: 63%
Extracts from ‘Out There On The Ice’, ‘Midnight Runner’, ‘Far Away’ and ‘Nobody Lost, Nobody Found’
