By A Web Design
By A Web Design
PALOMA FAITH
Fall To Grace
Sony Music / RCA
The story goes that when Paloma Faith was preparing to follow up her platinum-selling debut album, 2009’s Do You Want the Truth Or Something Beautiful?, she reread Milan Kundera’s Immortality.
She seems to have attempted to interpret the novel’s complex themes of art and death in her lyrics, particularly evident in Black & Blue’s pseudo-profundities: “I know people who use chatrooms as confessionals/I know down and outs who once, once they were professionals”.
BOBBY WOMAK
The Bravest Man In The
Universe
XL / Remote Control
At 68 Bobby Womack is a survivor, the soul legend has endured decades of music while also surviving drug and alcohol addictions. After the turn of the millennium his music career faded away with the only noise being made during his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.
THE HIVES
Lex Hives
Dew Process
Five years in the making, Swedish rockers The Hives are back with yet more loud garage rock… but has it been worth the wait? Lex Hives has been touted as The Hives’ return to their garage punk roots, and as far as the guitars are concerned, it is. While not as abrasive as the band’s very early work (which was often loud enough to invoke listener fatigue), there’s enough crunch on a track like I Want More to excite even the most hardened lo-fi purist.
THE BEACH BOYS
That’s Why God Made The Radio
EMI / Capitol
In their heyday, The Beach Boys whipped out up to three full-length albums in a year, and now they’ve managed to conjure up some of that work ethic with their first album in ions, That’s Why God Made The Radio.
With a combined age of 341, the five members of the 2012 Beach Boys haven’t been ‘boys’ for a while, but they still seem to have some of the magic of their youth flowing through their veins.
STORM CORROSION
Storm Corrosion
Roadrunner Records
Fans of Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson have been waiting for the Storm Corrosion collaboration for years, it was basically written in the stars. One should be wary of arriving at this album with any preconceived notions, as they’re likely to be dashed.
Rather than becoming a prog-metal supergroup, the pair abandoned all pretence of restraint and expectations in their sprawling opus. Freeing themselves from the norm, in what some might call a self-indulgent manner, has allowed them to create a one of a kind masterpiece.
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Out Of The Game
Decca / Universal
When Mark Ronson produces an album, you know it’s going to be a stylish finished product. Wainwright’s Out Of The Game is beautiful.
Ronson’s pop influence doesn’t make it a pop album per se. Instead, it’s a classy combination of jazz, soul, rock and blues.
Wainwright credits pop/rock from the ‘70s as the inspiration for the album’s tone and this is also shown through the soulful female backing vocals used on many on the tracks.
NICKY BOMBA’S BUSTAMENTO
Intrepid Adventures To The Lost Riddim Islands
Vitamin
Best known as the drummer of the John Butler Trio, Nicky Bomba takes musical control with new outfit Bustamento - a six-piece band that covers calypso, reggae and ska styles with a wry sense of humour.
Bomba has managed to create a fun record that does not take itself too seriously, with his themes centrally covering happiness, love and beaches.
BLACK DICE
Mr. Impossible
Ribbon Music
Electronic music, with tools like quantisation and minute digital editing, offers the possibility of musical “perfection”. It is always interesting then when electronic musicians eschew perfection in the name of a looser, more organic aesthetic and Mr. Impossible, the latest LP from NY band Black Dice, is about as loose as it comes.
METRIC
Synthetica
MMI / Create Control
Canadian indie-rockers Metric are back with their fifth record Synthetica. After self-releasing their fourth album Fantasies and selling over a million singles and 500,000 albums worldwide, grand expectations were laid for the four-piece lead by one of the most mesmerising front women ever, Emily Haines, to release an epic fifth record.
THE MELVINS
Freak Puke
Ipecac / Fuse
Not enough bands employ an alternative line-up to keep things fresh these days, but then again, not many bands are quite like the Melvins.
Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover have given Jared Warren and Coady Willis some time to go back to Big Business, and brought in none other than Mr Bungle founder Trevor Dunn in on stand-up bass.
