What does it sound like?:

I’m certainly no expert on the music of Miles Davis, owning only a couple of the more obvious albums. Thus most of the music on here, although previously available, is new to me.

As the title suggests, the overall concept is to collect some of Davis’ music that has been used as part of film soundtracks, these covering one or two individual songs right the way through to the opposite end of the scale with a full score. They also cover almost a fifty year period, starting with his first cinematic effort, the full soundtrack to 1956’s Elevator To The Gallows, right through to more recent times with music used in 2012’s Gilda and Rosa. As to the music itself – well maybe I’m not the best judge, but overall it is pretty much what I expected, beautiful but often innovative too. Ones that stand out from the crowd for me are Blue In Green from the aforementioned Gilda and Rosa, and Nature Boy from 1999’s The Talented Mr Ripley.

What does it all *mean*?

A good collection overall, but I feel some of these pieces may have worked better in the context of » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

James were a band of cocky Mancs, who had a reputation as a live act to see. They supported The Fall and The Smiths. It wasn’t long before Tony Wilson and Factory Records came sniffing around. Two Eps later, they decided to take their business elsewhere and signed for Sire subsidiary Blanco Y Negro, hoping Eno would produce them. Justhipper collects the entire released output from that contract; two albums, Stutter and Strip-Mine, the contemporaneous singles and B sides and an EP.

In the end, they had to settle for Lenny Kaye to produce their debut. He was horrified to find a difficult-to-manage group of lads who couldn’t play their instruments, were unfamiliar with song structure and enjoyed bizarre lyrics. The most positive description of the resultant album, Stutter, is lovably shambolic. Sire had hoped they’d signed the next Smiths. The opening line of the opening track, Skullduggery, ‘An earwig crawled into my ear / Made a meal of the wax and hairs” must have been deflating. This Charming Man it ain’t. The music of Stutter is largely chaotic clatter, dominated by frenetic drumming by Gavan Whelan and Tim Booth’s deranged vocals. It reminds » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

“Don’t leave me like this, I might explode” Hannah Aldridge sings on opening song Aftermath. But that is what Hannah does across the ten tracks on Gold Rush, this her second album. She explodes into your musical experience, embedding herself in your psyche and richly rewarding you with every repeated play.

This review is a couple of months late, but that is not a good reason for this recording to be ignored.

I loved her debut Razor Wire, but this album takes her music forward. For me there is a strong Tom Petty vibe on this record, but she also reminds me of singers like Etta James and Anne Peebles, with flavours of soul and gospel coming through to produce a fabulous blend that draws upon her Muscle Shoals roots to create a confection of sound that is very much her own and she has produced an album that rewards repeated listening. But in contradiction to what I’ve just written and mixing my metaphors, this album is no compound, but consists of ten nuggets of pure gold.

So to the music: what has struck me with Gold Rush, and I’m not sure why I » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Juanita Stein is one half of a brother/sister combination within Howling Bells, a band on an extended break to accommodate Juanita’s maternity leave and early motherhood. Rather than getting the band together again, she has decided to release a solo album. Having achieved the peak of human creativity, making another human being, this Australian lady living in London has been inspired to write songs about America, an America perceived through half remembered movies, TV programmes and magazines that were viewed as a child. When you listen, you’ll hear an enticing mixture of a romanticised American Dream, soured by bitterness, loss and the filthy reality of a seedy underbelly, “dusty trails, a whimsical Fifties suburbia and the haze of the Sixties” as she puts it. Juanita is exploring the dichotomy of what’s real and what’s a dream, in the tradition of Roy Orbison.

Her voice is wispy in the mid range and fragile in the high register. Her accent sounds English, rather than Australian. The music is Americana once-removed, a curious sounding second cousin, an elegant guitar adding the fine detail throughout. It’s the oddness that’s appealing, the feeling of looking at a landscape » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Bill Withers last released a studio album in 1985, and even that came after a seven year hiatus from his most prolific period covering the years 1971-78, during which he made seven albums. He’s one of those rare artists whose ‘best ofs’ outnumber his original albums – I make it that this, astonishingly, is the eleventh collection issued since 1975 when he was at the very height of his popularity. Looking at the track listings, these all contain pretty much the same songs, centred around his big, classic, hits, Just The Two Of Us, Lean On Me, Ain’t No Sunshine and Lovely Day. There’s no arguing with the quality of these songs, but perhaps understandably they rather overshadowed the rest of his material. That’s a real shame as it led to some fine songs being overlooked. Use Me, Grandma’s Hands and Watching You Watching Me, to name just three, all deserved far more attention, and really in the nineteen tracks here there’s not really anything that lets the side down. Pushing eighty years old now, this is presumably all the Bill there’s ever going to be unless there’s a hidden hoard of unissued material » Continue Reading.