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Enrique Iglesias - Insomniac
One unbreakable rule of pop music is to stick to doing what you do best. For Enrique Iglesias, that is to make smouldering music videos that accompany the kind of slick ballads that are made to played millions of times on the radio. If you can find anyone who doesn't know Hero like the back of their own hand, then they are very fortunate indeed, but Iglesias's big hit has been pretty much ubiquitous since it got released. Now he's back with another English-language album, hoping to continue his massive success, but clearly playing to several different audiences at the same time. There's soppy ballads like Somebody's Me (a less bombastic version of Hero, basically), slick radio-friendly pop like current single Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song) and also attempts to appeal to a slightly younger and hipper crowd with Lil Wayne featuring on R 'n'B tune Push, which sounds like R.Kelly. Yes, that's what Iglesias thinks is hip and trendy in 2007. It's actually utterly awful. He's much more at home on tracks like On Top Of You, which is basically designed to make his female fans imagine having sex with him, a dead cert sales booster. The production on Insomniac is very good, giving all the songs - even the rubbish hip-hip stuff - sound impressive even when the percussion is being provided by a ping pong ball bouncing (what next, fingernails down a blackboard?) as it is on Do You Know? and its Spanish language version Dimelo. Does an album need two different language versions of the same song? Seemingly Iglesias thinks so, as it's not even a bonus track (of which there are two, stretching the running time way past the hour mark). Unfortunately, while he has mostly avoided changing too much in terms of his sound and has stuck to doing what he does best, he sleepwalks through Insomniac and if your own eyelids aren't drooping after the fourth or fifth ballad, you're either a lovestruck lady or made of sterner stuff than this reviewer, because he's good at what he does, but what he does is irredeemably dull. Some rules are made to be broken.
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B.C. Camplight
- Blink Of A Nihilist
Soy Tonto! doesn't
sound much like a Brian Wilson song
title, but it sure as hell sounds
like a Brian Wilson song, full of
all the quirky production techniques,
instrumentation and gorgeous melodies
and harmonies that we would expect
from the chief Beach Boy. However,
that isn't to say that BC Camplight
is nothing but a copycat, and Soy
Tonto! is actually conclusive proof
that he is so much more than that,
because not even Wilson would throw
that many crazy ideas into one song,
least of all try to sound like both
Phil Spector and Joao Gilberto at
the same time. And BC Camplight (Brian
Christinzio) pulls it off too. This,
his second album, is sheer mad pop
genius from start to finish, and has
to be one of the best releases of
this year so far. He takes the quirkiness
and ambition of The Flaming Lips,
mingles it with the power pop of someone
like Matthew Sweet, along with with
touches of Burt Bacharach, the Polyphonic
Spree and the Beatles. And yet he
makes it all sound new and fresh,
rather than just reheated, and songs
like Officer Down, Forget About Your
Bones and Suffer For Two are absolutely
perfect. Christinzio's voice is heavenly
sweet, as are the backing vocals while
his 'everything plus the kitchen sink'
approach to intstrumentation ensures
that it never gets dull. The only
risk with music like this is that
you can come up with something that
is just too busy for its own good,
but Blink Of A Nihilist treads that
tightrope very deftly, surpassing
his excellent debut album in almost
every way. In a word, awesome.
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Ray LaMontagne - Till
The Sun Turns Black
A thin beardy white
man who sounds like Otis Redding, Ray LaMontagne's
voice is a force of nature and his first
album showcased it to the world. However,
as a cohesive piece of work, it was rather
lacking, with far too much filler and not
enough quality. His career over here has
also been slightly confusing, with this
second album released in the States last
year and readily available in the UK too,
while his record company continued to push
singles from the previous album. Indeed,
when he toured at the start of the year,
his set-lists were massively dominated by
tracks from Til The Sun Turns Black, and
the vast majority of the audience knew them
already. So it's a bit bizarre that it's
only finally getting a proper release at
a time when most people who would buy it
already own it. It's also unlikely to have
much commercial crossover appeal either,
because unlike his debut, there's not much
in the way of obvious songs that can be
used in TV adverts for it. However, it is
still vastly superior to its predecessor
in every way. It's much more understated,
with LaMontagne's vocals mostly low-key
rather than raging, while the backing instrumentation
is less Stax and more Kelly Joe Phelps,
albeit still with some muted horns and flutes,
etc. Opening track Be Here Now sets the
scene well and pretty much sums up an album
that isn't as immediate as his first, but
is a real thing of raw beauty that will
hopefully finally get the general recognition
its muddled release has denied it so far.
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Black Strobe
- Burn Your Own Church
It's taken Black
Strobe ten years to come up with a
debut album, which isn't exactly prolific
by anyone's standards. The French
dance-rock outfit have been mostly
involving in releasing occasional
singles and building a reputation
as great remixers, but this is the
acid test. Can they sustain interest
over an album that lasts almost an
hour? For a band as diverse as this,
it's not so much a case of keeping
people interested as making sure they
remember that it's all by the same
people, because the decade-long process
that has led to Burn Your Own Church
is reflected by the various genres
they undertake during it. There's
some nice electronica, some big dirty
breakbeats, some industrial metal,
some stomping blues and the only thing
tying most of it together is Arnaud
Rebotini's Nick Cave impersonation
on vocals. Whether doing Bo Diddley's
I'm A Man as a Nine Inch Nails rocker
or merging Depeche Mode with clubland
beats on the electrifying Blood Shot
Eyes, Rebotini sounds like Cave, which
at times makes Black Strobe seem like
the Bad Seeds on very strange drugs,
but this turns out to be a good thing.
There's been lots of great French
acts over the years, but these guys
don't sound anything like any of them,
and certainly don't have any kind
of Gallic flavour whatsoever. Instead,
Burn Your Own Church ploughs its own
furrow and from the start of Brenn
Di Ega Kjerke to the elegaic finale
of the haunting Crave For Speed, this
is an album that was well worth the
wait.
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Messiah J And The Expert - Now This I Have To Hear
Irish rap isn't exactly a genre brimming with big names, but Messiah J And The Expert are hoping to change that with the UK release of their second album Now This I Have To Hear. With the Dublin duo's influences ranging from Bjork to The Zombies as well as hip-hop from 1988 to 1996 (according to them, that was the genre's 'golden age') they have come up with a very entertaining record that is chock full of ideas and experimentation as well as a sense of fun that is sadly lacking from so much modern hip-hop. This is best summed up on the barking-mad Place Your Bets, with its female backing vocals and hints of 30s jazz, something that continues with Leda Egri's vocals on Something Outta Nothing. The Boys Have Had Enough starts with a jokey bit of Hammond Organ before a rant about boring bands, not an accusation that could be labelled at a band who use lines like "She was so grown up, she was so fit, she had a bum even Jesus would grip." Of course, throwing in too many jokey lines and effects would make them sound like an Irish version of the Bloodhound Gang, but Messiah J And The Expert manage to steer clear of that, while also making sure they can't be compared to The Streets either. They are in their very own genre and while there's no competition, they're easily the best in it. Now This I Have To Hear isn't an amazing album, but there's more invention and excitement here than most hip-hop albums we've heard in the last few years, so it's certainly worth a spin.
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Amp Fiddler - Afro
Strut
There's a bit of a
surfeit of good funky soul music these days,
with the glory days of the 1970s long replaced
by entirely soulless production-line schmaltz
and nonsense. So, thank god for Amp Fiddler.
It's no surprise that a man who has played
with the likes of George Clinton, Prince
and Primal Scream has a sense of what good
music should sound like, and this latest
release also shows that Waltz Of A Ghetto
Fly was no one-off success for him as a
solo artist. Afro Strut is a pretty good
title for an album that really does strut
along with the cocky swagger of a pro who
knows that he is cool and that his music
is funky, which is certainly is. His vocals
aren't the sharpest, and there's nothing
worth paying attention to in the lyrics,
but tracks like You Could Be Mine, single
Right Where You Are and opener Faith are
as good as you'd find on any other soul
album these days. There's no crazy inspiration
like you'd find on a prime Steve Wonder,
P-Funk or Isaac Hayes album, but Fiddler
does what he does with class and style and
this is another very fine release from a
man starting to get himself quite a reputation.
It got released over here last summer, but
is now back with the US version, featuring
a slightly different track listening that
gives it more of a chilled-out vibe, with
If I Don't (featuring Corrine Bailey Rae)
a 30s influenced jazzy number, while Not
is a smooth ballad. There's also a bluey
Hendrix tribute with Hey Joe, which is slightly
superfluous, but at least shows Fiddler's
versatility nicely. Overall, this US version
is probably actually better and more focused
than the original release of Afro Strut,
which was pretty good to begin with...
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Viva Voce - Viva Voce Loves You
We've been big fans of Kevin and Anita Robinson ever since their impressive The Heat Can Melt Your Brain album came out over here in 2005, and while the follow-up, Get Yr Blood Sucked Out, was a bit less awesome, they are still a great band. Viva Voce Loves You is a short collection (just eight songs) of their best work, including the fantastic Alive With Pleasure, certainly their best track. Everything on here is great, with the cuts from Get Yr Blood Sucked Out being definitely its highlights, while Wrecking Ball from 2003's Lovers, Lead The Way! is also wonderful. Viva Voce Loves You is no replacement for the three albums it is compiled from, but hopefully it will inspire some new fans to go and check them out. Short but very sweet.
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