Reviews on dadams.co.uk come along as regularly as certain comets pass the Earth, so let’s crack on. First up is the new album from We Are Scientists, the bizarrely-named ‘Barbara’. Why ‘Barbara’? I have absolutely no idea. But what I do know is that it’s a damn fine fourth studio album from the band that are now once again a three-piece – drummer Andy Burrows, formerly of the dreadful Razorlight, making an excellent career move.
Barbara is a return to the more simple straight-forward style of their second album ‘With Love And Squalor’, but it’s evident that Keith Murray and Chris Cain have improved as song-writers and can litter their work with catchy riffs and melodies. And as a former bass-player myself, I can appreciate Chris Cain’s pulsing bass-lines, particularly on tracks like Nice Guys and I Don’t Bite. Best track… undoubtedly Ambition, but the mellow Foreign Kicks runs a close second.
If I have one criticism it’s that the ten tracks pass in less than thirty-two minutes. But it’s short and sweet, and overall I’m in love with Barbara.
In complete contrast, next up is something without electric guitars. Incubus front-man Brandon Boyd stated on the band’s Alive At Red Rocks DVD that he amazes himself every day at how badly he plays the guitar. Six years later Brandon is clearly more confident about his musical abilities and plays everything on his debut solo album ‘The Wild Trapeze’ bar the keyboards. I’d take a guess at saying that Brandon isn’t someone who would sit down at a conventional drum kit, and instead has beaten several different drums and mixed them together. The effect defines the album and gives it a unique feel, and is most evident on the album’s stand-out track Runaway Train.
Overall, everything is done differently to how Incubus would do it… Mike Einziger’s powerful and complex electric guitar work is replaced by acoustic strumming, Ben Kenney’s clear-cut bass-lines are replaced by fuzzy acoustic basses, and Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann provides the under-stated keyboards. Overall ‘The Wild Trapeze’ is more moody and restrained than any Incubus album, but occasionally soars to dramatic heights on tracks like A Night Without Cars and Here Comes Everyone. In charge of his own creativity, Brandon’s voice and self-harmonies have seldom sounded better. Thankfully, this is a solo album rather than an album by a solo artist – Incubus are returning to the studio as a band later this year.
Finally, it’s difficult to review an album when it’s only 11% complete, but that’s the situation with The Smashing Pumpkins‘ new offering ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’. The Pumpkins reached the height of their popularity and creative strength with ‘Siamese Dream’ and ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ in the 90s, and then saw their popularity decline into an eventual break-up. Billy Corgan went on to form Zwan (who delivered a sole but excellent album) and then followed-up with a rather lacklustre solo album. Getting back together with his once-disgraced drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, Corgan reformed The Smashing Pumpkins and produced a strong comeback album ‘Zeitgeist’ (reviewed here by guest blogger Florida Steve).
After Chamberlin left the band, Corgan continued and recruited 19 year-old Mike Byrne to the drum stool. After working with some touring band members and starting the recording of ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’, Corgan finalised a line-up by officially adding touring guitarist Jeff Schroeder and (yet another female bass player) Nicole Fiorentino.
The new work is part of Corgan’s new approach to recording and releasing his music – he stated that the old concept of recording an album of ten or so songs was done with, and planned to release ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’ one track at a time via the Smashing Pumpkins web site. Reaction to the new material seems incredibly positive, and judging by the live sessions recorded at New York’s Terminal 5, there’s more great stuff to come. Billy Corgan is an enigma and a genius, he’s still a major force in rock music, and his band are resurgent in doing what they do best, albeit with a changed line-up. Corgan is the lynch-pin but he needs a great band around him as he once did and now has again.
The awards ceremony takes place this coming Tuesday – I don’t care who wins and who loses because the whole thing is a nonsense. Let’s start with best album of 2009 – Dizzee Rascal is nominated. Is that his real name? “Congratulations Mr Rascal, it’s a boy” – “great, I’ll call him Dizzee… a brother for my eldest son Dirty”. Anyway, who else? Florence & the Machine, Kasabian, Lily Allen and Paolo Nutini. Young Mr Nutini, who sings like he’s had eight cans of Special Brew and is wandering through the streets of Glasgow asking people for a quid for a cup of tea, is in second place on the list of artists who make me want to turn the radio off. Dizzee (real name Dylan Mills) is at the top.
But my real problem with this list of nominees is the glaring omission, mainly those Welsh wonders the Manic Street Preachers – a band who in 2009 released not only the best album of the year, but also one of the best of the decade (Journal For Plague Lovers). The lack of recognition for such a powerful and emotional collection of songs is a farce. Who are the people deciding on the nominations?
To be honest I’m not a big fan of ‘greatest hits’ albums. In this day and age when you can download whatever set of tracks you like, and therefore effectively make up your own compilation, the idea of greatest hits is rather redundant. If you’ve already bought the albums of the band in question then a greatest hits album is almost completely redundant, apart from the one or two tracks that they add. And so I had mixed feelings when I heard that my favourite band of the last five years, Incubus, were releasing ‘Momuments and Melodies’.
The iTunes Store has just sent me a very nice e-mail telling me that I can pre-order Dido’s new album ‘Safe Trip Home’. It says “Because you’ve downloaded music by Dido from iTunes in the past”. What? I bloody well haven’t. That’s tantamount to slander. It’s almost the same as saying I drive a Fiat Punto, wear high heels and worry about water retention once a month.
I’ve just read the very sad news that Richard Wright, co-founder and keyboard player of Pink Floyd, has died of cancer aged 65. Richard Wright was the unsung hero of the band. For many years Roger Waters was the creative powerhouse, but it was David Gilmour and Wright who largely provided the music to Waters’ ideas (even though they weren’t often credited). Wright’s song-writing and musical contributions shaped classic albums such as ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’. He suffered writer’s block and was driven out of the band by Waters during the recording of ‘The Wall’ but made a triumphant return with ‘The Division Bell’ in 1994.
Today’s set of announcements, by Apple’s standards, were not incredible. Even the BBC News pages didn’t go overboard, but of course they gave Apple more coverage than they gave the Archos 5 a couple of weeks ago even though Archos’ announcement was a bit more revolutionary.
As we watched the voting, it became all too easy to predict where the 8, 10 and 12 points would go where the ex-Russian and Baltic countries were concerned. I’d have put my house on Montenegro’s top marks going to Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia, and it was one of many occasions I got it spot on. The break up of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia has forever changed the face of the competition.