Fight Like Apes
The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner
9/10
I was worried about this album. I mean, what happens to the unwashed children of the revolution when the revolution has been won? How does a band like Fight Like Apes start to mature and grow when they have built their entire sound (well almost) on pure teenage angst, pretty noise and hilarious bad taste?
The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner is a remarkable mature record. Fight Like Apes have somehow found a musically mature next step when really, it didn’t seem like one was there.
Of course this was never going to be as raw, energetic and unprecedented as those early EP’s. But how could it be? You can only fall in love once, , you can only have one debut release – it’s a futile exercise trying to engineer a beginning when what you really need is a middle. This is a very good middle. The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner is release this Friday
Andrew Hamilton
Kate Walsh
Peppermint Radio
7/10
It’s very hard to know how to approach a covers album. The key, I think, is to see can the artist bring something new to the familiar; something that is better or at least different from the original.
Kate Walsh’s fourth trip to the studio, Peppermint Radio, released in early September features 11 songs which have influenced her music. It’s a motley crew of tunes; with some very modern songs mixing easily with some of the elder statesmen of the rock and roll lexicon.
The record, on the whole, is a decent stab at a difficult task. Each song brims with Walsh’s heavy piano and the occasional low tones cello to add poignants when needed.
The songs that work, work really well. Her brilliant version of EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’ and the surprisingly moving take on Blur’s ‘Beetlebum’ are definite standouts. That said, her take on song like Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’ and Radiohead’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ add little or nothing to the originals.
Andrew Hamilton
NoLand Folk
Ghosts Light The Scene
8/10
Released quietly in the dying embers of 2009, Ghosts Light The Scene is the second studio album from north Clare folk rock collective NoLand Folk. Although sign-posted as a good representative of the bands more rocky recent leanings, this record remains rooted heavily in folk – with only the occasional nod and wink in the direction of something different.
Bookended Sergeant Pepper style with it’s title track ‘Ghost Light The Scene’ and closing track ‘Ghosts End The Scene’ – what lies between is a rich tapestry of music drawn from many influences.
Standout tracks include ‘Out On Your Own’ with vocals shared between chief songwriter Paddy Mulcahy and accordionist Edel Barry and the brilliantly frenzied ‘Affectionately Know As…’ and ‘I Want To See You Dancing’.
The records best moment however, comes in the shape of a gift from former vocalist Suzanne Walsh. Written by the former band member, the Cajun driven Devil For Tea, is a born single and would make some progress on radio if a brave DJ decided to take it under his wing.
Andrew Hamilton
Keith Mullins
The Great Atlantic
7/10
The latest in the recently cranked-up Galway musical production line, The Great Atlantic is the debut solo album from singer songwriter Keith Mullins.
If Mullins’ voice sounds that bit familiar, it’s because you’ve probably heard it before. As a former member of the much heralded Pier 19, this isn’t his first time being heralded as the bright new thing of the west of Ireland music scene.
Dabbling across the genre lines, The Great Atlantic mixes folkish singer-songwriter fare with some alt-country and even the odd trad influenced trimming thrown in here or there. Mullins combines smart and heartfelt song-writing with a keen ear for a melody and a hook.
Mullins’ songs are honest and confessional – always searching for something illusive and asking the hard questions. There is much to recommend about many of the songs – particularly the ultra clever ‘Neil Armstrong’ and the moving ‘Mistakes’ – and each song benefits from a second or third listen.
Given half a chance, this could be a significant album in 2010.
Andrew Hamilton
The Rags
A National Light (Sampler)
9/10
As accustomed as I am to getting completely carried away with a new record (and regretting it later when all that early excitement and shiny dies down), The Rags are well on the way to become the Irish mainstream band of 2010.
With their debut record, A National Light, due for release in early March, the Dublin band has just released an album sampler (available to the media only I’m afraid) which is generating much excitement (not least in the offices of the Clare People).
First up, the Rags are not just a Dublin band, they are a very Dublin band. The accents, the attitude, the song-writing – it Dublin all over, it’s all brashness and pomp.
This EP is fresh and clever pop/rock, with biting, smart vocals held together ably with a lazy but infectious guitar drone. If you notice a slightly retro feel to these songs, it’s because The Rags have certainly worked plenty of their influences seep into their sound – shaping and forging them into something all of their own.
Andrew Hamilton
John Shelly and the Creatures
Long May You Reign
6/10
It’ll be right on the tip of your tongue, you’ll know it but you just wont be able to place how and why you know it. Well, to avoid needless hours of stress and strain, and nasty injuries sustained from bashing your head off the stereo, allow me to unlock the mystery.
If ‘Long May You Reign’, the title track from John Shelly and the Creatures debut release, due out next month, means something to you – if probably from that add on the TV. You know that add, the one for the Northern Ireland tourist board with the happy couple one the beach. And just in case you haven’t seen the last installment in the add, he proposes in the end.
Now that I’ve taken all the mystery out of it, Long May You Reign is a promising if not exactly jaw dropping debut.
Lead single, ‘Long May You Reign’ comes out much slower than in the advert and will surprise people with it sincerity. The rest of the record much less folky and much more alt rocky than you might have expected. A decent start.
Andrew Hamilton
The Plea
Nothing but Trouble
R&S
7/10
That’s just what Ireland needs, another slue of indie pop-rockers. No wait, I’m serious. While it might seem that the record stores are jammed with Irish bands answering that exact description, more then a few of them have been misfiring just recently.
So there could be a gap there for some catchy guitar driven tunes, and maybe, just maybe, The Plea are the people to fill it.
Coming to us from the hills of Donegal, The Plea, might be happier to be described as real life rockers, but their poppy, harmony filled tunes would suggest something different. But so what, there’s nothing wrong with being a rock band with pop leanings, or vice versa.
With their debut album “Modern Chaos” die for release this September, “Nothing but Trouble” is a tasty sneak preview of what is to come. By and large it’s a tasty introduction, with songs like “Hello” and “Beatnik Street” certainly catchy enough to earn the Donegal lads some radio play.
Andrew Hamilton
Eels
End Times
7/10
Okay, so you’ve just come out of a screening of The Road, having unsuccessfully demanded a refund for the popcorn that you, or anyone else in the cinema, couldn’t bring themselves to eat, and you’re desperately, oh so desperately searching for something to cheer yourself up.
What that you say? Ells have a new albums out – those quirky sunshine Americans – that should do the trick. Don’t do it. It’s a trap, cruelly designed to make you so depressed that you immediately stop using fossil fuels, fill your cupboards with canned peaches and buy your significant other a huge bunch of flowers.
This is not your typical Eels album. There other way of writing this up – this is a break up album. Now that’s not to talk it down or anything, but it does set a certain tone and a place a definite statute of limitations on the emotional range of the record.
This is a from the guy record – written in recorded in a couple of months – and because of that some of the songs are going to work and work really well and others just aren’t.
Andrew Hamilton
Garrett Wall Band
Hands of Imperfection
7/10
It’s been ten years since Garrett Wall gave up the hard cobbled streets of his native Dublin in favour of the warmer and more welcoming piazza’s of Madrid – and that’s a long time, in anyone’s book.
The travelling Dub returns next month with the latest offering from his Spanish odyssey in the shape of his latest record, Hands of Imperfection. Having carved out a healthy career for himself across the Iberian Peninsula, Wall is slowly but surely making some headway back on home soil.
Hands of Imperfection is a very decent album. There are times when the record feels like a bit of a throwback to a more simpler, or perhaps more honest, time in Irish music. And while Wall would probably be the first to admit that the record is not exactly on the cusp either of pop or alternative pulse in Ireland, he’d probably also admit that this isn’t really the point.
It’s about good song, well performed – and he has that in spades. Blending pop and folk with occasional Spanish influences standout tracks include Ballad of an Exorcism and Better Days. Well worth a listen.
Andrew Hamilton
Surfer Blood
Astro Coast
7/10
Rarely can you tell so much about a band from their name alone. Surfer Blood is exactly what it sound like – soft American indie pop/rock, set to a background of guitar led songs about the summertime and, well, surfing.
Less lyrically clever than someone like Weezer and not quite up to the likes of Modest Mouse in the music department, Surfer Blood and their debut album Astro Coast would seem to be the poor relation of the American midrange summertime rock field.
Despite all of this there is something about this album that works.
Lead single ‘Swim (to reach the end)’ is a half decent stab at a new summer anthem and sounds exactly like it was recorded in a university dorm room off Palm Beach – which, of course, it was.
But it’s the songs where they go a bit more weird and left of field – songs like ‘Twin Peaks’ – which really work. Despite the hype coming from the US, this is not a brilliant debut. More of a solid enough start than anything else.
Andrew Hamilton
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