Album Reviews – Page 18 – The Light Appears

The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy (2024)

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Michael

The ladies of The Last Dinner Party were already living out rock fantasies before releasing a note of music. Opening slots for The Rolling Stones and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds would be the pinnacle for most bands, not the starting point. Prelude to Ecstasy is full of sweeping cinematic drama, the theatre kids have made an album. A galloping drum in the chorus as singer Abigail Morris sings “You think it’s romantic… we’re both just addicts”. An expansive vocal performance and drums power “The Feminine Urge” on a track about mother/daughter relationships that “nurture the wounds my mother held”. Heady stuff.

Produced by producer of the year, James Ford, the album has thus far yielded a staggering seven singles including “Beautiful Boy” about the ease in which pretty young gents can move through life. The quintet’s twin guitar attack gets turned up on “Sinner” that also adds dissonance on “My Lady of Mercy” on an otherwise clap happy pop song.

The highlight of the album is first single, “Nothing Matters”. An expression of love with nothing held back. The group singing in the chorus lifts the song into an anthem when they sing, “And I will f*** you like nothing matters”. It’s a powerful moment on an album full of them. At times, Prelude to Ecstasy can be a bit tiring, like a precocious teenager who is mostly clever but hasn’t figured it all out yet. It’s a minor gripe, the debut from The Last Dinner Party is full of histrionic outbursts of great songs.

8/10

Album Reviews

David Bowie – The Gouster (2016)

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Michael

When David Bowie released the second boxset in a career spanning history, Who Can I Be Now (1974-1976) in 2016, the set also included The Gouster. This album was never released but eventually came in out in a revised form as the Young Americans LP. The two albums share four tracks in common, all in alternate forms including the sax driven “Somebody Up There Likes Me”. It also contains the track of the same name as the boxset, a midtempo piano driven track with a lot of horns as well.

The Gouster contains two future singles. The first being “Young Americans” that brims with Philadelphia soul and the second being “John, I’m Only Dancing”. The disco soul number would eventually be released in 1979 in edited form. The version here clocks in at 7 minutes, a true disco dancefloor edit. Leaving off a few upbeat numbers from Young Americans, The Gouster is a slower take on what eventually would become a big album hit for Bowie in 1975.

7/10

Album Reviews

blur – Leisure (Expanded Edition) (2012)

Posted on October 7, 2024October 7, 2024 by Michael

1991 saw the release of the debut album from London’s blur. The prevailing music trends at the time – baggy Madchester beats, shoegaze and grunge all helped form the songs on Leisure. Led by 3 singles, the first being the stoner indie rock with a slight Manchester feel of “She’s So High”. The track adds a swirling keyboard and psychedelic guitar from Graham Coxon while bassist Alex James keeps the low end in a constant groove. The song scraped into the UK top 50 singles chart.

Building on that success, the band released one of their finest early singles in “There’s No Other Way”. A UK Top 5 hit, the distinctive guitar opener from Coxon is added to with an organ line and dancefloor filling beat from drummer Dave Rowntree. The band’s fortunes sagged with third single “Bang” that didn’t hit the top 20 and has been largely disowned by the band. While not as strong as the other singles, the bored slacker lyrics from Damon Albarn and inventive drumming from Rowntree does make it a decent track.

The most distinctive song on Leisure was never released as a single. Later rescued by the Trainspotting OST, “Sing” is a surreal atmospheric track that manages to be both experimental and tuneful. 30+ years on, “Sing” is still a band and fan favourite. Another atmospheric track closes the album with the grungy guitar driven “Wear Me Down”. Albarn’s vocals sound otherworldly with an excellent layered vocal chorus.

In between these tracks, the foursome assembles a decent set of it’s time indie dance rock with “Bad Day” and “Fool” being particularly upbeat, catchy album tracks. Like the single “Bang”, the band has doesn’t have much good things to say about this album as they would strive for far greater heights in just a few short years. Like other blur fans, I have a soft spot on this album after discovering it a few years after release. It was a regular pregaming disc to blast in my bedroom while getting ready for a night out. While lyrically slight and following rather than leading on the music side – Leisure does boast several banging tracks to listen to while downing the first lager of the night.

When blur released their blur 21 boxset in 2012, they included bonus discs with each album featuring b-sides, rarities, and extended tracks. “I Know” appears in extended form and is memorable number while the band’s remix of “There’s No Other Way” adds some spacey atmosphere in a dubby like sound. “Luminous” has a dreamy guitar and “Explain” might be the best of the bunch. Unlike contemporaries Suede, there are no early lost gems or should have been singles. The band picked the best of the bunch that made the actual album.

Leisure – 8/10

Expanded Extras – 5/10

Album Reviews

Fontaines D.C. – Romance (2024)

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Michael

For their 4^th album in 6 years, Fontaines D.C. enlisted arguably the producer of the year in James Ford. Several of the tunes take on a gothic feel including the title track where singer Grian Chatten comes on like a louche vampire as he sings that we’re “into the darkness again”. “Desire” adds strings on a track where “they drown their wishes in the fountain like their fathers before”.

“In the Modern World” is mostly just a guitar with strings that adds a stellar chorus, sometimes it’s the quieter songs that grab the attention on one of the album’s highlights. On the flip side, the listener doesn’t know what they are in for as the elegant piano tickling of “Starburster” gets pushed to the background when the drum kick of Tom Coll takes centre stage and Chatten spits out rhymes with an MC’s energy on one of the songs of the year. As the fog starts to lift, second single “Favourite” closes out the album on a happier/poppier track. The band planned this all along, take the listener through a dark journey and ending in the light.

Romance sees the Irish lads incorporate several different styles as they continue to be one of the hardest working bands around. Leaving room for songs like “Bug” which is a more straightforward rock song about being in a relationship that easily mixes in with their darker, more complicated songs. Fontaines D.C.’s debut album Dogrel got rock fans of all ages excited and it’s thrilling to see the band continue to impress four albums later on a standout album.

8.5/10

Album Reviews

Travis – The Man Who (1999)

Posted on September 25, 2024 by Michael

I’m not sure where I would have first heard about Glasgow band Travis back in 1997 when they released their first album, Good Feeling. It was likely Alternative Press magazine that I had a subscription to back then who would regularly write reviews on the newest British buzz bands. The album is a solid debut with highlights that include the heavier “All I Wanna Do Is Rock”, “U16 Girls”, and the fun romp of “Tied to the 90s”. The CD sound tracked many bus rides up and down Pembina Hwy on the way to the University of Manitoba.

Two years later the band released their sophomore album, the introspective The Man Who. I moved to London for a couple of years on May 10^th 1999, the album was released exactly two weeks later. On first single and first track on the album, Healy sings of hearing “Wonderwall” too much on the radio on a song who’s beginning guitar lick sounds eerily similar to that smash hit. It was Travis’ highest charting single thus far.

Second single, “Driftwood” ups the ante. The simple acoustic guitar verses lead into an anthemic chorus that ramps up even with the melancholy strings on a song about someone drifting through life and not living up to their potential. At that year’s Glastonbury performance, Travis caught lighting in a bottle as they sang, “Why Does it Always Rain on Me?” just as the skies opened up. The single shot the band to number one in the UK on a song that was inescapable that summer and was their breakthrough hit in several other markets. The song is one of the endearing hits of the late 90s.

While sounding similar to their other singles, “Turn” hits a bit harder as the fourth single on the album that went top 10 on the UK singles charts. Like the previous songs, this could be heard in pubs across the nation as the punters flocked to the band’s softer brand of British rock. Other notable songs include the moody, atmospheric “The Fear” and “As You Are” that sounds similar to the band’s singles.

The album started Travis’ association with producer Nigel Godrich who was also working with that other popular UK band, Radiohead during that time. While the album does tend to swing towards an extensive amount of ballads, it all sounds of one… and certainly one moment in time. Travis’ The Man Who – a classic of late 90s British rock.

9/10