A catchy but combustible album of uneasy sentiments with a frantic schizophrenic feel: perfect for these unsettled, tempestuous times.
Erik Thompson
Choir Of Young Believers – Rhine Gold
While the challenging, somewhat elusive nature of Rhine Gold might not be for everyone, Choir Of Young Believers clearly didn’t play it safe this time round, and in the process have created an intrepid new album that becomes more poignant and edifying with each listen.
Tanlines – Mixed Emotions
While Mixed Emotions is indeed an uneven affair, there is enough originality and innovation here to suggest that once Tanlines hit upon a consistently creative sound that they can sustain over the duration of an entire album, there won’t be anything mixed about the positive reactions they will eventually receive.
Suborno – The Instrument
Throughout all of The Instrument, Akhtar is clearly telling his own story, which gives the tracks a clear cinematic sound and scope. But there is also a definite space that exists within these touching, powerfully poignant numbers that allows for a listener to hear their own unique tale being played slowly back to them.
Nite Jewel – One Second Of Love
Ramona Gonzalez strips away the reticent veneer of her enigmatic early material to honestly address some genuine sentiments; bringing a welcome level of candour and intimacy to the songs, which still nevertheless come across as slightly cold and mechanical.
Amandine – Amandine
The Swedish quintet’s self-titled new release, their first since 2007, takes the beautiful despondency that featured on their earlier work and buoys it up with robust, accessible arrangements and crisp, uncluttered production, making the stirring sentiments found within the songs that much more prominent and affecting.
White Birds – When Women Played Drums
A fragile evocative debut, pulsing with heartache and sorrow, offset by arrangements which add a sense of optimism, leaving the listener balancing tenuously between genuine feelings of anguish and radiance.
Archers Of Loaf – Vee Vee (Reissue)
Hopefully the fresh repackaging of this bold collection of songs will go a long way towards carving a bigger, more deserved chunk of real estate for Archers Of Loaf from the jagged musical landscape of the last twenty years.
First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar
This resolute new batch of songs remains intensely personal and intimate, like the whispered longings and frustrations of two siblings talking candidly to each other long after the lights have been shut off and everyone else has gone to bed.
Porcelain Raft – Strange Weekend
These spiralling songs succeed because they are both intensely personal but also quite epic and grandiose, rising majestically out of the various bedrooms and basements in which they were created for the whole world to hear.
Ryan Adams – State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN 13/12/11
Adams has ditched the trusty Cardinals and his irascible demeanour for his current acoustic solo tour, which drew to a close in Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Erik Thompson reviews the mammoth 24-song, two-and-a-half hour performance.
Piney Gir – Geronimo!
A mellifluous road-map of exactly where Angela Penhaligon has come from to get to this point, and what direction she may take her sound in the future. An endearing and ultimately successful fifth full length from Piney Gir.