Friday, June 27, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Album Review: The Lemonheads - Car Button Cloth
The Lemonheads sixth album, Car Button Cloth was released in 1996, three years after its predecessor and it's a kind of a messy one. Less countrified than their early nineties material, at its best it contains some wonderful power pop. The opening one-two It's All True and If I Could Talk I'd Tell You are fine examples of this lurching, rollicking style.
Break Me is an impassioned, relatively heavy track where the at times barely lucid Evan Dando is reduced to desperate pleas of "break me" over hard-riffing guitars. The Outdoor Type is a clever, classic pop tune about the joys of indoor pursuits backed by an easy, effortless pop melody, and later C'mon Daddy is almost as sweet-sounding.
Unfortunately the rest of the album is a bit of a mess. Losing Your Mind may have been semi-autobiographical and is a passionate, ragged rocker, while the band's version of Knoxville Girl is passable. Heavy rockers Something's Missing, 6ix and One More Time were presumably great fun in the studio but add little to the album.
The album is frontloaded with the stronger tracks which just about keep things on an even keel. Worth checking out.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Monday, June 2, 2014
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Album Review: The For Carnation - Promised Works
Promised Works is a compilation of The For Carnation's early, mid 90s material, drawn from 1995 EP Fight Songs and 1996's mini-album Marshmallows. Grace Beneath The Pines is à quiet start, Brian McMahan's whispered vocals underpinned by vaguely threatening rising and falling guitars provided by McMahan and David Pajo.
After brief guitar instrumental How I Beat The Devil, we get the steadily creeping Get And Stay Get March. On The Swing invents the higher quality end of the 'Quiet is the new Loud' troubadours of the early noughties, while Imyr, Marshmallow has a soothing, conventional melody and Salo growls moodily.
We also get Slint-like workouts like I Wear The Gold, Winter Lair and Preparing to Receive You which have borderline atonal guitar lines. Interesting to see where so-called 'post-rock' sprang out of.
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