The Horrors – Night Life – Album Review

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Tindersticks – 3Olympia – Live Review – 15/03/25

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?

 

You could argue PJ Harvey is one of the most interesting artists of the last 30 years.  Her fourth album, released in 1998, was recorded in collaboration with John Parish.  It starts with the fairly muted Angelene, which unfurls gradually, building pleasingly to a chorus of “2000 miles away”. There are a couple of noisier tracks here.  The Sky Lit Up kicks things up on a notch but it’s a quick sub-two minute blast, while the two minute My Beautiful Leah and Joy are almost industrial-sounding, the latter featuring gentle clanging before cutting off abruptly.   

But for the most part the album is made of muted, mysterious tracks with little instrumentation other than a prominent, moody bassline.  These tracks (The Wind, Catherine and Electric Light) are by and large excellent.  There are a couple of more ‘traditional-sounding’ PJ Harvey tracks, not guitar-heavy rockers by any means but more fleshed out tracks.  The gnarling A Perfect Day Elise has a soaring chorus, while The Garden and The River have sweet-sounding piano and keyboards, the latter also feautiring a nice bit of trumpet.

The relatively rocking No Girl So Sweet has PJ cutting loose completely on vocals and the track turns into a glorious racket, but it’s back to muted glory for the title track where PJ sings sultry and sweetly.  It’s another really high quality collection of songs from PJ Harvey.

Western Skies Motel – Trails – Album Review

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Bob Mould – Here We Go Crazy – Album Review

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Fields of the Nephilim - Elizium

 

The third album from Fields of the Nephilim, released in 1990, could be viewed as a departure from, or an evolution of the band’s sound.  After a brief intro (Dead But Dreaming), we get For Her Light, a standard issue goth track, though here Carl McCoy actually sings more than gargling with broken glass.  At the Gates of Silent Memory follows seamlessly, and is quite portentous.  Slow and doomy.  This is rounded off with (Paradise Regained) which sparks into life.  Much of the album is sequenced like one long track. 

Submission opens with a low bassline and a faint keyboard line.  Between this and  McCoy’s intonation “where have I been” you are reminded of Joy Division’s Decades, though you also get squalling guitars in the midsection.  It’s a decent track, though it’s a few minutes longer than it needs to be. Sumerland (What Dreams May Come) has intricate gothy guitar work, building up deliberately to great effect for an entire 11 minutes.  The final two tracks are the closest songs to Pink Floyd that McCoy and co released.  Wail of Sumer plods like mid 70s Floyd, leading into And There Will Your Heart Be Also, another long, seven minute plus song.  This one has a particularly haunting melody, probably the most emotional on the album.

It’s a kind of long moody album with not much variety, tracks all kind of evolve from each other.  Not a bad thing by any means, it’s just different from its predecesssors.  There are fewer peaks and standouts and thus is a bit harder to get into than Dawnrazor or the Nephilim.

Tim Hecker – Shards – Album Review

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