Latest CD releases reviewed
THE TWILIGHT SINGERS
A Stitch in Time
One Little Indian
***
It's a match made in purgatory - former Afghan Whigs singer Greg Dulli and erstwhile Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan get it together in a fetid studio to produce a mini-abum that is meant as a taster of their full-length debut album (under the moniker of The Gutter Twins) next year. The news is good: this is undiluted intensity from two of the most respected anti-rock instigators of the past 15 years. The record is short but sour, and features five songs that veer between gruff love (Massive Attack's Live with Me), tough love (The Lure Would Prove Too Much), stuff love (Flashback) and the stuff of love (Sublime). Lanegan, along with rising cult songwriter Joseph Arthur, cuts a rug with his collaborations, but its Dulli's show all the same - a tortured genius giving in to the pain. Tony Clayton-Lea
[ www.thetwilightsingers.comOpens in new window ]
WARLORDS OF PEZ
Warlords of Pez
Trust Me I'm a Thief
**
America has Tenacious D, but we have this evil race of cybernetic beings whose mission is to destroy everything on the planet. Except Cork. Cork will be spared. The Warlords second album is a gaudy horrorshow of bleeps, riffs, scatalogical schoolboy humour and dirty, sleazy sex. If songs about horse vomit, snowmen made of poo and frankfurter-frotting are your bag, then you'll probably laugh yourself sick at such tracks as Fat Muthafucka from Hell, Clippety Clop, Barney Schwarzenegger and World Control, and will be delighted to discover that the entire first album is contained in the hidden track. I found Monster Voice and Old Women with Broadband mildly amusing, but then I used to regard Frank Zappa's Titties and Beer as a comedic masterpiece. Purely puerile. Kevin Courtney
[ www.warlordsofpez.comOpens in new window ]
LENNON
Damaged Goods
JGE
**
Lennon Murphy is an American-Irish headbanger who has opened for the likes of Alice Cooper, The Cult and Monster Magnet; she's a brave young soul who deserves some luck, but sadly on the basis of this, her second album (coming cold on the heels of her 2003 debut, Career Suicide) she needs a few more ounces of songcraft skills to be able to stand alongside the people she supports. Songs such as Where Do I Fit In, Nothing Out of Me, Finish What We Start and Brake of Your Car show little in the way of originality; they plod along like a heifer, commercial metal at its most anodyne. It might, however, cut the mustard in a live setting, which we'll get to see when Lennon appears as special guest to Soil on their forthcoming Irish dates (January 17th in Belfast's Limelight, January 18th in Dublin's Voodoo Lounge. Tony Clayton-Lea
[ www.lennononline.comOpens in new window ]
ROSE KEMP
A Hand Full of Hurricanes
One Little Indian
**
This 21-year-old Cumbrian singer-songwriter is the daughter of folk couple Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp, but if you're expecting hey-nonny tunefulness or morris dance beats, forget it. Kemp's abrasive, scraping style owes more to Radioheads Kid A than to Gaudete, and songs such as Violence, Dark Corners, Sheer Terror and Sing Our Last Goodbye are intensely personal tunes that have little in the way of catchy melodies, but pack a lyrical and musical sting. Martha Wainwright may have had issues with her famous parents, but Kemp seems to have issues with the whole world, and she airs them with uncomfortable candour, backed by scabrous guitars and lurching drumbeats. Her voice is firm and fighting fit throughout, but vestiges of her pastoral upbringing show on the twisted three-part harmony of Orange Juice or the gentle glide of Metal Bird. Kevin Courtney
