Latest CD releases reviewed
JAMIROQUAI
Dynamite Sony/BMG
**
The Space Cowboy is back, and he needs some more petrol to keep his sports car collection on the road. So, time to dig the silly hats out of the attic and deliver another album's worth of chart-friendly cosmic disco tunes. Jay Kay has been ploughing the same groovy furrow for yonks, and he always manages to yield some fresh funky fruit, even though it invariably tastes the same. Opening track Feels Just like It Should, with its electronic vocal burps, evokes that other one-trick stallion, Lenny Kravitz, while Electric Mistress sounds like something Scissor Sisters could comfortably cover. But on tracks such as Starchild and Seven Days in June, Kay seems to have dug a bit too deep into his disco vault and fallen headlong into the pit of purism. Like his sports cars, the tracks here gleam with the chrome sleekness of classic Studio 54 disco, but the album as a whole is about as soulless as a Gino Soccio record. JK is still the master of the high-hat hustle, though, so he can rest assured his gas tanks will keep brimming over. www.jamiroquai.com
Kevin Courtney
JANIS JOPLIN
Pearl - Legacy Edition Columbia
****
Janis Joplin was enjoying a creative and personal resurgence before she died of an accidental drugs overdose in 1970. She had broken away from Big Brother & the Holding Company and was fronting her own crew, the Full Tilt Boogie band. She seemed to be winning the battle with drug addiction, and was pouring all her pent-up energy into the music. The resulting album - her last - captures Pearl at her raspy best, and if you haven't yet experienced the full force of Joplin's jagged howl, you won't believe that anyone could sing with such larynx-shredding force and make it to side two. Her band members ride the Joplin vocal storm with impressive style, lifting her effortlessly from one crescendo to the next on such ragged soul tunes as Move Over, Cry Baby, Half Moon, Get it While You Can and Me & Bobby McGee. Disc two features in-concert highlights from the Festival Express tour of Canada in summer 1970, including previously unreleased live versions of Summertime and Piece of My Heart. A throaty treasure. www.officialjanis.com
Kevin Courtney
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE
Out-of-State Plates Virgin America/EMI
****
Not one CD but two? Truly, the sunny Gods are smiling down on lovers of power pop. This isn't an official follow-up to Fountains of Wayne's third album, Welcome Interstate Managers, but rather a collection of non-album tracks that have, up to now, been available only on import, as extra tracks, or through downloading. The recordings vary from basic demos to fulsome studio productions, from one-take acoustic songs to tricksy arrangements. Covers include Jackson Browne's These Days, Aztec Camera's Killermont Street, Britney's One More Time, and ELO's Can't Get It Out of My Head. The remainder of the songs will just as efficiently soundtrack the summer - a fine mixture of sweet-tooth pop/rock and killer riffs. Hooray for the band whose recording contract obviously requires them to have on each of their albums at least four songs that prominently feature girls' names, and the word "baby". www.fountainsofwayne.com
Tony Clayton-Lea
THE CRIBS
The New Fellas V2/Wichita
**
Leeds brothers Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman have named their band most appropriately. Cribs by name and cribbing by nature, there is little about their debut album you could recommend to anyone who likes even the barest hint of originality. Tonally basic, recorded at the now quite ubiquitous Toerag Studios (made famous by White Stripes stripped-down production values), and clocking in at a mercifully brief 30-odd minutes, the album smacks of small-town attitudes and ambitions. Clearly trying to latch onto the rather more adventurous quirkiness of fellow UK urban bands Kaiser Chiefs and Maximo Park, but lacking the wit and the smarts, The Cribs are to the new Britpop brigade what the likes of Mansun were to old guard. They've given up the day jobs? Doh!
Tony Clayton-Lea
DÓNAL DONOHOE
Midnight 'Til Noon (No label)
***
Dónal Donohoe's debut solo CD is a deeply controlled, disciplined affair, defined by forensic attention to detail in the arrangements, but not enough pruning in the choice of songs, or in the vocal style. Straddling blues, roots and an odd synthetic lapse (Through the Smoke), reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's more bombastic efforts, this is a collection that would have benefitted from the cold eye of a lone producer, unencumbered by the artist's emotional ties to his own material. Donohoe's guitar skills are impressive, if a touch self-referential, and co-producer Jeffrey Jensen's drums and bodhrán bolster and counter his intriciate picking stylishly. The vocals struggle for air, though - Donoghue's deadpan style of delivery is at odds with the artisan approach to the musical arrangements. Whispers of a looser-limbed alter-ego peep through occasionally. www.donaldonohoe.com.
Siobhán Long
