Latest releases reviewed
ELBOW Leaders of the Free World V2 ****
There's no disputing Elbow's talent, vision and quixotic tenacity. Over two albums, Asleep in the Back and Cast of Thousands, they've proved themselves able and willing to broaden the scope of modern indie music, and unafraid to dabble in devilish prog rock. But they've been a hard band to truly love - until now. Leaders of the Free World draws you into its warm, cocoon-like sound, and wraps you in a web of gossamer guitars, drizzling drums and Guy Garvey's half-whispered Peter Gabriel burr. Once you've settled in, songs such as Station Approach, Forget Myself, Mexican Standoff and The Everthere seduce with their soft edges and deceptively complex layers. The title track alludes to "passing the gun from father to feckless son", while the utterly gorgeous An Imagined Affair will break your heart. Finally, love is here. www.elbow.co.uk
Kevin Courtney
NEIL YOUNG Prairie Wind Reprise ****
Approaching the big 6-0, and having survived a medical scare earlier this year, Neil Young opts to take stock and reflect on a life lived and lessons learned. This album has been touted as the third part of a trilogy that began with Harvest and continued with Harvest Moon, and certainly it shares some of the rustic sounds, intimacy and imagery of both albums. Joined by the likes of veterans Ben Keith (pedal steel) and Spooner Oldham (keyboards), Young is full of kind thoughts and gentle memories of family and friends (the ambitious No Wonder and the tender Here for You), though the weight of the years passing is palpable. He splices these telling if occasionally gauche reflections with rockier tracks such as Far from Home and He Was the King, but the mood is set from the outset when he notes on The Painter that the road "stretches out behind me". An essential album for the old grouch's longtime admirers and all lovers of harmonica solos.
Joe Breen
JAMIE CULLUM Changing Letters Candid/Universal Jazz **
While there has always been a place at pop's dining table for great jazz singers who can do the crossover tango, the success of Jamie Cullum to date has more to do with astute marketing than his ability to sing for his supper. After Twentysomething set Cullum up as a grittier, male Norah Jones in a scruffy leather jacket, Changing Letters is an attempt to turn him into the jazz Robbie Williams. The presence of Guy Chambers (Williams's former songwriting partner) on London Skies is one thing, but the bland, hookless drift of Oh God and the faux-modernist push and pull of 21st Century Kid show that Cullum's talents as both singer and songwriter are all too easily stretched when he veers beyond standards and set-pieces. More adventurous production would have helped (Get Your Way has a punch thanks to Dan the Automator), but that might have upset the stylistic wheelbarrow a little too much for comfort. www.jamiecullum.com
Jim Carroll
GRANDADDYExcerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla V2 ***
Grandaddy are everyone's favourite rustic, synth, prog rock, spatial expanding head band, aren't they? Mixing a little bit of Mercury Rev, Pink Floyd and Neil Young has clearly not done them any harm, but singer and main songwriter Jason Lytle - halfway through the writing and recording of the next Grandaddy album proper - has decided, temporarily, that enough is enough. And a good thing, too. Excerpts sees Lytle retire from the studio into his bedroom in order to get back to basics. Inspired by his intense and increasing discontent with his life in Modesto, Lytle's songs on this mini-album act as a series of confessionals from an angry guy. The synths are still in operation, as are the expanding head band melodies, and we await the new album (due next year) with a high sense of expectation. For the moment, though, this curiously bitter little pill will do just fine.
Tony Clayton-Lea
THE GUGGENHEIM GROTTO Waltzing Alone Shellac Records ***
You'd think that poetry and songwriting would be perfectly complementary art forms. But - Leonard Cohen aside - nobody aiming for the peaks of the former has ever done much good for the latter. Influenced as much by Shelley and Keats as Simon and Garfunkel, this Dublin trio may be unfailingly pleasant in their considered folk arrangements, vocal harmonies and thematic focus on artistic immortality, but Kevin May's lyrical reach often exceeds his grasp. "Your Edgar Allen crow is the very bird that holds me together" is one of many referential clangers. This wouldn't distract so much were it not for the delicacy of spiralling guitar arpeggios, gentle breezes of Rhodes piano and soft shuffling rhythms. Still, May's velvety cadence on the disconsolate Koan or a gently forlorn Cold Truth are more encouraging, escaping the otherwise airless feel of a museum piece. www.guggenheimgrotto.com
Peter Crawley
CHRISTIE HENNESSY Stories For Sale Mvine ***
The simplicity of Christie Hennessy's songs has served him both well and badly over the years. Christy Moore's championing of Don't Forget Your Shovel unpicked Hennessy's essential grasp of Everyman's dilemma: how to navigate a successful passage from sunrise to sunset. Hennessy's own solo work has often faltered in its attempts to communicate that same universality, his adoption by a major label serving to drown rather than deliver his quixotic sound to a larger audience. Stories For Sale is a home-grown return to form, the first recording on Neil and Calum MacColl's label. Slo-mo waltzes such as Remember Me float languorously alongside unadorned reminiscences of young love (Denny St, an affectionate tribute to his home town of Tralee). Amid a loose-limbed production, the pep is back in Christie Hennessy's step. www.mvine.com
Siobhán Long
TURN Turn Setanta **
Turn are one of those ubiquitous Irish bands everyone's heard of, but no one owns a record by. This self-titled third collection from Ollie Cole and company possibly reveals why. It's not that this is unpardonably bad - it's not. A decent pop/rock track surfaces occasionally. Ditto orchestral brio, slick filters and Cole belting out the odd lyrical gem. All too quickly, however, it's countered by a grating sameness that has dogged Irish bands for years. Like Green Day-lite meeting The Walls, Turn sound like they're giving it their all while managing to sound slightly anodyne. Cole's songwriting ability peeks through on Little Bird and I Don't Want to Waste More Time, but the songs end up eclipsed by a dated indie cloud. Turn could be the ultimate slow burn band - we'll have to wait and see. www.turn.ie
Sinéad Gleeson
TOASTED HERETIC Now in New Nostalgia Flavour Big Yes Music **
It was a cassette classic, with twisted Tayto pack cover, fart-in-a-bucket sound, and witty, pretentious Morrissey-meets-Monty Python lyrics by nascent author Julian Gough. Toasted Heretic were Galway's answer to Half Man, Half Biscuit, and if you've been waiting 20 years for the remastered, 5.1 surround sound version of Songs for Swinging Celibates and its follow-up, the equally cheap 'n' cheerful Charm & Arrogance, you might be disappointed: these low budget meisterwerks still sound like a bunch of pissed-up students messing with a four-track. Though Galway Bay and LSD (Isn't What it Used to Be) are perfect just the way they are, such songs as Very Naughty Party, Goodbye to Berlin, Drown the Browns and Abandon the Galleries could have done with a complete re-recording. But that might be taking nostalgia just a bit too far. www.toastedheretic.com
Kevin Courtney
