Garrett Wall: "Change" (Rico)You've gotta admire Garrett Wall's tireless work ethic. Since he graduated from UCD in 1990, the guy has been on the go non-stop.
He has worked with Liam O'Maonlai and The Cafe Orchestra, sung backing vocals for Tina Arena and Michael Bolton, appeared at the Eurovision Song Contest and won the Indonesian Song Contest with his own composition. Change is Wall's second album, the follow-up to 1994's All Of The Above, and it sees the singer sharpening his rock edge on songs like Listen To You, Rain Box and Someday, while retaining his soft touch on tunes like There Is Time and Sweet Mary.
Sometimes things feel a little too smooth and streamlined; if Wall could shed some of those AOR costumes, he could become a powerful voice in Irish rock.
Kevin Courtney
Laurnea: "Betta Listen" (Mercury)She's been compared to Erykah Badu, but on
Betta Listen Laurnea proves she's really more of a pure soul singer than a product of the hip-hop scene. The producers Speech and DJ Kemit, both graduates from Arrested Development, produced at least three of the tracks, of which
Kemit's immaculately moody and sensual Sun Don't Rain is not only the best, but also the most representative. Better again are bluesy-gospel based tracks like
Infatuation and Can't Let Go, which sound like they've rolled right down the aisle and out of the door of the Reverend Al Green's church in Memphis; best of all is the voice, flowing like molasses on a Mississippi summer afternoon. The title of this album, Betta Listen, is, says Laurnea "a plea not a command".
Ignore that plea and this summer will, I promise, be less memorable than it could have been. Joe Jackson
Third Eye Blind: "Semi Charmed Life" (Elektra) The American music scene has been debilitated by Hootie-rock, an evil virus which makes every record sound like a Marshall Tucker B-side. Third Eye Blind might just mark US rock's slow crawl back to musical health, and lure the disciples of Darius Rucker away from bluesy blandness and towards something a little more dangerous. Though tracks like Losing A Whole Year and Graduate are flailing, reckless pop tunes, there's too much safe navigation in songs like How's It Going To Be and Jumper, as if
3EB are afraid of alienating the unadventurous. Semi Charmed Life has none of the dark menace of The Eels nor the innocent abandon of Fountains Of Wayne, but it has enough tunes and hooks to grab the vote of the non-committal. Kevin
Courtney
