album review
Not Forgotten: Terrorvision – Regular Urban Survivors
How to Make Friends and Influence People had shown brief glimpses of what Terrorvision were capable of, but on the whole it was relatively scrappy. It appeared that the four lads from Bradford had shot their bolt and that they were never going to amount to anything particularly special. Then came Regular Urban Survivors. Opening …
Not Forgotten – Pink Floyd – The Final Cut
By this point in their career Pink Floyd were only a band in name. While building his wall, Roger Waters ego had crushed all before him. Richard Wright had been usurped, David Gilmour was losing interest in Water’s material and Nick Mason’s position in the band was looking increasingly fragile. The Wall had been an …
Not Forgotten – Black Crowes – By Your Side
For a band with such a reputation for shelving whole albums there’s a good argument for By Your Side being the forgotten Black Crowes album. Easily better than anything since The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion and more economical than their most celebrated release, it was also tighter than the band’s debut. In many ways …
Not Forgotten – Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
The career resuscitation of Wilco following the release of the rightly hailed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a joy to behold. From being dropped by a short sighted record label to the redemption they found proving the doubters wrong, via losing key band members and being celebrated by the notoriously fickle music press, it must have …
Not Forgotten: Bernard Butler – People Move On
When former Suede guitar botherer Bernard Butler announced he was going solo after a short but troubled collaboration with Soul singer David McAlmont, I barely blinked. I was actually pretty ignorant of his career up to then actually. I had heard that he had quit Suede just before the epic and gloriously overblown Dog Man …
Not Forgotten – Sparks – Exotic Creatures of the Deep
Following up the undisputed best album of your career must be an unenviable task. There was no way that Oranges & Lemons was ever going to be a match for Skylarking, Desire was no Blood on the Tracks, i, as brilliant as it is, will always suffer in comparison to 69 Love Songs, Guerrilla would …
Not Forgotten – Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Top selling musicians these days have it easy. The average recording artist is expected to release a new album once every two years, maybe one a year if they are a new artist. Back in the early 70s it was a given that at least one album a year was the acceptable rate, that way …
Album Review – The Hold Steady – Teeth Dreams
The Hold Steady return in a hail of guitars. Great, that’s exactly what I want from The Hold Steady. As much as they’ve engaged my enthusiasm for wordy guitar rock over the last few years, I have to admit that their previous album, Heaven is Whenever, was the one I had the most difficulty connecting …
Not Forgotten: Brendan Benson – The Alternative to Love
2005 was an odd year for power pop, when three big names released albums of new material. As fate would have it these much anticipated releases by Teenage Fanclub, The Posies and Big Star were solid, but at the end of the day they were just preaching to the converted. Just the same skillful playing …
Not Forgotten – Gene Clark – No Other
You know something, sometimes it’s okay to not succeed. Sometimes you put every ounce of energy and emotion at your disposal into achieving your goal and still you fail. Sometimes the level of effort you have put into something only becomes evident months, years, maybe even decades after the event, thus offering retrospective redemption to …