Latest releases reviewed
GARBAGE Bleed Like Me Warners ****
Fewer loops, fewer samples, fewer keyboards: the electrorock of the previous three Garbage albums has been replaced here by a blitzkrieg of guitars as a distinct Queens of the Stone Age sound creeps noisily into the mix. The opener, Bad Boyfriend, with Dave Grohl beating the bejasus out of the drums, sets the scene nicely for the ensuing uncompromising sonic adventure. "Sped-up girl group," say the band and, on the single Why do You Love Me, they do indeed sound like a weird mix of Phil Spector and buzzsaw guitars. Geo-politics surface, however obliquely, in the lyrics, with Boys Wanna Fight carrying a timely message. Even the sole ballad here, It's All Over But the Crying, sounds muscular. Up there with their best work to date.
Brian Boyd
TOM VEK We Have Sound Go Beat **
This fascination/ obsession with bringing the 1980s into the Noughties is getting out of hand. With Franz Ferdinand, The Rapture and Interpol copping licks from the likes of Gang of Four and The Bravery swapping tongues with Duran Duran, it seemed as if most if not all '80s touchstones were rubbed smooth. Not so with Tom Vek, the 23-year-old Londoner who is being touted as not just a one-man art band but also the future of rock (yawn). If, after hearing Vek's lo-fi debut, you don't come away thinking that one Howard Jones, one Thompson Twins and one Wang Chung weren't enough, then truly there is no hope for you. Shades of other, rather more durable and endearing '80s acts are referenced (Talking Heads, The Fall), but these seem more aberrations than advances in taste. "Sounds like the future!" trumpets the press cuttings. Sounds more like the past has been rifled yet again, but to no good effect.
Tony Clayton-Lea
EFTERKLANG Springer Leaf ****
After the extraordinary critical and commercial success of their second album, Tripper, Efterklang release their remarkable debut for the first time outside its native Denmark (the original was released in 500 fake-fur-wrapped copies on its own Rumraket label). The Copenhagen-based, multi-instrumental eight-piece seamlessly blend acoustic instrumentation and studio sounds with graceful melodies, supple rhythms and warm vocals (sung, spoken, choral) into a signature electronic/post-rock soundscape. If Tripper is a dramatic canvas of lush musical colours and exquisite vocal tones, then Springer is a laconic sketchpad of experiments and ideas, at once brash and playful - the fuzzy distortion and piano of Redrop, the soulful vocal duet of Antitech and the dynamic ambient pulses and pitches of Filmsonic XL. Springer marks the beginning of an already remarkable musical journey. www.efterklang.net
Jocelyn Clarke
A HAWK AND A HACKSAW Darkness at Noon Leaf ****
Combining ethnic instrumentation (accordion, bagpipes, oud, violin, trumpet) with found sounds and field recordings (claps, rain, horses) multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Barnes wrestles a whole world of music into his superb second A Hawk and a Hacksaw album. Moving effortlessly from klezmer and mariachi to rai and American folk, crossing from South America to eastern Europe and north Africa and back again, Darkness at Noon displays an astonishingly diverse array of musical voices, a daring eclecticism that Barnes shapes into an individual and original sound world, at once gleefully promiscuous and knowingly postmodern. From the driving Mexican-inflected Laughter in the Dark to the brooding Gypsy Lament Europa and the lyrical folk ballad Portlandtown, Barnes's project boldly proposes a new art music for the 21st century. www.ahawkandahacksaw.co.uk
Jocelyn Clarke
MARK DIGNAM Box Heart Man Times Beach Records ***
Followers of the Irish singer-songwriter brigade will recognise the name of Mark Dignam; he started, like most of his contemporaries, busking on Grafton Street, and graduated to the rank of dependable support act. However, he didn't stay in Ireland long enough to become part of the aural furniture that so many have turned out to be. Now based in Pittsburgh, and with two solid albums (In a Time of Overstatement and ...And One for All) already under his belt, Dignam's third album finds him on good, bracing form. Replacing rather more obvious acoustic accompaniment with the textured sound of a full band lifts the songs to a place where they become far more accessible. There isn't much here that we haven't heard before, but it's executed with such a sense of fun and a level of proficiency that it's difficult not to be swayed by it. www.markdignam.com
Tony Clayton-Lea
MAXIMILIAN HECKER Lady Sleep Kitty-Yo **
Even male models get the blues. How else do you explain Maximilian Hecker's third album, in which the one-time Levi's clotheshorse becomes so consumed by whispered laments, epically sad strings and a yearning of such intensity that oblivion is his only escape? "And I walk to my own grave," sings the breathy Berliner, as delicate as gossamer through Daze of Nothing, "and I watch the sun go down." With melodies as regular as his threnodies, Help Me and Dying sound like Nick Drake summoned through the studio trickery of Sigür Rós. Though a quiet/loud formula gives the sluggish Yeah, Eventually She Goes the illusion of momentum, too often Hecker's pallid mix of piano, guitar, violin and maudlin croon forms an uninteresting chamber pop of self-absorption: The musical equivalent of a pout between perfect cheekbones. www.maximilian-hecker.com
Peter Crawley
