The latest releases reviewed
CROWDED HOUSE Time on Earth Parlophone ****
Crowded House have always been a watchword for a certain sort of melancholia and longing. More than a decade after they bowed out with a show on the steps of Sydney Opera House, they return (frontman Neil Finn is joined by bassist and founding member Nick Seymour) - but this time a new, world-weary steel is propping up the whimsy and three-part harmonies. Original drummer Paul Hester hanged himself in a Melbourne Park in 2005, and his absence, in fact a general air of brooding loss, haunts the album (it is dedicated to Hester). Still, Finn is canny enough not to allow things to become overly heavy and bleak. Steve Lillywhite adds bounce on the tracks he produces, and Johnny Marr brings zip to both Don't Stop Now and Even a Child, which he co-wrote. Mature, well constructed pop - it's very obviously a Crowded House album. But it's also honest and open, and will preach to more than just the converted. www.crowdedhouse.com PAUL MCNAMEE
Download tracks: Don't Stop Now, English Trees
SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime Blue Note ****
In some ways, Suzanne Vega's move to the Blue Note label is long overdue. Her cerebral, detached, languorous song stories would seem like a perfect match for a label that's championed the aloof sensuality of Sidney Bechet's Summertime and the intellectual crossfire of Wynton Marsalis. Beauty & Crime is a travelogue through Vega's fertile imagination, alighting with magpie-like opportunism on such diverse subjects as Edith Wharton, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, and, inevitably, the ties that bind and unbind. Musically, Vega is free- wheeling with an unprecedented lightness of touch. Her hometown
of New York features heavily, cool strings underpinning the driving yet muted rhythms of Unbound, as if propelling her towards her beloved Manhattan skyline. After the trauma and travails post-9/11, Vega's back on form. www.suzannevega.com SIOBHÁN LONG
Download track: Frank & Ava
NEW YOUNG PONY CLUB Fantastic Playroom Modular ***
Following rave reviews from their live shows, indie magazine darlings New Young Pony Club have a lot to live up to. In crafting the 10 songs on offer here the London-based five-piece have borrowed judiciously from CSS and LCD Soundsystem. With a healthy dollop of 1980s synth pop added to the mix, even the most ardent shoegazer should be lured onto the dance floor. It's the singles that stand tall: Ice Cream, The Bomb and Get Lucky are finely tuned dance pop workouts, and frontwoman Tahita Bulmers's sneering delivery pulls no punches. If the album falters towards the end, it's as much due to Bulmers's lyrical shortcomings as the directionless tunes of Fan and Grey. Failing to justify the hype that preceded this debut, NYPC need some more original ideas to prove they're more than one trick ponies. www.wearepony.com BRIAN KEANE
Download tracks: Ice Cream, Get Lucky
VELVET REVOLVER Libertad Columbia ***
With their debut album, Contraband, this motley crew of American rock flotsam fused grunge and metal to impressively sleazy effect, and now they've repeated the formula. The combination of Slash's guitar attack, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum's raunchy rhythm and Scott Weiland's screwed-up, rasping vocals could be a sub-genre of its own - metrosexual metal, perhaps. Let It Roll, She Mine, Just Sixteen and Pills, Demons & Etc are dirtbag anthems that should appeal to the lowest common denominator in all of us. American Man and Last Fight are quick glances into the male mirror. A version of
Jeff Lynne's Can't Get It Out of My Head verges on the girlie, but Libertad mostly runs free through macho terrain on Get Out the Door, Mary Mary and She Builds Quick Machines. With Rose's guitar taking care of the high-end tension, Weiland is able to find plenty of sonic and lyrical spaces to crawl under. www.velvetrevolver.com KEVIN COURTNEY
Download Tracks: She Builds Quick Machines, American Man
INTERPOL Our Love to Admire Capitol ****
Editors are proving that you can play doomy, gloomy post-punk and still pull in a mainstream pop audience. With their third album, New York quartet Interpol are hoping to widen their fanbase to take in, well, the whole world. The wild, open vistas of the album's artwork are a million miles away from the dark satanic caverns of Lower Manhattan, and singer Paul Banks's heart is also far, far away - songs such as No 1 in Threesome, The Heinrich Manouver, Pace Is the Trick and All Fired Up are consumed with desire to go the distance, and the music has moved from tank-like solidity to runaway train fluidity. There's still room for heavy laden existentialism in Rest My Chemistry and The Lighthouse, but, as lengthy opener Pioneer to the Falls proves, Interpol have managed to take the inner darkness and bring it to some bright new places. www.interpolnyc.com KEVIN COURTNEY
Download Tracks: Pioneer to the Falls, No 1 in Threesome, The Heinrich Manouver
GIRAFFE RUNNING Giraffe Running Learn to Love/Red F ***
Like all the best matches, Giraffe Running's new release is a game of two halves. On the first CD are five fiendishly intricate tracks from GR's Greg Barrett and Hag, a bass-and- drums duo who have sweated over various math-rock equations since 2001. On the second CD, the real Running begins with talented friends and accomplices translating the original five tracks into different languages. Such musicians as Ian Williams (Battles), electronic shapeshifter Max Tundra and a rake of Irish names (Eoin Dillon, Matthew Bolger, Somadrone, Miriam Ingram) add their ingredients to the mix. What results is an album rich in idiosyncratic imagination, oddly charming discordance and strangely realised beauty. In tracks such as The Second Wave, from Redneck Manifesto guitarist Matthew Bolger, and the nostalgic drift of Shafted by the Light, there's plenty to reward your curiosity. www.learntolove.net JIM CARROLL
Download tracks: Shafted by the Light, The Second Wave, Liars Tears
THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND Forward March! Fantastic Plastic ***
Much about this fine album is misleading. For starters, there's the subtitle: Traditional Marching Songs to Learn and Play. Then there's the cover, which depicts in Enid Blyton fashion a quartet of children marching in fancy dress. And then there's the opener, Modern Folk Song, which starts off exactly as the title might suggest but then crashes into the rest of the album. Clearly, all is not as it seems; the quintet subvert expectations. We like this, and we like the way the group, when on stage, switch instruments between songs. We also like the way An Old Fashioned War reminds us of Radiators from Space's Kitty Rickets, and God Damn Broke and Broken Hearted of the Virgin Prunes. Where in the name of all that's holy this shower will slot into is debatable, but there's a place for them in my record collection. www.tsdole.co.uk TONY CLAYTON-LEA
Download tracks: An Old Fashioned War, God Damn Broke and Broken Hearted
