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Personally, the worm links the name Eric Carmen with that old seventies smoothy “All by myself”, but he had another hit more recently, from the soundtrack to the movie “Dirty dancing”, here he is with “Hungry eyes”.

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FIFTH SPIN

So, let's see where the Wheel of Mystery (well, the “play random” key on my media player!) ends up sending us this time! Looks like it's settled on a band from Switzerland --- first time for that, I think --- known as Lunatica, who are described as a “symphonic metal band”. Can't be bad. Let's get a little background, then, shall we?

Formed in 1998, the band has released, up to now, four albums, with a fifth in the works since 2010. A quick look at their website, however, for up-to-date information, merely informs the reader “We are working on our new album and website”. Hmm. No date. So could be that abovementioned --- and as yet untitled --- fifth album, or could be that the information is old and Lunatica have split. Who knows? When your own website gives out that little information, bad news I fear. But all may not be lost.

Fables and dreams --- Lunatica --- 2004 (Frontiers)
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Lunatica are, it would seem, another of those female-fronted bands like Nightwish, Leaves' Eyes, Within Temptation et al. This is their second album, and it opens like a movie soundtrack, with low synth, wind noises and the sound of what I take to be an eagle screeching. Dramatic, powerful music flows over the listener, then a voice announces ”Two years ago, Atlantis was found/ But this is history/ And my search continues/ The search for a book/ A book called Fables and Dreams.” It appears from the opener, “The search goes on” that this album is a concept one, based around the search for the eponymous book, and that a tale is going to unfold as the album progresses. I don't know who does the narration, as the only credit given for vocals is for Andrea Datwyler (there are some umlauts in there, but my character set doesn't support them), and the narrator's voice is definitely male.

At any rate, “The search goes on” is carried mostly on the atmospheric and ethereal keyboard work of Alex Seiberl, and is pretty much an overture to the album proper. First real track, “Avalon”, is much punchier, guitar-driven by Sando D'Incau, with Seiberl swapping his synth for a nice piano, and we first hear Andrea's vocals. Very powerful and clear they are too, not as operatic as Sabine Edelsbacher or Tarja, but strong and distinctive. The music is very much what you'd expect of a symphonic metal band: big, brash, dramatic, bombastic, with lots of keyboard runs and guitar solos. “Elements” slows things down just a little for its opening, then speeds up again as the keyboards lead the song in what becomes a powerful slice of symphonic rock, nice sharp guitars backing up the keyboard lines and again some effective piano slotted in there too.


The title track is the first (and only) ballad, nicely laidback with a duetting vocal, but don't ask me with whom Andrea sings: information on this album is sketchy, to say the least! Whoever he is, he's good, his raw, somewhat gutteral style perfectly complementing the clear, angelic voice of the lead singer. Nice ballad with some very nice keyboards and choral vocals. “Still believe” is an epic, strings and keys driven monster, the second longest on the album (“Elements” pipped it by about forty seconds), mid-paced with urgent guitar and frothy keyboards, more of those nice choral vocals. “The spell” is a much faster, uptempo rocker, with male backing vocals added in the style of Evanescence and some nice guitar work from D'Incau, and the tempo doesn't slacken for “The neverending story”, and though it seems like “Hymn” is bringing things down a gear, it's actually not the case as it explodes into another fast rocker with some really good backing vocals. A cover of an old Ultravox, apparently, but I don't recognise it personally.

Things keep moving with “Silent scream”, and a problem I'm coming up against fairly regularly now with these bands I've not heard before is that a lot of their material sounds very similar. It's certainly the case here: the last three tracks have sort of gone by in something of a blur, one could be the other and so on. That's not to say they're not good, but I don't see anything about any of them standing out enough to make me either remember them, or want to seek them out to play them again. In short, if I were making a playlist of symphonic metal, I'd be hard-pressed to know/remember which tracks to choose from this album, if at all. Perhaps that will change with the final track...

Well, it starts off like some dance track. That's interesting. Loud, brash keys, galloping guitar, choral vocals. This is “ A little moment of desperation”, but despite the promisingly different opening, it seems to slip into what appears to be the natural groove for this band, and becomes another somewhat faceless and generic track, indistinguishable from the rest. Pity, thought there was going to be something original here to close.

After all that, I'm left with the feeling that this album could easily have fit into the “Meh...” slot, which is never a good thing. You never know what you're going to get when you Spin The Wheel, of course, but I had hoped for so much more from this band. From something that began well, it quickly slipped into mundanity and even the concept --- if there truly is one --- is lost on me; it's certainly not expressed through the songs, though as ever with a concept album (if indeed this is such) it helps to have the liner notes to follow the story, as we found when I reviewed Fairyland's “Of wars in Osyrhia”. In the end, not bad at all, nothing against them, but kind of like I said at the beginning, there are so many other bands doing this so much better than Lunatica, I have to wonder if they'll ever get that untitled fifth album finished?

TRACKLISTING

1. The search goes on
2. Avalon
3. Elements
4. Fable of dreams
5. Still believe
6. The spell
7. The neverending story
8. Hymn
9. Silent scream
10. A little moment of desperation

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Friday, November 25 2011
Raincloud --- Tony Banks --- from "Bankstatement" on Virgin
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Footie fans will recognise this as the once-theme to Goal of the Month on BBC's “Match of the Day”. This is the Lightning Seeds, with “The life of Riley”.

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As exclusively revealed by Stacey-Lynn's NewsFoxes last week, this is a new section starting up today, wherein I try to review an album in two hundred words exactly. Why? Well, firstly to try to rein in my often over-loquacious writing (that's running off at the mouth, to you!) and to see if it's possible to get across the important points about the album in a short review. Secondly, to allow me to write more reviews: my usual ones take time, obviously, and these new ones allow me to quickly skim through an album --- or listen to it all the way through --- while just picking out the relevant points, instead of having to analyse each track, the history of the artiste, what the producer had for breakfast (just kidding there: the sound engineer, maybe...) and so on. In short, it's an effort to cut the waffle and present you with a filleted version of one of my reviews.

As Kate mentioned in the NewsFoxes report, this doesn't mean that any album I review in this way is any worse than one I do a full review on, or that I consider it less worthy, or anything. Often, these will be albums I know well and can write succinctly about. Sometimes they will of course be new albums I haven't heard before, but the decision will be mine as to in what format they get reviewed.

The two hundred words does not include the title, banner, tracklisting or any notes I may make before the review, such as to give a quick idea of who the artiste is, or any special information I have about them. Oh, and as the review is barely a few paragraphs, I'll only be featuring one YouTube from the album. It's a challenge, to write to such an exacting formula, but I like a challenge. So let's have the first one off the blocks then, shall we?

Soul provider --- Michael Bolton --- 1989 (Columbia)
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Smooth. Sexy. Sterile. Three words that could be used to describe this, Michael Bolton's famous (or infamous, if you prefer) breakout album. Although it seemed to everyone as if he appeared overnight, this is in fact Bolton's sixth album, but it was the one that made him a household name, yielding a slew of hit singles and making his style of smooth jazz/soul rock fashionable.

There are some good covers, in particular Hoagy Carmichael's classic "Georgia on my mind", Laura Branigan's "How am I supposed to live without you" (which was in fact co-written by him) and Cher's "You wouldn't know love", but there are rockier tracks (sort of) too: "It's only my heart", "How can we be lovers" and "Love cuts deep" all rock along nicely, for Bolton that is. In general, the album is a smooch-fest, crammed with ballads and slow songs, though it's true that here he really does excel.

Although this album marked a move away from Bolton's more hard-edged, rocky approach, commercially it would see him rocket to the top, and indeed earn for himself the title of lounge rock lizard, and the undying scorn of rock fans who had hoped for so much more.

TRACKLISTING

1. Soul provider
2. Georgia on my mind
3. How am I supposed to live without you
4. How can we be lovers
5. It's only my heart
6. You wouldn't know love
7. When I'm back on my feet again
8. From now on
9. Love cuts deep
10. Stand up for love

Been a while since we moseyed on down to the (yeah, I know: even I'm getting sick of the tired old western references --- doesn't mean I'll stop though! Yeehaw!) place where unappreciated albums get one final shot at convincing me they're actually better than I at first believed, before they're consigned to the scrap heap. This is the final stop before the border, where the passport is checked one more time before deportation, the last desperate appeal before sentencing is passed, the
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Billy Joel is not one of my favourite artistes. I mean, I have some of his albums, and his greatest hits of course, and the man has written some exemplary material, but I wouldn't go for his whole discography. The last album of his I bought was “Storm front”, way back in 1989, and I was seriously unimpressed with it. I've never bought another of his albums since. There are many artistes who come to what I call their “Lady in Red” moment, that is, they release a song which just makes me hate them, and look at their former work in a less than favourable light. No prizes for guessing where that phrase came from!

Well, in fairness, the “LiR” moment doesn't really affect previous output: I'm not that shallow that I can enjoy an artiste's music until they record something I don't like, and then say I hate everything they do, or have done. No, not quite that shallow. Not really. But the “LiR” does affect, usually, my desire (or lack thereof) to purchase, download or even listen to any of their music post-”Lady in Red” moment. For me, Billy Joel hit that point with “Uptown girl” which, although it was one of his most successful singles, I truly hated, and since then I've viewed his output with first a suspicious and then a disinterested eye.

In general, at least pertaining to Joel, this attitude has, for me, for the most part, been vindicated, as post-”Uptown girl” I see very little in his music that I've liked. Certainly, there have been moments: “The bridge” is a good (but not great) album, and “Baby grand” is a wonderful song, and “We didn't start the fire” is clever and catchy, but I see most of Joel's best output in the late seventies to early eighties bracket, and what I've heard --- I stress what I've heard, as I can't really offer an informed or decisive opinion, not having listened to his recent albums --- just has not measured up to that.

All of which prefaces nothing really, because the album I'm going to feature here comes well pre-”Lady in Red” moment, from 1978, and I initially bought it (on audio cassette!) purely because of two songs from it I had really enjoyed, but on listening to the album through, I was quite disappointed. Now, I point out that I only really ever listened to the album once, maybe twice, so here is its opportunity to make its case and see if I was really giving it a fair chance or if, after all, it is nothing more than what I took it to be at the time, filler for the few tracks I enjoyed.

52nd Street --- Billy Joel --- 1978 (Columbia)
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I know it's gone down in history as a great album. I know it had three hit singles (two of which are the tracks on the basis of which I bought the album) and I know it's been hailed as one of Billy Joel's best. But I certainly didn't like it. It was, I told myself, no “The Stranger”, though measuring up to that classic was always going to be a hard, even impossible task. But I wasn't expecting “The Stranger II”, just a good album with more tracks on it like “My life” and “Honesty”, the latter of which I had really fallen in love with. I was as I say at the time disappointed. Is it still the case?

It starts with “Big shot”, a boppy, uptempo number that really isn't too bad. Great piano goes without saying when you're dealing with Joel, but there's some pretty funky guitar too from Steve Khan (Star Trek fans will understand if I roar KHHHAAAAAAAAANNN! Others will just think I'm crazy, and who knows? Could be true...) and nice measured percussion. A good enough start, nice horns too from various brass players employed for the album, but it's the next track that takes the album into could-be-classic territory, the beautiful “Honesty”, played against initially a solo piano melody, Joel's voice low and earnest, Diogenes in the dark looking for that one honest man. Or, in this case, one assumes, woman. It's a lovely, gentle ballad which breaks out for a short time with a heavier midsection as Joel snaps ”I can find a lover/ I can find a friend/ I can have security/ Until the bitter end/ Anyone can comfort me/ With promises again.”

Everyone knows the big hit, “My life”, with its jumping, joyful piano melody juxtaposed against the lyric which yearns for freedom from rules and having to please people. It's “Zanzibar”, up next, which sort of let the wind out of my sails, with a more jazzy sort of beat, but listening to it now, you know, it's not that bad. Kind of reminds me of the faster sections in “Scenes from an Italian restaurant” on the previous album. Joel's voice is as ever perfect, loud and strident when needed, soft and gentle when not. “Zanzibar” also features some instrumentation not used before on Billy Joel's albums, to my knowledge: vibes, marimba and flugelhorn.

“Stiletto” is another jazzy type song, sort of mid-paced, kind of reminds me of a slower “Only the good die young” in melody, with marching drums and nice organ, some very clever bass lines and great sax breaks. Nice handclaps and stride piano halfway through, but not one of my favourites, then we're into “Rosalinda's eyes” (not literally!) with an interesting organ and marimba intro which takes us into a mid-paced half-ballad, with very Spanish overtones (it's about a Cuban lady, but you get the idea) and some piano licks borrowed from “Just the way you are”. Again, it's okay, but nothing special, I feel. Probably doesn't help that I'm no fan of Latin American music --- I only listen to Gloria Estefan for the ballads (and to watch that fine aaa-aahhh never mind...) :)

“Half a mile away” is very much built on a horn section, and funky and jazzy in a way I'm really not all that fond of, lot of soul in there but not my kind of song, sorry. I lied above in the intro when I said I bought this album for two tracks: it was three, and the penultimate song is one of those, in fact one of the two most important to me. “Until the night” is a slowburner ballad which opens on piano and guitar rather slowly, and builds to something of a climax to the horns-heavy ending, a triumphant string section carrying the song to its powerful close, and indeed this is the song that should have, in my opinion, closed the entire album.

As it is, we're left to hum the title track, oddly the shortest track on the album (the previous having been the longest), sort of blues and jazz melding with soul and rock, but it lacks a certain something. Nice sax, good piano as ever, but a little flat I feel. After the glorious “Until the night” this feels limp, flaccid and anticlimactic (sorry for all the inadvertent sexual imagery there!), and a huge disappointment.

No, I'm still not convinced. There are good tracks, but they're the ones I already knew, and on second listen “Zanzibar” is okay, but the rest I feel are just filler, and not very good filler. Maybe it's the jazz leanings Joel used on this album, as opposed to the, in my opinion, far superior “The Stranger”, or even its successor, “Glass houses”, that alienated me, but I'm still largely bored with this album. Pass.

TRACKLISTING

1. Big shot
2. Honesty
3. My life
4. Zanzibar
5. Stiletto
6. Rosalinda's eyes
7. Half a mile away
8. Until the night
9. 52nd Street

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I know I said, when I featured Bon Jovi's two versions of “It's my life” at the beginning of the month, that that sort of thing was quite rare, ie an artist essentially covering their own song, and it is. But I've found something even more weird, and it's from my favourite ever band, Marillion.

The song “Berlin” appears on Marillion's first album after Fish left for a solo career, and it's a great song, heavy with Cold War rhetoric, obviously written well before the Wall came down. The strange thing about it is that it actually surfaces, in another form, on a previous album. In fact, it's the last they made with Fish, the downbeat “Clutching at straws”, and it's not part of the actual album released, but an extra track added to the CD remaster that was released ten years after “Seasons end”. But the music and lyric had been written during the sessions for “Clutching at straws”, lyric by Fish, so you could say that the song had been around really since 1987.

When Fish departed, the band were left with a lot of material he had written or collaborated on, and the original version of “Berlin”, which had a totally different lyric but virtually the same melody, and was then called “Story from a thin wall”. This was then the song included on the remaster of “Clutching at straws” in 1999.

Meanwhile, the lyric that powers “Story from a thin wall” seems to have been taken by Fish for one of his own first solo songs, on his debut solo album “Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors”. The song “Family business” has the same lyric as “Story from a thin wall”, but new music.

This is, therefore, the only time that I can see when a band not only covered their own song, but a former member of that band also covered it, and each of the three versions, though similar, are radically different. Admittedly, it's only the lyric that links the two Marillion songs with the Fish one, but even so, it's interesting. And to hear the same song sung with completely different lyrics is also very intriguing.

Anyway, below I've included all three versions: first, the original, “Story from a thin wall”, with Fish on vocals, unused until 1999, then “Berlin”, with new singer (at the time) Steve Hogarth, from the “Seasons end” album, released 1989, and finally Fish's solo “Family business”, used on his “Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors” album, which hit the shelves in 1990.

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Saturday, November 26 2011
The space... --- Marillion --- from "Seasons end" on EMI
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Hey, the worm admits it: he just selected this tune for the video. Hey, worms get horny too, ya know! :pimp:

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When searching through my vast (vast!) collection for something new to review, something I've not heard before, something, in short, to make the next “Unwritten” slot, I came across this and thought, hey why not? I've already featured two tracks from Cain's Dinasty in Random Track of the Day, and liked what I heard. Besides, any album whose closing track is titled “**** you forever” has to be worth a listen! So, step forward, guys...

Madmen, witches and vampires --- Cain's Dinasty --- 2010 (RedRivet)
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Almost making it a candidate for “Meanwhile, back in the real world”, Cain's Dinasty's second album was released December 30 2010, still making it very current. The band hail from Spain, a country previously known among the heavy metal fraternity mostly for Baron Rojo, but these guys sing in English, which is a help, no matter what way you look at it. They do offend the spelling Nazi in me though: why they couldn't have called themselves Cain's Dynasty (or Destiny, if that's what it's meant to be) I don't know, but it's a minor quibble so let's not blow it out of proportion. Makes 'em hard to search on the internet, though!

Cain's Dinasty seem to have gone through something of a lineup change recently, but as far as I can gather, at least three of the five were born in Alicante, so perhaps this is a case of childhood/school friends getting together to form a band? Though they seem a little old for that, but who knows? Maybe they've been together under different band names. Either way, it seems these guys have always been a quintet, and are based around the tried-and-trusted format of singer/guitar/guitar/drums and bass. And away we go!

It's power/speed metal right from the off, mad steamhammer drums with finger-frying guitar on opener “Breaking the bloodlines”. It's quite long for a speed or even power metal track, just over seven minutes, and the longest track on the album at that. Vocalist Ruben Picazo alternates between a powerful, throaty roar to deep growls (or maybe someone else is taking that part of the vocal?) but seems very competent: you can certainly make out what he's singing. The band seem to have something of an obsession with vampires and other creatures of the night --- you'd never know it from the title of the album! --- and a lot of the tracks seem to reflect that in the lyrics as well as the title. Here, we have ”Crying for the wasted blood/ The weak man kills the strong one/ Breaking the blood lines /Devil May Cry.” Great guitar solo from Pablo Rizo, who is obviously strongly influenced by Kirk Hammet and Dave Mustaine, but who is also an accomplished classical guitarist.

“After death still you play with me” --- a dodgy title if ever there was one! However, the song seems to be based on the fact that even in death there is no release, though a common problem with bands for whom English is not their native or first language surfaces here, in some pretty incomprehensible lines: ”Open my mind, open her grave/ She excused my life, But broke all my hopes” but in fairness the rest of the lyric is quite well written. However this is power metal, and we're less concerned with the lyrics than we are with the music, and there's little doubt that's pretty damn good. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely up there with the better bands of this ilk.

I'm getting the vague feeling that this may be a concept album, as the next track, “Waiting for death”, has some sort of introductory narration or soliloquy in a language I don't recognise, and I don't think it's Spanish. There's the name of a character (Lord Strigoi), and there's a definite idea of some sort of story going on here, but I can only guess from the lyric how that fits together across the album. At any rate, the song is another fast power rocker, but there are definitely some keyboards in there, as they were in the background to the introduction to this track, though no player is credited. Apparently the main figure, the hero I guess, is on a quest for his soul, which seems to have led him to Hell. Interesting, if a little confusing.

Quite dramatic, the music here, with some excellent guitar solos, something of a cut above the norm, here at least. “Devil may cry” seems to be about the Fallen One (hard to follow the story, if there is one) and is a fast, powerful rocker-on-rails-of-thunder, that everpresent galloping, pounding drumbeat driving the rhythm like some infernal engine, courtesy of David Sabater. More great guitar solos, and the double vocal lending that sort of “background death grunt” prevalent in a lot of this music. One criticism I would level at Picazo though is that it's hard to make out the lyrics he's singing, though he's quite clear when there's a break in the instrumentation, as in this song, so perhaps it's the overexuberance of the players, drowning him out?

“Clarimonda” is a slower cruncher, with definite elements of Metallica, the tragic tale of a man who sees his lover turned to the Darkness, and has to kill her for good. ”After bearing the pain of burying her beauty/ I saw her back to life turned into a vampire/ And blinded by ambition of breaking her damnation/I returned to the graveyard to finish with her/ I Scattered blessed water on her body/And all her beauty turned into ashes.” There are a lot of choral vocals (whether on synth or an actual choir I don't know, though I'd suspect the former) and the melody has tinges of Thin Lizzy in the guitar parts. The song speeds up near the end, as the awful deed has to be performed, I would assume. Hmm, nice bit of Maidenesque guitar in there too!

Vampires figure again in the next track, “My last sunrise”, but this time the singer is the creature of darkness, and is about to give his life, or unlife, as he faces the sun, which is obviously true death for any vampire. It opens with sorrowful, dramatic synth, then powers right up into another fast headshaker, as Picazo sings ”Rising from the East bringing life/ To a new day (the last for me)/ Feeling the heat of light /With tears in my eyes.” Given the subject matter, I think this would have worked better as a slower song, maybe some lonely piano, a crying violin... maybe Cain's Dinasty don't do that sort of thing, I don't know, but in a way it's a pity that at its heart “My last sunrise” is just another fast power-metal-rocker, when it could have been so much more. It is, at any rate, the first of the tracks on the albums that fades!

We've had the madmen (“Waiting for death”, “Breaking the bloodlines”) and the vampires (both the last tracks), now we have the witch, as “Miss Terror” gets going, and it's pretty clear that all the imagery used in Cain's Dinasty's lyrics is dark, centred around death and doom, blood and horror. No love songs then, and no “We're the toughest/fastest/loudest/delete as appropriate” songs. I guess this is what they call Black Metal then? It's a faster track than previous, if that's possible, and really rockets along, but there's nothing there to really mark it out as all that different from the rest of the songs on the album. Soon forgotten, unfortunately.

“Bring me your blood” is more of the same: fast, powerful, anthemic. I'd say this goes down well onstage. Vocals a good bit clearer here, you can make out what's going on. Well, you can hear the lyric: it's kind of hard to figure out what these guys are on, assuming they write their own stuff! All very dark and gothic. This, at any rate, is where Pablo Rizo briefly shows off his considerable skill on the classical guitar, and this carries through into penultimate track “A void in my heart”, with more effective keys, and the first slow track, indeed the first, and I would venture only, ballad. It's handled very well, with tasteful guitar, nice emotive keys and a very restrained vocal from Picazo. Nice to hear him rein it in for once. See, you can do it if you try!

No such restraint, as you would expect, for the closer, the gloriously named “**** you forever”. It's another heads-down, blood-boiling, teeth-chattering speedfest, but then, that's only really appropriate with this band as I've come to know them through this album, and in a weird way it would have been wrong to have finished on something like the previous track. There's no pretensions here, just out-and-out metal, with every sinew straining as the band charge headlong towards the finish line.

I have a sort of sneaking admiration for Cain's Dinasty, perhaps born of their very deep and intricate, if sometimes obscure lyrics, or maybe because they're Spaniards who do very well singing in English and seem to be building up quite a following. Or maybe it's just because they're honest. Here we are, they say, we're Cain's Dinasty. We play metal. It's loud. It's fast. It's hard. And if you don't like it then **** you! They don't try to be what they're not, they don't aspire to some level they can never hope to attain, and most of all, they're dedicated to their music. It's not really my kind of metal: I prefer to be able to make out the lyrics and speed is not really my thing. But for what they do, these five guys from Alicante do it exceedingly well.

Oh, and that concept? Your guess is as good as mine. Answers on a postcard...

TRACKLISTING

1. Breaking the bloodlines
2. After death still you play with me
3. Waiting for death
4. Devil may cry
5. Clarimonda
6. My last sunrise
7. Miss Terror
8. Bring me your blood
9. A void in my heart
10. **** you forever

Uh...god damn this journal is intense. I can't even keep up!

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Sunday, November 27 2011
The blue and the grey --- Magnum --- from "Brand new morning" on SPV
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Fallen empires --- Snow Patrol --- 2011 (Fiction)
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Okay. Deep breath. Let's give this one. Last. Try.
I have been singularly unimpressed by everything I've heard from Snow Patrol so far apart from the single “Chasing cars”, which I love, so where am I going wrong? Are they a band with only one good song I will ever like, and should I give up on trying to get into the rest of their music? It would be unlikely, though not impossible and certainly not unprecedented. But then I heard the lead-in single to their latest album, “Called out in the dark”, and I have to say I loved it, even before I knew it was from those boys who go patrolling at winter. So is this album going to be the one that finally shows me what a great band they are, or is “Called out” destined to join “Chasing cars” as being two of the only tracks I like from these guys? Let's find out.

Okay, so we're opening up with an Alan Parsons-ish synth intro to “I'll never let go”, starting slowly, then some nice bass and guitar coming in and the tempo is upping slightly, becoming a mid-pacer with some interesting effects, I think on guitar. Gary Lightbody is on form vocally as ever, and I do have to say from the off this sounds more commercial, more accessible than anything I've heard from them before, “Chasing cars” obviously excepted. Nice growly guitar cutting in there, from Nathan Connolly, and the keyboards very dancy from Tom Simpson, but not sounding out of place here. Good opener. Impressive, yes.

Next up is that single, and you've more than likely heard it by now. Chock full of hooks, great chorus and just a really catchy, commercial song, “Called out in the dark” is the song that preceded the album and let people know Snow Patrol were back, and it's a good choice. Great bass, warbling keyboards never drowning out Lightbody's clear voice. Restrained guitar, the song mostly carried on synth from Simpson, and very ably so. Both a dancefloor filler and a rocker, this could be a song that is all things to all men, as it were. Kind of hard not to like it, which is a difficult feat to accomplish, but seems like the boys have struck gold here.

“The weight of love” comes in on nice low guitar (acoustic, maybe), then bass and drums cut in, but for about a minute it's Lightbody's voice that carries the song, and even when the keyboards come in they're still just a backdrop for his powerful voice, joined by backing vocalists giving the song a little of a gospel feel. Connolly comes in with his guitar a bit more forcefully, but Edge-like he's just out there on the periphery, keeping the melody but never attemping to take it over. Very well constructed song indeed. Three for three so far. The first ballad, and second single, then comes in the form of “This isn't everything you are”, with nice piano and chingling (what? It's a word I made up: perfectly cromulent down our way. Look it up...) guitars, impassioned vocal in the best style of Ricky Ross or Paul Heaton. Great powerful backing vocals again (is that a choir?), and a dramatic, soul-stirring ending. And then another ballad.

Piano again introduces “The garden rules”, with some nice acoustic guitar, a lookback to childhood lost, a real gem of a song with some nice female backing vocals. As this album was only released last week, it's hard to get concrete information on lineup and so on, so I can't tell you who the female backing singer is (but she's good!) or who the choir is, if there's a choir, but I'm beginning to believe that's the case. No bad tracks so far, and now we're into the title track. It opens with what sounds like banjo, but is probably just fast guitar, thumping drums coming in, a nice uptempo track after the last two ballads slowed everything down. Great bassline carrying the track too, and some pretty frenetic piano from Tom Simpson. The song always seems like it's about to break into a mad guitar solo, but that never happens. Powerful stuff, nevertheless.

“Berlin” is a short track, just over two minutes, and basically a march and a chant with musical backing, all sounding very happy and triumphant, sort of like one of those reprise-type songs you often get at the end of albums. The cleverly-titled “Life-ning” is a gentle guitar ballad with a very simple and honest lyric, and what sounds like violin or some kind of string section coming in and filling out the song, while “New York” is also a ballad, but on piano, with a real economy of melody, proving that you don't have to have banks of multi-tracked instruments and production to the nth degree to create a truly exceptional song, which this is. Earnest, powerful vocal is the vehicle the song travels on, accompanied by Simpson's simple piano lines. Beautifully simple, simply beautiful, a future classic. “In the end” kind of revisits “Called out in the dark”, with a similar melody and rhythm, and “Those distant bells” is an acoustic ballad, very much I feel in the mould of Suzanne Vega, with a little REM thrown in for good luck.

The longest track on the album, at just over six minutes, is “The Symphony”, a mid-paced song, but it comes across to me as the first weak track on the album, or maybe the first that doesn't have its own clear identity. That doesn't mean it's a bad track --- it's not --- but if there's a less-than-brilliant track on “Fallen empires”, for me, this is it. Possibly overlong, too, as it doesn't really seem to have the faintest idea where it's going or what it's about. Or maybe it's just me. It could end at the four minute mark, but it drags on for a further two minutes which, despite a pretty impassioned guitar solo from Connolly, seems to be superfluous.

“The president” is another piano ballad, with nice synth lines, a drawling, somewhat morose vocal a little at odds with the sudden introduction of upbeat drums in the background, though the juxtapositioning actually works quite well. The song itself would appear to refer to the late President Reagan, as Goodbody refers to seeing him ”There at Margaret's side” and the track ends with what sounds like recordings of Thatcher speaking, though very low.

The album closes with a short, ambitious instrumental which they call “Broken bottles form a star (Prelude)”, and it's interesting but kind of empty, more tacked on than anything else. Perhaps they thought closing with the previous track might have been too downbeat?

At any rate, it appears that finally, Snow Patrol have done it: they've converted me! This is one hell of an album. There are few, if any, bad tracks and so many of them are excellent that they really lift “Fallen empires” to the top of my repeat-listen list. I will have no problem playing this through again, end to end, several times. Perhaps I've just been unlucky in the music of theirs I've chosen to listen to, but this makes me want to go back and check out “Eyes open” at the very least. Perhaps there's hope for us yet.

TRACKLISTING

1. I'll never let go
2. Called out in the dark
3. The weight of love
4. This isn't everything you are
5. The garden rules
6. Fallen empires
7. Berlin
8. Life-ning
9. New York
10. In the end
11. Those distant bells
12. The Symphony
13. The President
14. Broken bottles form a star (Prelude)

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The worm always liked this one, from the Human League. This is “Mirrorman”.

Yeah, but you like a challenge, right? :)

Coming around again --- Carly Simon --- 1987 (Arista)
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Not an artiste I would normally be that interested in, my curiosity was piqued when a friend spun the album for me, and I was quite surprised at how good it was. I'm not a Carly Simon fan, have none of her albums bar this one, and in all likelihood will probably not buy any more, but I did like this one. I think it was the surprise factor that did it for me, the fact that as an album it's really solid and has really very few if any bad tracks.

As you might expect, it's music that's best described as adult contemporary: you're not going to get any mad guitar solos, long keyboard passages or very deep lyrical themes on this, but for what it is it's very good. The opening track is also the title, and is a mid-paced ballad, which not incongruously sings of the normal, everyday trials of middle-age, with its opening lines ”Baby sneezes/ Mommy freezes/ Daddy breezes in/ So good on paper/ So romantic/ So bewildering.” It's a song of love found in ordinary places, and of perhaps accepting what you have. It's carried on nice acoustic guitar and keyboards, and Carly's voice is still strong, clear and passionate, even sixteen years later(at that point) and twelve albums prior to this, and she still has a lot to say.

With a songwriter of her calibre and pedigree, it will come as no surprise that she writes or co-writes most of the tracks on the album, with some star help here and there. “Give me all night” is another ballad (there are rather a lot of them), but with a harder edge, thumping drums and electric guitar giving the song a lot of heart, and it kind of breaks out into a type of AOR tune, boppy in a mid-paced way and very catchy. The standout is her cover of the classic song from that classic film “Casablanca”, and she does a really fine job with “As time goes by”, featuring Stevie Wonder on piano and harmonica. You can just see her in a long red dress, smoking a cigarette in those then-fashionable holders they used to use, stretched on a piano as the song plays.

“Do the walls come down” is carried on gentle guitar with some nice keyboard and piano, a gentle yet insistent ballad with great backing vocals and a great beat. “Stuff that dreams are made of” is a little faster, but still laid-back, as most of the tracks here are. Again it's a song of making the best of what you have, instead of flying off to pursue unattainable dreams, of finding your heart's desire right where you least expected to, as she sings ”What if the prince in the fairytale/ Is right here in disguise?/ And what if the stars you've been reaching for/ Are shining in his eyes?” Sobering words, indeed.

The whine of a familiar electric guitar introduces the only song written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, and “It should have been me” has their fingerprints all over it. Yet another ballad, it has a rockier edge, a very power ballad feel, with the obligatory guitar solo, while “Two hot girls (on a hot summer night)” is just great fun, jazzy and funky with some smooth sax: you can almost hear the streets steaming in the hot summer air, the moon low in the sky over the city, cats prowling the darkened alleys in search of prey, or shelter from the heat.

“You have to hurt” is another cautionary tale set to music, as Carly foresees disaster as her friend tells her she is in love, and the older, more mature woman knows how it's going to go. Nice piano line and some decent guitar, with a certain amount of bitterness in the lyric, which is one of the two on which she had no input: ”It was good to see her/ Believe me/ But I couldn't stand to hear this anymore!” After the somewhat bitchy snap of this song, “All I want is you” is a more uptempo celebration of love, with an almost Bruce Hornsby sound, a lot more positive now that Carly is again calling the tune, then the pure gospel of “Hold what you've got” would have been a fantastic closer (though it's not the last track), with Carly stretching herself and showing that age has not dulled her voice or her enthusiasm one bit, with her holding court from the pulpit on the importance of loving the one you're with. Hallelujah, sister.

The closer, when it comes, is odd, and yet strangely appropriate. “Coming around again/ Itsy bitsy spider” is a combination of a sort of reprise of the title track allied to the children's nursery rhyme, which in itself sort of takes the album full circle, as the ”Itsy bitsy spider/ Climbed up the spout again.” Never give up seems to be the theme of the album, displayed in the most offbeat and yet deepest fashion in this strange little finale.

This is an album to relax to, not to dance around the room to. I wouldn't relegate it to the status of background music, but it certainly can be listened to without too much attention having to be devoted to it. And it improves on subsequent listenings. You may not listen to it that often, but on occasion you'll find yourself digging it out, and reminding yourself why Carly Simon is the renowned and respected artiste she is, and has been for over forty years now.

TRACKLISTING

1. Coming around again
2. Give me all night
3. As time goes by
4. Do the walls come down
5. Stuff that dreams are made of
6. It should have been me
7. Two hot girls (on a hot summer night)
8. You have to hurt
9. All I want is you
10. Hold what you've got
11. Coming around again/Itsy bitsy spider

I have always thought I had a gigantic taste in music but you, you sir, have a much wider, broader taste, and I can only compliment you and slow clap in your general direction. Congratulations!!! You are well-rounded!

Why thank you sir! Though compared to the mighty Jackhammer I am but a mote of space dust within the nebula, or something. Wait till you see what I have coming up next --- a rock opera in three parts? Better believe it! Working on the review at the moment, should be ready in the next few days.

Ah, I'm like a shark: if I stop moving I'll die. Plus I have a row of razor sharp teeth and dark eyes. Not really.

Hey, this journal is my outlet: keeps me going when the world seems to want to close in on me from all sides. Gotta have your escape route, and if it benefits other people at the same time, so much the better. Share the joy, that's what I say! :)

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Often castigated for not having enough soul on the journal, the worm presents today's offering from the mighty Drifters, with a tale of a practice that sadly may be going out of fashion in these days of DVDs and downloadable films. This is from a simpler time, it's “Kissin' in the back row of the movies”. Oooh baby!

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Monday, November 28 2011
Calling card --- Rory Gallagher --- from "Calling card" on
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Little shop of horrors OST --- Cast recording --- 1986 (Geffen)
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Movie soundtracks are not something I review very often, but this one is pretty special. Not only is the film itself great, clever, funny and entertaining, the music forms a perfect backdrop to it, and every time I hear it I can see the movie running in my mind's eye. Possibly all the more surprising as it stars two people I really do not rate, they being Rick Moranis and Steve Martin (although the latter has something of a supporting role). Moranis annoys me because he always seems to play the stereotypical geek-become-hero figure, which for me reached an unacceptable peak with the “Ghostbusters” movies, and Martin I used to like but lost faith in him after he made “Roxanne”: for me, it's been a steady slide downwards for him from there, as far as my appreciation of him goes. Don't anyone even mention Sergeant Bilko!

But the movie is great, a remake of course of Roger Corman's 1960 B-movie, which was made into an off-Broadway musical and from thence to a movie. For any who hasn't seen it, the basic plot runs thus: Seymour Krelborn (Moranis) works in a flower shop as a dogsbody and unappreciated genius with plants, admiring from afar the beautiful but dizzy blonde who works in the shop with him, Audrey Fulquard, played by Ellen Greene. One day he brings in a “weird plant” he has bought, and when his boss sees it he decides to put it in the window, to attract interest, which it does. After a while, the shop, which had been struggling, is making lots of money and Seymour becomes famous as the owner of the plant, named Audrey II, in honour of his unattainable love.

However, things soon take a turn for the worse, when Seymour scratches himself on one of the plant's thorns and the Audrey II SPEAKS to him, demanding blood. Turns out it's an alien lifeform, and needs human blood and flesh to live. Cue black humour as Seymour first feeds Audrey's abusive boyfriend, dentist Dr. Orin Scrivello (Martin) to the plant, but this is not enough and once Audrey II has a taste of blood it wants more, leading to a comical trail of corpses making their way to the evil plant.

Along the way, Audrey (the girl) and Seymour declare their love for each other, and then Seymour has to take down the alien plant in a final showdown...

The plot isn't that important, but it does help to know it as the musical numbers basically narrate and advance the script. But it's the music that makes the movie, and this being a music forum, that's what we'll be concentrating on in this review. The above was just to give you a grounding in the film, so that what follows will make some kind of twisted sense.

It opens, as most musicals do, with an overture, or prologue, with narration to introduce the plot, behind dramatic music which suddenly breaks into bright, rock-and-roll piano to introduce the theme, sung by three girls who act as a kind of ongoing narrative device as the movie goes along. They're known as Chiffon, Ronette and Crystal, but I'll just refer to them as the Trio for handiness' sake. They only feature a little in the movie anyhow. What is essentially the title track is a rock/soul romp, very fifties in nature, with lots of piano and brass, but it's not one of the better tracks on the album.

It fades into one that is, that being “Skid Row (Downtown)”, a gospel-like opening that catalogues the horrors of living “downtown”, in the lowest of the low neighbourhoods, known colloquially as “Skid Row”. The song introduces the two main characters, Audrey and Seymour, the latter of whom bemoans his fate as he sings ”Poor, all my life/ I've always been poor/ I keep asking God what I'm for/ And he tells me gee, I'm not sure/ Sweep that floor kid!” It's a real soul track, building in intensity as the characters (mainly Seymour and Audrey) declare their determination to get out of this place. It goes totally Hollywood, ending on a big finish. In the movie, it's really clever as after the big finish someone throws slop out on the sidewalk and a tramp shuffles past, somewhat ruining the atmosphere.

The arrival of the alien plant is introduced in “Da doo”, with Moranis as Seymour detailing how he came to buy the Audrey II from an old flower shop run by “a Chinese guy”, as the Trio rip off a perfectly-balanced ”To-tal-e-clipse-ofthe-sun!” Ah, you have to hear it. It's very fifties again, like most of the music: lots of piano, doo-wop singing, close harmonies and the like. So with his plant bought, Seymour then begins to think he's been sold a lemon, as the plant refuses to grow, no matter what he does. In the next song, “Grow for me”, a parody of an old fifties love song, Moranis begs the plant to grow, detailing all he's done to try make it grow, and at the end snaps ”Whaddya want from me? Blood?” Of course this is the spark, and when he discovers this is what's needed, he squeezes out a few drops, eyes closed, but this will never be enough. Still, the plant does begin to grow when he leaves in frustration, as the dramatic finale to the song denotes.


Another standout then in the lovely “Somewhere that's green”, as Ellen Greene in the role of Audrey sits and sings of her dream life, married to Seymour with kids in a house with a white picket fence. A beautiful fragile piano melody carries the song, about halfway getting more forceful and desperate as the strings come in, then fade away as Audrey realises this is just ”A picture out of / Better Homes and Gardens magazine”, and the piano slowly leads the song to its sad conclusion. Greene's dizzy-blonde voice is a little hard to put up with, but she does have a lovely singing voice, and it's a really nice song.

“Some fun now” reintroduces the Trio, but I could live without it. It's a sort of caribbean styled/limbo song that really goes nowhere as far as I can see. But then we get “Dentist”, which introduces the mad character played by Steve Martin, Orin Scrivello, a dentist who gets off on pain. Not his, other people's. He's in the right business then, as he gleefully sings that his mother told him when he was a child ”You'll be a dentist/ You have a talent for causing pain/ You'll be a dentist/ People will pay you to be inhumane.” It's a kind of a play on the old “Leader of the pack” song, with lots of echoey drum and guitar, and to be fair, Martin makes the song with his insane persona of the sadistic dentist.

Then it's time to hear Audrey II sing, and her voice (his voice: the plant is male, despite Seymour's having given it a female name) is provided by Four Tops legend Levi Stubbs. “Feed me” is a real rock/soul tour-de-force, as the plant promises to give his owner anything he wants if he will feed him some human flesh. Seymour comes in on the song, unsure: ”I don't know/ I have so many strong reservations/ Should I go and perform mutiliations?” and the rock vibe goes up and the two join as Seymour realises that Audrey's dentist boyfriend could be a victim: ”The guy sure looks like/ Plant food to me!”

And so the stage is set, and the plant has the first of many victims. With the abusive dentist gone from her life, Audrey is free to fall in love with Seymour, and they duet on the lovesong “Suddenly Seymour”, with nice piano and strings which, like “Somewhere that's green”, starts off quietly and gentle but gets more operatic and powerful as it heads towards its, ahem, climax. On this song Greene really shows off her singing prowess, and to be fair, Moranis can carry a tune, but the girl is without question the star of this song. Reminds me of Sam Brown at her best.

That's the end of the lovey-dovey stuff though, as “Suppertime” brings back in Levi Stubbs and encourages Seymour to kill his boss, who has discovered what he's been doing back late at the shop. A great funky number, it also features the Trio, who function in this song as a backing group for the Audrey II,

Seymour's life starts to spiral out of control as his fame rises, as “The meek shall inherit” tells us, with the Trio and Seymour singing as Moranis tries to make up his mind whether he should allow Audrey II to live, or finish it off and so kiss goodbye to his new fame and riches. Almost a tango in style, it slows down near the end as gentle strings and piano sway his mind back as Seymour reasons that without the Audrey II and the fame it brings his own Audrey might not love him, and the song ends on a somewhat confused crescendo.

Stubbs' piece-de-resistance then is “Mean green mother from outer space”, where he rocks and funks it out like there's no tomorrow, laughing in Seymour's face: ”I'm just a mean green mother/ From outer space/ And I'm bad!/ Just a mean green mother/ From outer space/ And it looks like/ You been had!” The climax both of the film and of the soundtrack, it rocks along and gets really frenetic near the end as the plant is destroyed --- great guitars and brass, excellent percussion and rollicking piano all mesh to make a fine almost-closer, but the last word is reserved for “Finale (Don't feed the plants)”, a rocker with great backing vocals, kind of a reprise of the opening theme which brings the curtain down really well.

Like most soundtracks, it helps if you've seen the movie, but even if you haven't, you can still enjoy this album on its own merits. There's some great music on it, some fine vocal performances, and hey! Levi Stubbs! I mean, come on: what are you waiting for?

TRACKLISTING

1. Prologue (Little shop of horrors)
2. Skid Row (Downtown)
3. Da-doo
4. Grow for me
5. Somewhere that's green
6. Some fun now
7. Dentist
8. Feed me
9. Suddenly Seymour
10. Suppertime
11. The meek shall inherit
12. Mean green mother from outer space
13. Finale (Don't feed the plants)

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Who doesn't like a bit of ABBA, from time to time? Here they are with one of the worm's favourites, this is “The winner takes it all”.

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Tuesday, November 29 2011
Transfiguration --- Virgin Steele --- from "The marriage of Heaven and Hell, Part II" on T&T
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Bad English --- Bad English --- 1989 (Epic)
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What do you get when you put together the likes of John Waite, Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon? Journey II? No, you get Bad English, a supergroup who released two albums in the late eighties, of which this was the self-titled debut. As you might expect, it's chock-full of power rockers, faultless playing, great songwriting and some lovely ballads.

Bad English really don't put a foot wrong, from explosive opener "Best of what I got" to low-key closer "Don't walk away", and in all, five hit singles were released from the album, which went double-platinum. Unlike some supergroups, who make it obvious that they're only getting together for the money, Bad English always feel like they're in it for the music, and there's no hint of either boredom, by-the-numbers playing or even one-upmanship.

I really can't fault this record. I bought it, not knowing who was involved, and I loved it. Standouts would be, for me, "Price of love", "When I see you smile", "Forget me not", "Ghost in your heart" --- ah, hell, just the whole album! If there are weak tracks, maybe (maybe) "Ready when you are", but even then it's a close-run thing.

Bad English? Great album!

TRACKLISTING

1. Best of what I got
2. Heaven is a four letter word
3. Possession
4. Forget me not
5. When I see you smile
6. Tough times don't last
7. Ghost in your heart
8. Price of love
9. Ready when you are
10. Lay down
11. The restless ones
12. Rockin' horse
13. Don't walk away

Tracy Chapman --- Tracy Chapman --- 1988 (Elektra)
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It's seldom that a debut album will receive seven Grammy nominations, three of which it actually wins, but that's how good Tracy Chapman's self-titled debut was when it was released. A real breath of fresh air, it's almost like Robert Cray got a sex change! The music is powerful and has a lot to say, the guitar work flawless, and the whole thing rather understated, despite the fanfare. Rather surprising in a way then that although she has since released another seven albums, Tracy has somewhat faded from the glare of the music spotlight, perhaps by choice. She has certainly been heavily involved with charities and social causes, and has built up a solid following of loyal fans, but the huge commercial success that the first single garnered for her has not been repeated.

Most of the album is quite sparse and low-key, and opener “Talkin' 'bout a revolution” is no exception. With acoustic guitar joined by organ, the song looks to the day when ”Poor people gonna rise up/ And take what's theirs”, and in some ways we've seen that recently --- over twenty-five years later, admittedly --- in the popular uprisings across the Middle East, as well as the Ninety-nine percent movement in the US. We're still a long way from world revolution though. It's a boppy enough opening, but with a serious message, like the next track, the hit single “Fast car”, carried on mostly single guitar and bass, the story of one woman trying to get out of the rut her life is in. It's a song about the problems many suffer: poverty, homelessness, unemployment and responsibility for others as she sings ”My old man's got a problem/ Lives with the bottle …/ Someone had to take care of him/ So I quit school and that's what I did.”

Despite the dreams and plans the woman has, she knows things will never change, and in the end she's forced to tell her boyfriend to sling his hook: ”Take your fast car/ And keep on drivin'.” “Across the lines” is another tale of trying to break out and make something of your life, rise above your social status, with a strong anti-apartheid message in the lyric: ”Across the lines/ Who would dare to go/ Under the bridge/ Over the tracks/ That separates whites from blacks?” A triumph of acapella singing, “Behind the wall” is under two minutes of domestic violence which ends in tragedy, decrying the inaction of the police and the result of such refusal to get involved in a domestic dispute.

Sadly, just about everyone knows the next track due to its being covered by Boyzone, but that doesn't stop “Baby can I hold you” from being a classic love song. With lovely acoustic guitar and lonely keyboards in the background, it's fragile, tense, frustrated and yearning, a sincere wish to heal the wounds, any way possible. Like just about every track on this album it's short, just over three minutes, and indeed there are only two tracks on the whole album that exceed the four-minute mark. Chapman does not need long, meandering, complicated songs to make her point and get her message across: every track is short, concise and hits the right note in exactly the right way.

“Mountains o' things” is very Caribbean influenced, dulcimer and kettle-drum-like percussion giving the whole thing a relaxed, lazy feel, bongos tapping out the rhythm as if the whole thing was recorded on some island paradise somewhere. I have to say, though, it's my least favourite track on the album, just does really nothing for me. Not mad about “She's got her ticket” either, a reggae styled track I feel is more filler than anything else, but things settle down again with “Why”, which asks the questions we all want answers to, backed by electric guitar and wailing keyboards: ”Why do babies starve/ When there's enough food to feed the world/ Why when there's so many of us/ Are there people still alone/ Why are the missiles called Peacekeepers/ When they're aimed to kill?”


“For my lover” is a country/folk-styled ballad, and then comes one of the other standouts on the album, “If not now...”, a tender, piano-driven semi-ballad, almost in Al Stewart territory, where Tracy declares sharply ”If not today/ Why give your promises?/ A love declared for days to come/ Is as good as none.” The album ends on the brittle “For you”, a very low-key and somewhat muddy ending to an album which, while not perfect and which has its flaws, is still an impressive debut.

TRACKLISTING

1. Talkin' 'bout a revolution
2. Fast car
3. Across the lines
4. Behind the wall
5. Baby can I hold you
6. Mountains o' things
7. She's got her ticket
8. Why
9. For my lover
10. If not now...
11. For you

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When he was younger the worm hated new romantic music (still does!) but even he has to admit there were a few good songs from that genre, and this is one of them...

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Wednesday, November 30 2011
Crow Jane --- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds --- from "Murder Ballads" on Mute
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Well, before the month closes I need to get some more new sections going, otherwise those sexy little NewsFoxes will be all over me … wait a minute...! ;)

Anyway, as promised by those sultry vixens in their first Journal News segment, here's the first of at least two new features. This is called “Epics”, if the graphic hadn't already made that clear, and as reported by Kate, it will be concerned with tracks which are long with a capital L. As a baseline, I'm trying not to include any tracks under seven minutes (though the odd one may slip through, if I feel it's worth breaking the unwritten rule for!) and really, anything after that is fair game. Don't expect to be able to whizz through these selections: they're all going to be long and need some time devoted to them.

As already hinted at, the nature of prog-rock does mean that this particular genre will feature fairly strongly here, but I'll be trying to get long songs from other types of music too. In fairness, I won't include classical, as they are covered on the “Get the Culture Bug” section, nor long instrumentals --- again, they have their own place --- but other than that, anything is fair game.

Going to start off with one from a metal band, Rainbow in the Ronnie James Dio era, a great track from “Rising”, clocking in at a respectable 8:13, this is “A light in the black”.


And now for a REALLY long one! This is IQ, with the opening track from the album “Tales from the lush attic”. The only way to get the full version though was to take a live performance, so here it is. The live version, like most of its sort, is in fact longer than the studio, the latter working out at 19:57 (yeah, I know!) and the live version comes in at a massive 22:08! Sorry the sound is not perfect, but that's what you risk with live recordings...


And THIS one is so long it had to be split into two YouTubes! This is Redemption, from their self-titled debut, a track that runs in total for 24:29, and it's called “Something wicked this way comes”.


Couldn't really have an Epics selection without Marillion, so here they are with their recognised epic, the studio version of which runs for 17:18, this is “Grendel”.


33:54. Did someone say thirty-three minutes fifty-four seconds?? Yeah, that's right. This is Salem Hill, with the closing opus from their album “Not everybody's gold”, this is “Sweet hope suite”.

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I know a few people have been waiting for this, and sorry for the delay, but these guides should not be rushed. Our third beginner's guide features the enigmatic and uncatergorisable
The Divine Comedy

Like a lot of other people I suspect, I first got into the Divine Comedy's music through being advised that he was “that bloke who wrote the Father Ted theme”, and then being handed “Casanova” by a friend. Suffice to say, having listened to it I was, as Mister Brittas remarked on occasion, impressed!

Formed in 1989 by Neil Hannon, the Divine Comedy is, essentially, him. It's his brainchild, he writes the lyrics and music, he's the face of the band and while members have come and gone and lineups shifted and moved, the one constant in all of this has been Neil Hannon, the driving and creative force behind possibly the coolest music that should never have been. On the face of it, the Divine Comedy should not work. It can't work. Classical fusing with chamber pop music, rock and blues and soul and dance and, well, just about anything else you can think of, really. Add to that an upper-class sense of lyrics, with high literature, mythology and history, and surely it has to be music you can only hate?

But it works, and works superbly well. The disparate elements of the music, which should surely tear each other apart like two planets caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole, instead somehow combine, sort out their differences and meld together to form music that is, really, wholly unique. Here, I can give you a taste of what the Divine Comedy is about, but really, you need to go to the restaurant and order for yourself, because this guide is bound to leave you hungry for more.

However, 'twas not always thus! The first inception of the band enjoyed poor record sales and absolutely no acclaim or interest when they released their first album, the now-deleted “Fanfare for the comic muse”, with a style very different to that which would later characterise the very essence of the Divine Comedy, and bring them the fame and recognition they so deserved.

Fanfare for the comic muse (1990)


As it's deleted, this is the only Divine Comedy album I don't own, and so I can't tell you much about it, other than it's apparently quite influenced by REM, was radically different to the direction Hannon took the band in afterwards, and that after this album, the original lineup split --- so I'm not going to bother naming them --- leaving Neil to reinvent the Divine Comedy for the launch of their second, but first proper, album. The only thing I can find on YouTube is the opening track, it's called “Ignorance is bliss”.


Liberation (1993)
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The real Divine Comedy emerged in 1993, and released the excellent “Liberation”, which I consider their debut, given that it changes the musical direction and creative ideas behind the band in a major way from the original debut. Although acclaimed, this album nevertheless failed to garner any commercial success for Hannon, and it was only his hardcore French fanbase that bought enough copies of the album to enable him to record his second album.

It's hard, really hard to choose just two tracks from this album: indeed, it's going to be hard to do that for ANY of the Divine Comedy albums, as it's rare or even unknown to come across a bad song by Hannon, but I decided when opening this section some months ago that I would restrict myself to two tracks per album, and so the decision must be made.

I'm going to leave out “Timewatching”, as it appears in another form on one of the Divine Comedy's later albums, and is, essentially, “When I fall in love”. Similarly, “The pop singer's fear of the pollen count” (how's that for a title?) was a single and in the charts, so probably reasonably well-known, and I want to get across here stuff newcomers to the music may not be familiar with. Oh, that only leaves, what, 11 tracks to choose from! Oh god! Right then, let's start off with the brilliant “Bernice bobs her hair”

and the equally excellent (superlatives are going to get so overused here!) “Queen of the south”. I actually had decided on “Europe by train”, but the only video I could find had such terrible audio it just would have been pointless.


Undeterred by commercial failure, Hannon went into the studio and recorded his second (all right, third!) album the following year, with mostly a whole new band, and the result was “Promenade”.

Promenade (1994)
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Again, it's a wonderful album, and again, the proles turned their noses up at it. Hey, back then, I probably was one of them, more interested in listening to Iron Maiden and shaking my rapidly-shortening hair than seeking out music of this quality! Anyhow, again it's a long album, another 13 tracks, this time it's based on a concept, of two people sharing one afternoon while in love. And again, it's hard to pick just two tracks, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

I want to go for “Tonight we fly”, but I have a feeling it was used in some commercial enterprise (an ad, or jingle, or promo, or suchlike) so I'm going to resist the temptation and instead go with the beautiful, haunting and ethereal “Neptune's daughter”

and the hilarious “A seafood song”, with hints coming through in the intro to what we would later hear on “Casanova”.

This was the first album to feature a man who would become a longtime collaborator, arranger and conductor with Hannon, Joby Talbot, who would feature on the next five albums and compose two songs with Neil.

1996 was the breakthrough year for Neil. Having written the theme music to TV series “Father Ted”, and later the hilarious “My lovely horse” for an episode of that series (and, I remain convinced, the song entered in that selfsame contest by Father Dick Byrne, but I can never get it either confirmed or titled!), he produced the stunning “Casanova”, which gave him his first hit singles.

Casanova (1996)
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Now, as there were singles off this, I'm going to ignore them in this guide. My favourite track on this is without doubt the closer, “The dogs and the horses”, but I've featured that at least twice in my journal already, so instead I'm going to go for “Middle class heroes”

and the frenetic, almost apopletically angry “Through a long and sleepless night”.

Note: the only version I could find of this is a live radio session. The album version is a little different.

A short album about love (1997)
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In 1997 Hannon released a sort of mini-album, something to keep fans going, as it were, till the release of his next full recording. This featured only 7 tracks, but yielded one of the Divine Comedy's biggest hit singles, “Everybody knows (except you)”. It also was the album on which 1993's “Timewatching” was resurrected from “Liberation” and re-recorded and mixed. These two tracks I will, therefore, you will probably have sussed by now, not be featuring. Instead, here's the dramatically powerful “Someone”

and the weird “If I were you (I'd be through with me)”


Fin de siecle (1998)
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The next full album didn't hit the shelves till the next year, and when “Fin de siecle” was released it gifted Neil another huge hit, in “National Express”. No, you won't be hearing it here, that's right. How about the Tom Waits-like “Sweden”?

And the tremendous “The certainty of chance”.


“Fin” marked a hiatus of three years before the Divine Comedy's next release, 2001's “Regeneration”.

Regeneration (2001)
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Three more singles were lifted from this album, so I'm featuring “Eye of the needle”

and also the acoustic triumph “Mastermind”.

“Regeneration”, as its name somewhat implies, is a return to the original stylings of Hannon's debut and now-deleted album, “Fanfare for the comic muse”. There's less orchestral and chamber music, and he uses a full band, giving his sound a different dimension while still retaining the unique character of his music. A step backward, two steps forward.

Absent friends (2004)
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Three years later and Neil had dispensed with the band, releasing his eighth album, “Absent friends” under the Divine Comedy name, but with just himself and Joby Talbot with some session musicians and guests. This album goes a little back to the “Fin de siecle” sound, and from it came two singles. I'm looking here at the almost bluegrass “My imaginary friend”

and the sad and haunting “The wreck of the Beautiful”.


Victory for the comic muse (2006)
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Neil Hannon has said that the title of this album has nothing to do with his ill-fated debut, but come on! They're virtually the same, with the replacement of one word. Either way, “Victory for the comic muse” goes back to the practice of using a full orchestra, and although it won the Irish Choice Music Prize, it contained no hits, though two tracks were chosen to be released as singles.

I haven't heard this album all the way through, so I'm guessing a little here, but I'll try “A lady of a certain age”

and any track called “Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World” has to be worth including!


Bang goes the knighthood (2010)
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The last, so far, album was released last year and I've only had the chance to listen to it the once up to now, but I already like the title track

and I love “When a man cries”. Not literally, you understand!
This album is already shaping up to be one of my favourite of his, and I see in it a return to the “Casanova” era, with much tighter songwriting, powerful yet understated performances and an economy of instrumentation.

There's little doubt that Neil Hannon, as the Divine Comedy, is a unique act, and there's no-one I can think of to compare him to. He's one of those artists that defies an answer to the question, well, what's their music like? You might as well try to describe how Tom Waits or Philip Glass sound. You can't; it's impossible to tell anyone what sort of music they play, as it just doesn't fit in with any of the normal conventions of music. You simply have to listen to the music to understand and appreciate it, and more than likely you'll love it unreservedly. Or hate it. But one thing is certain: it will definitely make an impression.

So, like I said at the beginning, this has been but a tiny taster of the delights available from the artiste known as the Divine Comedy. To really understand what he and his music is all about though, you need to experience it in full, so book yourself a table now and tuck in!

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Ooh yeah, it's a new month and we have the ultimate earworm today! Go on, try not to hum this to yourself --- you can't, can you? Just give in (or watch the video)...

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As December begins, with only twenty-three shopping days to Christmas, we thought we'd give you headbangers an early Xmas pressie. As mentioned on Journal News, here's the inaugural dance at the Devil's Ballroom!

Here you will find only the loudest and heaviest music. Many heavy metal bands are capable of writing really sensitive ballads and slow songs, but you won't find any of those here! If you can't shake your head to it, it ain't got a place here. Loud, fast (usually), hard and heavy is the name of the game in this section, which will be the largest selection we've ever attempted, usually thirty videos per session, with seven videos from our “featured artist”.

Along the way, we'll be doing our best to fill you in on who the bands are (in case you don't know them), what albums the music is from, and so on. The intention is to feature a good mix of old, classic, new and obscure bands, so that there's something here for everyone. The only unalterable criterion is that the band MUST be Heavy Metal, and recognised as such.

So drag on your raggiest jeans or try to squeeze into those old leather pants, let your hair down (any who have it, unlike me!) and turn your amp or headphones up to 10, cos this is gonna be LOUD!

The Devil's Ballroom: Inaugural Dance, December 1 2011: “If it's too loud you're too old. I SAID, if it's too LOUD...”

And to get things off to a rockin' start, here's Megadeth, who are of course the rival band formed by Dave Mustaine after he was kicked out of Metallica. This is from their contribution to the Black Sabbath tribute album “Nativity in black II”, and their version of Sabs' “Never say die”.


And if THAT didn't get you headbangin', how about something from the real deal? Here are Ozzy and the boys, back in '71, when they were arguably the heaviest band around. This is from “Master of reality”, a great album, and a powerhammer called “Children of the grave”.


Time for some new blood on the dancefloor! The Gate are a band from a country which has long been a bastion of metal, Germany, and which is also the native land of our featured artist, Helloween. But though they've been together since 2009, The Gate only released their debut album, “Earth cathedral”, last month. I'm working through it, but what I hear I like! This is a taster, called “Face your fear”.


Something from Anvil's new album “Juggernaut of justice”, this is “Not afraid”.


Time for the first track from our featured artist. Helloween are a metal band from Germany, who have been together for over twenty-five years now, and are still turning out class albums. They are seen as one of the pioneering influences on metal in Germany, along with bands like Scorpions, Accept and Kreator. They have had, to date, thirteen albums (not counting live and compilations), their most recent being last year's “7 sinners”. This is taken from their third album, released back in 1988, “Keeper of the seven keys part 2”, and one of their best-known songs, this is “I want out!”


Great stuff! More from Helloween later. But you couldn't really expect to have a Heavy Metal disco and NOT invite the Gods of Heavy Metal, now could you? So here they are...


One of my favourite metal bands around at the moment is these guys from Spain, who call themselves Cain's Dinasty. Dodgy spelling and lyrics apart, they sure know how to rock the house! Here they are with a track from their current album, “Madmen, witches and vampires”, this is “Devil may cry”.


Dragonforce get a hell of a slagging, and no-one seems to consider them proper metal. Not sure why, with tracks like this!


Time for another classic from another classic metal icon. This is Thin Lizzy, from the album “Chinatown”, and “Killer on the loose”. We miss ya, Phil!


One of the loudest bands to come out of the NWOBHM --- and that's saying something! --- this is Tank, from their album “Filth hounds of Hades”, with “Run like Hell”.


Time for some more from our featured artist, Helloween. This is taken from their most recent album, last year's “7 sinners”, and it's a question we all know the answer to: “Are you metal?”


Crossing over the Atlantic now, here's Kiss with the title track from their album “Creatures of the night”.


Personally, I loved Manowar for about the first two albums, then I thought they became a real joke, but there's no faulting their music. Title track from the album “Sons of Odin.”


Back over to this side of the pond now, for Germany's favourite sons, the Scorpions, with a belter of a track entitled “Speedy's coming”. Sadly, the Scorps are due to disband this year, but they've left us a hell of a lot of great metal to remember them by.


What happens when you get “Fast” Eddie Clarke from Motorhead together with Pete Way from UFO? Fastway, that's what. They released their debut album in 1983 and they're still going strong. This is from that album, self-titled, and it's “We become one”.


And speaking of Motorhead, here they are with the bombastic “Overkill”!


Back to our featured artist now, for another sampling of the delights served up for over a quarter of a century by Helloween. This is the song that they take their name from, or vice versa. Or something. Anyway, it's from their second album, “Keeper of the seven keys, part 1”, and it's called --- anyone?


Some classic metal now, from Budgie, this is taken from the album “Power supply”, great song called “Gunslinger”.


And from budgies to tigers, here are the Tygers of Pan-Tang, before they went all AOR. This is from their debut album “Wild cat”, featuring original vocalist Jess Cox, with “Suzie smiled”.


Time for another trip across the ocean, but this time it's the Pacific, as we travel all the way to the land of the rising sun, where Vow Wow were flying the flag for heavy metal in the eighties. This is “Rock me now”.


And staying in Japan, here's the shredder king himself, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, with a stormer of a track called “Far beyond the sun”.


Back to Hell(oween) we go, this time it's a track from our featured artist's album “Rabbit don't come easy”, and it's called “Back against the wall”.


On the anniversary of the sad death of the great Ronnie James Dio, here's a doubleplay from him, first with his own band, Dio, from their “Sacred heart” album, this is “Hungry for Heaven”.


And this is him with Rainbow, with the powerful “Kill the king”. RIP Ronnie.


How about something from Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society? This is “Concrete jungle”.


The blackest of black metal now, here's Venom!


Coming slap bang up to date now with Swedish metallers Coldspell, this is from their current album “Out from the cold” and it's called “Save our souls”.


I don't think anyone is likely to ever mess with Ted Nugent! Here he is with a rant against gun law, snarling “Kiss my Glock!” Gulp!


Let's have two tracks back-to-back from our featured artist now. First, here they are with a track from the album “The dark ride”, the hilarious “Mr. Torture”.


And now a track from 2007's “Gambling with the devil”, this is “Paint a new world”.


Back to the NWOBHM we go, for one of Diamond Head's best, this is “It's electric”.


Finland isn't normally a place you think of as shaking with heavy metal, but these guys are good! This is Excalion, from their second album “Waterlines”, and a track entitled “Ivory tower”.


Getting near time to wrap things up, guys, but we couldn't leave without something from the mighty Saxon! Here's one of their best, the thundering “Princess of the night”.


Just time for one or two more. Let's squeeze in Damn the Machine, from their self-titled, this is “The fall of order”.


Time for the last track from our featured artist, Helloween. This is from the album “Time of the oath”, released in 1996, and it's simply, and appropriately, entitled “Power”!


And we'll leave you with another German band, this is Avenger, from their album “Prayers of steel”, and “Rise of the creature”. Hope you enjoyed our first Devil's Ballroom, and haven't hurt your neck headbanging or wrecked your fingers playing air guitar! We'll be back with another selection after Christmas, with a new featured artist. Until then, keep rockin' and keep it metal!

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Thursday, December 1 2011
Still believe --- Lunatica --- from "Fables and dreams" on Frontiers
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Friday, December 2 2011
Dry lightning --- Bruce Springsteen --- from "The ghost of Tom Joad" on Columbia
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A song that became synonymous with the ad for Vodafone, this is the Dandy Warhols, and “Bohemian like you”, a song that made it cool to shout “Woooo!”

Bridge of spies --- T'Pau --- 1987 (Siren)
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How can you be a Star Trek fan and not like a band who take their name from one of the characters? So I was already leaning towards liking, or hoping to like T'Pau, and when I heard their debut single, “Heart and soul”, I knew that I was going to like them. Naturally, when their debut album was released I bought it, and though it's not perfect from start to finish, it's more than a worthy first effort, and I was impressed with the quality throughout.

It opens with the aforementioned “Heart and soul”, which you probably already know as it was a big hit single on both sides of the pond. It starts off with a chunky bass, nice keyboard and a sort of double-vocal, one low and kind of chanting which continues on a track independent of the main vocal, which comes in soon after, both taken by singer Carol Decker, and the song becomes a mid-paced rocker, very commercial, and not surprising that it was a hit, as it's very catchy and memorable. It leads into “I will be with you”, the first ballad on the album, with digital piano and nice guitars, the double-vocal not repeated again as Decker settles into “normal” singing.

She has a strong, distinctive voice, and it was both her voice and her image that characterised T'pau and allowed them to keep something of a stranglehold on the charts in the latter part of the eighties, gaining a total of five hit singles --- of which this was one --- from this album, an impressive feat. In my opinon a vastly inferior song to “Heart and soul”, it was third track “China in your hand” which made it to number one, and for which now T'Pau are best remembered. It's a good song, but it just doesn't strike a chord with me. The pizzicato-string keyboards, deep piano and mostly restrained guitar take, I feel, from the style of T'Pau's music, and though it's a cleverly constructed song and was their biggest hit, I just don't like it. Probably the only one who doesn't, but so it goes. Nice sax solo at the end, all right.

“Friends like these” is more uptempo, but to be honest doesn't restore the confidence engendered by the first two tracks, with its almost reggae/calypso beat, and “Sex talk” keeps up the fast rhythm for a real brass-driven rocker with some great keyboard arpeggios, and the guitarists Ronnie Rogers and Taj Wyzgowski get to finally let loose! Ooh yeah! The title track follows, and although there's only one real standout track for me, it being the opener, I must say this comes damn close.

In fact the longest track on the album (I know: here he goes again!) “Bridge of spies” is a great little tune, built on a perfect little guitar riff with some really impassioned singing from Decker, a great hook, pure AOR magic. Really impressive guitar solos from one, or other, or both, of the axemen. Drumbeats are very military-style, suits the melody very well. Nice false ending, a minute before the actual one, and a lovely instrumental ending that almost fades but instead ends abruptly and bursts into “Monkey house”. Now, I could have done without that. I thought the song was finishing well, and it was a bit jarring to have the sudden shout of “Oh yeah!” at the end, then rushing without a pause into the next track. Not how I would have preferred it.

For what it is, “Monkey house” is a good rocker, down and dirty as the band lets loose, with some inspired guitar work, and Carol at her most raunchy, but I still wouldn't consider it one of the better tracks on the album. That, however, cannot be said for the next one, the beautiful ballad “Valentine”, which firmly re-establishes T'Pau as a band of class and craft, and made a great single. With its gentle guitar intro and Carol's gentle, soulful voice this was always going to become a classic. The guitar gets unleashed further into the song, pulling off a sublime solo, and Decker's voice becomes stronger and more strident as the song proceeds.

“Thank you for goodbye” is another good one, halfway between a ballad and an uptempo rocker, with some very effective keyboards and again nice sax breaks, with a feel of Las Vegas nightclubs about it, somehow, and the album finishes strongly with “You give up”, a raunchy, boppy uptempo rocker with a keyboard riff that's right out of Springsteen's “Glory days” from “Born in the USA”. Naughty, naughty! Great closer though.

I say closer, but in fact it's not the final track, as there is a reprise of “China in your hand”, but it's barely worth mentioning, just fifty-two seconds of the sax outro from the track itself: why it's included I have no idea, and for me it takes from the strong closing of the album, and would have been better left off.

T'Pau never again reached the heights they scaled with their debut album. People got bored, forgot them, looked elsewhere. Times were changing, music was changing, and it was kind of hard to fit Carol Decker and her cohorts into any real pigeonhole, so people seem to have stopped trying, and in so doing, stopped caring. They released two more albums after this, but neither were very successful, and they split in 1988, which is a pity, as for a moment there, they shone like diamonds in the sun. But I guess in the end, the bridge of spies is something that can only be crossed once.

TRACKLISTING

1. Heart and soul
2. I will be with you
3. China in your hand
4. Friends like these
5. Sex talk
6. Bridge of spies
7. Monkey house
8. Valentine
9. Thank you for goodbye
10. You give up
11. China in your hand (reprise)

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Once again we're looking at an album that, while not quite the bottom of the barrel, doesn't rise to anywhere near the top either. The best that can be said is that it's all right, neither terrible nor brilliant, but in general leave you with a general overall sense of a shrug of the shoulders, an album which is unlikely to get played more than once all the way through, an album, in short, that left me feeling “meh...”

Love scenes --- Beverley Craven --- 1993 (Epic)
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The more disappointing considering her stunning debut three years previous, which gave her a huge hit single in “Promise me” and made people take notice of her. Possibly due to that, the ever-awkward second album syndrome, “Love scenes” is a big let-down. Hardly prolific, Craven has only released a total of five full albums in almost twenty years, and it would be six more years before her third was completed. A lot of this has to do with the birth of her children, and you can't blame any mother for taking time off to make sure she shares the golden years with her kids, but her music certainly seems to have suffered from the hiatus, and any hope she had of making it big soon disappeared. Music fans are a fickle and impatient lot, and you can't expect (most of) them to wait six years between albums --- even three is asking a lot, especially following a debut.

But I had enjoyed that self-titled first album a lot, even if much of it is somewhat indulgent and more than a little depressing. I thought a new star might have arisen on the horizon, and perhaps she would have shone a lot brighter and more powerfully had she followed up her debut more quickly, and with a stronger second album. As it is, what we have is a lot of rehash from the first, with some it has to be said pretty dire tracks, a lot of filler and one or two decent songs.

“Meh”, say I.

It opens, in fairness, with one of the better tracks, the title in fact. It's a nice guitar and string-driven semi-ballad with a good hint of bitterness in it, as Bev sings ”You're playing love scenes without me/ And she's got my role.” It's quite similar in pace and melody to her huge hit “Promise me”, and as this is one of the better tracks on the album, that's really not good. If you can't write new material without recycling your better songs, it's a bad start. Second track “Love is the light” is another ballad, though this time a full one. This is another shortcoming with Craven's material. She always risked her music being forced into the “easy listening” category (surely death for any emerging artist!) due to the overpreponderance of ballads on her albums --- her debut had five out of a total ten --- and the opening of the album does little to dispell this practice, despite a spirited guitar solo halfway through “Love is the light”.
The shining diamond on this album is the utterly amazing “Hope”, which unbelievably was not chosen for release as a single. A tender, touching, tragic ballad, it focusses not on love and men, but the wrongs in the world, the injustices and the crimes against humanity practiced on a daily basis, often closer to home than we would wish to admit. Opening lines ”The martyrs of democracy/ Are lying in the streets/ People with the power/ Will kill to keep the peace” lay down the marker right away, as a lonely but effective piano is slowly joined by slowly-building strings, as a sad bell of doom tolls in the background. The strings surge on the back of powerful drums as the song increases in intensity, and this is, without question, one of the finest songs ever written by Beverley Craven, indeed, one of the finest songs on democracy and human rights ever recorded, and it should be far better known than it is.

Unfortunately after that it's pretty much downhill for the rest of the album. “Look no further” is a pretty awful reggae-styled song in the vein of “You're not the first” from the debut, while “Mollie's song”, written for her daughter is touching but I prefer Phil Lynott's “Growing up”. Still, you can't really pick too much fault with an artiste when they write a song for their children, and it's not a bad song, but doesn't stand out: perhaps it's a little overindulgent, though as I say we'll allow her that indulgence. Hey, at least it isn't “Kathleen!” :)

The ballads continue with “In those days”, more acoustic piano and to be fair Craven has a lovely clear and almost spiritual voice, even if it does often stray into Judie Tzuke territory. There's a nice touch with the addition of what sounds like oileann pipes, and the song is a nice look back to her childhood, while digital piano abounds on “Feels like the first time” (not, sadly, a cover of the stomping Foreigner song!), a ballad that owes much of its melody to “Castle in the clouds” from her first album, and then she attempts --- rather unsuccessfully in my opinion --- to fuse reggae and rock stylings with a good slice of jazz on the first real uptempo number, “Blind faith”. It's a worthy effort, but I think she's trying to step too far away from what she's best at here, and it comes across as too earnest, a real “look at me, I can rock!” song. And sadly, no Bev, you can't, not really.

There's not much left to say really after that. Although far from perfect, “Blind faith” does come as a welcome break in the ballads, but then we're right back into weepy territory with “Lost without you”, and the album ends with an unlikely cover of ABBA's “The winner takes it all”. One of my favourite songs from them, I'll never forgive her for reggae-ing it up! It's strangely prophetic really, as this album really didn't win her any new fans, any hits or any continued success, and when she took a six-year break --- twice the length between her debut and this --- before her third album, the writing really was on the wall.

After a successful and impressive debut, Beverley made the decision to put her children before her career. You can't argue that kind of decision --- so often it's the other way around --- and paid the expected price. After the last strains of “Promise me” had faded into the background, people forgot her and although her last album was released in 2009, for most people she'll forever be classed as a one-hit wonder, proving the old adage that if you stand still, the world moves on without you.

TRACKLISTING

1. Love scenes
2. Love is the light
3. Hope
4. Look no further
5. Mollie's song
6. In those days
7. Feels like the first time
8. Blind faith
9. Lost without you
10. The winner takes it all

Recommended further listening: For a far superior album check out her debut “Beverley Craven”

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Saturday, December 3 2011


Stand --- Poison --- from "Native tongue" on Capitol
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For once, the worm and Stacey-Lynn have got together (urgh! Not like THAT, you sick sonofa...) and we're both featuring songs from Poison --- okay, so hers is a random choice, but when she told me she had turned up Brett and the boys, the worm thought sure why not?
So here they are again, and yah boo sucks to any Poison-haters, with their massive international hit, a real cowboy theme, of course it's “Every rose has its thorn”.

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Arrive alive --- Pallas --- 1981 (Cool King)
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(Note: this is not part of the review, so doesn't count towards the 200-word limit. Whaddya mean, cheater?)Here's where I reveal how old I am. When I bought this album originally it was on vinyl, and though the CD versions seem to have had a lot of extra tracks, they weren't on my copy, and as the initial impression I got of "Arrive alive" is what I want to recreate here, that's what I'm going to use.

I was disappointed with the opener and title track, the only track not recorded live, and "Heart attack", which seems to have disappeared from the later CD releases, was similarly unimpressive. But then...

"Queen of the deep" is a prog masterpiece, with many changes along the way, excellent keyboard work from Ronnie Brown, as well as frenetic guitar from Niall Mathewson. "Crown of thorns" is a painfully lovely ballad, which speeds up at the end to some amazing synth work, but the standout is reserved for last, with the fractured history of a serial killer in a song that has since become a fan favourite.

"The Ripper" starts with disjointed piano and a childlike vocal, then roars into life as the eponymous killer goes on his spree, guitars screaming like his victims, and ends as it began, nursery-rhyme style piano with a chilling maniacal laugh from frontman Euan Lowson against a backdrop of discordant keyboard from Brown. It's also the longest track, at almost fifteen minutes. Pure brilliance.

Between these three, they make "Arrive alive" a triumph, rather than the damp squib promised by the two opening tracks. Glad I perservered, but better opening tracks would have ensured top marks.

TRACKLISTING

1. Arrive alive
2. Heart attack
3. Queen of the deep
4. Crown of thorns
5. The Ripper

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Let's have one more poke at the Eurovision before the year ends. Come on, it's Christmas! Well, nearly...

Coming right up to date with this one, just to prove that Eurovison hasn't improved with the passage of time, here we have Ukraine's entry for 2009, a lady who thinks she's Cher, Madonna, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga all rolled into one unholy entity, with a song so bad even Rhianna might (might!) turn it down were it to be offered to her for her next album, “Making money with my body, Vol IX”!

I guess you'd have to say they're only relatively recent entrants to the contest, as they only achieved their independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and they obviously wanted to make a splash. Well, they certainly did that. If theatre was one of the criteria for the Eurovision (it isn't?) then this performance would have gone a long way towards gaining the former Soviet republic their first victory. Oh, sorry, their second. Apparently they won in 2004, the second year they entered. Well, sue me. I'm not a fan of Eurovision, just a fan of making fun of it!

Mind you, she can play the drums pretty well, can't she? And at least she looks sexy! Don't quite know what's going on with those dancers dressed as Roman soldiers, though. Still, gotta envy that guy at 2:06!

Anyhow, this is their entry for the 2009 contest. It came twelfth, but at least it's in English!

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2009 --- Ukraine --- “Be my valentine! (Anti-crisis girl)” by Svetlana Lobada