Short Update…

Hi, I’ve just added a few more album reviews I’ve written in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been very busy of late hence my lack of blogging, I suppose I’m also still getting used to it.
How’s life? I had a lovely email from a former Music First programme listener the other day saying I was the modern day John Peel!!! REALLY?? Made me feel even worse for ending the BFBS show now!!!

FOALS – Holy Fire

Hi, 

I’ve been listening to the new FOALS album Holy Fire a lot this week and the good news is that it’s heading for the No.1 UK album posit this weekend according to the chart update midweek sales figures. But either way you should get it because it’s just as good if not slightly better than their last album.

We had a member of the royal family at work yesterday, Prince Andrew was in the Music Dept and we talked about the Brooklyn indie shoegaze music scene at length!! I’ve attached a photo, haha. In reality we didn’t talk about what music he likes cause I had just 1 minute to tell him how I choose and run a music dept for 3 radio stations.

It’s The BRITS next week, on Wednesday, I was invited to go and watch it at The BBC Club in London but as the artist for the showcase on before is now ill nobody is going, which is a shame. Looks like I’ll be watching it on TV like everyone else.

That’s about it for another week, hope you’re well and enjoying my album reviews.

Cheers, Frank

Album Review: Silversun Pickups – Neck Of The Woods

Silversun Pickups are Californian alternative rock with a capital ‘C’. Carnavas was the debut album back in 2006 and two songs spring to mind whenever that fabulous album is mentioned, Lazy Eye and Future Foe Scenarios. Lazy Eye is still hugely popular, even 6 years later for the unknown at the time band and it’s also played on many US alternative radio stations to date. The song Future Foe Scenarios, I got for free when leaving Meadow Bank stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland in August 2007, after seeing Foo Fighters, supported by Nine Inch Nails and yes, you’ve guessed it Silversun Pickups. That UK support slot is even documented in history by the band. I didn’t realize it at the time but it was lead singer Brian Aubert himself who handed me that cd single.

2009’s second album by Silversun Pickups was, in the most part, a lot louder. A number 7 in the Billboard album chart proved that the band had made their mark on the music buying public in the USA. Panic Switch was the smash hit from the album, after achieving a number 1 in the Billboard Alternative Chart.

Silversun Pickups are about buzzy vocals and edgy harmony between Brian and Nikki (she is absolute key in this band), pulsing and wailing guitars, build-up in abundance, waiting, floating, almost fading out, progressive and almost painful at times drums and a very unique infectious sound. They are quite simply stunning.

Neck Of The Woods is that it’s all too samey. It may be wonderful but the songs could have been from either of the first two albums because nothing has changed on album number 3. The standout by a mile song is Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings) with its very cool and inviting intro slowly enticing you to stay in the song. It’s the perfect blend of the 2 distinctive SIlversun Pickups styles, beat-driven mellow and beat-driven noise. Simmer and The Pit both show the band have matured, in particular during the choruses and are two tracks better listened to cranked up loud. Bizarrely the surprise of the album is track 5, Here We Are (Chancer), there’s something about the electronica of the song, so simple and naked yet sensitive and dark in the process.

Silversun Pickups will never emulate their debut album. It’s evolved into a sublime masterpiece, it’s almost as if they were placed on this planet to chance alt-rock forever. Album number one, Carnavas, may well be outsold by albums to come but success isn’t everything, bringing a unique sound like this to the industry table, will forever prove to be far more important.

Please don’t get me wrong, Neck Of The Woods is a beauty of an album if you’re already a Silversun Pickups fan but if not then you ‘must’ start with their first album, before you even consider buying album number 3.

I can guarantee that the more you listen to this band the more you’ll want to play them over and over again, they are cool with a capital ‘C’.

7.8/10

 

Album Review: Muse – The 2nd Law

It’s just 2 whole days short of 13 years since British progressive rock band Muse released their debut album Showbiz back in 1999. At that time the music industry and the band Muse had a totally different feel and sound and many critics said they initially sounded far too similar to, the then riding high in their career, Radiohead. Then again that might in part due to both bands sharing the same inspirational producer in John Leckie. The late 90’s were a time when Radiohead were about to embark on their experimental phase, a little like Muse are now but we’ll get to that later, when this rocky, talented and inspirational new band called Muse rolled up onto the British music scene, almost filling the Abindon in Oxfordshire bands shoes, if not their 2 sizes too small sandals initially for the first album but it was all very promising.

Muse entered the British album charts with their debut album Showbiz on October the 4^th 1999 at number 29, while Radiohead had just shifted almost 5 million copies of their, top 10 in 9 countries, third album OK Computer. For Muse the success would build gradually but then they had already been together for 8 years, in which time they had toured extensively, won local battle of the bands competitions, released their Muscle Museum EP and worked hard to create a whole new British fanbase and music scene.

In 2001, after the release of Muse’s second album Origin of Symmetry, the band had a coming together with Celine Dion over the name of their band conflicting with the name she wished to call her Las Vegas show. She offered them $50,000 for the rights to the name but they turned it down, they didn’t want to be known as Celine Dion’s backing band for the rest of their as yet unknown future career. Celine was eventually forced to back off, as the band wouldn’t shift and the money didn’t interest them in the slightest bit either.

The 2^nd Law is the 6^th studio album from the Teignmouth in Devon, England band Muse. It’s just less than 3 years in the making and is the follow up to the hugely successful The Resistance album, their most successful album to date. The Resistance was also the first time we were to hear Muse sounding oh so similar to Queen, a style they have developed even further on this brand new album. That’s the problem for me, gone is the new and cool sound, constantly and progressively challenging the boundaries of musical reality and instead we’ve been left with a tepid fuzzy warm feeling, as if too much has been smoothed over so to help please the majority. They have lost their edge and all that remains is a band trying to create a new sound without utilising even the ashes of former album incarnations.

Muse have openly said that they have drawn a line under their former selves, that band sound has changed, I’m sure they think for the better but I couldn’t disagree more. What they have done to us hardcore fans is exactly what Radiohead did but only from their 4^th album, at least you could say that Muse waited until the 6^th album to take an abrupt and uncharacteristic change in musical direction.

I’m sure the brand new 6^th album, The 2^nd Law, will sell but to be honest even if they went ‘country music’ on us it would still shift stock like nobody’s business, simply because they are Muse and have amassed a huge worldwide fanbase.

Give me one of the older albums any day; like their excellent 2001 Origin of Symmetry which included an amazing cover version of ‘Feeling Good’, the song which was originally a huge hit for Nina Simone in 1965; or their 2006 album Black Holes and Revelations which became the album that the USA audience picked up on for the first time, that album alone sold over 4 million copies.

You could say the The 2^nd Law is a kind of second coming or second incarnation of Muse but by totally alienating their fanbase of the last 13 years I really have to wonder what their expectations are. Yes, there will be a worldwide tour and if you haven’t seen them live yet, yes you absolutely must go because they are fabulous showmen live but if I hadn’t got The 2^nd Law from the record company (for free) I honestly wouldn’t have bothered buying it.

I never thought I’d say this about a Muse album but  sad 4/10 and that’s being generous.

 

Album review: Led Zeppelin – Celebration Day

If you were one of the 20 million Led Zeppelin fans who applied for a ticket to their O2 concert back in 2007 and missed out then now’s your opportunity to experience it all for yourself. Celebration Day has been 5 years in the making, since the concert at London’s O2 Arena, on 10^th December 2007. Now, not only is there the recorded concert on CD but it’s also been imortalised on film.

This is a total celebration and one of the greatest musical reunions ever, but why did it take the death of the Atlantic Records founder to make rock legends Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and the late John Bonham’s son Jason pay tribute, by reuniting one last time for this gig, to their friend Ahmet Ertegun?

Throughout their illustrious Led Zeppelin have sold over 300 million records worldwide, 111.5 million of them in the USA alone. A ticketing world record was also set for ‘the highest in demand tickets ever’ for one concert, when 20 million people applied for tickets to see this what would seem to be the final every coming together of Led Zeppelin. It makes me wonder why, if so many people wanted to see the band, they didn’t perform for 20 nights in a row, or tour the world one last time, or just anything to captalise on the immense popularity of a Led Zeppelin reunion, regardless of whether or not there was any new material.

Celebration Day is available via Atlantic/Swan Song Records as a double CD, CD/DVD, Blu-Ray audio and DVD, vinyl and digital download, so there are no excuses.

This is a band playing what was expected of them, the classic renditions of Led Zeppelin tracks are featured but in a slightly more stripped and thinner sounding format and there’s not a single drum solo in sight, although the untrained ear would be hard pushed to spot the difference between Jason and his late dad John Bonham.

These quotes from the band members not only go to prove just how special the show was for the fans but how much it meant physically and emotionally to the band also:

John Paul Jones, “As soon as we got together at the first rehearsal to explore the possibility of whether we could still play together and be as powerful and exciting as we once were, the answer was blindingly obvious. The energy and the chemistry was absolutely still there. The show itself felt like the first night of a tour. We wanted to keep everything simple and real, to let the power of the music speak for itself.”

Jimmy Page, “The first step was to get into a rehearsal room with Jason and kick it off. We managed to continue with the rehearsals over the next few months, subject to everyone’s availability, shaping the set, building confidence and reconnecting the Zeppelin synchronicity. There was a lot to live up to, but the preparation and passion was undeniable. We were ready!”

Robert Plant, “Why? For me… to do justice to meaning and expectation. It was a big ‘ask’. Anticipation and hype are not sensitive bed-fellowers. House lights on – no place to hide.”

Jason Bonham, “The moment was seconds away and I still couldn’t swallow. It’s time. I raise my sticks and count us off into ‘Good Times Bad Times’, this really is the greatest day of my life!! I thought I didn’t want it to stop. I felt a certain closeness to dad.. like he was there with us and he was one with me. I fill up with emotion and use it as a fuel to deliver the drum break ending we all know so well in ‘Rock and Roll’. We take a bow and smiles are all around me. I slowly walk to the dressing room where I collapse and burst into tears.”

If you’re new to Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day is a wonderful place to start this musical journey into classic British rock but if like so many fans you already have every album from the back catalogue but couldn’t get a ticket to this gig, then this is another ‘must have’ for your collection.

8/10

 

Music Last!

…how strange, I’m at home in Buckinghamshire listening to my pre-recorded last ever BFBS Music First show, on DAB Digital Radio in the UK.

It’s been a great last 4 years bringing all the brand new indie and alternative music to you via BFBS.

I’ve been presenting on BFBS for the last 21 years, since I first started at Bielefeld, Germany and from tomorrow on I’ll no longer be on the radio, which will be very strange. Our radio station has some very big changes ahead and hopefully you’ll like what we’re doing but with those changes come things you may not like at first but I think that it won’t be long before we all get used to them.

Watch this space is what I’m saying, once 2013 is over and this time next year we’re in a whole new scenario, I just might start where we left off … albeit with an 11 month gap!!

I’m hoping this blog will go some way to fill the 2 hour Music First void, I’m not sure if you’ll agree or not, I’m hoping to get song links and videos etc onto here also .. but give me time on that one.

What I like about wordpress is that it reminds me of MySpace of old, do you see what I mean?

Stay in touch.

Cheers, Frank