Jonathan Hill

A Soapbox for Uninformed Opinions

Mar
17

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SPY What the Future Holds Review

Category: Music Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

Artist: SPY
Album: What the Future Holds
Genre(s): Electronic
Subgenres(s): Drum and Bass, Liquid Funk
Released: 2012
Length: 73 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Hospital Records

Track List:

01. You
02. Analogue Dreams (feat. Diane Charlemagne)
03. Back Again
04. Love Hurts
05. Infiltrate
06. See the Light (feat. Diane Charlemagne)
07. What the Future Holds (feat. Ian Shaw)
08. Surge
09. Hammer in My Heart (feat. Diane Charlemagne)
10. Nightcall
11. Bass Terror
12. Adrift
13. Kiss the Sky

SPY What The Future Holds Cover

SPY What the Future Holds Review

SPY (or S.P.Y.) is the alias of Carlos Lima, a Brazilian born, London based musician who released his first full length album, What the Future Holds, in 2012 through Hospital Records after issuing a number of EPs dating back to 2006. He focuses largely on the liquid funk branch of drum and bass and combines a heavy dose of ambiance mixed with loud, repetitive percussion to keep the songs moving forward.

He expands on his sound to create the standout crossover song Love Hurts, which has slow jazz piano chords playing with a subtle double bass and jazz drumming that is at times washed out by the overlain drum and bass percussion. While the jazz portion of the song is a slightly sped up sample of My Precious Thing by Llorca, the only other obvious samples that exist on the album are the distorted spoken word dialogue on Surge that has been lifted from the Remedy Entertainment video game Max Payne and a telephone being dialled and ringing on Kiss the Sky.

More notably, the title track has a live performance of an oboe, bassoon and flute performed by Emily Johnston, Harry Ventham and Gemma Hawkins respectively, which are used to create a cinematic quality within the song and departs entirely from the drum and bass sound for roughly half of its length.

Diane Charlemagne creates some memorable vocal performances on Analogue Dreams, See the Light and Hammer in My Heart, helping to distinguish the songs on the instrumentally lead album. Vocalist Ian Shaw features on the title track but unfortunately, like the jazz drumming on Love Hurts, he has to compete with the percussion to be heard clearly during his performance. Minor edited background vocals are also present on Bass Terror and Adrift but don’t have the same presence as the other performances.

Unfortunately, What the Future Holds loses steam about 3/4 of the way into the album. This is partially due to most of the songs keeping a similar pace throughout, but mainly because SPY fails to justify the excessive length of the album, as there isn’t always enough material to flesh the songs out for as long as they are while keeping the listener engaged. If the CD edition was cut back to the length on the vinyl release (songs 1 to 8, making it 46 minutes long) then the condensed time would have greatly improve the listening experience.

External Links:

SPY Homepage
SPY on Discogs | What the Future Holds on Discogs

Mar
10

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Dropkick Murphys Signed and Sealed in Blood Review

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Artist: Dropkick Murphys
Album: Signed and Sealed in Blood
Genre(s): Folk, Rock
Subgenres(s): Folk Rock, Hardcore Punk, Punk Rock
Released: 2013
Length: 41 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Born & Bred Records

Track List:

01. The Boys Are Back
02. Prisoner’s Song
03. Rose Tattoo
04. Burn
05. Jimmy Collins Wake
06. The Seasons Upon Us
07. The Battle Rages On
08. Don’t Tear Us Apart
09. My Hero
10. Out on the Town
11. Out of Our Heads
12. End of the Night

Dropkick Murphys Signed and Sealed in Blood Cover

Dropkick Murphys Signed and Sealed in Blood Review

Signed and Sealed in Blood is the Dropkick Murphys 8th album overall and if you’re familiar with their previous output then you’ll already have a rough idea of what you’re in for. But for those not in the know, the septet mixes bagpipes, acoustic guitars, whistles and accordions among other instruments with the standard punk rock format of guitar, bass and drums to forge an unforgettable and explosive listening experience.

Sonically, the majority of the songs are still firmly rooted in the folk punk style that they have become known for, but this time around there seems to be a stronger emphasis on creating the most glorious gang shouts and infectious hooks possible. The album features a few folk-centric songs that bring the folk instrumentation to the centre of the stage and Out on the Town even allows for a chirpy whistling break mid-song. All of this makes for a subtle, yet noticeable change in composition that allows the band to retain their trademark attitude and personality, all while branching out enough to keep their well-defined style fresh and interesting.

The vocals are clearly sung, spluttered, shouted, bellowed and chanted by 6 of the 7 band members over the course of the album. Lyrics tend to revolve around drinking, celebrating, unity and situations in life as told through fictional characters. The best example of this is in The Seasons Upon Us, a sarcastic caricature of a dysfunctional family that recounts their miserable annual Christmas gathering and is guaranteed to leave you grinning. It’s worth noting that while being a Christmas song, albeit unconventional, the way in which the lyrics are written make it timeless so that it can enjoy at any time of the year and not just when the Christmas season comes around.

The band tones back the cacophony on occasion but they rarely slow down the tempo significantly. The exception to this trend is End of the Night, a somewhat sombre sounding song that lets the listener know that the album is coming to its end. It features a rare appearance of the piano, not the most commonly used instrument in their arsenal, which is also used on Don’t Tear Us Apart to create a memorable opening and makes another small appearance later during the bridge.

Signed and Sealed in Blood is packed full of memorable choruses, catchy hooks and a passionate, energetic performance that blends 2 distinct genres, several singing styles and a variety of instruments into just over 40 minutes, which prevents it from overstaying its welcome. It will keep you coming back for more listen after listen and because of this, it could already be on its way to becoming one of the best albums of 2013.

External Links:

Dropkick Murphys Homepage
Dropkick Murphys on Wikipedia | Signed and Sealed in Blood on Wikipedia
Dropkick Murphys on Discogs | Signed and Sealed in Blood on Discogs

Mar
3

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The Darkness Permission to Land Review

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Artist: The Darkness
Album: Permission to Land
Genre(s): Rock
Subgenres(s): Hard Rock
Released: 2003
Length: 38 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Atlantic

Track List:

01. Black Shuck
02. Get Your Hands off My Woman
03. Growing on Me
04. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
05. Love is Only a Feeling
06. Givin’ Up
07. Stuck in a Rut
08. Friday Night
09. Love on the Rocks No Ice
10. Holding My Own

Darkness Permission to Land Cover

The Darkness Permission to Land Review

Permission to Land is the over the top debut album by The Darkness that features the flag song and lead single I Believe in a Thing Called Love that they quickly and deservingly became known for. The album throws back to the hard rock sound of the 70’s and 80’s, while overflowing with memorable guitar riffs and solos, audible bass (somewhat of a rarity in rock music), and the outrageous vocal talents of Justin Hawkins. The drums, while not getting as much of the spotlight, provide a solid backing to each song and have a more noticeable presence in the power ballads and during the bridges and breaks of the louder songs.

In addition to standard rock instrumentation, there are some incredibly brief and overly subtle uses of a keyboard on Get Your Hands Off My Woman and Holding My Own, a barely audible piano in Friday Night (which also features a low, quiet purring noise) and an acoustic guitar that shimmers on Love is Only a Feeling.

Hawkins’ voice stays firmly in the falsetto range for the majority of the album and isn’t afraid to flex his vocal cords to show off his abilities. There are some offbeat moments as well, such as on the albums opener, Black Shuck, in which he alternates between high notes most women couldn’t reach and a snarling tone before jumping back into the style that he has become known for. He later performs a 10 second shriek-slash-gargling noise that sounds like it came straight from the bowels of Hell itself.

His voice is pushed right to the limits on Stuck in a Rut (listen from the 2.40 marker) and the lyrics throughout this song (and sometimes others) become incomprehensible amidst his ear piercing performances. In between all of this, he somehow manages to find time to break off to perform a manic laugh that makes you think he’s fallen right out of his tree.

As you can judge from some of the song titles alone, lyrical themes revolve largely around love, making love, women, a mythical creature on Black Shuck and probably the most, if not only, upbeat song about using heroin I’ve ever heard (Givin’ Up).

With all the catchy, sing along moments and guitar solos combined with the fun loving, lively approach to both composition and performance, this is easily everything you’d want to hear on a rock album and doesn’t fail to deliver on anything.

External Links:

The Darkness Homepage
The Darkness on Wikipedia | Permission to Land on Wikipedia
The Darkness on Discogs | Permission to Land on Discogs

Feb
24

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Andrew WK I Get Wet Review

Category: Music Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

Artist: Andrew WK
Album: I Get Wet
Genre(s): Rock
Subgenres(s): Hard Rock
Released: 2001
Length: 35 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Island

Track List:

01. It’s Time to Party
02. Party Hard
03. Girls Own Love
04. Ready to Die
05. Take it Off
06. I Love NYC
07. She is Beautiful
08. Party Til You Puke
09. Fun Night
10. Got to Do It
11. I Get Wet
12. Don’t Stop Living in the Red

Andrew WK I Get Wet Cover

Andrew WK I Get Wet Review

I Get Wet is a short collection of non-stop, hyperactive party anthems by an extreme extrovert named Andrew WK, who draws stylistically from 80’s hard rock and the glam rock scene while fusing it with the speed and simplicity of punk rock. The average length of each song isn’t much over 3 minutes and most of them barely take a moment to slow down.

The music is dominated by the guitar and has keyboard and piano lines playing alongside it with thumping hard rock drums not far behind, whereas the bass is pushed underneath all of this and you’ll have to listen intensely if you want even a small chance of hearing it. The album is accompanied by an overly sleek production style where everything is loud, fast and repetitive, leaving little space for variation. This might sound negative but when put into practice it has a surprisingly positive outcome, although it’s worth noting that this could have just as easily been the downfall of the album.

Most of the lyrics are straight forward and are presented largely in the form of mantras and shout along anthems, all of which will get firmly lodged in your head for weeks after listening to them. Themes strongly revolve around partying to your last breath, women (Girls Own Love and She is Beautiful), motivation (Got to Do It and Don’t Stop Living in the Red) and more partying.

There are two oddities that break away from the established formula for the lyrics. The first is about killing people in Ready to Die and the other is I Get Wet, which seems to have been written from a woman’s perspective but is barked non-stop almost entirely by Andrew WK for the duration of the song and you can’t possibly keep count of many times the title line is repeated. It does feature female vocals for the last part of the song, which are probably there to break up the snarling and yelling voices momentarily.

At the end of the day I Get Wet is a big, loud, straight forward, over the top party album that lacks any form of subtlety where you don’t need to engage your brain but you will get hours of fun out of it so long as your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek.

External Links:

Andrew WK Homepage
Andrew WK on Wikipedia | I Get Wet on Wikipedia
Andrew WK on Discogs | I Get Wet on Discogs

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