THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES

Sgt Pepper’s Anniversary Deluxe Edition TheBeatles

It was 50 years ago... this week when, in terms of culture, the Earth shifted on its axis and Sgt Pepper’s was released. ‘The most important album of all time’ was influenced by The Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds, which itself was influenced by The Beatles’ Revolver. Here, Giles (son of George) Martin has done an exemplary job taking the original tapes and utilising 21st-Century technology to polish up an already glistening gem. However, if it is not heretical to say so, I prefer Revolver.

Trust The Wire The Coronas

The Dublin quartet were filling arenas here before signing to a major label for their last album The Long Way. The attempt to break them internationally failed so they’ve reverted to Irish independence. Their fifth album is a familiar-sounding set of radio-friendly songs that will please existing fans but is unlikely to attract many new ones. We Couldn’t Fake It opens proceedings at a slow to medium pace that sets the tone for what follows. The Coronas are caught between soft rock and a hard place and now seem content to stay there.

Is This the Life We Really Want? Roger Waters (Columbia)

Pink Floyd’s creative genius warned us on his last solo album, 1992’s Amused To Death, of the dangers of the over-arching influence of the media, military and megalomaniacs. Now, 25 years later, he is not so much saying ‘I told you so’ as shouting at us from the brink. Samples of speaking clocks, shipping forecasts, radio and TV broadcasts are not so much evocations of a more innocent past, rather markers of where we ceded trust to unseen authority which comfortably hummed us into acquiescence.