Continental drift
Russian Red Fuerteventura Sony Music
IF the Swedes are anything to go by, there’s something about foreign accents that just works wonders with a simple pop tune.
Involving more nations than a spy thriller, the Spanish singer-songwriter Lourdes Hernández performs in English under the moniker Russian Red. Her sophomore album
Fuerteventura takes its name from a sunny island in the Canaries.
More Lykke Li than Abba, Hernández offers ditties that favour sunshine pop over melodrama, though she does indulge in the occasional bout of melancholy, like on the piano ballad The Memory is Cruel. Recorded in Glasgow and produced by Tony Doogan (of Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai fame), Fuerteventura features 12 carefully crafted songs.
The new album is a definite improvement from the Madrid-based singer’s 2008 debut I Love Your Glasses, showing more consistent style in her singing even if her arrangements vary (rather refreshingly) song to song, giving the album a sense of cohesion despite the wide range of genres explored.
Some of the standout songs include the perky The Sun The Trees, title track Fuerteventura, and 1960s pop shout-out January 14.
The international edition also includes an updated version of her previous hit Cigarettes, aptly names Cigarettes Revisited, that was previously available as a bonus track only on the vinyl-version. For the intrepid Russian Red fan, this singer-songwriter also plays the Mosaic Festival in Singapore next month. Ferns Fairweather Friends facebook.com/fernsband AFTER neurotically lining up every guitar twang, every drum beat perfectly on its debut On Botany, Malaysian indie pop band Ferns attempted to rush out a carefree second album, perhaps to ride on the wave of acclaim of its first outing.
Four years later, the group may have failed on the “rushing out” bit, but it still managed to make this labour of love sound effortlessly carefree.
The band’s sophomore Fairweather Friends is based (loosely) on the theme of weather, features the occasional weather related lyric or song title. In the same way local weather only has the two extremes of rain and shine, but a thousand minute differences between the two, Ferns explores degrees between happiness and depression, all the while maintaining an upbeat twee sound.
In the band’s best moments, Ferns blends the two so perfectly, listeners are left wondering “should I cheer these guys up or be jealous of them?”
“This is a love song, just a silly little song, shouldn’t take too long,” warbles leadman Warren Chan, in the very short A Funny Feelin, which kind of applies to the album that runs just under 35 minutes.
This self-funded effort is also unique with some songs being recorded live years ago, while more recent songs like Sad Sack and Hey Okay enjoyed studio treatment and the maturity of four more years of being a band. Not to worry though, the entirety of the album shares the same happy-sweet-gooey DNA that may just rot your teeth with too many listens. Various Artistes True Blood: Original TV Soundtrack Volume 3 Sony Music GETTING all the vampire puns out of the way: this album does not suck, it does have bite, and like the hit TV series it is based on, combines dark and sexy with Louisiana blues.
After earning Grammy awards for the album’s predecessors, music supervisor Gary Calamar returns to the helmof this third outing, which features songs from season three and four of True Blood.
Highlights of the album mostly come in the form of covers, including the album opener Season of The Witch by former model (and Jack White’s ex-wife) Karen Elson and Donovan while The Zombies’ classic She’s Not There is made specially for the soundtrack by flamehaired country gal Neko Case and creepy Australian Nick Cave.
Surprisingly good too is What You Do To Me by blues and rap collective Blackroc, the only rap song, surrounded by almost uniform femme rock by the likes of PJ Harvey ( Hitting The Ground), Cary Ann Hearst ( Hell’s Bells) and Siouxsie & The Banshees ( Spellbound).
The True Blood theme song, Bad Thing by Jace Everett makes another appearance for the die hard fans. Then again, if you were a die hard fan, you’d already have it from the first album.