ALBUM REVIEWS
Kylie Minogue – Tension
The 16th studio album from Kylie Minogue reveals why the Australian hitmaker has had a number one UK record in five consecutive decades and is the master of reinvention. Tension is not just another pop music oeuvre from the 55-year-old singer-songwriter but commits itself to embrace earnest disco-influenced-styles of Robyn and Dua Lipa through dancefloor tracks and joyful electro songs as well as not forgetting Minogue’s past. Padam Padam, a viral earworm that has already entered the lexicon, sets the 11-track record off with its hypnotic beat before Hold On To Now and Things We Do For Love soar with more emotional flourishes. Vegas High paints a nod to her upcoming first residency in the Nevada city while Hands goes into an unexpected rap direction.
Teenage Fanclub – Nothings Lasts Forever Review by Matthew George
Teenage Fanclub return with an album full of shimmering melodies, jangling guitars and more hooks than a fishing shop. More than three decades in and on their 13th studio album it’s hardly fair to expect them to reinvent the wheel, but when it rolls this smoothly, who’d want them to? Song titles include Back To The Light, I Left A Light On and See The Light
– along with Falling Into The Sun – as the quintet try to find a path through the darkness. Songwriters Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley work separately but found themselves mining similar seams, with their trademark melancholy swathed in glorious harmonies. Several of the songs have saxophone played by Stephen Black, who as Sweet Baboo supports the band on their November UK tour.
Liz Hanks – Land Review by Duncan Seaman
Cellist Liz Hanks has amassed quite a CV since arriving on the Sheffield music scene the 1990s. A regular performer with Richard Hawley and Thea Gilmore, she has also worked with Self Esteem and Paul Heaton as well as the folk artists Martin Simpson, Kate Rusby and Jon Boden, and become a member of Frame Ensemble, a silent film improvisation group that performs throughout the UK. Latterly she’s been touring with the Leeds sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun and Indian classical-style drones are noticeable in her album Land, alongside her fondness for minimalism, folk music and improvisation. A beautiful, meditative work, it gracefully explores both the loss of nature in the urban environment and forgotten natural worlds, whilst celebrating the green spaces that remain in her adopted home city.
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century Review by Duncan Seaman
Combining the talents of C86 veterans Hue Williams, of The Pooh Sticks, and Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey, of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, Swansea Sound continue to fly the flag for spirited, sharp-witted guitar pop that the indie charts were once full of before major labels muscled into the scene. Twentieth Century offers self-deprecating critiques of everything that was supposed to be great about alternative culture – and of the way that culture left its adherents ill-equipped to deal with modern reality. In the title track a pseudopunk singer muses on “selling out” in search of fame, Click It and Pay is a duet between an online shopper and a warehouse worker bonding over reissues of albums from the 80s and 90s, while Markin’ It Down pokes fun at hipster music tastes for The Fall and Can.