ALBUM REVIEWS
Billy Joel – The Vinyl Collection, Vol 2
This vinyl box set will bring joy to Billy Joel fans, and there’s plenty of them – the man with the New York state of mind is the sixth best-selling artist of all time. Volume 1 covered the Piano Man’s at times tortuous rise during the 1970s, and we start here with him as a star at the beginning of the 1980s. Glass Houses
(1980) channels the new wave, defined as It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me in the impossibly catchy single that was his first US Number One. Later highlights include An Innocent Man – huge singles such as Uptown Girl and Tell Her About It, made this one of his most popular albums.The box set also has the first-ever audio edition of the treble album Live From Long Island in 1982, and a 60-page booklet putting all 11 LPs into context.
Matt Rogers – Have You Heard of Christmas? Review by Rachel Howdle
Feeling festive, but not willing to let go of the disco heavy tunes from this summer?
Well Matt Rogers is here with a camper than Christmas album, think drag queen Mother Christmas, North Pole dancing elves and twerking reindeer as Father Christmas is looking for the secret weapon to make sure that all his goods fit on the sleigh this year. Comedian and podcaster Matt Rogers is coming out hard for the shes, theys and gays. This is not an album to have playing while the kids are around due to some very adult language. Lube for the Sleigh is drag brunch ready, God’s Up To His Tricks! is itching to be on Broadway and RockaFellaCenta is a dancy little number filled with celebrity pop culture and he is joined by podcast partner Bowen Yang..
Johnny Marr – Spirit Power Review by Kristina Wemyss
It had to be done: an album celebrating 10 years of indie-rock legend Johnny Marr’s solo career, a chapter that has now lasted longer than his time in bands including The Smiths, The Pretenders and The Cribs. This collection brings together songs from his four top 10 solo albums with stand-alone singles and two new creations. Spirit Power opens with a bang on Armatopia, a non-album fan favourite from 2019. The Priest, a second non-album hit, this time featuring actress Maxine Peake, also finds its time to shine on here. Marr also includes a cover of Depeche Mode’s I Feel You. Rather than simply churning out the old, there are also two new songs – Somewhere, which Marr wrote last year, and The Answer, but they fall short of breathing much new life into the collection.
Setting – Shone A Rainbow Light On Review by Janne Oinonen
The debut from a North Carolina-rooted supergroup drawn from the fertile underground of kosmische Americana follows recent releases from Revelators Sound System and
Rich Ruth in its improvisation-rooted, percussive instrumental mash-up of spiritual jazz, heady ambient landscaping and drone-fuelled explorations. With Nathan Bowles, Joe Westerlund and Jaime Fennelly handling a diverse array of acoustic and electronic instruments, these richly layered, hugely rewarding extensive sound paintings often appear to proceed at the unhurried pace of a cloud trekking through the sky on a windless day, simmering unhurriedly until the slabs of sound accelerate into an intense, dense stew where the collective whole far exceed the sum of the individual ingredients.