ALBUM REVIEWS
Shed Seven – A Matter of Time
Britpop veterans Shed Seven have certainly turned things around after the departure of founding members Alan Leach and Joe Johnson in 2021. Singer Rick Witter and guitarist Paul Banks’s songwriting on the band’s sixth studio album has a real spring in its step, with tracks such as Talk of the Town and F:K:H equal to past glories such as Getting Better or Chasing Rainbows. Witter has spoken of him and Banks returning to the music of their youth for inspiration, and the guitar riff in Kissing California is a definite nod to Peter Buck’s playing in REM. Duets with Laura McClure of Reverend and the Makers (on Tripping With You) and Rowetta of the Happy Mondays (on In Ecstacy) work well. Meanwhile the poignant anthem for lost youth, Starlings, is surely destined to become an emotive concert set-closer.
Trevor Horn – Echoes Ancient & Modern Review by Duncan Seaman
Super producer Trevor Horn has raided his contacts book for this star-studded covers album that mixes orchestral arrangements of key songs from his own past – Slave to the Rhythm, Owner of a Lonely Heart and Relax
– with some his favourite tracks by the likes of Depeche Mode, Billy Idol, Roxy Music and Nirvana. Marc Almond wrings the melodrama out Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield, and Seal’s burnished tones add soul to Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out, but Iggy Pop’s take on Personal Jesus pales next to Johnny Cash’s, and Toyah’s reading of Relax is rather anodyne. At least Lady Blackbird gives it her all on Slave to the Rhythm and Tori Amos’ revision of Kenrick Lamar’s Swimming Pools (Drank) is unexpected. But overall, it’s a decidedly mixed bag.
Vince Clarke – Songs of Silence Review by Duncan Seaman
Those only familiar with Vince Clarke from his 40-year array of hits with Depeche Mode, Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure may be wrongfooted by the lack of hooks and melodic earworms within the 10 tracks on this solo album. Yet he also has a longstanding interest in modular synthesisers and soundscapes, and it was to them that turned while his wife Tracy was ill during lockdown. Obvious comparisons here include Vangelis’ otherwordly soundtrack for Blade Runner and the dreamy synth vistas of German group Tangerine Dream, but Songs of Silence is not entirely without vocals. Passage was inspired by a Puccini aria and features the soprano Caroline Joy Clarke, while Blackleg employs a sample of an old male singer performing a 19th century Northumbian folk song about a strikebreaker.
Gazelle Twin – Black Dog Review by Duncan Seaman
Elizabeth Bernholz – aka Gazelle Twin – enthused that upon hearing his dad play a Scott Walker song in the car her son had asked ‘Is this Mummy?’. “Think I’ll retire now,” she said. Indeed there’s much of the late American singer-songwriter’s fearless commitment to experimentation in her fourth album. Bernholz has described the record as “album of confrontation, childhood fears and how they manifest in adulthood”; in Author of You her treated vocal sounds inhabited by a sinister spirit; the title track is even more ominous as she recalls a dream that “took my heart (and) ripped it clean out”. By the end, however, there is redemption. In This House she sings that “only love” has entered it, adding in A Door Opens: “Here’s to laughter, here’s to tears, and a sweet dream”. An unsettling yet rewarding journey.