Robin's Album Reviews
In no particular order at all

The System
! - Buttock-clenchingly pisspoor
* - Mouldy buns
* * - My grudging acceptance of reasonable aspects
* * * - Really quite a nice album
* * * * - I'll probably listen to nothing else for at least 2 weeks. Nice one.
* * * * * - Drop everything, go and buy it

Artists' Index
Remy Zero - Villa Elaine
Mercury Rev - Deserters' Songs
Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
Radiohead - Kid A
Dido - Life For Rent
The Cruel Sea - 3-Legged Dog
Neil Finn - Try Whistling This
John Renbourn - Travellers' Prayer
Robin Williamson - Celtic Harp Airs & Dance Tunes
Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma - Sampradaya
John Dowland - Lute songs
Klaus Weiland - Acoustic Passion
Shirley Rumsey - Music of the Spanish Renaissance

Remy Zero - Villa Elaine (Geffen - GED-25300).* * *
Hmm, an interesting one. It got pretty good reviews, comparisons being drawn with Radiohead and REM. Well, it's got the skinny-and-weirdness OK, and the squeaky fuzzy non-musical scratchy bits in the background, but it goes a bit beyond that narrow categorisation. There's a BritPop-ish feel there too, a touch of Suede or David Bowie, even a soupçon of the Longpigs. Perhaps the strongest songs are the quieter ones: the Crowded House-y Fair, the rather cheery and anthemic Whither Vulcan, and the mournful Life In Rain. The latter's incomprehensibility rating is certainly boosted by the first line - "I once had marigolds for eyes"; always a good sign for up & coming bands, particularly to counterbalance the guitar sound from the Father Ted theme which crops up later in the song. Contains several genuine shiver-down-spine moments.

Weirdest song: Life In Rain (the last song Goodbye Little World sets out to be weirder, but fails, though in a thoroughly amiable fashion).
Jangliest guitar song: Hermes Bird.
Worst 2 songs: 'Prophecy', and 'Problem'. Prophecy's guitar sound is just too reminiscent of being attacked by a horde of angry wasps for my liking. Some nice feedback and a promising guitar riff starting 'Problem' turns into something that even Michael Bolton or REO Speedwagon might have rejected as too pappy. "We could work this out and just let it go". Indeed.

All in all though, a rather pleasing album. What are they singing about? Does it matter?

Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs (V2 Records - VVR1002772) *
"'Deserter's Songs' is a beautiful timeless record". So said Mojo magazine, according to the sticker on the CD case. One of those stickers that refuses to come off completely, leaving some glue and an area of ripped-up papery stuff that collects dirty fingerprints. Sums it up, really.

Folks, this album is a pile of poo. Perhaps I wouldn't be so disappointed if it and the band hadn't been so over-hyped. Then again, if it hadn't been over-hyped, I never would have bought it anyway. Whatever that proves.

Opus 40 has a nice melody, ditto Goddess On A Hiway, and Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp rambles along in jolly stylee, but 3 nice melodies do not a whole album make, and I fear the singer's voice irritates rather than intrigues. And when they try to do 'weird', with collages of sampled sounds, and little beeps and whoops here & there, it only emphasises how much better the Grateful Dead were at doing 'weird'.

What are they singing about? God knows, but I wish they wouldn't sing about it near me.

Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump !
Two years on from Mercury Rev, the nightmare continues....
Curiously, I notice that Grandaddy are on the same record label as Mercury Rev. Hmmm. You never see them together in the same room. Think about it. The hype is the same, from, I note, the same reviewers. 'Low-fi, folky rhythms, beautiful songs, Americana with a touch of the Byrds and REM'. And so on and so on. Folks, this *is* the same album... Thank you, James Bloody Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph. That's the best part of £30 you owe me.

I sat for the 46 minutes it took to play the CD, and was entirely unmoved. Only one track annoyed me sufficiently to skip to the next one, the rest just drifted past, and then I thought 'Oh, the CD's finished'. Grandaddy *are* Mercury Rev, and they're a bunch of whining bloody vegetables too. Save your money, go and buy a Britney Spears CD instead. You'll enjoy it more, and the music will sound fresher for longer.

Radiohead - Kid A !
While I'm ranting, I may as well touch on this as well. They've finally done it, and made an album I couldn't listen to. Every track got skipped, I took the CD out of the player, and it's not been back since. Come back, chaps, whatever went wrong after OK Computer, *surely* you could try a bit harder than this?

Dido - Life for Rent ***
Hey ho, away from this rant, though sometimes it feels like ranting is all that gets me through the day. Mmmm, Dido. The fact that she doesn't look like Bagpuss helps one to forget about ranting, right enough. But I'm still in several minds about it all. Restrained, laid-back, ethereal, breathy, measured; hesitant, almost. Nicely-crafted songs, every man jack of 'em, and way above most of the dross. It's a pretty voice, but periodically through the album, I find myself thinking, for fuck's sake, why don't you pull your head back, open your throat, AND JUST BELLOW!

Ooops. I lost myself.

Track 3, "Life for Rent", is sublime; "Don't Leave Home" is nice¹; "Mary's In India" has some well-observed imagery. "This Land is Mine" and "White Flag" are both cracking good songs - as indeed most of them are. But I find myself frustrated and on edge, and wishing she'd JUST BLOODY SHOUT! Once in a while, she very nearly does. It's a little like being in someone else's living-room, and being afraid to move for fear of knocking over the plethora of ornaments.

So, what's it all about, then? Is it just aural Prozac for miserable Sunday Times readers in Islington who've got bored of David Gray's sub-Dylan gurnings? Me, I hope it's a lot more than that, because it feels like it'll probably grow to be more than the sum of its parts.

Most irritating track. Well, look at me, I'm rambling again. I was going to say "Sand in My Shoes", but that had more than one or two redeeming features. "Who Makes You Feel", it has to be.

¹OK, OK. Six months on, I find out it's all about heroin. In an album otherwise chock-full of songs about shagging (or the lack of it), who the hell could've envisaged that?

The Cruel Sea - 3-Legged Dog (Polydor Records Australia - 527 537-2)* * * *
Australia's finest once again send an album lurching and sprawling across a pavement near you, belching and muttering curses at invisible opponents. Think blues-reggae-early ZZTop-Nick Cave and a lot of Castlemaine. Their songs contain menace and heroic beer intake, sleaze and vice, and some touching moments, in a wasted sort of way. Sometimes, one does wonder, wistfully, what would happen if they wrote a song about buying some flowers and having a nice cup of tea and some cake and sitting down to watch a wholesome family documentary on TV. It would probably sound just as menacing. Not many bands do instrumentals at all these days. Even fewer bands fit so many onto each album. Seems to work, though.
Best songs: The strummy Anybody But You is a cross between a pledge of devotion and a plea for sanity, and as such, succeeds admirably. Too Fast for Me continues the plea for sanity theme, reminiscent of Marc Bolan. Too Late To Turn Back and Save Me are dark and languid and threatening. For me, The Lot is the strongest song of all.
Best instrumental: Either This Is What It Is or Strange Thing
Worst songs: Teach Me and Baby Meet. Just because, OK?

Neil Finn - Try Whistling This (EMI 7234 95139 2 1)* * *
It's an album neatly bisected. Good songs - 7. Mediocre songs - 6. The good songs are pretty much as good as anything Crowded House ever did. The mediocre songs, very plainly, aren't. Simple as that. Very Crowded House, but subtly different. If that makes any sense at all.

The CD starts on a high point with the pop-tastic Last One Standing, and amazingly maintains that high through 6 songs in a row. And then the souffle falls a bit flat. By far the best song of the 2nd half is Astro; even that goes off the boil a little towards the end.

Best songs: Last One Standing, and Sinner - the latter for being entirely unlike Crowded House. Sparse Bungalow, maybe.
Worst song: Probably has to be Twisty Bass.

John Renbourn - Traveller's Prayer (Shanachie 78018)* * * * *
It's that good. This album is a delight from beginning to end. John Renbourn's last solo album was The Nine Maidens, in 1988. Since then, there have been re-issues of old material, contributions to others' albums, a lot of touring & writing, but no new recordings. Some had almost given up hope of ever hearing any. And then this happens. It's a lovely album, every track belongs, and the playing, of Renbourn and the other musicians, is exquisite. 2 minor quibbles: the clarinet on Bunyan's Hymn, and the percussion on I Saw Three Ships. Otherwise, it's fantastic.

Best moments: The change from major to minor key in Wexford Lullaby. The vibrato/bend at 2mins 55s in The South Wind, and the moment when the Uillean pipes start at 7mins 12s in Feathered Nest.
Worst moments: Ha! There aren't any!

Robin Williamson - Celtic Harp Airs & Dance Tunes (Greentrax CDTrax 134)* * * * *
Another absolute gem, despite having the C word in the title. This is pure solo harp music, mainly Scottish, Irish and Welsh traditional tunes - which may not sound immediately appealing to all. However, there isn't one superfluous track, and there isn't one note too many or too few. Pure and unalloyed pleasure. I have a half-formed theory that the music of the harp is the closest in melody, tone, scansion and rhythm to the human voice, and as such can convey an incredibly wide range of emotions and sensations, entirely non-verbally. Others might say that's bullshit. Whatever. Buy it, today.
Best moments: All of it, especially the modulation between major & minor in The Rocks Of Pleasure, the delicacy of The Blackbird, and the unusual treatment (in comparison to the guitar versions by Davy Graham and Pierre Bensusan) of The Old Frieze Britches.

Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma - Sampradaya (RealWorld - CDRW75)* * * * *
Another beauty, from the other side of the world. This is a raga, played by two dulcimers and percussion, and it is quite extraordinary. Set aside preconceptions of sitars and wailing. Thoroughly beautiful, from the slow-moving beginnings to the frenzied climaxes. Run out of things to say about it.

John Dowland - Lute songs (Naxos - 8.553381)* * * *
For those who thought that songs about the cruelty of unrequited love were a recent innovation, here's a CD full of them from the 1600s. Dowland (1563-1626) was by reputation the most famous lutenist-composer of his time, a master of the instrument and the craft. Sung by counter-tenor Steven Rickards with lute by Dorothy Linell, this collection of 26 songs and instrumentals would probably go best played moderately loud with a bottle of decent red wine fairly late at night, perhaps in an oak panelled drawing-room or library, and certainly with good company. The instrumentals are short, according to the fashion of the time - several under 1 minute. The songs, by contrast, mostly stick to the 3 - 4 minute format beloved of pop songs since time immemorial.
Best track: Greensleeves Divisions.

Klaus Weiland - Acoustic Passion (Phon und Ton, Munich, Germany - PTCD 021 Pho)* * * *
Klaus Weiland seems to have been a fairly integral part of the folk scene in 1960s/70s Germany. His early work was fairly reminiscent of the English style of folk singer-songwriter stuff, with a touch of John Renbourn thrown in as well. Long periods of travelling around the world have obviously expanded his influences, for here is a very different collection of guitar music. Mediaeval and traditional roots are evident, but the rhythms are complex, and the playing is very fluid and relaxed, the picking of the notes is extremely precise and tasteful. If you're moved by John Renbourn, Pierre Bensusan, Leo Kottke and Michael Hedges, you should certainly have a listen to this. A thoroughly pleasing and impressive album, that will probably see more than one guitarist frustratedly hitting the 'back' button on his CD player, in his efforts to copy it.

Shirley Rumsey - Music of the Spanish Renaissance (Naxos 8.550614)* * * * *
Here is some quite extraordinary music. I keep saying grandiose things like that, I know, but it's true. These are songs and instrumentals from 16th century Spain, for voice, vihuela, lute and guitar, filled with passion and the sweetest melancholy. Shirley Rumsey is a singer and instrumentalist of immense ability and technique. There can be little more to add.

"But go, fetch my vihuela
perhaps I will sing a song
so wrapped up in my passion
that everyone will feel pity."
(Bartolome de Torres Naharro, Comedia Ymenea, 1517)

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Last updated October 27th 2006
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