Travis - The Boy With No Name
Before the arrival of Travis, the British album charts were a sunny, chirpy place that, bar the occasional visitation from Morrissey, included little that could be described as indie or miserable. But with The Man Who album in 1999, and in particular the hit Why Does It Always Rain On Me?, this Scottish four-piece ushered in a whole era of maudlin, bittersweet balladry that culminated in much greater recent success for Keane and Snow Patrol. Back after a three-year absence, little has changed in the band's outlook and on 3 Times And You Lose, Closer and Big Chair Fran Healey's sleepy falsetto has been dulled to bland perfection. Elsewhere Battleships provides the album's mobile-phone-in-the-air tune, while several songs (Selfish Jean and the 'secret track' Sailing Away) veer towards the shambling pop that earned them their original fan base. A bit more breeze and a bit less wind would help enormously.
The Boy With No Name is on Independiente
Client - Heartland
It's not just Bryan Ferry who admires Nazi hemlines; this all-female electro pop trio describe their style icons as "air hostesses, bank clerks and prison camp commandants". Uniform chic suits Client's cold, detached, mechanical and clean sound. Thankfully, that sound comes with plenty of dark, menacing sexual glamour, not to mention classy pop hooks, just beneath the gleaming surface. Among the highlights is the steely brilliance of Drive and a great fem-bot cover of Adam and the Ants' Zerox. Elsewhere the Ants' two-drummers technique is brilliantly copied on Lights Go Out, while Where's The Rock And Roll Gone feels like a trip in the Tardis back to 80s Sheffield. Soul music for robots.
Heartland is on Loser Friendly Records
Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
The success of Favourite Worst Nightmare is that Arctic Monkeys have retained their trademark edgy sound but have done so without becoming formulaic. What the album lacks in throwaway humour, slang or chorus-packed sing-a-longs, it makes up for by being a far more varied, mature and musically ambitious set - the songs are superbly arranged, the rhythm more muscular and the guitar playing drill-tight. As ever, though, it's Turner's wonderful lyrics that stand out - these days the 21-year-old's sharp wit and slurred delivery are closer to Alan Bennett than George Formby. A typically English view of fumbled sexual relations permeates the album, and nowhere more so than through the evocative fifties twang of Flourescent Adolescent, where he tells the tale of a raver who's past her prime, attempting to remember "was it a megadobber or a betting pencil". A marvellous album.
Favourite Worst Nightmare is on Domino
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have never been about originality - their uncompromising wall of guitar noise and dark monotone harmonies can be easily traced to The Jesus and Mary Chain (another gang keen on leather trousers). But in a climate where so many rock bands are laced with irony, the straightforward nihilism of Baby 81 feels honest rather than laughable. It builds on their strength of lacing darkness with killer melodies: Window thrillingly incorporates a hammering piano alongside the squalling guitars; 666 Conducer channels the heavy riffs and power of Led Zeppelin; Weapon Of Choice is a pile-driving anthemic indie metal beast. And, like all great rock albums, Baby 81 ends with a slightly overblown symphonic epic - All You Do Is Talk. Comeback of the year? Until Radiohead, anyway.
Baby 81 is on Island
Feist - The Reminder
Leslie Feist began her career as the lead singer of a screamathon punk band but currently navigates far calmer waters. The Reminder skips through electro-soul, acoustic pop and laid-back folk with a calm, assured vocal and evocative poetry that recalls the glossy calm of Nico or Cat Power - and, at its most theatrical, Kate Bush. On My Moon, My Man and 1 2 3 4, Feist creates skatty jazz pop, a style which makes a cover of the folk curiosity Sea Lion (best known as recorded by Nina Simone) her own. Elsewhere the best moments are the most simple - The Park employs a stripped-bare up-close microphone technique that creates an ambiance that's almost uncomfortably intimate; Limit To Your Love builds on a deliciously tense brooding atmosphere. Dazzling.
The Reminder is on Polydor
Blonde Redhead - 23
After the damage inflicted by a Jim Carrey psychodrama, the number 23 regains its outsider cool by being the title of a half-decent album by this eccentric New York based Italian/Japanese trio. At their best Blonde Redhead create a rich, densely layered landscape of echo-ey, squalling guitars, hypnotic beats and floating androgynous vocals that's both monotonous and majestic. The first half of the album majors in this lovely aching melancholy - in particular the classy title track and Spring And By Summer Fall. But when they cheer up a bit - on the perky Silently and Top Ranking - they come close to sounding like a J-Pop band attempting to be avant garde. Maybe that's the point, but fun isn't what they do best.
23 is on 4AD
Fountains of Wayne - Traffic And Weather
"Puts Coldplay on/ pours a glass of wine/ curls up with a book about organised crime". Seldom has the singleton life been better defined than on Fountains of Wayne's opening track Someone to Love. But then again, on this album we are in the company of songwriters at the top of their game. Echoing early Elvis Costello, Prefab Sprout and Squeeze, Traffic and Weather is so chock-full of neatly turned lines about modern life that you'll find it hard to resist quoting them. It's a huge step up from the last time we heard from this New York band, with their global pop hit (Stacey's Mom) about the perils of fancying your friend's mother. Here the music doesn't lose its catchiness - it's perfect car radio new wave - but comes with added intelligence.
Traffic and Weather is on Virgin
Electric Soft Parade - No Need To Be Downhearted
Brighton brothers Tom and Alex White could give a lecture on the perils of signing to a major record label. After being Mercury Prize nominated in 2002 for their psychedelic pop debut Holes In The Wall, they signed to BMG but found themselves dropped after releasing a completely different-sounding follow up. It's taken them four years to recover, but they're still in their early 20s and now able to release uncompromising records with fewer worries about sales figures and meetings with a marketing department who hate you. No Need To Be Downhearted is a prog-pop album that majors in lengthy explorations into multi-layering weirdness with the occasional blast of a catchy pop tune (If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know and Misunderstanding) to wake the listener from their sweet headphone slumbers. They could do with following the songwriters' maxim - don't bore us, get to the chorus - but nonetheless it's a lovely sounding, eclectic album that should get old fans happily returning.
No Need to be Downhearted is on Truck
Lucky Soul -
The Great Unwanted
Recalling the classic sorrow-laden 60s pop of The Shangri-Las and Lesley Gore, this Greenwich-based six piece have perfected a capricious sound that's completely at odds with the current music scene. Here is a world where horns, strings, tambourine and handclaps reign supreme; a world of romantic disaster (One Kiss Don't Make A Summer), sunshine fun (Add Your Light To Mine, Baby) and sloppy slowies (My Darling, Anything) that are much darker once you dig into the lyrics. Both the title track and the wonderful Ain't Never Been Cool make great play of their outsider status: "Won't get in your club/Not quite up your street/It's terribly exciting/I'm practically asleep," sings Howard. You don't need scenes when you're this unfashionably fabulous.
The Great Unwanted is on Ruffa Lane
The Cribs - Men's Needs
Produced by Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, the return of the Wakefield trio (consisting of twins Ryan and Gary Jarman and their younger brother Ross) sees The Cribs stepping up a gear with a punchier sound. Here their narky attitude comes with the snarled hook 'Have you noticed/ I've never been impressed/ by offers from New York and London' and a naturist/slasher video. Rock'n'roll is alive and filthy in West Yorkshire.
Men's Needs is out on Wichita on May 14
Hungover Stuntmen
This Geordie band's profile is littered with quotes from the great and the good. The Sun calls them a "brilliant new band", Radio 1's Zane Lowe reckons they're "awesome" and Jacques Villeneuve, no less, thinks they're "the next best thing to come out of the north of England". The quote ends before Jacques can add 'since the A1' - but we're only speculating. With such recognition, it's strange they're still unsigned. The four MySpace tracks display a group, sporting four Paul Weller haircuts, who have nailed the 60s beat rock sound of Cream and Them. Naturally the modfather himself is among their MySpace friends, but then, if you click through to page two, so is some gent who calls himself Gay Bigfoot.
See more of Hungover Stuntmen at myspace.com
Summer Festivals
If you weren't quick enough to snap up tickets for Glastonbury, V or Reading/Leeds, fear not: there are still plenty of festivals to choose from this summer. What they lack in star names the smaller festivals gain in atmosphere, with the emphasis on fun rather than corporate sponsorship. Here's a quick guide to the seven best alternative weekenders of 2007. In my purely subjective order of preference, they're Secret Garden Party, Bestival, Latitude, Green Man, Summer Sundae Weekender, Wickerman and Wakestock. Click through for details of dates, bands and general good times. 
Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
Neil Young's influence echoes loud and clear throughout contemporary music - from the Scottish anti-folk movement, to the strung out country rock of Kings Of Leon and Alberta Cross, to experimental DIY artists like Loney, Dear. After The Gold Rush bookends Young's most productive period and marks a pinnacle of his early career. Not that critics thought so at the time; they chose to ignore wonderful tracks like Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Tell Me Why. Overall the album hits a blue yet optimistic tone redolent of an era when America's attention was divided between moon landings and the Vietnam war. The exception is Southern Man, a stinging attack on Bible Belt racism that upset, among others, Lynyrd Skynyrd who penned Sweet Home Alabama as a response. A perfect Sunday morning hangover album, and the best beginning for anyone new to Neil Young.
After The Gold Rush is on Warner
Reviews by Johnny Dee
FIRST POSTED MAY 4, 2007
