Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Gnarls Barkley is indeed made up of two odd-bods: production mastermind Brian 'Danger Mouse' Burton is tall and squirrelly, and Cee-Lo Green is built like a cannonball. They're a cartoon come to life, and the music fits too. Broader than their debut album St Elsewhere (but still with plenty of strange and wonderful touches), The Odd Couple sounds like the soundtrack to a mad, screwball chase through the corridors of a psychiatric hospital. There are moments of serene clarity though: Who's Gonna Save My Soul, No Time Soon and A Little Better are subtle masterpieces with dusty samples and laid-back soul crooning. Elsewhere on the album, everything including the kitchen sink is thrown in to this carnival of sounds and moods. The stand-outs are slow-burners rather than immediate killers, but it makes for a more satisfying long-player.
The Odd Couple is out on Warners
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Quite rightly, most rock music obeys the dictum 'don't bore us get to the chorus'. These Mancunians follow a completely different set of rules. There's a slowness, majesty and tenderness to their fourth album that's born from a band who takes their time to get things right. Guy Garvey's voice is somehow weary and luxurious (like some battered but comfortable old sofa), sounding fantastic in a duet with fellow crooner Richard Hawley on The Fix (a Northern England re-tooling of Mac The Knife) and about as barely in the room as a voice can get on the closing Friend Of Ours. The very best tracks - Starlings, Weather To Fly, The Bones Of You and The Loneliness Of A Crane Driver are all multi-layered epic laments that touch on everything from Debussy to Robert Wyatt to Muse and are full of subtlety and humour. Those with patience will find a great deal to admire here.
The Seldom Seen Kid is out on Fiction
We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery
Brooklyn duo Keith and Chris have a nerdy charisma that lends itself marvellously to comic videos, YouTube sketches and radio-friendly, ironical indie rock songs. The scene-setting Ghouls defines all that is good about them – short, punchy and with self-effacing lyrics - while After Hours is a brilliant, uplifting anthem that, like much of the album, operates somewhere between uber cool and ultra naff. The latter reaches a peak on the falsetto Lethal Enforcer, which stunningly features synth effects not attempted since China Crisis were last in the charts. Elsewhere on That's What Counts there's even a St-Elmo's-Fire-style sax break. Incredibly, despite the 80s excesses, they get away with it and if anything, Brain Thrust Mastery is less zany than their debut. It will undoubtedly be hailed as light and fluffy, however, by anyone still expecting to hear Stroke-a-likes.
Brain Thrust Mastery is out on Virgin
R.E.M. - Accelerate
After three much-trumpeted but drab albums (Up, Reveal and Around the Sun), R.E.M. has returned with an album that actually sounds like R.E.M. rather than a band trying to ease their way into retirement. This is great news, although in reversing to the basics they haven't gone quite as far back as many would hope (to their career high of Automatic for the People). Instead, Accelerate deals in the direct, crunchy guitars last heard on 1994's Monster. Michael Stipe's songwriting prowess has diminished also, and there's a distinct lack of epics here, but the harmonies and sense of playfulness have returned. Living Well's the Best Revenge, Hollow Man, Horse to Water and Supernatural Superserious are the best tracks they've recorded in over a decade - and they herald a few summers yet of stadium-filling.
Accelerate is out on Warners
Supergrass - Diamond Hoo Ha
In the Britpop era when most artists were in their late 20s, Supergrass were the only ones who could truly claim to be kids. A decade on they have the hit-strewn back catalogue of veterans and have successfully survived as a Great British pop band. After several good but incoherent albums, Diamond Hoo Ha marks a solid return to their key influences of The Kinks, Small Faces and glam-era Bowie – Rebel In You, Rough Knuckles and The Return Of Inspiration all mix prog and pop masterfully. Meanwhile the band’s eccentric side continues on apace with Whisky & Green Tea - a fabulously nutty blend of military brass and hallucinogenic rock. Fab.
Diamond Hoo Ha is out on Parlophone
Foals - Antidotes
It has been noted about this typically trendy Oxford band that the ratio of photo sessions to fans currently stands at about two to one. This is cruel but it's true that image appears to be Foals major concern. The embodiment of musical Marmite, most tracks here follow the same concentric pattern of yelping about something obtuse like aviaries or balloons, awkward, funky bass lines and random splashes of percussion that merely serve to confuse those brave enough to attempt to shake a limb. The exception is the terribly titled (actually, nearly every song is terribly titled) but wonderful Red Sock Pugie which slowly bursts into life after a minute of clanging and sounds like an electro-pop classic -until they start wibbling about vessels and wasp nests.
Antidotes is out on Transgressive
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into
Judging by their novelty name, one would expect from this band some gimmicky trio of hoodie-wearing ASBO kids writing narky songs about WKD, STDs and KFC. The truth is far from it. They have an indolent edge for sure, mixing the synthesised disco of Daft Punk with wired guitars and punchy, staccato rhythm – Battle Royale, We Are Rockstars and With a Heavy Heart (I Regret To Inform You) are fierce, Prodigy-esque, nu-rave anthems. There's also a lot of arch humour in the song titles (the last song is called Epic Last Song). But there is real depth to the songs themselves and the album revels in big tunes which rival The Klaxons' hits. On top of that, front man Morgan Quaintance has a marvellous irate yelp and a singing voice that’s close to The Cure’s Robert Smith. Bloody brilliant.
You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into is out on Virgin
Clinic - Do It
Existing completely on a limb, outside any genres or scenes, this Liverpool band has grown stranger and more maverick with every release. Not since Echo & The Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch relayed his vision of cauliflower, cabbages and April showers has a singer had such command of psychobabble as Clinic's Ade Blackburn. While he's obviously possessed by rock'n'roll voodoo, the music rumbling away behind him is a bubbling laboratory of blues, psychedelia, folk, sea shanties and Merseybeat. There are moments of macabre terror, fuzzy wonder and drunken chaos, and, more often than not, all three within the same song - Free Not Free is simultaneously the sweetest and creepiest song ever, and Shopping Bag the fiercest graveyard stomp imaginable.
Do It is out on Domino
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
In the 70s, every other record was a concept album. Maybe Spinal Tap with their miniature Stonehenge put musicians off, but today, they’re a scarcity. Rejoice, then, for a project (by Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys and techno-pal Boom Bip) based on the life and times of car-playboy-turned-con-man, John Delorean – he of the famous Back To The Future gull-wing sports car. The music is retro and synthetic, but is given a humanist edge by Rhys' brilliant deadpan lyrics about a tycoon whose career ends in a drugs bust. There are a few too many guest stars which confuse proceedings, but if you can’t overdo it on a concept album, when can you?
Stainless Style is out on Lex
The Young Knives - Superabundance
With their elbow patches, thick-rimmed glasses and ruddy cheeks, Ashby-de-la-Zouch's favourite sons are more likely to be mistaken for Ronnie Barker look-alikes than rock gods. But appearances can be deceptive. Their second album will please anyone who's not scared of the words guitar, art and funk all appearing in the same sentence. Terra Firma, Light Switch and Up All Night are jerky, arch songs that grow more addictive with each play. The bulk of the album still owes a debt to new wave icons Gang Of Four, XTC and Wire, but on slower tracks like Turn Tail and Mummy Light The Fire there's a sense that this trio are quickly growing into a force that will outlast fickle music trends. Super. Smashing. Great.
Superabundance is out on Warner
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
Comprised of Alex Turner (from Arctic Monkeys) and best pal Miles Kane (of The Rascals), this incarnation is far better than a side-project has any right to be. Inspired by the early-70s sounds of Scott Walker, Bowie and David Axelrod, The Age of the Understatement is a freewheeling, widescreen epic that transports the spaghetti western to the wild plains of Rotherham.
The Age of the Understatement is out on Domino
The Teenagers
Fast, catchy and very rude, this trashy Parisian trio is the best thing to come out of France since Thierry Henry. They launched their current album, Reality Check, with a Prom Night inspired by their favourite teen movies (Teen Wolf, Pretty in Pink and Grease), and they'll be continuing the party on a nationwide tour next month.
The Teenagers play Roadhouse, Manchester on April 1 then tour. Details from www.theteenagers.net
Howl Griff
Howl Griff (real name Hywel Griffiths) is a manfully-mustachioed, Aberystwyth beekeeper and bilingual singer-songwriter who looks a bit like a 70s Swedish porn star and (thanks to one of his pastimes) has enough venom in his blood to kill "a normal person". As with his music, Howl's MySpace page is mainly in Welsh, but language is no barrier to his band's gorgeous guitar pop which has a lovely, loose, vaguely 60s and decidedly un-bee-like feel about it.
See more of Howl Griff at myspace.com/howlgriff
Reviews by Johnny Dee
FIRST POSTED MARCH 14, 2008
