Benjamin Booker - Benjamin Booker Review

Rating: 7/10 - Review: Young, New Orleansbased singersongwriter’s feral debut Jack White likes
Benjamin Booker – and Benjamin Booker certainly returns the favour. He’s got the rasping voice (see “Slow Coming”), and the influences spanning Blind Willie Johnson to The Gun Club. He’s also got a respect for the duo format: as illustrated by the swaggering “Have You Seen My Son?” on which his sole accomplice, drummer Max Norton displays a wayward, hurtling sense of rhythm. There’s artifice in Booker’s make-up but the troubled, strutting loner, serving sizzling sides of electrified psyched-swamp blues, is a role he inhabits with conviction and aplomb. A name to watch.

Bahamas - Bahamas Is Afie Review

Rating: 8/10 Review: Former Feist collaborator unveils mellow gold “I’ve got all the time in the world – don’t you want some of that?” asks Afie Jurvanen four songs into his third album. Like his pseudonym, it’s indicative of the Toronto musician’s laidback, warm nature: Bahamas Is Afie drifts effortlessly from such easygoing, blue-eyed soul – also evident on the brassy “Stronger Than That” – to autumnal campfire acoustics, reminiscent of the work of overlooked fellow Canuck Paul Hayden Desser. Blessed by an amiably husky voice, Jurvanen unfurls elegant melodies amid intelligent, economical arrangements, with the delightfully understated strings and flute of “Can’t Take You With Me” a particularly tender highlight.

Marc Almond - Ten Plagues Review and Music Video

Rating: 6/10 - Love and death during the Great Plague Playwright Mark Ravenhill and composerConor Mitchell’s song cycle about the 1665 bubonic plague debuted at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011 before moving to Wilton’s Music Hall in Tower Hamlets, East London. Written specifically for Almond, it followed a year in the life of a London-dwelling survivor and his struggle to come to terms with the death of friends and family, and the near destruction of his city. Accompanied only by piano in this studio recording, Almond has certainly been in better voice, although he still manages to bring enormous depth and poignancy to Ravenhill’s libretto and its echoes of the AIDS crisis.

9BACH - Tincian Review

World music's new frontier: Snowdonian trip-hop Where their 2009 debut was stuffed with traditional Welsh balladry, Tincian (meaning ‘dazed’) is almost all original work by singer Lisa Jen and musician Martin Hoyland. The duo have refined their approach too, matching Jen’s crystalline voice to equally spare arrangements of harp, guitar, drums, keyboards, and electronic toy box. They have a distant cousin in Portishead, but 9Bach’s flavours are lighter, more mysterious and more uplifting. The traditional “Pa Le?” gets the full harp and finger cymbals treatment, while on “Plentyn”, Jen turns Bushesque againt a female chorus. Despite some ponderous moments, Tincian is a captivating original. Verdict: 70/100

Eels - The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett Review and CD Covers

Cautionary Tales picks up where End Times left off. The style of the two albums is similar and it seems like the stories are extensions of that album. This is dark Eels, not the happier, funkier, more produced Eels of the past. E is at his best with these stories.

I wasn't a huge fan of Wonderful Glorious; it was too dark, and too long. End Times and Beautiful Freak are still my favorite albums - those seem to land on my playlists more than any others. I like that Cautionary Tales is thirteen songs long and much more to the point. It plays very well with my two favorite albums.

Lucinda Williams (Reissue) - Lucinda Williams CD Covers

Under-g Score: 65/100 Average

info: The remastered reissue of the singer's self-titled third release, considered by some as one of the first Americana albums, includes 20 live tracks. Release Date: 2014

Real Estate - Atlas CD Covers

Under-g Score: 80/100 Great

info: The third full-length release for the indie rock band was produced by Tom Schick and recorded at Wilco's studio in Chicago.

St. Vincent - St. Vincent CD Covers

Under-g Score: 60/100 Average

info: The fourth full-length release for the indie artist was produced by John Congleton and includes contributions from Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss and Midlake's McKenzie Smith.

These New Puritans - Field of Reeds CD Covers

Under-g Score: 70/100 - Good

info: The third full-length release for the British art rock band experiments with avant garde and classical music elements arranged with conductor André de Ridder and featuring guest appearances by Henry Lowther, Adrian Peacock, Elisa Rodrigues, and Michel van der Aa.

Genres: Alternative/Indie Rock, Electronic

Marc Almond 2014

Collaborations with Tony Visconti and Jarvis Cocker, “lustrous pop” albums, classical crossovers – and even an ’80s revival… MARC ALMOND’s hectic 2014

Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks - Wig Out At Jagbags Review

On his sixth album with The Jicks, the ex-Pavement man settles into his role as elder statesman of rock

“We lived on Tennyson and venison and The Grateful Dead”, sings Stephen Malkmus on ‘Lariat’, adding another food pairing to the menu that’s already given us oysters and dry Lancers wine on Pavement’s ‘Shady Lane’ and saag aloo with gin and tonic on ‘Pink Indıa’ from 2001’s ‘Stephen Malkmus’. This time though the 47-year-old is matching his food with the books and records from his past on an album that sees him squinting through rose-tinted specs at “the music from the best decade ever” (‘Lariat’ again), and writing tunes devoid of the sourness and inertia that characterised much of late-period Pavement and his solo career.