Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly - The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager - B000H30938

God knows what Sam Duckworth, lone Get Cape-er was thinking of when he came up with this moniker, but this homegrown guitarist clearly has his musical heart in the right place at least. Coming across like a modern day acoustic troubadour backed only by his guitar and a laptop (with some sparse strings and a trumpeter in some places), he's definitely a likeable singer/songwriter on paper. And the media attention is warranted to some extent, too; he's got a great ear for melody and doesnt let his lyrics get bogged down in the standard singer/songwriter relationship problems. Makes a bloody nice change, actually.

Sam's not putting on a faux-American accent too, letting his southern English voice come through, if a little harshly for the songs at times like on part 2 of the title track. But his acoustic strumming is well complimented by the electronic drum backing, which simply allows the songs to breathe when they arrive and doesnt constrict them. Like with Halloween Alaska, it's hard to compare him to someone, and whilst he isn't the second coming (experience says no one the British media hypes up will ever be), this is a pretty damn good CD.

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad of The Broken Seas - VVR1035822

That’s Isobel Campbell of Belle and Sebastian and Mark Lanegan of Queens of The Stone Age, and my copy of the CD came with a sticker full of one-liners from various reviews claiming that this album would change the course of music as we know it. Of course, they’re wrong but the whole thing does have an intriguing air about it, making you wonder where they’re going to go next, and whether you care.

The duo share the vocals, Campbell’s being light, sweet and breathy. Lanegan, by way of contrast, comes from the Waits/Cohen school of singing (which is not a bad thing in my book). The first track, Deus Ibi Est, is pure Waits in tone and content. Next, Campbell’s Black Mountain is pure folk, reminiscent of Scarborough Fair and with a really annoying refrain of “I choo, I choo.” The third track, The False Husband, is Tom Waits meets Enrico Moricone, as Sara described it. Baffled by all this? I was.

Then, thank goodness, they produce something of themselves in the title track, lapse briefly back into The Waits Land in Ramblin' Man, complete with Mark Ribot-style guitar, and finally settle into a pleasant country-rock groove with the two voices playing off against each other. There are two rather pointless instrumental tracks before the album closes with a piece of pure Springsteen, The Circus is Leaving Town. It’s all rather pleasant and beautifully played, but I don’t think it’s going to change anything. Of course, there's no need for the album to change anything but you might decide to listen to the real thing, or things, instead.

The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely - 4AD 2614

Well, we'd better (see below) have a review of The Goats' latest album then. John Darnielle, who is The Goats, has never been one for shying away from emotional trauma. As RS and Iwan noted, The Sunset Street was all about his relationship with his abusive stepfather. In Tallahassee, which is still his best album for my money, he explored the what it was like to be in a relationship that was on the rocks in the visceral No Children. In Get Lonely, he goes a step further and explores the aftermath of the departure of a partner.

If you don't like albums of sad songs, then this is clearly not for you because these songs are really sad. He expresses perfectly the desolation, the loss of purpose, the grief, and the futile attempts to find distraction in a succession of perfectly turned and beautifully played songs, rather more lavishly orchestrated than in previous offerings. He ranges from the mundane consequences - making coffee for two out of habit and drinking it all because she didn't like waste - to the cosmic - "an astronaut could have seen the hunger in my eyes from space." At best, relief comes only for a minute. He takes refuge in memories until they become too vivid to bear.

So, it's not going to send you skipping down the street exactly but the attraction comes because we've all been there and everything he describes is instantly recognisable, expressed clearly and poetically, and seamlessly combined with his music. The good news is that he's touring Australia in the near future and playing Sydney in January. I'm going

Razorlight (Mercury) + The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree

Two clicks on iTunes and two Indie albums later...
The Mountain Goats was released last year (and properly reviewed at the time by Iwan) but I have only just caught up with it. And it's definitely a case of better late than never. John Darnielle writes autobiographically of growing up in California with an abusive step father (to whom the album is dedicated). It captures teenage angst, sorrow, anger and more put to compulsive often joyful tunes. "This Year" with it's refrain ("I'm gonna make it through this year if it kills me") and salvation through a girl called Kathy ("two high maintenance machines") is the best track for me - but there is much to admire and sing along to. Catharsis through pop. Worth a second review if it encourages someone else to discover it!

Razorlight's second album lives up to the promise of their first. For me they are the best of the new indie bands sweeping the festivals in the UK over the last couple of years. "Somewhere Else" was a great single last year. The new one, from this album, is just as good: America, "All my life, Watching America, All my life, There's panic in America"...but other tracks like Who Needs Love and Before I Fall To Pieces are just as strong. Lead singer Johnny Borrell's arrogance irritates some - but if you're 26 years old with a great band and some great songs, that's as it should be. And the fact that Pete Docherty decided to physically attack him only to be floored by Borrell endears him to me even more.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times (Columbia)

"Epic", "another masterwork", "his best in decades" ran some of the reviews. It isn't. It's not bad - but we've come to hope for more after 40 years of innovation and turning expectation on its head. And that's my real problem with the album. Once you've started, it's predictable. Rolling Stone magazine said in its review: "This music is relaxed; it has nothing to prove. It is music of accumulated knowledge, it knows every move, anticipates every step before you take it." I would sum that up in one word: tired.
In a series of slow waltzes and blues shuffles, Dylan sounds like the pensioner he is, taking another turn around the tea dance floor. He says the band is the best he has ever worked with. They are tight - but you can anticipate every turn of musical phrase bars ahead and they never defy your expectation. Is this, as some suggest, an homage to tradition, their blues folk roots, or is it, as I fear, just a failure of imagination?
Someday Baby and Workingman's Blues 2 lift their heads and show what might have been and the final track Ain't Talkin' has a trace of the old menace. But for the most part the songs, like his voice, sound frail. I shall return to Desire, Blood on The Tracks and even Time Out of Mind, but not often to his view of Modern Times I fear.

Ali Farka Toure - Savane - WCD075

This was the last album he made before his death and, like its predecessor In The Heart Of The Moon, it was recorded in the Hotel Mande in Bamako. Many were disappointed with that album: it was undeniably beautiful but perhaps too intimate, Toure and Toumani Diabate too involved in each other’s skill and musical cultures to draw in the listener. Well, this one is different.

It’s a return to the plaintive, driving, dry-as-dust desert blues of his early albums, played with even more assurance and beautifully recorded, and really feels as though it was recorded for an audience. It’s becoming hard to find a mainstream African album without an itinerant Westerner or two popping up on a few tracks, not always to good effect. Here we have Pee Wee Ellis, who has been playing with many Malian musicians, but I’m glad to say his sax doesn’t sound too out of place and adds to the atmosphere on Bato.

More effective is the harmonica of Little George Sueref, Cardiff-born, and now based and playing clubs in London. As far as I know, he’s released only one album of his own and it’s splendid. He sounds perfectly in place and, hopefully, this collaboration means we’ll hear more of him.

Even so, the unadorned title track really can’t be beaten. The whole album is wonderful. Can’t recommend it enough.