Jeff Lynne

“Long Wave”

Pop

Frontiers

Released 8^th October 2012

            "I call this new album Long Wave because all of the songs I sing on it are the ones heard on long wave radio when I was a kid growing up in Birmingham, England," Lynne explains. "These songs take me back to that feeling of freedom in those days and summon up the feeling of first hearing those powerful waves of music coming in on my old crystal set. My dad also had the radio on all the time, so some of these songs have been stuck in my head for 50 years. You can only imagine how great it felt to finally get them out of my head after all these years."

            There, now you know. What he forgot to mention is the fact this sort of nostalgia trip is a bloody huge money spinner as Rod Stewart, Michael Bolton et al… have discovered.

            Not content with rerecording a load of ELO’s greatest hits for the “Mr Blue Sky - The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra” compilation, Jeff Lynne has gone and done a second covers album of songs from his youth. To some, this may be interesting but to the rest of us it is rather perplexing.

            Of the eleven tracks here, only one is of interest, Berry’s “Let It Rock”, and even that has had its nuts nipped. The rest are ponderous and rather insipid covers of songs some of which have no relevance to rock at all, Charles Aznavour’s “She” for instance, suggesting Lynne is pondering a jaunt down the Great American Songbook route, or at least his version of it.

            The problem being we know Lynne is more than capable of rocking out. Being a bit of a poptastic genius in his day, he has more than ably demonstrated his rock cred with ELO and The Traveling Wilburys and a song writing and production credit list that is to die for.

 

            There are probably enough Lynne disciples knocking about who will hoover this CD up with glee. However, if like me, you are hoping for something along the lines of “Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle”, “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Rockaria”, forget it.

 

ELO

“Mr Blue Sky: The Very Best Of…”

Pop Rock

Frontiers

Released 8^th October 2012

 

            Let me make one thing clear, I don’t like people pissing on my back and telling me it’s raining.

           This is the blurb that accompanies this album and I quote, “Featuring ELOs biggest and most memorable hits, Mr. Blue Sky The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra is a BRAND NEW ALBUM featuring BRAND NEW RECORDINGS by Jeff Lynne, which sound much sharper and clearer than the old versions. It includes a never before heard bonus track, Point of No Return. In a nod to ELOs 40th anniversary, a very special edition of 10538 Overture is also featured.”

Got that? No? Well let me put in simple terms; IT’S A FUCKING RIP OFF.

I’m fucking incandescent. A brand new album of brand new recordings? A brand new compilation album of rerecorded ELO hits more like. That used to be termed alternate versions didn’t it? What’s the fucking point in that?

There are two bonus tracks, one of which has never been released. I take it that’s the USP then? Well yippee, fuck me rigid and call me sweetheart.

What makes things worse is the tracks here add nothing to the originals. In fact, if they don’t sound almost exactly the same, they are inferior.

And where’s Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle and Rockaria? The very tracks that would justify me sat here flipping my lid and writing this. They couldn’t even do a full cover version of the damn title track.

There are probably still hordes of ELO completists out there to justify Frontiers optimism/cynicism. Well good luck to them. The deserve each other.

If you want some ELO then go for Best Of… which is available for nearly half the price with nigh on double the tracks.

Or…

There are loads of excellent original albums of original songs by original bands out there on which to spend yer hard earned dosh. Just check out Metaltalk’s archive of review articles for one.

I don’t understand why this nasty release has arrived at all, let alone why now so avoid this fucking piece of shit like the plague. I don’t care what they’ve done; it’s still a damn rip off.

I think when the corporate juggernaut takes its piss taking antics to these heights (admittedly surprising for Frontiers) someone has to get stuck in with the proverbial size elevens.

Overall, trully awefull in more ways than one

 

My back has been seriously fucked all week. It clicked out on Saturday and got gradually worse until I had to be brought home from work Monday. I was only filling a kettle when it happened. So, for the past week I've done nothing but think about things. Then this album came across the death decks. I thought was rather good but the original write up, for Metaltalk, didn't get accepted so I tweaked it a bit and here it is...

The Dandy Warhols

“This Machine”

Alt Rock

The End Records

Released 24^th April

                The Dandy Warhols is an alternative rock outfit that came out of Portland, Oregon in 1994. The band’s founding core of singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor, guitarist Peter Holmström and keyboard player Zia McCabe were joined in ’98 by current drummer Brent DeBoer. If you are unfamiliar with the band, you will almost certainly have heard  their “Bohemian Like You” track that was used in a Vodafone ad in 2001 which pretty much put them on everybody’s radar.

“This Machine”, the band’s eighth album, is quite dark and stripped back. The cover of “16 Tons” is given a spiky horn driven blues groove. “I Am Free” is, despite the Dandy’s arty pretensions, a driven pop song by another name. It has nice brass work too. “Seti Vs The Wowi Signal” courts a Stonesy shambolic lope and “Enjoy Yourself” is like something Bowie would do with Iggy Pop if he needed to be cool again and Rono was still alive. It is a laid back affair that mixes Gothic with an eighty’s new wave artiness and a real lazy vocal that overall sounds a little dated; a situation not helped by the band’s urgent attempts at eclecticism and the need to avoid mainstream acceptance; a need that in itself is a cliché.

                This is not an album to just dip into nor will it appeal to everyone but the production allows a spontaneous live feel that gives a satisfyingly rough edge to its contrived altiness; a guitar album that offers the metal head a chance to take a break from the balls-out aural onslaught of today’s hard rock arena. “This Machine” is the sort of album to slap on the death decks on a hung over Sunday morning when it’s raining and all you want to do is fuck all.

The Jac Dalton Band

“Icarus”

Melodic Rock

FMSG

                Doing good business in its Australian homelands, The Jac Dalton Band is now looking to spread its wings with the re-release of 2010’s “Icarus” for the UK and European markets. A move designed to not only act as a vehicle for his own musical ambitions but to also benefit Dalton’s charity, LandAid (www.landaid.org.au) which was set up to help regional Australian communities.

                Dalton himself is a North Carolina ex pat, and man can you tell. This second album is brim full of the sort of soft centred melodic AOR the Americans used to shit on demand giving the album a joyous groove that demands a long hot drive through the desert.

Some have compared Dalton’s voice to Coverdale’s early croon but it is nowhere near as soulful or dextrous. It is not that it is bad, it isn’t and Dalton certainly sings a good song but Dot he ain’t. Fitting this sort of quaint AOR perfectly, his voice has a honeyed restraint that mercifully shuns over-egged octave scaling arrogance. Think Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” with a bit of a vocal overhaul.

                On paper, “Icarus” is an easy album to nail and yes it comes pretty close to the norm of Mr Big and Pride Of Lions but the Antipodean angle works enough sunburnt magic to give the album a resonance that sets it apart from the great white herd. It is smooth and well produced but there is a hot outback shimmer to it that allows the album to neatly side step the generic.

                Apart from the insane Hayseed-lite cover of ‘DC’s “Back In Black” the general quality of “Icarus” is pretty damn good with the grunting “Waterline”, the breezy “Good To Go” and the driven “Suck Bang Blow” being particularly noteworthy. Throw in the killer track “Locked Cocked & Ready To Rock” and you’ll find an album that suspects it is destined to be a long lost gem.

                The chances are that if “Icarus” had been issued thirty years ago it would have proved a staple of US FM radio with the likes of the effortless “State Of Rock” and “Eye Of The Storm”.  Now, it has a fight on its hands with the Vikings and Teutons shipping this sort of quality high end melodic rock by the ton, though with a fair wind and some luck there is nothing to say “Icarus” won’t get heavily rotated somewhere thus hopefully avoiding the ‘much-sought-after-obscurity’ tag.

                “Icarus” has that certain something that only Ausie outfits possess; a sun burnt shimmer that is unique to our colonial friends. You’ll hear it on any Cold Chisel album but you will be unable to identify what “it” actually is, yet here it is on “Icarus” in unbridled abundance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC-dCm5XW8c

Reign Of Fire

Reign Of Fury

“World Detonation”

Heavy Metal

Mosh Tuneage (PHD / Plastic Head Music ) & Goodlife Recordings

Released 13^th August 2012

 

                Reign Of Fury originally hails from the mean streets of Cheltenham. Prowling the stages of the English South West and Midlands for the last fifteen years, the band has honed its groove; a surprisingly authentic sounding Bay Area thrash/metal hybrid, until it is now in a position to release this, its debut album.

                If you like your metal a la Priest, Maiden and old(ish) Metallica then you are gonna love Reign Of Fury’s “World Detonation”. It is a hugely produced, thrashed up harmonised dual guitar meat fest that furls its homage to metal’s old guard in a chain mailed, if fading, youthful exuberance.

The opening one-two of “Infernal Conflict” and instrumental “Goodbye Mother Earth” nail the album’s colours to the mast in no uncertain terms. The Metallica-meets-power-metal mix is a combo on which the rest of this album comfortably sits with the occasional death grunt thrown in to break up the otherwise clean soaring vocal.

Other than a few quiet intros, “Heaven Waits, Hell Takes” and “Vile Submission” for instance, there is not a lot that distinguishes the songs from each other. “World Detonation “ lacks enough light and shade to give the individual tracks something that makes them memorable and with three tracks weighing in at over eight minutes, the boundaries of the already limited and fragile attention span of today’s youth might be tested beyond destruction.

Until the closing track, “The Hound” that is, because here we have a nine minute dose of heavy metal that is the result of the best of the album being distilled and filtered until only the very essence of perfection is left. If “The Hound” does not become a darling of the mosh pit then there really is no hope for us.

New, “World Detonation” certainly isn’t; you will be lucky to find it being described anywhere as inventive, innovative or creative. It is an album that you will be almost instantly familiar with, accompanied as it is by the ghosts of thrash’s big hitters. Yet Reign Of Fury does the Bay Area thrash/power metal thing very well.

Despite the originality issues, there is no denying the album has considerable commercial potential. “World Detonation” has the accessibility of the likes of Trivium and Dragonforce; an ease of use that whilst not necessarily being substantial enough to satisfy the needs of the older members of the metal fraternity, will almost certainly appeal to the younger, less patient metal head who demands instant gratification; immediate fulfilment.

To release this sort of metal album now must have taken nuts of iron being as some of the biggest names of the genre have released albums recently into an already engorged market place. In this instance however, the quality of the album is such that the ploy might well pay off and Reign In Fury might just be able to justify hitching a ride on the tail of this particular thrash comet.

For metal heads in the know “World Detonation” will either verge on the parody or prove a nice welcoming album to get into. For those, however, who know not where they step then perhaps this album is the perfect introduction to the genre.

The track ‘World Detonation‘ is available as a free download at www.reverbnation.com/reignoffury
Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGe3jWr84p8