Clever Eleven April 2009
Due to vacations, holidays, birthdays and other time-consuming activities, April's collection is a good week late, but better clever than never, eh? You know the drill, eleven cracking tunes, perhaps particularly upbeat this time.
1. Green Day - Know Your Enemy
- I'm guessing minimalism was never on the agenda when Billy Joe & co set to return with a Butch Vig-produced rock opera.
2. The Enemy - No Time For Tears
- What better way to follow Green Day's suggestion than to check out the first single from the Coventry punks' second album Music for the People, where The Jam/The Clash-attitude is topped with Oasis/The Verve grandiosity to great effect.
3. Bob Mould - City Lights (Days Go By)
- He's pushing 50, but the former frontman of Hüsker Dü and Sugar is more prolific than ever, releasing his ninth solo album Life and Times only a good year after his eighth, it still being better than what most bands at half his age muster in twice the time.
4. LoveLikeFire - William
5. Eskimo Joe - Foreign Land
- Already huge in their homeland (no, not Greenland), the Aussie trio try their luck on a foreign contintent with their fourth album, Inshalla. In keeping with the exotic album title, the lead-off single not only builds from a Turkish snake-charmer's theme but also features a muscular guitar riff in the vein of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.
6. Manic Street Preachers - Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
- With AWOL guitarist Richey Edwards officially pronounced dead last November, the Welsh trio pay the ultimate tribute by using his lost lyrics on their upcoming album that also see them returning to their earlier work in terms of fuzzy guitars and artsy song titles.
7. The Mojo Fins - Always Now
- The Brighton popsters soldiered heroically on after the death of their lead singer two years ago, and are finally ready with their debut album The Sound that I Still Hear. The sound they're still hearing is presumably that of The Unbelievable Truth (remember them?) or even The Sundays.
8. Tinted Windows - Kind Of A Girl
- Ten years ago, the odds would be pretty high on a Hanson/Smashing Pumpkins collaboration. Well, here you have the heartthrob from the former and the weird guitarist from the latter, joining forces with songwriter-maestro Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and the drummer from Cheap Trick in an unlikely, but most likeable powerpop supergroup.
9. The Fine Arts Showcase - The Teenage Order
- If anything, this track is certainly a showcase of mastering the fine art of emulating The Byrds (1967, to be precise), something the sympathetic Swedes aren't too coy about, naming the brilliant parent album Dolophine Smile after a track by the psychedelic pioneers.
10. Maxïmo Park - Roller Disco Dreams
- Personal highlight from the the Geordies' third outing, on which they (again) sadly fail to repeat the magic of their debut, sounding more and more like a Kaiser Chiefs without the singalong-anthems, without the hits and most importantly - without the fun.
11. Heroes & Zeros - Cipramillion
- On their second album, the Norwegian drone-poppers get some vocal help from current indie it-girl Anne-Lise Frøkedal, who appears for the third time in five months (also being lead singer in Harrys Gym and I Was a King).
SUBS:
The Tragically Hip - Honey, Please
The Mary Onettes - Dare
Montée - Isle Of Now
Gomez - Natural Reaction
White Belt Yellow Tag - You're Not Invincible
