Leonard Cohen - Songs From The Road

Artist: Leonard Cohen
Album: Songs From The Road
Rating: 5 stars
Record Label: Columbia Records Legacy Recording


Close on the heels of Bird On A Wire, a DVD of never before seen footage from Cohen's 1972 European tour comes the CD/DVD combination Songs From The Road, a collection of 12 songs from Cohen’s 2008/09 tour. For those of us who only dream of hearing the legendary rock and roll hall of famer live, this is as good as it gets to the second best thing, after Live In London, of course. Not surprisingly, the record starts with Lover Lover Lover from Cohen’s Tel Aviv concert, where he performed to a crowd of over 50,000 people and still managed to connect with the audience in typical Cohen fashion. It’s almost overwhelming to hear a crowd of 20,000 plus people cheering in recognition as Cohen sings opening notes to songs like Famous Blue Raincoat, Bird On A Wire, Chelsea Hotel, and Hallelujah. An interesting thing about the collection is the presence of songs like That Don’t Make It Junk and Waiting For The Miracle that you won’t find on any greatest hits collections, and the almost perverse absence of any tracks from I’m Your Man, Cohen’s masterpiece record from 1988. What is probably most endearing about this new package is the genuine humility and appreciation he shows for the response from his fans. The best part of the package, however, is the 20 minute bonus footage of his band navigating through 195 countries. Recently turned 71, Cohen’s legacy is truly spectacular and this collection proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his music was wise beyond its years.
 
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(Originally published in The Sunday Guardian on September 26, 2010)

Shaa'ir & Func - Mantis

Artist: Shaa'ir and Func

Album: Mantis

Record Label: Blue Frog Records

Rating: 3 stars

Two and a half years in the making, Mantis is the third studio album from Shaa'ir and Func. Arguably, it’s no mean feat for an indie band to release three whole albums. Available for free download on their website, Mantis is a welcome change in the indie music landscape of our country. Again, not such a big deal considering the music put out by a lot of the bands. The album goes from pretty pulsating loops to the breakbeat influences one has grown to almost expect from the band. We’re not alone, the opening track, starts off with a quite reverberation before moving into a bouncy rhythm and Monica Dogra’s quirky – supposedly poetic – vocal delivery. Hyperbole raises the bar a little, very easy to move to. The music has the potential of being anthemic among desi listeners, is catchy and a slight departure from the synth-bass focussed Light Tribe from 2008. Randolph Correia’s excellent skills light up tracks like Take It Personally and My Roots. The choppy beats on When You’re Around and the bass-driven instrumentation work quite well with Dogra’s soul-inspired lyrical play. Goodbye Cruel World is energetic, yet effervescent. The sound is interesting, the lyrics are political. The trouble is, none of that is any different from what we’ve seen of the duo in the last two records – New Day and Light Tribe would both fit that description quite well. And where the first two times the sound was refreshing, the third time around it seems rather affected. Only ever so slightly, though. A most refreshing indie release on all other counts. 

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(Published in today's The Sunday Guardian)

Röyksopp - Senior

Artist: Röyksopp

Album: Senior Living

Rating: 4.5

Record Label: Wall of Sound/ Astralwerks

If 2009’s Junior was optimistic, then Röyksopp’s fourth LP titled Senior is the perfectly aged foil – edgy, moody and brooding. Recorded around the same time, the two very different records are meant to present two different sides of the duo. While Junior was supposed to present a more “danceable” Röyksopp (which is delivered rather efficiently), Senior is about what they call “The darker sibling who lives in the attic”. True to their claims, Senior is a record to get lost in, to kick back to. The duo from Norway has gone entirely instrumental on this effort, quite a departure from their usual vocal-intensive music. Tricky Two, appropriately named for the second track, may create a momentary illusion of a slightly uptempo drift, but listen carefully and you’ll see that’s only part of the story being told through the record. On The Alcoholic, you can almost hear the birds chirping and the rain as if you were on a drunken ride through the countryside. The broody Senior Living is haunting, exotic and delicately layered with an almost angelic choir like feeling in parts. The Drug, on the other hand, effortlessly fuses minimal 90s house synth with a trip-hop beat. Forsaken Cowboy takes us back to the duo’s debut album Melody A.M. with its swinging tempos and restrained moodiness. The soundscape on this record is lush, if at times a bit eerie like on The Fear, and full of 70s synth recalls. Overall, one of the best albums we’ve heard so far this year.

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(Published in today's The Sunday Guardian)

Ashutosh Phatak - The Petri Dish Project

Artist: Ashutosh
Album: The Petri Dish Project
Record Label: Blue Frog Records
Rating: 2 stars

When there’s so much buzz created around an album pre-release, it would only be fair to be a little sceptical of what’s on offer. But that’s how indie music seems to work in India, and the irony is not exactly lost on us. One possible theory is that the releases are so few and far between that the listener just eats into all the hype created by “artist managers”, “promoters”, club owners and the like. Such is the story of Blue Frog co-owner Ashutosh Phatak’s latest album The Petri Dish Project. Now, Ashu has been dabbling in electronic music as an independent producer and as part of a few other collaborations for a while now and his music has never quite made an impression, and for good reason. The Petri Dish Project, unfortunately, doesn’t put any big dents in that reputation. The opening song, Petri Dish, is easy listening and a damp squib as an opener, reflecting well on the rest of the record. The album’s highlight, beyond doubt, is the large number of collaborations with interesting female vocalists like Anushka Manchanda, Monica Dogra, Suman Sridhar, Ashima Aiyer and Saba Azad. The smoky Saba Azad on Immaculate and the quirky Ashima Aiyer on Miss Understood are probably the high points of the album, and the only two tracks that have any recall value, too, perhaps. Overall, a decent effort but nothing particularly interesting. The album makes one wish musicians would stop creating soundscapes to a perceived lower expectation of the “desi” audience.
 
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(Originally published in The Sunday Guardian, September 5th, 2010)

Matthew Dear - Black City

Artist: Matthew Dear
Album: Black City
Record Label: Ghostly International
Rating: 3.5 stars




Matthew Dear’s fourth full length studio album has left us a bit confused, and we’re not certain how we feel about this record. That is no surprise, really, if you’re any follower of the man with more aliases than one can count (Audion and False, for instance). In continuing tradition from his 2007 release Asa Breed, Dear delivers vocals on Black City as well. One minute, we are completely in love with his deep, droning – slightly disconnected if not robotic – Nick Cave reminiscent vocal delivery, and the other we’re not very sure how we feel about the 1980’s throwback of the Grace Jones kind. However, the sonic peculiarity of this record goes beyond that. Dear has taken Asa Breed’s gauze disco feel to a darker place and draws beautifully from the playfulness of Zappa, Bowie and Eno – and if deconstructed long enough, the daddies of them all, Kraftwerk (particularly in the swamptronica track Shortwave). But that’s not the end of the 80’s influence – You Put A Smell On Me brings back the New Beat with its hard-hitting industrial dance sound. Slowdance, on the other hand, is a bit disturbing with a dark vocal pattern in a peculiar retro-futuristic way. In Black City, Dear has produced a very engaging album, thoroughly enjoyable and most fun to dismember into all its various constituents. The latter, however, is what keeps us from being generous with our love for the record – once all the elements are separated from the tracks, there isn’t much left to love.
 
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(Originally Published in The Sunday Guardian, Delhi: August 29, 2010)

Tracy Bonham - Masts of Manhatta

Artist: Tracy Bonham
Album: Masts of Manhatta
Record Label: Lojinx
Rating: 3.5 stars

Since her first album in 1996, Tracy Bonham has been delivering fine alternative pop while maintaining an artistic difference from legends she one wrote songs for. Masts of Manhatta is her fourth album,  five years in the works and definitely worth the wait. Bonham’s songwriting and her skills on the violin are no surprise to anyone, but this particular album shows a kind of light hearted maturity that makes it a lot more endearing than her previous records. The record shows a deviation from norm, and from 2005’s haunting Blink the Brightest, in the cleverly defiant song structures and skilful arrangements. Beck’s ex guitarist Smokey Hormel delivers an interesting counter to her otherwise jazz roots creating a delightful urban-rural sound bridge in her music. It is exactly this that she put on the table with what is arguably one of the highlight of the album – We Moved Our City To The Country, a satire on the young fleeing to the cities in search of a faux hip factor. Songs like Big Red Heart make the Beck influence apparent with the angular guitar work in combination with Bonham’s violin. Moonlight and Angel and Won’t You Come Down are perfectly examples of what the record has to offer – wry, witty lyrics combined with an effortlessly bouncy sound.

The Radio Dept. - Clinging to a Scheme

Artist: The Radio Dept.

Album: Clinging to a Scheme

Record label: Labrador

Rating: 4

There is something to be said for being worth the wait and with Clinging to a Scheme, their third album since they first came on the scene in the 1990s, The Radio Dept. seem to be making a case for the adage. Clinging to a Scheme comes after four long years of frustrating anticipation since the Swedish band’s 2006 album Pet Grief with it’s claims to be influenced by “minimalist post-punk, krautrock, repetitive motorik beat and ambient noise”. For the uninitiated, The Radio Dept. is a fairly conventional indie pop outfit with glazes of electronic soundscape. And yes, the influences only preempt the peculiarity of the 10 track long record with hard to deconstruct layers of guitar riffs, overlapped with speech samples and Saint Etienne like dance pop that the albums has to offer. WithClinging to a Scheme, The Radio Dept gives us an album that, in all likelihood, will turn into a cult offering in a decade. The shimmering clarity of Heavens on Fire is echoed throughout the album as it opens with Domestic Scene, the melancholy lyrics are well juxtaposed with the consistently cheery music on the record. Tracks like This Time Around, David and A Token of Gratitude – even as it borders on the histrionic – emerge in new layers on each spin. A long time in the waiting as it may have been, the band delivers a high fidelity, textured album – with The Radio Dept.’s trademark dreamlike ambiance –that will continue to unravel its myriad layers with each listen.

Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be

From a while back, but I quite liked the album. 


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Artist: Dum Dum Girls

Album: I Will Be

Record Label: Sub-pop

Rating: 3.5 stars

The Dum Dum Girls – their name a clever take on the name of an Iggy Pop album called Dum Dum Boys – started out in 2008 as singer Dee Dee Penny’s (real name Kirstin Gundred) solo project. Since then they’ve released a home recorded CDR and a 12” EP. The now four-piece garage pop band has just released their first studio album titled I Will Be, all of eleven songs. The Dum Dum Girls, in their previous recordings, took low fidelity 60’s girl band brand of pop and a cocktail of catchy lyrics and terrific harmonies.  This time around, by buffing up the band with three other members, including Frankie Rose from their suffix-sake girl-group Vivian Girls, Dee Dee has – almost fiercely – turned the Dum Dum Girls into a bonafide rockband. I Will Be was originally slated to be an album about a woman in prison, but in the final product has only one track that keeps to the theme – Jail La La, released as a single earlier this year. Oh Mein Me, sung in German, and a delicate rendering of Sonny and Cher’s Baby Don’t Go, are irrefutably hip with vocals that easily shuttle between fierce, coy and mysterious. The record’s production by Richard Gottehrer is the perfect foil to Dee Dee’s lyrics and the girl’s harmonies, creating mature and latered pop pleasures. 

Morcheeba - Blood Like Lemonade

A review I wrote for the newspaper I work with.


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Artist: Morcheeba
Album: Blood Like Lemonade
Label: Play It Again Sam
Rating: 4 stars

Morcheeba is often referred to as the music to which one would escape the “Decade from Hell”. Their carefree yet decadent sound when they started off in the mid-1990s rightfully earned them this reputation. Syke Edwards’ vocals had defined the band’s sound with an almost ethereal quality. Seven years after she quit the ensemble – and seven years of fading fortunes for the Godfrey Brothers, incidentally – Edwards returns to the band in their latest release Blood Like Lemonade, and it’s almost like they’re making up for the last two albums they put out. There is a  feeling of the lost years being retold, in both their laid back musicality and in Edwards’ breezy vocal renditions. The opening track Crimson takes one back to the late 1990s and is the perfect welcome wagon for Edwards, even if it’s slow burn-like quality makes one wonder if it’d be more at home somewhere in the middle of the record instead. Even Though might not be one of the album’s highlights, but it makes for a good lead-in to the title track Blood For Lemonade. The lingering vocal quality Edwards brings back to Morcheeba’s music seems very at home in the album with the light pacing. Clear picks for favourites on  the album have to be Mandala, I Am The Spring and Recipe For Disaster, with that familiar dreamy ambience that makes this – in typical Morcheeba fashion – perfect for a lazy summer day.