Trollheart

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One of the big hits for Savage Garden, also the title of an Alan Rickman film, though the worm doesn't think the two are connected...

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It may seem so, but that's just coincidence. The thing about Fleetwood Mac is that I first got into them via Rumours, then Mirage and then Tango, after which I was hungry for their next album. I personally liked Mask, and the fact that Lindsey B was not there --- though I did remark upon it during the review --- didn't spoil the album for me, or indeed make any difference. MY favourite in FM has always been Stevie! Say you will was an excellent album, I agree, without question. I haven't heard much of LB's solo material, may check it out at some point. I assume you've heard Stevie's? I had two Christine albums too, they were ok but nothing special.
That album just amazed me. Admittedly, the other two were not as good, but for a band I'd never heard of I was just so impressed.
I spent about half a year listening to Mostly Autumn, exclusively. I had to force myself to turn to other music. They're still one of my favourites; another band who came out of nothing in terms of where I knew them from --- recommendation from allofmp3.com, may ye rest in peace...
SO I can understand: great, great album, but how you can compare UP to it or indeed US is beyond me! I tried and tried to get into that album, (UP) but even after seeing him live on the telly, the songs he performed from it left me totally cold. I was so disappointed with NEW BLOOD too, as you'll see later on --- it won some bad Pollys! I was so sure it was going to be great and in the end the best I can say is it was meh. But I agree the early PG stuff was great, the first three albums --- not so familiar with the fourth --- not to mention Plays Live and of course then So. Ovo is also a fantastic album, and if you haven't heard Passion (the music for the movie "The last temptation of Christ"), seek it out as it is amazing. But I think in recent years Gabriel has begun to lose it, and I'm sorry to have to say that.
I liked Momentary Lapse, though there was a heavy feeling of doom about it, very morose (black prog rock?) and also an idea of "we can make it without Waters" which made it a little strained. Division Bell was definitely much better, more cohesive, more an album made for the enjoyment of it rather than because they were trying to prove a point.
I was surprised by the quality of some of the solo material, though I didnt review ALL his solo albums --- I think he has seven? --- the ones I did I was generally impressed with. Mostly. But doesn't he, and the Cars, shamefully rip off a lot of old melodies, even he doing so with Cars ones on his solos?
Look forward to it!

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Always one to give an artiste a fair chance --- especially if they're a pretty girl; see my doomed review of Pixie Lott's second album a while back --- I heard one song off this album (a single) and thought the eternal thought: I wonder if the rest is as good as that? The song, “Soulmate”, was in fact so good that I was really impressed with it and hoped that there would indeed be percentage for me in buying the album. And so I did. But was sorely disappointed, as you can guess, otherwise it would not have ended up here.

N.B --- Natasha Bedingfield --- 2007 (Phonogenic)


Not released in the USA, at least in this form, and with good reason I think, this was the second album for the sister of singer/songwriter Daniel Bedingfield, and would in fact result in her fame and popularity eclipsing his. Her first album, “Unwritten”, had been well received, though I haven't personally heard it; this was not so much so. For my money, the only decent track on it --- and it's streets ahead of anything else on the album --- is the aforementioned “Soulmate”, a lovely, haunting ballad that gave her chart success. Well, there is one other...

The opener though, “How do you do”, despite having a certain Waits charm about the brass and the percussion, is quite weak

and the other single, “I wanna have your babies” is basic pop/r&b boredom

“Pirate bones” is okay, but doesn't live up to its interesting title

“Tricky angel” starts off quite well, nice bassline, but then more or less degenerates into basic pop

“No more what ifs” could have been a good song, but falls far short

It takes the genius of Diane Warren to lift this album out of the ordinary, with the lovely “Still here”

But then you have something like “Smell the roses” to close what is a very weak album overall.


To be fair to her, at least Natasha does co-write the lion's share of the music on this album, and for that she has to be commended, but her writing (or co-writing, as it were) is just not up to scratch. Either that, or the writers she collaborates with aren't that great. Hard to say, as there isn't one song on the album written solo by her. I suppose I should not have expected all that much: it's generic pop after all, hardly the sort of thing I would normally listen to, but when I heard “Soulmate” I had such high hopes.

In the end, all I can say about this album is “N.B: do not bother”. Sorry for the obvious pun, but it fits in well with how I felt about this album, having struggled through it.

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When I'm not listening to or writing about music, I like to relax with a bit of telly. Like probably most people these days, I have a SKY Plus box, so I hardly ever watch “live” TV anymore: I record what I want and then watch it when it's convenient for me. Like their tagline used to say, it's changed the way I watch TV, and I'm sure that's true for a huge amount of people too. We no longer have to allocate time to sit down and catch our favourite shows; we can now just rely on “the box” to record them for us and we can review what's recorded and watch whenever we please, whether that's the early hours of the morning or just before we go to work. We can record a whole fistful of programmes that we would never have time to watch during the week, and binge on them at the weekend, when things are less hectic and time is more available.

Personally, a lot of the time I tend to record whole series, or a few episodes at least, and then watch them back to back. The idea of waiting for next week's episode has largely been eliminated. Nowadays we watch what we want, when we want. The upshot of this of course is that we often end up recording more than we can ever watch, and as the programmes stack up on the Sky box we have to make a decision as to either what to watch or what to delete. I've found myself recording things I thought I'd really like to see, but every time I review the list I'm just not in the mood, or there isn't enough time, or a million other excuses, and things just end up getting wiped off without being watched.

Luckily, I went for the terabyte box, which as its name implies means you have 1000 gigs of space to fill up, so it's unlikely to get full anytime soon. Of course, this is a two-edged sword: with so much space available, it's nothing to me to record four, five, six full seasons of programmes and add in movies or specials or documentaries, concerts and so on, and the more I record the more I have to watch. This has resulted in my deciding not to bother after all with some series --- I enjoyed the opening season of “The Wire” but thought the second was a bit flat and uninteresting, and so with about 26 episodes on the box that I was likely never to watch, or want to watch, it was eventually a case of clear out some space by deleting them.

There are shows I watch on the day they're transmitted --- though hardly ever live --- or the day after. Shows I'm following, the news, football etc., and these are the ones where I'm actively waiting for them to be shown so I can see them. But many are just series I enjoy or think I might, and record with the intention of watching to see if I like them. Sometimes this works out, sometimes not. In this section, to move away a little from the music for a short while, I'll be going through some of the programmes I'm currently watching and enjoying (well obviously: why would you watch something if you didn't enjoy it?) --- some of them may be very old to some people, some may not even be known to them. As I live in Ireland, some may be only transmitted on our national channels, but I'll throw in as much information as I can about them.

2 Broke Girls


The first one is one that followed the original pattern I described above, ie I recorded a few episodes hoping it would be good, kept ignoring it as the episodes built up, and eventually one night thought I'd see what it was like. If it was no use, I reasoned, I could delete the episodes and make space. Somehow, whenever I think this, the show ends up being great. And so this proved to be.

A comedy from the same stable that brought us classics “Cheers” and “Frasier” (well, James Burrows is involved), it features two girls from wildly different backgrounds working together as waitresses in a Brooklyn restaurant. Max, played by Kat Dennings, is a tough, streetwise, no-nonsense girl from a poor, working-class background who is doing what she has to do to keep body and soul together. She is joined one day by Caroline (Beth Behrs), a snobby, sexy socialite who is much more used to moving in higher social circles, but whose father has been indicted and imprisoned for running a ponzi scam, and all his assets having been frozen means she has nothing to live on, and must fall back on her completely limited survival skills. Talk about putting a domesticated, spoiled cat out to fend for themselves on the Serengeti!

Anyway, things don't go smoothly at first but eventually the two become on/off friends, and the show centres around their dream (put forward by Caroline utilising Max's baking skills) of opening a cupcake shop. Caroline reckons they need $250,000 to make this happen, so they begin saving, and at the end of each episode, depending on whether they've made or lost money, a total is shown as to how far they have to go to reach their goal.

It sounds a bit cheesy, and I wasn't sure at first, but I quickly grew to love it, so much so that now I'm letting the episodes build up so that I have a few to watch at once! Other good characters in the show are the lecherous and eternally optimistic Oleg, a Ukranian chef at the restaurant, who thinks every woman is attracted to him, and never stops trying. The girls' boss, Han Lee, a short little Korean guy, is also very well played, and it's refreshing in that the episodes don't seem to centre around “crisis of the week” or anything, just the things that the girls go through on their way towards success and riches, both of which it's painfully obvious they're never going to achieve.

The characters may not be original, but they're played with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek humour that you never feel they're taking themselves too seriously, and yet they still elicit your sympathy when life throws a curveball at them. Well worth a look, it's currently on our national station, RTE, but no doubt it's also available through the usual channels. Here's a clip.


The Borgias


Now this is a programme I had the entire series of on my Sky box until I recently decided to give it a shot. I did enjoy it, but I was a little underwhelmed, given the “original mafia” tagline the show had been going with, that it had not a lot more sex and violence in it. Not that I enjoy that sort of thing, per se, but when you're talking about the Borgias, you expect them to be more the Sopranos and less the Simpsons. I found the sympathetic line Neil Simon took with the story interesting, but a little unbelievable. Essentially, he was saying that the Borgias were misunderstood, put upon, reviled and there was a real “us against the world” attitude about how they ruled.

This is NOT how I remember being taught the Borgias were! Wasn't the daughter, Lucrezia, supposed to poison her enemies? Yet here she's depicted as an innocent, strong and determined woman, the best side of the family. Well, the image aside, the series is very good: very historically accurate especially in the dialogue (I just hate it when some Roman soldier says “dude” or “guys”, or uses some other idiom that wouldn't be invented for another thousand years!) and the settings, and the story is well written. Jeremy Irons puts in a fine performance as the Pope, but I believe it's Francois Renaud as Cardinal Cesare Borgia and his sister Lucrezia, played by Holliday Grainger, who steal the show. Michel Muller pulls off a star turn as the king of France later on in the series, and Steven Berkoff is his usual scintillating self, though sadly only for two episodes.

I personally thought the ending was a little flat (won't give anything away) but am heartened to see that a second season has been commissioned. Let's hope it gets a little more bloody and raunchy though, or I might just have to stick with the second season of “Game of thrones”!

Here's what happens when you piss the French off!


IRT Deadliest roads: the Andes

I've been into “Ice Road Truckers” from the start, so when they spun off into this other series, where some of the drivers leave the USA and head for the most dangerous roads they can drive, you better believe I was there! The first series had the guys in India, where high, twisting and treacherous narrow roads that barely deserve to be called such put the truckers to their ultimate test. These were the roads to sort the men from the boys (and the women from the girls)! Now they're back, and this time it's in the Andes, where the roads of India must look like a walk in the park, as they struggle with feet-wide mountainous passes, landslides, tunnels cut into the mountains and bridges that even Indiana Jones would think twice about crossing!

For pure adrenalin rush, IRT is great, but the interplay between the drivers is also interesting to watch. On the first series of “Deadliest roads”, one of the drivers gave up on the first day and flew home. I'm not going to give away whether that happens this season, but as I say, these roads are even more dangerous! How they get all those mad camera angles is beyond me: trucks must be festooned with cameras. Currently showing on History. Here's an idea of what to expect.



Death Valley

Do you like those shows like “Cops” where the cameras follow the police around on a “normal” day or night? Do you like vampires and zombies? Have you a healthy sense of humour? If the answer to all three is yes, then do yourself a favour and tune to MTV to watch the hilarious “Death Valley”. It's just so good it should be mandatory viewing. Here's a clip.


Flashpoint

A new series I've just started watching that follows the day-to-day adventures of the Strategic Response Unit (SRU), essentially SWAT team in an unnamed Canadian city. The guys are called upon when special tactics are required, and though they do their fair share of sniper work, there's a lot of negotiation involved too. Yes it's hackneyed and has been done to death before, but I'm really enjoying what I'm seeing so far. Only just started on Universal Channel, but I see from Wiki that it's currently going to a fifth season. Good news for me.



And finally, though it's not showing at the moment and has in fact finished, I'd like to give a mention to one of the “sleeper hits” on my Sky box, a little show that only lasted five episodes sadly, but should have run for much longer.

The Booth at the End

Xander Berkeley plays the mysterious Man who is always at the booth at the end of a diner, with notebook and pen. He is said to be able to grant your fondest wish or deepest desire, but at a price. He will demand you do something for him. If you do, then what you ask for will be yours. But there is no alternative request: you do what he asks you or there's no deal. This can be anything from robbing a bank (seriously!) to setting off a bomb (no, really!) or becoming pregnant (I am serious, I promise!), and the really interesting thing about the short series is that the lives of each of the people who visit him usually intersect in quite ingenious ways, leading to the one getting their wish at the expense of, or in concert with, the wish of another.

It's really quite amazing, a real play on the idea of “how far would you go to get what you want?” Berkeley is brilliant in the role, calm and collected but with both a quiet air of menace, an aura of tragedy and a sense that perhaps he's a victim of his circumstances. In one episode, someone says to him, having heard what he must do to get what he wants, “You're a monster!” He responds calmly, “No, but you might say I feed monsters.” Excellent dialogue all throughout. Check it out if you can, and you'll agree with me that five episodes is just not enough.


That's enough of my telly viewing for now. As I watch newer stuff, or stuff that's on my box but I haven't watched yet, or indeed come across older stuff I may have missed, I'll fill you in on the details. As if you care. But if you want to talk TV programmes with me, or comment on any of the ones above, you know what to do!

We now return you to your normal programme, already in progress...

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Unknown Soldier

Sure I know Stevie's solo stuff really well and without a doubt her solo album Bella Donna is her best work, the song "Edge of Seventeen" is a classic cut, the only other album in her discography that approaches the quality of this album is Trouble in Shangri-La.

Up is a complex art rock album and is indeed a cold and inacessible bit of work, but I found its one of those albums that gives over to repeated listens to really enjoy the quality of the album, thats my experience of it anyway.

Page 9

Elo- I have a love hate relationship with ELO and often tell people I don't really like them, when in fact I actually do! Out of the Blue is a classic 1970s double and the band's crowning achievement and a better album than the previous A New World Record. Out of the Blue is probably the band's best album from their golden period along with Eldorado. It took Jeff Lynne several attempts before he was able to transform his love of the Beatles, over to a symphonic rock environment ELO style, Out of the Blue is that album. FTW my fav ELO album has to be Time, with its heavy synth approach its the swansong of ELO, but sadly its a forgotten gem.

Boston- I adore Third Stage and I actually bought it when it actually came out (showing my age here) When I first put it on and heard Brad Delp singing "Amanda" I was hooked, its an album I still love today and one of the finest AOR albums of the 1980s.

Ric Ocasek- I see you didn't do a review for Fireball Zone? This is a very good album and one of his rockier outputs, its got a lot of good material and "Mister Meaner" has to be one of the best songs that he has ever written, if you don't know it I'm sure you'll really like it.

You mentioned earlier that you thought Ric Ocasek was guilty of ripping off his old melodies, well Quick Change World is one of the worst cases of plagiarism that I know off, its the worst album he has ever written and the whole thing sounds like some shoddy cut and paste job of earlier material, its an embassing album.

Next time more of Ric Ocasek or part 2 of the NWOBHM and definitely page 10.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

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One of the Police's earlier hits, but not any the worse for it; one of their better songs in fact, when they were a bit truer to their original reggae roots, this is “Roxanne”.

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Okay, well as the Americans would say, my batting average on new albums this year has been pretty damn poor --- I think two out of six so far have impressed me --- but last week's offering from the Boss was never going to have been in doubt, nor was it, and I'm hoping this will help get me back on track and go some way towards redressing the balance. There must be better albums getting released, even this early in the year! Come on, we're nearly a quarter of the way into 2012!

I've liked Lana Lane ever since I heard “Lady Macbeth”, though I have to say some of the tracks from her other albums have somewhat underwhelmed me, but then I've tended to listen to them on playlists rather than as an album all the way through (I know, shame on me!) so I can't really say that any particular album has disappointed me, though her covers project, “Gemini” did fail to impress. But then, so did Fish when he tried the same on “Songs from the mirror”, and that's the only one of his albums I don't rate. Lana has a new album out this year, her first in four, so I'm expecting a big return to form and a serious thumbs up.

El Dorado Hotel --- Lana Lane --- 2012 (Think Tank)


For those of you who don't know, Lana is married to producer, musician and basically everything supremo Erik Norlander, and he usually plays on and produces her albums, as well as co-writing with her. He's of course involved here again, with a guest appearance by Asia's John Payne, not only singing (well, backup singing) but also playing mandolin! This I have to hear.

Big, growling guitars, heavy organ and rolling drums greet us as “A dream full of fire” opens the album, an epic, almost progressive rock piece, a long opener but not the longest on the album, but at just under eight and a half minutes it's plenty to sink your teeth into, to whet the appetite that has been waiting since 2008's “Red planet boulevard” to be satisfied. And satisfied it looks to be, as the song rocks along as it gets into its stride, Lana's voice as distinctive and strong as ever, certainly not seeming in any way dulled from four years of inactivity. Norlander is a constant presence on the keys, ever by her side, both as husband and musical partner, while guitar duties are taken by no less than five guys, giving the album, not surprisingly, a very heavy, guitar-centric feel, while yet allowing plenty of scope for Norlander to express himself as only he can on the keyboards.

A great running bass line more than halfway through is complemented by what sounds like cello, but isn't credited as such so perhaps that's on the banks of synths Erik Norlander is using. Either way, it sounds really impressive and just adds to the overall soundscape. On first listen this comes across as very similar to “Lady Macbeth”, which in my opinion is no bad thing, as that's my favourite of her albums. Great guitar solo, though who's playing it I couldn't tell you, as there are, as mentioned, five candidates. The song actually fades out on the solo, then we're into “Maybe we'll meet again”, with a huge, powerful keyboard intro very close to Europe's “The final countdown”, a mid-paced rocker with some really nice choral vocals (keyboard made?) and another great soaraway guitar solo. I have to admit, looking at the title I thought this would be a ballad. It's not. Though I'm confident there will be at least one, as Lana Lane does truly exceptional lovesongs.

The title track, as such --- it's actually called “El Dorado” --- comes in on spooky synth and strings, with gorgeous Spanish guitar, restrained percussion giving the song a very low-key feeling, and it seems indeed to be a somewhat epic (six minutes) rock cruncher, with heavy guitar and solid keyboard, Lana's voice passionate and yearning, the Spanish guitar really characterising the song and providing its identity. It's not clear from the lineup, but I'm going to guess that it's Mark McCrite who's behind the Spanish guitar, as he mentions the song is one of his favourites, and he is one of the guitarists. Erik Norlander's keys certainly give the song a very progressive rock feel too, a lot of drama and intensity in a slowburning song that seems like it could go on forever.

There's very little short here, with most of the tracks heading over the five minute mark, many well over that, and “Darkness falls” is no exception, coming in at a respectable five minutes eight seconds. It starts off slowly, with more Spanish guitar and humming synth, then breaks into a dark rock groove a little in, sliding back into the soft, gentle melody and then back out again, with great backing vocals from John Payne. A beautiful acoustic or Spanish guitar solo (how do you tell the difference?) a little more than halfway in, which is then taken up by the electric guitar and runs all told for about a minute before Lana comes back in to take the song to its conclusion.

The shortest track is next, in “Hotels”, acoustic piano led with some nice guitar backup and a soulful vocal from Lana, decrying the life on the road as she sings ”I live in hotels/ A life I know well/ My personal Hell/ So very lonely.” Beautiful strings accompaniment opens up the song, piano keeping the melody with some brass, again probably Norlander on the synth as no trumpet or trombone player is credited. This is the first ballad, and certainly worth waiting for as Lana's soft, almost breathless vocal carries us along and into her world of room service and tour buses, which can of course have very much a downside.

Oh no! I'm shocked --- shocked! --- to hear Lana use vocoder on her vocals on “Believe”! Why? Oh why? She does not need any electronic processing of her voice: it's fine as it is. Well, luckily it's only sporadic use, but it really grates on me. Damn, I hate vocoders, in case you didn't already know. The song? Oh yeah. It's a mid-paced AOR style rocker, kind of in the Journey or Styx mould, but it's damn hard to concentrate on anything after that shock. The first, hopefully the only disappointment on the album so far. I must admit, Norlander's frequent use of what I have to term “the Europe riff” on his keys is also quite annoying. Once is okay I guess, but he's using it almost as a signature now, and come on man, “The final countdown” was a decade and a half ago now. I think they have the high ground here!

Good heavy guitar opening then to the other short track, “Life of the party” just about edging the four minutes, and it's a good straight-ahead rocker which certainly gives the five guitarists a chance to cut loose. I must say, I've heard John Payne's voice a little now (though not that much) but I have yet to hear this mandolin he's rumoured to play. Heavy organ adds to the song as it trundles along --- this will be good when played live, I have no doubt. Next up is “Gone are the days”, opening on choral synth but quickly breaking into a boogie rocker that rocks with energy, bopping along on an almost three-chord-boogie that reminds me in places of “Through the rain” from “Love is an illusion”. It's really a powerful rocker, and features a curious spoken word outro which may be Norlander, hard to say, but the voice sounds very English, so it could be John Payne. Some great guitar work though, and the bitter shock of the vocoder use is already a fading memory.

“Moon god” opens on wild guitar and organ, but that damn vocoder is back! Just when I'd wiped it from my mind, or as good as. Goddamn it! You would not believe how much I hate vocoders. I think the only time I can take them is when ELO used them back in the seventies and eighties. The track: concentrate on the track. Yes. Well, it's a mid-paced rocker that goes through some changes over its five minute length, with a really nice acoustic guitar bridge which is then joined by electric guitar and forms a great instrumental break about three minutes in, then goes back to heavy rock for the remainder of the song.

The closer is a new venture for Lana. An eleven-and-a-half-minute progressive rock epic, “In exile” opens on beautiful acoustic guitar and strings --- hints perhaps of Payne's much-anticipated mandolin there? --- and a soft, gentle vocal from Lana complemented by tender acoustic piano from her husband. Solid, ballad-style percussion cuts in, joined by some evocative electric guitar, which on the third minute crashes into life with heavy chords as the synth swells behind it and the drums get heavier, then it all drops back to a gentle acoustic guitar and piano melody.

In true prog-rock style though, it changes focus, as a funky bass taps out the new rhythm and guitars and keys join in an extended instrumental section, part of which is a great guitar solo and which stretches the instrumental break to almost four minutes, pulling in seventies-style Mellotron, staccato drumming and snarling guitar and ending on a drumbeat pulled from Marillion's “Misplaced childhood” as Lana comes back in, the piano backing her with the strings gently ushering the song along into its eighth minute. A complete stop then before the bass kicks things off again and drums and guitar are added along with some brassy-sounding synth, another great guitar solo which takes the piece, Pink Floyd-style, to the tenth minute before another breakout guitar solo finishes proceedings off, handing over to Norlander's synth, the two then combining to take the piece to its conclusion.

This is definitely one album that's been worth the wait, and it sets me up, as I knew it would, with a decent chance to turn things around. If the albums I review from now on end up being this good I'll soon forget the likes of “A brief crack of light”, “Whose side are you on” and “How to dismantle a U2”. There wasn't really any doubt in my mind this would help redress the balance: I've been waiting for a new Lana Lane album for years now (four, to be precise) and am delighted to be able to report that the wait is now over, and the album is everything I hoped it would be.

TRACKLISTING

1. A dream full of fire
2. Maybe we'll meet again
3. El Dorado
4. Darkness falls
5. Hotels
6. Believe
7. Life of the party
8. Gone are the days
9. Moon god
10. In exile

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