Jade's Music Blog

The Coral, Roots & Echoes

Oh my word this is good. It’s better than good. It is, dare I say it, the best album I’ve heard all year.
It’s got their distinctive blend of joyful indie, spacey, Sixties Love-style psychedelia and vintage keyboards, paired with the delicious combination of James Skelly's deep, rich voice and Bill Ryder-Jones’s shimmery guitars.
It’s a slice of their impossibly laidback, with innovative, imaginative sounds and perfect, blissful harmonies.
The first single, Who's Gonna Find Me (hear it on a radio near you now) is a stomping soulful celebration of Liverpool’s very best musical heritage.
The heavenly Jacqueline and Bring the Sun Back encapsulate summer days sitting outside with acoustic guitars. You can almost smell the festival wood smoke.
Gone are the eccentric time changes of Magic and Medicine, in favour of beauty, calmness and simply fantastic melodies.
There was a time before the recording of Roots And Echoes when the band feared they might never make another album, and it shows. The joyful side of The Coral we’ve missed since their exciting 2001 self-titled debut is back, and they are better than ever.

Jade Wright, 5/5

www.myspace.com/thecoral

The Broken Family Band - Hello Love Track and Field
 
This most underrated and understated of bands, the dazzlingly brilliant Broken Family Band have delivered yet another marvellous album in new release ‘Hello Love.’
The Broken Family Band play a wonderful sort of David Lynch comes to London via Cambridge music, that smells of dank fens and big handed onetooths, and things that go ‘Ugh’ in the night. It’s strange and it’s lovely, and it haunts you, once you’ve let it under your skin. Someone compared them to the Mekons, but they’re an awful lot better than that…
Their deeply effective, affecting and utterly addictive songs are sometimes searingly sad, often slyly funny, and always pinpoint accurate with their keenly observed, cut you to the bone lyrics, delivered by their fascinating, magnetic frontman Steven Adams.  The instrumentation that conveys the words is hugely interesting too, with sweetly poignant guitar from the always impressive Jay Williams, and all of their regular and guest musicians and instruments weaving the sound into a cage for your very heart. These songs are mesmerising, from the opening bars of cheerily truthful Leaps, through the Helter Skelter like intensity of Love Your Man, Love Your Woman, and the sweetly compassionate You Get Me, to the fading moments of the delicious Seven Sisters, this album is an instant treat for the ears that gets right into your bloodstream and stays there.
 
5/5 Reviewed by Rikki Wright
http://www.myspace.com/thebrokenfamilyband
 
Little Name – How To Swim and Live Sleepy Records
 
Gentle mellow loungey jazzy, brassy, sound with bossa nova Astrud vibes contrast with some wryly melancholy words to takes a us through a portal to the land of old fashioned haircuts and faded formica in cafes which still serve tea from urns, where Martin Parr probably lives. It’s fab, and it’s a little bit sinister, in a supremely groovy sort of a way, that you just can’t get enough of. Lovely!

Reviewed by Grace Tiede 4/5

http://www.myspace.com/littlename2
 
Alun Parry Liverpool 800 True Love Of Mine
 
Local folk music by the people for the people. This is traditional rather than twisted folk. It is grass roots music, with a local lad singing about what matters to him. It is aimed at people who want to hear the familiar stories and situations and issues of their own lives crafted into songs for them to relate to and enjoy. It is authentic, it is roots, it is the real McCoy. This is not going to be for everyone – folk music is definitely a minority interest, but for those who enjoy this sort of music, this is a treat.

Reviewed by Rikki Wright, 4/5

http://www.myspace.com/parryal