Reviews: Foals, Counting Crows, PJ Harvey and Elliot Minor

Foals - Antidote

Plaintive vocals, intriguing melodies shimmer through intricate and persuasive rhythms, to make rapturously lovely music. Deliciously reminiscent of Talking Heads meets Fela Kuti, The Comsat Angels and The Teardrop Explodes. This album from The Foals is distinctively, exhilaratingly theirs, and if there was ever an antidote to the formulaic pop fodder blues, here it is.
4/5, Josh Green

Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Crank up the volume and let that howly guitar give you a bit of whatfor… Grungey, rocky hoo hah with some emotionally vocalised lyrics, this is Counting Crows doing just what you’d expect them to. They do what they do and they do it well. If you are new to the planet, and don’t know, I’ll say that they sound a little like REM and Aerosmith, with a touch of something else, perhaps Van Morrison, on tracks like Baby, I’m A Big Star Now.
3/5, Jessie Alison

PJ Harvey – The Devil/Liverpool Tide

The Devil is the ethereal gothic voice of the exquisite damned, while Liverpool Tide recalls Patti Smith at her peak, in a song that sounds like a dark and desolate walk on Crosby beach on a moonless night, with Gormley’s silent guardians as the only company for a soul in torment.
5/5, Rikki Wright

Elliot Minor – Parallel Worlds

Predictable superior schoolband pop from these young indiepopsters.
It’s sort of sub-Greendayish, and McFlyish, harmless fare, that will be lapped up by the twelve year olds who don’t have access to more credible music. It’s not horrible, but it feels factory farmed, like it’s been kept in a calf crate and fed only on milk throughout its short life, and I prefer my music Free Range.
2/5, Rikki Wright