Reviews: Aimee Mann, Heartstring Sessions, and Hot Chip

Aimee Mann - Album @%&*! SMILERS and single 31 Today 4/5 By Rikki Wright

An excellent album full of richly textured, thoughtful and life enhancing, though sometimes a tad miserable, tracks from one of the world's finest singer songwriters. Aimee Mann has something of the range of Joni Mitchell and an edge like Chrissie Hynde, though there is something else to her music, something original and quite off centre that makes it utterly compelling. '31 Today' is a good song but thirty one seems a little young for a line like 'I thought my life would be different somehow, I thought my life would be better by now, but it's not, and I don't know what to do' At thirty one, you're still a baby, hardly starting out on the journey of your life. So love your life or change it, and enjoy every precious moment on the way.

Heartstring Sessions - Heartstring Sessions 2/5 By Rikki Wright

What a disappointment. This looked like it might be an album that captured some of the raw visceral excitement of proper Irish Folk music, and turned out to be the same old gutless anaesthetised folk rock claptrap that forces right thinking citizens with a good ear to give folk music a wide berth. I'm sure these people are good at playing their instruments, and the album is beautifully produced, but there was just too much twee, and not half enough poke you in the eye like it or lump it attitude.

Hot Chip - Hold On/Touch Too Much 3/5 Rikki Wright

Spacey electronica with a depth of feeling that surprises. Hot Chip call up shades of Kraftwerk and Johhny Marr's Electronic. Sensational Koyaanisqaatsi vibe on i-pod in a jam packed Bold Street, and even better out on Crosby beach with the tide out, stiff breeze and scudding cumulonimbus overhead.