New music releases

Albums are long, aren't they? On and on they go, song after song. Do they think we've got nothing better to do than sit about listening to music? What would be ideal is if they could all just pick their best song and release that on its own. Maybe even have a kind of chart where you could see which song had sold the most. It's just an idea...

The first long player from the pile this week is Athena 'Breathe With Me' (Embraceable). This has been out before but we didn't write about it then because we found the London-born singer's introspective and mature songs to be too slight for our tastes. But we've had a listen to this reissue and realised we find them quite irritating too. Never let it be said that 4Music is too proud to admit when it's wrong.

Not a reissue but still familiar material on The Cinematic Orchestra 'Live At the Royal Albert Hall' (Ninja Tune) which features big stringy versions of all your favourites, well, all our favourites anyway. Not containing any of our favourites is the new album from eternal also-rans James with 'Hey Ma'. If you like James then you'll be mildly satisfied to have another CD to slot into the J section. If you don't like James, this is the usual overblown, over-worked cobblers from a man who's never been able to decide if he wants to be Morrissey or Bono, and a band who own too many effects pedals.

What's good? Well Moshi Moshi Singles 2006-2008 is pretty good. (Singles! That's what we were thinking of earlier. Brilliant.) This label compilation has singles by people we've heard of, like the beguiling Lykke Li and the funky Friendly Fires, and some by people we previously hadn't heard of, like the charming Slow Club and the groovy Breakbot. It's also got Kate Nash's first one that she left off her album for some reason.

Speck Mountain 'Summer Above' (Peacefrog) has everything in the right place, in a less-soppy version of Mazzy Star sort of way but is so hypnotically soporific we can barely keep our eyes... mmm... sleepy ... zzz... get the zebras away from the spoons...

We're awake! We like a covers album as much as the next man (though not as much as Jo Whiley) but we're not completely convinced by 'On Your Sleeve' (One Little Indian) from Ryan Adams' mate Jesse Malin, who has given the Americana (we don't really know what that means either but we've seen it in magazines) treatment to The Ramones, The Clash, Sam Cooke and others. Quite frankly we think they were better off without it. Sticking with people called Ryan, Matthew Ryan 'Vs The Silver State' (One Little Indian) probably also belongs in the Americana section but in the good bit, near the Lucinda Williams CDs. These are great big passionate pop songs which, with their violin and sweet female backing vocal, remind us of The Go-Betweens and anyone who can do that gets awarded the prestigious 4Music ALBUM OF THE WEEK.

Speech! Speech! Oh...



» Reviewed by: Tim
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