Southport
Reporter® is the Registered Trade Mark of Patrick Trollope.
new country genre. Though neither is an obvious single,
this release only succeeds in testifying to the brilliance of an award-winning album.
Elbow - Newborn (V2)
Yet another re-release from Bury's most miserable. But you can't fault them for trying to cash in on some of the publicity from the Mercury Music Prize and when the track is one of the best off the album Asleep In The Back you can't really complain. Anyway, it shimmers and radiates with hope, despair, beauty and pain just like Radiohead used to make,
especially on the full-length version where the keyboards and guitar rise to a magnificent
finish. One to turn up loud and wake the neighbours with.
Albums
Ben And Jason - Ten Songs About You (Universal)
Busking has definitely got cool. Once upon a time you scorned at the doubled up image of two guys and their guitars scruffily clad on a street corner. Yet now every Elliot Smith and his best friend are joining in on the new acoustic movement that sees Ben and Jason hold off from writing any more songs for Martine McCutcheon (This Is My Moment) and pick up where they left off in the hazy hills of summer '99 and sumptuous debut mini-album
Hello.
Deadline for next edition Saturday October
13th, for publishing on 17th October 2001.
Their latest gathering of friends is Ten Songs About You, a stunningly simple collection of pathetically poignant poems about girls, girls and more girls. Opening track The Wild Things whilst possessing the crashing symphony of U2's Stuck In A Moment and The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony is a gorgeous
cacophony of sultry strings and digi-gospel strained vocals that would leave Jason Pierce 'Crying' and Albarn 'Tender'. Stand-out
tracks like Fingertipping, Let's Murder Vivaldi and How The Hell Do I Explain? take us away from the album's b-listed Radio 1 status and into the deeper reaches of emotion with Ben Parker's strained vocals calling up some of
Damon Gough's own precious shambolisms in The Shining and Magic in the Air.
The album's mood is further maintained by light acoustics tainted by the dark yet light (think Zero 7 and Air) swallowing quality of it's use of Moogs and Synths. There is the romantic idiocy of On Days Like Yours in its
meaning, whilst returning back to 'This is our song' in How The Hell Do I Explain?. This
album contains questions such as 'do you fear you'll fall into a hole if you don't pretend you're very tall' that Hello, and to an extent, their full blown debut
Emoticons, didn't answer.
In truth, you do get the impression that Ben Parker and Jason Hazeley are taking things a lot more seriously. Yet it all still has that shambolic quality that is the ideology of an acoustic guitar and a bottle of whiskey. With a double-bass in the background helping keep everything modern in a Lamb kind of way it
also holds on to that beatitude that last year's 'tramp of the decade' shuffled up on stage to get a Mercury Music Prize for
(Badly Drawn Boy). It's as if busking becomes baroque yet elegant, with sultry
strings and an even more elegant eclecticism that hasn't been touched upon since Neil Young or Simon and
Garfunkel.
Albums