Rabbit Island / In The Forest, Far Away

This wants to sound like a song made up at bedtime to soothe a child. The non-rhymes are cute. The too-many-syllables-for-the-line-meter are cute. The Oz accent is kinda cute unless you can't get Wake In Fright out of your head. The  unfurnished room acoustics are cute. The trouble is everything is cute, defiantly, unfailingly cute.And the effect is as ultimately irritating and empty as those gift shops that sell upcycled plant pots for 15 bucks and plain card birthday cards with line drawings of balloons on them. 

  

Santa Sprees / Sum Total Of Insolent Blank

Modern music feels like it is in reverse. There is a lot of it...probably way too much. Nearly all of it is very familiar. This was sent addressed to my old blog and I only played it because the description in the email was real funny but it turns out Sum Total Of Insolent Blank is going somewhere entirely of its own accord. It does not seem accountable to the present or many of the comforts of the past although that does not necessarily stop the X-meets-Y type descriptions that are the easiest way to mainline the core content of most reviews. A quick survey of links throws up the names Pere Ubu, Daniel Johnston, Sun Ra, The Residents but I think these could all be just a code for "strange" but equally grasp at trying to describe an album that is vast in its scope, invention and orginality and boasts a lyrical and musical wit that is funny, sad and poetic. It is over 90 minutes long...and kinda all over the map but very much one distinct thing at the same time....I wrote n told em it will be a hard sell....and they seemed to like that idea....and in a way that says everything about how you begin to make a record like this.

Beatrice Dillon / Workaround

I wanted to like this more. So much more. My third fairly attentive listen now and unfortunately I think I know it does not have any great secrets left to offer up. It is pleasant. Its surfaces are modern and clean and careful and mannered and arranged just so. Like nice tiling rather than the rush and pulled rug logic of the best footwork and dub which it estimates in a kinda deskbound way. It is all a little untroubling and easy to know. I think she definitely has the potential and capacity to do something great. Something stranger, less in step, more other.

Frans de Waard, Takuji Naka & Tim Olive / False Mercury

The parameters for this kind of music might seem different but when you listen to enough you are still trying to filter out the massive quantities of ho-hum and get to the good stuff. Sometimes I think it is the time you listen. I have listened to quite a bit from this label (845audio) over the long hours of Templetown lockdown and most of the releases maintain a good standard, generally interesting and full of sonic detail. They are mostly in the rinse, cycle, repeat mode of drone, click, whirr applied in thinnish washes and waves. Gentler, satisfying explorations, then. And the fetish-sating sleeves don't hurt at all in the sell especially for anyone keen to accesorize with their soft furnishings, ceramics and pot plants like me.

CB Radio Gorgeous / Babylon

Chop and churn punk a bit by the numbers across the whole EP but some neat drum falls and snatches of declamatory vocal that suggest they could become something more. I prescribe a month listening to Rosa Yemen or Suburban Lawns or something to help them transition quicker. However bits of the last track 'Babylon' have some good signs of pleasing non-crowdpleasing behaviour.

   

Jade Hairpins / Harmony Avenue

"You'll like this, Pammy. You will! I promise." Well, I don't. Actually, three tracks in I started to hate it. I hate it even more after a week. Hollow and whacky when I want insightful and mad. Polished and trite in a restless, needy, jumping-around-in-front-of-your-parents-face manner, in a way that makes you desperate for something relentless and real. I only kept listening to find out which track I hated the most. I am sure they are nice people.

Jordana / Classical Notions of Happiness

OK. OK. Front loading the positives: it is a good title, a good look, a few pleasant tunes, an occasionally interesting lyric (mostly the more awkward ones..."What about your mom? How about your cat?"  - a sense of an individual at work albeit one at war with the temptation of acceptance and fashion and success. Which is a shame. On the whole it mostly sinks with little resistance into a bog of cliche. Jordana might find a way out but now it is merely OK. OK?