Grand CD Listen Through, Part 20

[the_eggwhite]

The Eden House - Smoke & Mirrors
This has Tony Pettit's basslines dribbled all over it, as well as occasional vocals from Julianne Regan, drums from Nod Wright, Guitars from Stephen Carey and a whole pile of other luminaries of trad-goth and alternative music. I started drooling when I saw the line up, carried on when I started hearing the songs and haven't entirely stopped yet.

From the driving "To Believe in Something", on through the somewhat melancholy "All My Love" and all the way through to the end, this is just a mighty fine album. The constantly changing vocal duties and ever shifting lineup make this lot a band who are poised to be able to change mood and feel at a moments notice, without ever losing the quality.

I'm also a huge fan of the song "The Beauty of Science" - it just hits the spot for me in terms of performance and also of sentiment. You can go find out why on youtube (video is unrelated - but the song's still there).

Particular standouts beyond the songs already mentioned: "God's Pride", "Reach Out", "Fire For You" & "Sin".

Verdict: keep


Elbow - Asleep In The Back
Now, I like this album, but I think it's probably one of the weaker Elbow albums. Then again, it is the first. It's good, but I don't think the band have really found their whimsy yet. They're always quite capable of being a little bit miserable, but this album doesn't cut through that with humour and a sense of beauty quite as much as the later albums do.

Standouts are the album opener "Any Day Now", "Powder Blue", "Newborn", "Asleep in the Back".

Special mention goes to "Newborn" for managing to be an utterly beautiful song, despite starting with the line "I'll be the corpse in your bathtub".

Verdict: Keep


Elbow - Cast of Thousands
Still not into what I think of elbow's strongest albums... and in fact, I'm less convinced by the songs on this CD than I was with most of the previous disc. Having said that, Elbow are pretty much the masters of slowly building up to something awesome.

I also start to hear a little of the whimsy that I'd mentioned was missing from asleep in the back. Whilst the songs can be quite bleak or downbeat, there's a certain level of subtle humour (often quite dark humour) in them that just makes them stand out. This follows on into the videos as well. A good video to watch for an example of this is the video for "Fallen Angel".

Standouts here for me are "Fallen Angel"... and some others, but I got sidetracked whilst listening and don't have time to back up and listen again. Oh well.

Verdict: Keep