Latest CD releases reviewed
SONS AND DAUGHTERS
Love the Cup Domino
***
Taking their name from Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changing, Glasgow's Sons and Daughters finally release their début album on this side of the Atlantic (it was out in the US back in January) thanks to a worldwide record deal with Domino and a profile-building support slot with fellow hot-to-trot Glaswegians Franz Ferdinand. Coming across like Von Bondies breastfed on a diet of Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen, Sons and Daughters, with guttural accents intact, draw from the deep well of US and Scottish folk, albeit folk that's been busied up with snagging guitar riffs and brooding, surly arrangements. There isn't much room for humour - which is fine - but there's loads of space for a potent fusion of intense, in-your-face, dirty rock/ roots music. Which is fine, too. www.sonsanddaughtersloveyou.com
Tony Clayton-Lea
MCFLY
Room on the 3rd Floor Island
*
From the same crèche that brought you Busted, these four Hardy boys are the Wendy house band for a minipop party that nobody over 10 is invited to. Smelling suspiciously of pre-teen spirit, and cleverly mixing Beatley pop and 1950s rock, McFly are aimed at youngsters to whom Grease is a punk classic and The Bay City Rollers are rock monsters. To their credit, the McFly boys play well, albeit in a jaunty, Friends kinda way - you can picture their parents beaming proudly as they rock the junior prom. It's also not as offensive as, say, Westlife, so when your kids play tracks such as 5 Colours in Her Hair, That Girl, Saturday Night, Surfer Babe and Down By the Lake ad nauseam, you can just let it wash over you like Johnson's baby shampoo. Don't worry: they'll grow out of it soon and start listening to Slipknot. www.mcflyofficial.com
Kevin Courtney
MIKE FELLOWS
Limited Storyline Guest Vertical Form
****
JJ Cale-meets-Aphex Twin, gushes the promotional spiel, and it's probably as accurate a description as any of Mike Fellows's homespun brand of techno-folk. A sometime collaborator with Silver Jews, the New York native has struck upon a beguiling stylistic mishmash, pegging taut electro sequences to bluesy tales of love, lethargy and urban alienation. When it comes off, the effect is mesmerizing, recalling the plaintive beauty of Moby's output before he became composer in residence to the advertising industry. In passages, the formula sounds like exactly that: formula. On balance, however, Fellows' début release under his real name - he previously traded as Mighty Flashlight - is a gentle and moving triumph. Hobo anthems for the 23rd century. www.verticalform.com
Ed Power
MARAH
20,000 Streets Under the Sky Munich Records
***
Clattering to life with a montage of gritty street noise, Marah's fourth album of blue-collar rock 'n' roll gets back to basics, mapping out Philadelphia with music. A dependably brawny Spingsteenian effort that shirks off a recent cosmopolitan makeover, it retraces the steps of brothers David and Serge Bielanko through the detritus of Philly, seeking tough characters in every neighbourhood and soggy nostalgia around every corner. There's something shamelessly anthemic about the jump-rope rhymes of Freedom Park and lighter-raising chorus of Tame the Tiger, but the amped-up concoctions of doo-wop and handclaps don't mask the tragic detail of Feather Boa. Sentimentality ultimately gets the better of them, sinking certain ballads with egregious earnestness, but it's a hard soul who won't tap a foot and pump a fist to Marah's barroom bonhomie. www.munichrecords.com
Peter Crawley
