Various Artists: Abstraction Of Sound Logic (Folkrum)
Folkrum is a new independent label which offers an alternative to the cliches so pivotal to mainstream Irish rock. No sweeping soundscapes, no Celtic wibbling and no manufactured pop, just a collection of "slo-fo" oddities by such wilfully obscure acts as Simple Folk, Null Set and Moon Palace. Listening to Capratone's Non- Local or Chris McKibbon's Local Boy, you'd swear that all Irish bands were obsessed with American alt. country; Sunbear's Poke My Side and The Sound Of Bells' Worldwept, however, suggest a wider range of influences. If you're allergic to intense young people with acoustic guitars, then Sean's Still Love and Aoife Faughnan's Ever There may have you breaking out in hives; but check out the quasi-experimental attitude of Happy Stack's Breathe and The Mighty Avon Jr's Rapture Me Now.
Kevin Courtney
Celtus: Portrait (Sony Soho Square)
With The Corrs doing the diddley-aye all over the world's charts, you'd think the time would be right for another band of Irish siblings with bodhrans, whistles and electric guitars. This second album by Enniskillen brothers Pat and John McManus, however, sounds more like a mish-mash of Mike & The Mechanics and Simple Minds, and the injection of traditional instruments into the Eighties mix only adds a tired, New Age-y sheen to the already dated sound. If you're going to sell Celtic rock to the masses, then you might as well label the product clearly, and the name Celtus gets the message across efficiently, like calling yourself Britrockus or Drum'n'Bassii. This product may be slickly packaged, but the poodlerock poetry of the lyrics and the plastic romanticism of the music have to be winced at to be believed.
Kevin Courtney
Natalie Cole: Snowfall On The Sahara (Elektra)
An album that opens with a beautifully understated reading of Leon Russell's A Song For You and closes with an immaculate cut of Jerry Ragovoy's soul classic Stay With Me can't possibly fail, can it? No. And this album doesn't. Produced by David Foster and the ubiquitous Phil Ramone it's a flawless mix, moving from the highly sexual, I guess, gospel of Reverend Lee through Tin Pan Alley standards like More Than You'll Ever Know to Dylan's definitely gospel Gotta Serve Somebody. Talk about eclectic! Along the way Natalie also pauses to pick up tunes by the likes of Judy Collins and Michel Legrand. The title song, which Cole co-composed is good, but hardly deserving of its hierarchical position. On the contrary, it's the gospel-based songs that really show us the soul of Natalie Cole. Reverend Lee has to be heard to be believed.
Joe Jackson
Various artists Eyes Wide Shut (Warner)
Many soundtracks strive for serious cool: few achieve it with the seriously slick ease of Eyes Wide Shut, which, applied to a black eye, would relieve pain and reduce swelling in 10 minutes flat. A shameless compendium of all that's trendiest and bookended by some stern, spaced-out Ligeti piano solos, it offers jazz (Oscar Peterson and Brad Mehldau), big-band (When I Fall In Love and Strangers in the Night) contemporary art music and even - sounding almost funky in this company - Chris Isaak with the hit single Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing. The core of the enterprise, four pieces by the young composer Jocelyn Pook, aims for classy-spooky but checks in somewhere around weird-woffly, though the final number redeems itself with a bit of worldly African percussion and what sounds like qawwali singing. Fingersnappin' stuff for summer evenings.
Arminta Wallace
