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Liam Carey reviews
V o l u m e # 1 2 0 9 J u l y 2 0 0 3
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Hotel Paper, the new album from singer-songwriter Michelle Branch, is released this week in the UK. It’s the follow-up to last year’s promising major-label debut The Spirit Room, which featured her introductory hit Everywhere among its 12 accomplished (if not exactly groundbreaking) songs. Eclipsed in the commercial stakes by peers Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne, who both issued their albums shortly after The Spirit Room appeared, Branch faces a battle to establish herself over here. Perhaps too mature for the same teen audience that has taken Lavigne to their collective heart, yet still lacking the necessary depth required for genuine adult appeal, the 22-year old is still in search of a major UK hit.
The lead-off single from Hotel Paper, the grungy Are You Happy Now?, fell tantalisingly short of the Top 30, and only the Santana collaboration Game Of Love – which bridged the gap between Branch’s albums – made much of a mainstream impact in this country. To this end, Maverick/Warner have added Everywhere and Game Of Love to the UK edition of Hotel Paper, and used them as a major part of the album’s promotional campaign. Whatever it takes, I suppose.
CHILDREN IN NEED
A second series of the BBC’s Fame Academy is in the pipeline, but already the finalists of the first programme are struggling to forge anything resembling longterm chart careers. David Sneddon, cosy MOR specialist with the boyish good looks, might have scored a #1 in February with the saccharine Stop Living A Lie in the aftermath of his victory, but follow-up Don’t Let Go peaked at #3 and disappeared off the radar with some haste. His album fared even less memorably, despite aggressive pricing from the day of release, and there has been no word of a new single as yet. Ainslie Henderson‘s Keep Me A Secret was a pretty fine pop tune that breezed along quite pleasingly, but it made only the briefest acquaintance with the Top 10.
Runner-up Sinead Quinn, meanwhile, appeared to have the most potential; blessed with gutsy talent and a simmering feline sexuality waiting to be exploited. I Can’t Break Down, her opening chart gambit, was suprisingly bland but durable enough in the circumstances, duly reaching #2 in March. Since then, Sinead and her record company have clearly reassessed the type of market they wish to aim at – What You Need Is… , issued as a single last week – dispenses with the niceities of its predecessor and significantly vamps up Quinn’s image. However, the result was a #19 entry with sales tailing off quite dramatically towards the end of the week, and falling further still in the last couple of days to leave the record languishing on the brink of the Top 50 in yesterday’s midweeks.
Sinead’s album Ready To Run is ready to roll on July 14th, but the worry now must be whether many people will still be interested.
DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL
Paddy McAloon has been gracing the music scene for the best part of 20 years now, ever since his band Prefab Sprout emerged with their idiosyncratic brand of artful, angular pop in the early 1980s. Few of his contemporaries could match McAloon’s gift for seductive melodies and ambitious lyricism back then, and even fewer of those still remaining would be able to pull of something quite as remarkable as I Trawl The Megahertz.
Post-1990 Prefab Sprout has been a virtual one-man conduit for McAloon’s unique muse, and so this “debut solo album” is merely a continuation of latter Prefab explorations in grandly orchestrated but intimate soundscapes. Mid-period Prefab Sprout records courted the mainstream – The King Of Rock’n’Roll (#7 in 1988) remains their signature hit, while the new recordings on 1992’s Best Of embraced electronic beats – but McAloon has subsequently followed a less contemporary path, perfecting his skills on a series of albums which evoked the orchestrated arrangements of Sixties lounge-pop and song cycles reminiscent of Broadway musicals.
Largely instrumental and inspired by fragments of radio dialogue happened upon while McAloon recuperated from a serious eye disease, I Trawl The Megahertz is the next logical step onwards from Prefab Sprout’s last, commercially underachieving album The Gunman & Other Stories. It’s a record to lose yourself in, and discover fresh subtleties with each listen. It’s also one of the finest releases of 2003.
SOPHTWARE UPGRADE
This year’s ultimate album, though, is undoubtedly Sumday by US alt.rockers Grandaddy. Critical acclaim and modest word-of-mouth success accompanied 2000’s The Sophtware Slump. One of its singles, Crystal Lake, even grazed the UK Top 40. Three years on, the Grandaddy type of hazy, sureallist American retro-softrock has been appropriated by the likes of Mercury Rev and, in particular, The Flaming Lips, whose Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is the most obvious reference point for Sumday‘s dreamily evocative take on the classic pop template.
From the opening bars of last month’s Top 30 single Now It’s On, through the chugging, chiming synth bliss of The Go In The Go For It and Stray Dag With The Chocolate Shake, to the gorgeous finale that is The Final Push To The Sum, the album never puts a foot wrong. Likely to feature in many a Best-Of-2003 list come December, Sumday is the quintessential soundtrack to glorious summer days which will in all probability also sound wonderful when the blue skies and warm breezes are just a memory again.
FUTURE SOUNDS
The best music on the horizon:
- COLDPLAY – GOD PUT A SMILE UPON YOUR FACE: A Rush Of Blood To The Head is plundered for a fourth time, but as with the equivalent release from Parachutes, Don’t Panic, this single will only be available in the UK as an import.
EMI/Parlophone obviously feel the benefits of granting God Put A Smile On Your Face full-blown status in this country are minimal with the parent album nearly a year old and further sales potential understandably limited, while for the time being Coldplay seem to have reached a plateau in terms of singles success; their last two hits have both debuted at #10 before going into immediate decline. God Put A Smile.. will feature a brand new track on the B-side entitled Murder, and the video is already showing across the UK Music TV stations.
- THE CARDIGANS – YOU’RE THE STORM: The Scandanavians’ faltering fortunes could receive a much-needed boost by the release of Long Gone Before Daylight‘s outstanding highlight. Anthemic in an almost old-fashioned way, You’re The Storm (out on July 14th) boasts one of the strongest choruses of recent times and richly deserves to kickstart the album’s popularity after its disappointing chart showing upon release in March.
Page Content copyright © Liam Carey, 2003.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.