Album Review

Jack Murray’s Single Reviews –

• 13th May 2011

Those Dancing Days – Can’t Find Entrance

“Can’t Find Entrance” is not the type of song you’d expect from twee-popping Swedish darlings, more the sort of anthemic record that an X-Factor winner would realise; all hard-done-to imagery and shimmering snyths, quickening pace and mountain talk. Piling metaphor on metaphor into a tall tower of modern pop, it’s a fairly sturdy structure only to be quashed and wrecked by the flailing arms of past memories. Seemingly abandoning organs and harmonies and Northern Soul stance for mid-80’s power pop, it makes you wish that you could go back to the old Those Dancing Days, you know those days when we were dancing, those days when it was fun.



Lykke Li – Sadness Is A Blessing

Sometimes in life, I wonder what it would be like if Kylie Minogue and Phil Spector decided to make a single about melancholy and pain, clouded in the grandiose sounds of strings and misery and threaded through with lyrical moping and sweet, broken melody. I no longer need to wonder or imagine this happening as “Sadness Is A Blessing” taken from Lykke Li’s album “Wounded Rhymes” is exactly that – a gorgeous single full of emotion and dread, punctuated with the crash and thunder of religious drums and hymn like hope. God bless sadness.



Jim Kroft – The Jailer
A soft strut and softer voice twist with a jangling riff and an ambitious undercurrent in Jim Kroft’s second single from his upcoming album “The Hermit and The Hedonist” It’s a song that could have gone two ways a) Into a funky, sneering walk-to-work-and-feel-like-a-fucking-champion stomp of intelligent, pouting pop or b) Into a forgettable, sludgy walk-to-work-feeling-like-a-fucking-champion-before-feeling-a-bit-sick-and-getting-ran-over-by-a-toddler-on-a-bike way. It unfortunately, as the song goes on drags into Option B, over compensating for catchiness and undermining the potential genius of its original pomp with a lethargic lyrical bite and a too traditional climax.


Frankie & The Heartstrings – That Postcard

Frankie & The Hearstrings are the type of band that manage to both effortlessly slide into pop perfection and sidestep the pisspoor preconceptions of modern guitar music with hand-clapping, brass laden, jaunty meshes of thoughtful, simple poetry and first class ‘wo, wo, wo’s” True champions in the art of boyish romance, That Postcard is one part love song, one part pop song and as catchy as Alex Stewart (Obscure cricket reference) – as a swooshing quiff of reflective guitar and floating words, That Postcard is the perfect entry into the bands world, an oath to learn and practice by a band who’ll grow and grow. Ace.