Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree - 2008

I'm going to stop saying "here's another good album" as it can now be taken as a given that it wouldn't be featured if it wasn't, actually, it wouldn't be featured unless it's an exemplar.
Think this is my first of 2008 and what a way to start. As with Tears for Fears, and their album "Seeds of Love" before them, this is Goldfrapp's "Sargent Pepper's.." ie it's now that the duo, for they are Alison Goldfrapp and the shy retiring Will Gregory, evince a total mastery of their art. Not in a showoffy how clever are we way, but in that of consummate professionals. Beautiful broad (expensive) synth and orchestral pads back Alison's amazing voice: part Kate; part Madge; even part Kylie; yet wrapped in a unique package and given what I can only describe as that 1940's filmstar thing (a kindof catch at the top of the throat diction). Not as inventive and progressive as their 1st two recordings and ditching the glamslam camp of their last, an album very much designed with a live show in mind, the new cd has a newfound pastoral quality and I'd love to see it performed in a nice compact sit down auditorium, say Lighthouse in Poole - I can but hope.
web buy

Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns - 2007

Four canny young lasses from Newcastle, giving Folk a good name and making up for all that "thou shalt have a fishy, on a little dishy" bollox. Don't know where I've been at, letting summat this good pass me by. Astonishingly beautiful voices set amidst beautiful and unusual (for Folk) instrumentation. Bypass the 1st couple of tracks as, though they are good, the album really kicks in after these. Definitely one to listen to of a cold dark winters eve.
web buy

Ingrid Michaelson - Girls And Boys - 2006

I'm getting to like popular music despite getting my fingers burned by Eva Cassidy (hawk spit). Ingrid Michaelson, very big in the States apparently and very big on Grey's Anatomy - something else I never watch. I'm a bit po'd with hearing familiar songs on tv but not being able to remember who/what/where they are; heard a track on The OC purely by chance and it took me a whole morning rummaging through my drawers to find it was The Veils "Lucia", still rummaging through ones drawers - there are certain upsides. Anyway, Ingrid Michaelson - sounds uncannily like Erin McKeown and, as she's a particular favourite whose output has tailed off somewhat of late, that's no bad thing. Don't know whether I should tell you to cut straight to the song "Breakable" and play it over and over again, as having done that myself I've now got it playing on constant repeat inside my head. Seems to be no cure for this does there, save for over wiping it with the next song to come along and obsessively take ones fancy.
web buy

Emma Pollock - Watch The Fireworks - 2007

Most definitely a grower this one, with some particularly outstanding tracks too. Someone new to me but I do know she used to be in The Delgados - a band I never particularly took to. Like Laura Veirs she sings in a very unaffected way and with a tendency, which takes a little getting used to, towards being slightly flat (ie off tune) and as with Charlotte Hatherley there's a lovely Englishness, or as she's Scottish I suppose we should say Britishness, to her sound.
web buy