Patrick Kelleher - Album Review

Setting out to transform an electro-folk album into pure electronica is a brave venture. Particularly when you’re setting out to transform a record as well received as this one. It’s safe to say that Patrick Kelleher’s debut album You Look Cold was enthusiastically praised across the board. His layered approach in combining genres created something quite strange and yet quite beautiful. But less than a year since the original comes the cheekily titled You Look Colder – the remixes. Sequels to greats are often set up to fail but thankfully, You Look Colder is more Godfather II then The Matrix Reloaded. Phew.

Skinny Wolves kick things off with their stab at ‘He has to Sleep Sometime’, which is re-skinned as robotic dance punk you can pogo to. Thread Pulls ‘Finds You’ remix follows, starting out on the minimalistic side of the things only to build momentum with soft then intensified tribal drumming. David Kitt puts on his producing hat for ‘Not Leaving Town’ which at first maintains the haunting tone of the original, before morphing into a lighter, upbeat dance track. The other well-known producer on board is Jape, whose motorik beats establish themselves before relinquishing to an unexpected trance breakdown. Also featuring remixes by Toymonger, Catscars, The Booklovers, Hulk, Fucktotem, Legion of Two and School Tour, You Look Colder varies from mainstream dancey choons to industrial, avant-garde, orchestral, playful and even cinematic tracks.

A diverse experiment that really shouldn’t work but really does, You Look Colder is interesting as a companion piece to the original but can also stand by itself. The brain child of Patrick Henry from Osaka Records, the talents from very different electronic offshoots are pooled together for one mad record. More of this please Dublin.

Dave Clarke - Album Review

Words cannot describe the confusion and horror when the first few bars of Dave Clarke’s album There Was a Girl kicked in. This wasn’t the Baron of Techno, this was the stuff of acoustic nightmares. Er, there’s been a bit of a mix up…

There isn’t much musical crossover between techno Dave and his soft rock alter ego, but it still remains a highly confusing affair – even iTunes has techno Dave’s biography listed under soft rock Dave’s picture. All we know is what we can tell from the album cover; he’s bearded, he likes to wear oversized shades, he likes sitting in cars and, according to Amazon, his album is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. He cuts a mysterious figure.

Opening with the album’s title track, ‘There was a Girl’ eases us in to the lax pace of the record, albeit with eerie howling. From this introduction we learn that soft rock Dave likes to rhyme. A lot. And he showcases his rigid rhyming skills throughout the album, here’s a sample from track two; “running to hide, running to stay alive/running to keep still/running up a hill” and so on and so forth. This is just a tiny taster of what is an entire album of forced nonsensical couplets.

After that one meanders to a silence, a live track begins with a civil crowd clapping for ‘Paintings on the Wall’. If you never thought acoustic could be proper sleazy, think again and listen here; “bang bang/yes I like it/bang bang all the way together”. The monotonous strum of guitar is violated by the filth that comes out of soft Dave’s mouth. This is pretty much as exciting as the album gets. Aside from a country twinge to ‘Wake Up’ and the brief bizarre ’80s synth intros to ‘The Escape’ and ode to sending an email ‘Lonely Days’, There Was a Girl plods along track-to-track with a faint acoustic guitar strumming mindlessly in the background, while soft Dave moans into the mic. It’s all pretty uninspiring.

Admittedly we got off on the wrong foot, so an external examiner listened to soft Dave to give There was a Girl a fair hearing. After a few tracks they turned and said, “This sounds like something Hugh Grant would’ve wrote in that film Music and Lyrics, doesn’t it?” Sums it up really. Stick to the original Dave Clarke is the recommendation.

John, Shelly and the Creatures - Album Review

The first thing always noted about John, Shelly and the Creatures is how their track ‘Long May you Reign’ features on the Discover Northern Ireland ads. You know the one. But there’s more to this Belfast band than providing a folksy ambience to a montage of Ferris wheels and rope bridges. A lot more. And the proof is in their debut album Dinosaur.

It opens with ‘Blinded and Cross’ with an intro that manages to be both distorted and melodic. Combining the simplicity of a solo mandolin and both hoarse and harmonious vocals, it’s a good indicator of what to expect from the rest of the album. Dinosaur is a collection of contradictions that on paper might suggest a jarring mess, but in reality flows along effortlessly, irrespective of its varied genres and broad range of instruments.

JSC wear their influences on their sleeves; ‘Sunny Side Street’, ‘Cold War’ and ‘Sight of your Chest’ in particular evoke the haunting strains of Elliott Smith. But it’s not all doom and gloom, standout upbeats include ‘Rust’, ‘Killer’ and of course, ‘Long May you Reign’. Elsewhere, while pop-rock ditty ‘Fools’ is an enjoyable romp, its faux-American accented intro does seem out of place, as does the song as a whole, considering the general tone of the album. Still, eleven out of twelve ain’t bad.

This debut serves to further validate JSC’s place in State’s Faces of 2010, expect to see and hear a lot more from these guys. While Dinosaur probably won’t persuade you to go on a Northern adventure with a man in a hideous pleather tan blazer, it will persuade you that JSC deserve the rising hype.

Cobra Starship - Hot Mess, Album Review

To be fair, the lads (and lass) at Cobra Starship lay their cards on the table from the outset. With purple bubble writing on the album case reading ‘Pete Wentz is the Only Reason We’re Famous’, it’s safe to assume they don’t take themselves too seriously. And why would they? Hot Mess is an album about being bad and partying. Hard.

A first listen to Hot Mess induced a ‘cringe’ face, not seen here since Wentz’s wifey Ashlee Simpson, hillbilly danced on Saturday Night Mime, er, we mean Live. Some lyric samples; ‘I treat her bad, she loves me good’ and ‘We were hanging in your basement eating pills and falling in love’- now imagine these coupled with cheerleader chants, keytar synths, cock rock solos and vocodered vocals. You get the idea.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect to hear Cobra Starship accompanying a house party/overdose scene in Channel Four’s ‘Skins’ some time soon. Or they might pop up in Gossip Girl, since Leighton Meester who plays Blair, pops up for guest vocals on ‘Good Girls Go Bad’. With Wentz’s Fall Out Boy reportedly on permanent hiatus, Cobra Starship could easily fill the dead emo space left by the band. They are pretty similar, only with added synths and tongue in cheek. Lying somewhere between Gossip and !!! lie this glorified tribute act. Hot Mess should be taken at face value. It is fashion and it’s fun, but equally its sequined neon splendour seems forced. Expect them to be big on Spin 1038.