With a flood
of reggae releases landing in my Inbox I thought I'd kill several metaphorical birds with one reviewing stone. Here's a round-up of the best ones around.
Shanty –
Leave Me Out EP
Vinyl/CD/DL
Out Now
8/10
Hot on the
heels of their debut single Blackout, the seven piece band Shanty release a
four track EP. The opener and title
track has hints of The Police and their attempts at the genre, notably Roxanne.
Nice dubs and great horns with a great
hook of a chorus.
Another
solid horn section in the slower, summer sounding Bohemian Soul compliments a
basic reggae sound which is easy going but little else. Star of the EP is the wonderful Rise Up with
some truly wicked dubs and a lazy flowing feel.
Catchy and incredibly likeable with a strangely endearing London accent.
Final track
One More has some nice reverbs too and it billed as the ‘end of the night’
track. Again, it’s infectious and has a sour
away chorus with a great horn cavalcade towards the end. A worthy end to a very ear-friendly EP.
MC Horseman
– Dawn Of The Dread (Mr Bongo)
LP/CD/DL
3 November
2014
8/10
Definitely
one of the best album titles of the year, Dawn Of The Dread is a confident mix
of reggae and toasting which grows with every listen.
Perhaps
formulaic on first listen, there are attempts to make a regular reggae sound
that bit more interesting. The title
track has sound bytes which are very reminiscent of On-U Sound material and
Serpent really ups the pace with samples in a similar style to Public Service
Broadcasting. Sometimes very bizarre but
never uninteresting. Recent single
Computer even has Kraftwerk style vocals to add to an upbeat calypso-reggae.
Horseman (aka
Winston Williams) has an impressive CV having worked with Gregory Isaacs, Tippa
Irie, Barrington Levy and Sugar Minott to name a handful, and with this album produced
by Prince Fatty he’s certainly capable of attracting good attention.
There’s
nothing particularly ground-breaking but the attempts to stir it up (sorry Bob)
are welcome and make an otherwise ordinary album that bit more appealing.
Black Roots
– Ghetto Feel (Soulbeats Records/Nubian Records)
LP/CD/DL
Out Now
8.5/10
Brizzle
reggae band Black Roots are certainty no strangers to the UK. Forming in 1979 they are renowned for the
live performances of good old roots reggae right up to the early 90s when they
seemed to disappear off the radar. In
2012 they released their first new album for twenty years in the brilliant On
The Ground (see review here), and it was like they’d never been away.
Ghetto Feel
carries on the typically traditional sound of reggae with the bands almost
trademark lyrics of social conscience. Interesting
that in almost forty years since they formed, not a lot seems to have changed.
A Wah So has
a lively keyboard sound that carries the track along at a bouncy pace whilst
unravelling another of the bands wonderful lyrical extravaganzas whilst Albert
Villa prolongs the sound of the Summer.
As a title track, Ghetto Feel is slightly disappointing with backing
vocals that are a little too much cabaret.
It’s all typically
Black Roots and very typical reggae and its lovely to hear it done with respect
and more importantly, done well.
Talisman –
Nothing Change EP (Sugar Shack Records)
Vinyl/DL
Out Now
8.5/10
From one
Bristol roots reggae group to another, and one that has also been around since
the late 70s. Like their I-Surrection album from last year (see review here)
and its subsequent dub deconstruction, Talisman perform good, solid, old skool
reggae which is secretly what we all love the best.
The EP comes
with the lead track and two exceptional dub mixes in the Conquering Lion Dub
(complete with the sounds of, er, a lion) and the Oldwah Rockers Dub both remixed
by Dave Sandford. Not surprisingly, with
‘Oldwah’ at the desk, both mixes are something special. The former has the vocals stripped away, and
the dub isn’t dissimilar to the classic sound of 70s dub.
Sandford
then presents the Rockers Dub version which almost seems to dub the dubbed
version creating some excellent reverbs over a selected vocal. A real delight for fans of dub and showing
that after more than three decades, the group are still capable of cracking out
a great tune. Wonderful stuff.
Jean McLean
– Everlasting (Sugar Shack Records)
CD/DL
Out Now
7/10
From one
extreme of reggae to the other – pop-reggae.
My wife would describe Jean as a ‘wailing woman’ because she unnecessarily
holds notes in a Whitney Houston stylee.
Whilst Jean may have a good voice it’s unfortunately not put to good use
on Everlasting. A poor selection of
songs, some with some awfully predictable rhymes, are put her way and it really
doesn’t help proceedings.
A truly
terrible version of Marley’s Waiting In Vain is included, together with an
instrumental mix and the album opener Meant For U is very average. Where the album regains some credibility is
on the bonus disc which contains six dub versions from the album. It’s a shame that no-one saw fit to add
Jean’s voice to the mixes as that would really have livened things up.
There are highpoints along the way, Love Me Baby is a lively number and Higher tips a hat in the direction of real roots reggae, but like Waiting In Vain a misplaced version of Dennis Brown’s Things In Life could quite easily have been omitted.
There are highpoints along the way, Love Me Baby is a lively number and Higher tips a hat in the direction of real roots reggae, but like Waiting In Vain a misplaced version of Dennis Brown’s Things In Life could quite easily have been omitted.
I so wanted
to like Everlasting if nothing else that for Jean to have a place in an often
male orientated genre, but sadly it wasn’t to be the case.
Published on Louder Than War 3/11/14 - here
No comments:
Post a Comment