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Holiday Music

Went shopping just before the skiing trip and spent almost £50 on CDs! Well, at least I had some music for the trip but I probably would have been thanked more by my wallet for buying online (I like amazon, play and cd-wow - with no real faithfulness to any one of them) ... but - anyway, I listened to a few of them - and my verdicts follow:

Athlete - Tourist

Actually, I didn't get this in the shop as it wasn't out until the monday following - but I've now got it on order from cd-wow. However for the holiday, I picked up a 32kbs playback of the whole album from XFM's listening post which was enough to push me over the edge into the 'saturation listening' to any album like this one - which grows on you quickly and then starts to reward you with noticing the extra little blippy bits they like to put in.

Every track has something about it, either a sing-along-chorus or a wide string soundscape, deservedly a number one album already - Just get it, it's good!!


KT Tunstall - Eye to the telescope

First heard her on the repeat of 'Jools', after Sam (my little brother) was raving after seeing her on the initial run - and mostly because she was playing with an Akai Headrush tape-loop pedal! Then had a listen to the tracks of her website and finally got the CD.

Mostly semi-acoustic 'girl-with-guitar' country/blues/rock stuff (imagine Norah Jones fronting for Gomez and then getting a bit of attitude to go with it), but with some added fantastic little production twists and musical surprises. Definitely Top-10 worthy, and as there arn't really any filler tracks - it's good stuff.


Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti

Actually, Joy (my sister) gave me this for Christmas. And thought I'd better take it with me. As you'd expect, it's prety classic mid-70s stuff... definitely prog-rock - which I think I like!



Soulwax - Much against everyone's advice

Actually an album I've wanted to hear for a while - it's got at least three killer tracks, in the title track, 'Overweight Karate Kid' and 'Too Many DJs' (one of my all-time personal favourite tracks). But apart from that, it's a collection well produced tracks, but without any real cohesion and one two many fillers and balladesque bits of whining. Probably worth getting if it's ever on 'special'.



The Who - The Ultimate Collection

Nuff said, you need a bit of 'Who' in your CD collection and this looks like it has all the hits



Thirteen Senses - The Invitation

Bought this on impulse after hearing 'Thru the glass' on the radio, but it didn't really grow on me. Jury is out on this one - it's either weak wannabie Embrace/Keane/Coldplay or it's actually quite good and I just havn't given it a chance - so I'll reserve judgement on this one. But yes - apart from the mentioned track, I didn't hear anything yet to convince me it's any good...

posted by RichB @ Tuesday, February 08, 2005