Cage The Elephant
Social Cues
FOR a record inspired by the unravelling of frontman Matt Shultz's marriage to French actress Juliette Buchs, Cage The Elephant's fifth album is a gloriously confident, swaggering affair – a desperately sad yet awesomely uplifting record.
Moving away from their primary influences of the Pixies and Nirvana towards a melange of louche pop and weighty glam rock gives the Kentucky natives space to stretch out.
Ready To Let Go's sun-kissed bop hides lyrics written after a trip by Schulz to Pompeii, Italy, where he realised he was heading for divorce. With a Grammy under their belt, the band are in the best form of their careers even if their private lives are torn by strife.
Stripped of their naive, punkish energy, Cage the Elephant reveal a swaggering beast of a band – perhaps the one they were always meant to be.
Rating: four stars
Alex Green
Loyle Carner
Not Waving, But Drowning
SAVIOUR of non-grime-aligned British hip-hop, Brit nominee Carner's second album features yet more of the warmth and unfussy honesty of his lauded debut.
Carner's zero-grandstanding vocal style and unpretentiousness (highlighted by digressions and studio chat) are a refreshing mark of authenticity. On Loose Ends, Jorja Smith's layered vocals set a halo atop an already-emotive track, and Carner audibly has to take a pause after his reflections on his complex family life. It's a perfect song.
Other guests include fellow Mercury nominee Sampha and Carner's mum. Occasional images stay with the listener for a long time: one observation on dual heritage in Looking Back speculates "My great grandfather could have owned my other one".
While aware of social and personal history, it's never retro. Amid the horn solos, poems and fantastic beats, this is soul music.
Rating: four stars
Michael Dornan
Bananarama
In Stereo
IT'S hard to believe it's been 10 years since Bananarama's their last album and 38 years since Sara Dallin, Keren Woodward and Siobhan Fahey first got together to find fame with songs such as Cruel Summer, Venus and I Heard A Rumour.
Now a duo, childhood friends Sara and Keren have ramped up the pop, and have added more than a liberal application of production. This is definitely not a case of less-is-more, but then you don't want it to be: this is an outright fun, pop album ready for a party, though, like all other Bananarama albums, there are also slower down-tempo tracks – including the finale On Your Own.
Highlights include single Stuff Like That, Looking For Someone and I'm On Fire. There is a familiar feel across this disc, which has the promise of becoming a fan favourite.
Rating: Three stars
Rachel Howdle
Damien Jurado
In the Shape of a Storm
PROVING that inspiration obeys no time constraints, Lincoln, the opening track of singer-songwriter Damien Jurado's latest album, was apparently written 20 years ago, but is only now surfacing along with nine other songs on an album recorded in the considerably shorter period of just two hours.
Naturally, this didn't allow for much embellishment. Even by the usual standards of Jurado, who has made a name for himself in lo-fi music, this is a minimalist work featuring little more than vocals and gently strummed guitar.
In this way, it recalls the earliest Bob Dylan records, with echoes too of Leonard Cohen and Eliot Smith, and it is fit to stand alongside the best work of all three.
Such stark arrangements lend the music a timeless quality; every track is a melancholy gem that sounds like it has been ripped directly from the pages of the American folk songbook.
Rating: four stars
James Robinson
