It’s a choice between Emiliana Torrini’s sit down and listen album and the Friendly Fires’ get up and dance debut. Elvis Costello delivers some decent songs but doesn’t really add anything new.
There’s more happening on the Friendly Fires album than on any of the others this week. After five, six listens you’ll still hear new parts falling into place turning songs you discarded earlier into favourites.
Torrini’s album ‘Armini And Me’, on the other hand, is more straightforward: You either like her voice and her songs or you don’t.
If you do, then this is a no frills, close to the bone showcase of the talents of a singer-songwriter who strikes a delicate balance between lust for life and a darker side.
This week also saw the annual bash for the best album by a UK or Irish artist, the Mercury Prize. Manchester Rock band Elbow won the £20,000 prize pulling past the favourite, Dubstep artist Burial. Radiohead were nominated for the fourth time and walked away empty handed yet again.
Check Out Elbow’s Mercury Performance On The BBC
Albums Of The Week
1st Choice: Emiliana Torrini ‘Me And Armini’
It’s new territory for Torrini, a quiet singer-songwriter who established herself as a musican’s musician with her two previous albums. She’s co-penned a song for Kylie Minogue (’Slow’), contributed to the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack and has a solo career as a folky pop singer in her native Iceland.
Torrini has experimented with Rock and Dance influenced sounds before, but with the exception of ‘Unemployed In Summertime’ the results were pretty heavy handed and somewhat overly fussy.
There’s a much lighter touch at work on ‘Me And Armini’ and a definite bounce to most of the material. Half the tracks here still feature Torrini accompanied by acoustic guitar. But it’s the other half, the half that unashamedly plays with pop and 1950s rock that sounds the freshest.
There are touches of raucous 1950s Rockabilly on ‘Ha Ha’ and ‘Jungle Drum’. There’s the odd but funky ‘Heard It All Before’. There’s the dark ‘Gun’, all drenched in tremolo and reverb. And there’s a perfect pop song in shape of ‘Big Jumps’ that should make the playlists of more adventorous radio stations.
Listen to Emiliana Torrini
Readers from the UK and Ireland, Click Here to download ‘Armini And Me’ from iTunes UK.
2nd Choice: Friendly Fires ‘Friendly Fires’
Over the past year, Friendly Fires have become much slicker and there’s the odd echo of Coldplay or Snow Patrol creeping in on their debut album. The new single ‘Jump In The Pool’ is a good example for the more streamlined Friendly Fires: smooth, creamy pop topped off with breathy vocals. It works quite well on the video, however, where the soft crooning is coupled with some dreamy underwater scenes. Check it out below.
Watch Friendly Fires On YouTube
You still get last year’s infectious ‘Paris’ and other high octane numbers like ‘Photobooth’ and ‘White Diamonds’. And for a good part of the album, Friendly Fires adopted a tight Electro Funk sound. There’s a whole bunch of comparisons you can make here, from contemporary Brazilian dancefloor fillers CSS to old school Heaven 17 and even a touch of Japan. Eclectic, but Friendly Fires manage to sound like themselves on my two favourites ‘Lovesick’ and ‘In The Hospital’.
Not a showstopper album at first listen, but the mix of styles works, it’s fresh and there are tunes here that add something to the 2008 pop harvest.
Listen To ‘Friendly Fires’
Download the Friendly Fires’ debut album from iTunes UK.
3rd Choice: Elvis Costello & The Imposters ‘Momofuku’
Costello continues to revisit his 70’s and early 80’s period on ‘Momoofuku’. You get the classic Elvis sound: The fairground organ, the cardboard drums, the scratchy guitar and the sneering vocal delivery. Nothing new here then.
What’s new is that Elvis doesn’t just seem to go through the motions. There are a couple of songs on ‘Momofuku’ that jump out at you. Songs that are left pretty raw, simply relaying a strong hook or a few good lines. Songs like ‘Go Away’, ‘Drum And Bone’, ‘American Gangster Time’ and ‘Stella Hurt’. Elvis even injects new fire into his ballads on ‘Harry Worth’ and ‘My Three Sons’.
Watch Elvis Costello On YouTube
While ‘Momofuku’ in its entirety is not necessarily the strongest album, there are a good few songs here that will likely make it onto your next personal Costello mix ‘tape’ or compilation.
Finally, what’s it with the name? Well, Japanese noodle tsar Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles in 1958 and cup noodles, apparently Costello’s favourite junk food, in 1971. Now you know.
Listen To ‘Momofuku’ And Buy DRM-Free MP3s for $0.99!
Download ‘Momofuku’ from iTunes UK. We charge no extras just pay the iTunes UK Store price.
