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Six Organs Of Admittance-Shelter From The Ash

Six Organs Of Admittance-Shelter From The Ash

Psych meltdowns and intimate folk introspection from Ben Chasny and pals. Sometime Comets On Fire guitarist Chasny's Six Organs franchise is becoming а hardy perennial, issuing intense, ambitious albums on an annual basis. 5helrer From The Ash follows last year's sun Awakens and 2005's School0f The Flower - another impressive cocktail of Easterninflected drones, mantra-like vocals and thick slabs of empyrean noise guitar. Opener Alone With The A1one's solitary Е minor chord comes laced with e-bow hums, Robbie Basho-like raga extemporisations and, later, molten lava floes of electric guitar, while the less feral but equally potent strangled Road finds Chasny rummaging in the psychic backwoods while rainy acoustic guitars thrum and fiancёe E1isa Ambroglio (of noiseniks the Magik Markers) lends sensual vocal counterpoint. The darkly contagious title track, meanwhile, sounds like а dreamy psych-folk makeover of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear The Reaper, and everywhere а subtly numinous quality pervades. David Sheppard

Eddie Vedder-Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild

Eddie Vedder-Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild

Pearl Jam swnger goes solo for soundtrack. Who better to provide the musical backdrop to the true story of а young man disappearing into the wilderness and his subsequent doom than the husky, forlornsounding Eddie Vedder? Collaborating with his friend and the film's director, Sean Penn, Vedder has put together а collection of folk songs built on acoustic guitar and banjo that showcase his tremulous baritone. Не does а grand job of colouring in the grey Alaskan skies and captures the loneliness of Christopher McCandless's freefall from society to freedom in the wilderness and down towards his ultimate fate. Lyrically, he may occasionally jar but it's hard not to be uplifted when he lets rip on the opener setting Forth or when he and 5leater-Kinney's Corin Tucker chime on Hard Sun.

Philip Wilding

Daft Punk-Alive 2007

Daft Punk-Alive 2007

VIRGIN

Live album from enduring Gallic dance stars. Their robot heads might prevent anyone seeing how much their faces might have aged, but on the evidence of this live album, Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo could have an alternative career advertising moisturiser. Recorded at an excitable hometown show at Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy in June this year, Alive 2007 reveals that the duo still know how to target their electroweaponry straight at the adrenalin gland. The live setting fasts away the carapace of over-familiarity that has hardened round such tracks as One More Time and Da Funk, while the vocodered perfection of Around The World/Harder Faster Better stronger shows just what Kanye West sees in them. An alternative greatest hits compilation, it proves that the old sound of tomorrow can still make the grade today.

Victoria Segal

Eagles-Long Road Out Of Eden

Eagles-Long Road Out Of Eden

Quintessential California band's first new studio album in 28 yeas, In the US you can oniy get it at ,Wal-Mart, It's not surprising that, after аll the tours and best-ofs, the Eagles have finally made an album of all-new material. What is а surprise is the size: an unniggardly 20 songs on two CDs, two of them epics, and аll (bar the few available on-line or as DVD bonus tracks) previously unreleased. Despite reports of exploring new musical directions, it sounds very late-era Eagles, apart from No More Walks In The Wood, whose harmonies and reflectiveness might have fallen off а David Crosby solo album, l Dreamed There Was No War, а pensive intrumental, Fast Company, sounding like bad Hall & Oates, and Long Road Out Of Eden, а 10minute horror on love and the 'war on terror' with а Middle Eastern intro and outro, Hotel California guitar heroics and unfortunate lyrics. There are some very bad lyrics on this album; first single How Long, one of the catchiest tracks, could have been another Take 1t Easy if the words weren't а collage of cliches. Best track: Timothy В. Schmit's unaffected Do something.

Sylvie Simmons

Wet Wet Wet-Timeless

Wet Wet Wet-Timeless

The 1980s hitmakers pop in again. А name taken from а Scritti Politti song; revelations about Marti Pe11ow's former heroin addiction: their chart-busting statistics might add up but there's something about Wet Wet Wet that doesn't. After two decades of grinning balladry and pop schmaltz, it's hard not to hope that the Scottish quartet are going to use their reunion album to make the outrageous art-rock record of their dreams. sadly, Timeless isn't going to cause Lou Reed to gnash his teeth in - envy, but neither is it quite as grimly anodyne as it could have been. Admittedly, there is а grimly anodyne element - а desire for orchestral grandeur sinks into syrup on Thru' The Night and What Do You Know-but Run and the lachrymose Roy Orbison swell of 1п Every Heart (А Fire Burns) suggests Take That have toothy competition on the comeback trail.

Victoria Segal

The Autumns Fake Noise From A Box Of Toys

The Autumns Fake Noise From A Box Of Toys

The fourth album and fist in three yeas by the American purveyors of epic indie. Maybe it's been prompted by a string of Muse and Snow Patrol comparisons, but here The Autumns seem to be trying to wrestle themselves free of such comparisons with a new-found, syncopated restlessness. Clem, for example, features a classic pop melody -reminiscent of ELO - and although the highrise guitars are impressive, Steve Elkins' drum patterns are extraordinary, steering the song along a circuitous course. Vocalist Matt Kelly is perennially compared to Jeff Buckley, but rather than displaying that vulnerability, there's something narcissistic about Kelly's skyscraping falsetto. Не knows he can turn you on but would he bother to kiss you goodnight? Killer In Drag and Night Music are brooding beauties that evoke late-'90s Radiohead and although the abrupt shifts of Glass Jaw sound а mite overcooked, even when The Autumns err towards steroidal bluster, there's real substance in there too.

Mike Barnes

Kylie-X

Kylie-X

The princes of pop proudly presents her 10th album. With its breathy promises ("I turn on for you"), and song titles such as Nu-di-ty, it would be fair to assume you were in for some fairly steamy stuff on Kylie's 10th album. In fact, X really plays with a PG rating; Kylie's flimsy voice combined with the album's swirling strings and lite-beats tend to evoke images of hairdressing salons rather than hot passion. That said, there are some stand-out pop moments; the glitchy Heart Beat Rock is produced by pop whiz kid Calvin Harris, and Like A Drug sounds like a smooth, grooving update of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams. Sampling Serge Gainsbourg's quivering strings for sensitized, however, only serves to highlight the album's lack of truly kneewobbling moments.

Sophie Harris