CDs of the week

Evening Standard   05.06.09

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POP
Little Boots
Hands
(679/Atlantic)
***
Little Boots arrives fresh out of Blackpool, yet weighed down by premature adulation. The Pop Idol contestant formerly known as Victoria Hesketh might have taken her stage name from a rough translation of Caligula but she claims never to have smoked so much as a cigarette and her university dissertation was based upon the fascinating concept of Jamie Cullum's originality.

Her debut album is retro disco in excelsis, a huge, shiny glitterball long on little delights such as the stompalong New in Town — but short on personality. It leaves Little Boots marooned as a more lurex, less lurid Peaches without the heart of darkness.

No surprise then that Hands was partly produced by Greg Kurstin, whose CV reads like a roll-call of Little Boots templates: Peaches herself, Nelly Furtado, Lily Allen, Britney Spears and, inevitably, Kylie Minogue. In fact, she's so like them, it's hard to see where the production line ends and Little Boots begins.

On her better moments, she sounds like she's going to be as big a star as those she follows. Hesketh and Human League singer Phil Oakey swap lines on the outstanding Symmetry; Click is sweeping Eurodisco with a clattering instrumental break; Mathematics may begin “mathematics is a difficult thing” but it's as grandiose as peak period Giorgio Moroder.

As a tribute to a bygone era and to a slew of female artists, Hands is a roaring success. On Little Boots herself, the jury is still out.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Chester French
Love the Future
(Star Trak/Interscope)
***
Max Drummey and DA Wallach started writing songs as undergraduates at Harvard University. When an early copy of their album found its way to Pharrell Williams, the producer was sufficiently impressed to sign the pair to his Star Trak/Interscope label (Drummey promptly married, then divorced, Peaches Geldof to celebrate). Their debut delights and infuriates in equal measure. Complete with no less than three musical “interludes”, it's guilty of trying a little too hard at times. When it's good — such as on the doomed country of Beneath the Veil and Beach Boys-style harmonies of The Jimmy Choos — it soars. But some naff lyrics and a tendency for self-indulgence show that these students still have a few lessons left to learn. French: B-minus.
RICK PEARSON

The Black Eyed Peas
The E.N.D.
Polydor
***
The Energy Never Dies is the fifth Black Eyed Peas album and their first since 2005's patchy Monkey Business. There's a giant will.i.am production, which turns the otherwise slender Meet Me Halfway into a grandstanding epic. Elsewhere, there's Fergie turning into an annoying schoolgirl on Imme Be; there's the synth-crazed Missing You, the unlikely offspring of The Human League and Beyoncé; and Ring-A-Ling, which is as Eurovision as its title. Alas, 16 tracks is a fistful too many and with the exception of the Where is the Love? re-write, One Tribe, the second half dips into mind-numbing dross.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

Sonic
Youth
The Eternal
(Matador)
****
Sonic Youth are as old as the hills, and as reliable. Since this New York act first reared up on the horizon way back in the early Eighties, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and their chums have been churning out a dissonant brand of rock music that would have been profoundly irritating were it not for their evident love of a good tune. The Eternal finds them snarlingly unrepentant after all these years, wearing their fractured art proudly on their sleeves, and mistreating any musical instrument they can lay their hands on. Yet, like a benign virus, the melodies course through the band's system. You may as well let yourself become infected.
PETE CLARK

Dirty Projectors
Bitte Orca
(Domino)
****
THIS Brooklyn sextet have never sought mainstream acceptance — it's amazing their last album, a collection of Black Flag songs covered from memory, appealed to anyone but main brain David Longstreth. However, recent collaborations with Björk and David Byrne, plus a move to the indie label Domino, suggest this is their moment for a crossover. Bitte Orca is still full of whiplash-inducing changes of style, revealing its significant charms slowly. The African guitars on No Intention jangle beautifully, and the alien R&B groove of Stillness Is the Move, with sultry vocals by Amber Coffman, might even become an unlikely hit. A challenging charmer.
DAVID SMYTH

Kasabian
West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
(Columbia)
****Kasabian are a group that put me in mind of a jigsaw piece that doesn't fit into the overall picture, which is to say that they are a bit of a puzzle. At times, they come across as a rock band, with Tom Meighan's stadium vocals fighting it out with Serge Pizzorno's strutting guitar. At others, they seem to fancy themselves as a dance act, suffused with subterranean bass runs and electro flourishes. Then, just for a change, they lapse into being the new Kinks. West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is, according to them, the “soundtrack to an imaginary movie” but the type of movie is not specified. The record is unfocused, energetic, melodically mundane but not without its moments.
PETE CLARK

WORLD
Tony Allen
Secret Agent
(World Circuit)
****
Drummer Tony Allen is one of Africa's legendary musicians — but perhaps more a musician's musician than a popular name. He was Fela Kuti's drummer for 15 years and together they co-created the horn-heavy Nigerian style known as Afrobeat. And this is a great Afrobeat album, driven by Allen's powerful rhythms along with a choice selection of Nigerian singers. But Allen murmurs the lead vocals in the excellent title track and like a musical secret agent keeps the rhythms, horns, guitars and keyboards bubbling along together. With female vocals from Ayo, the most catchy song is Ijo, a joyful celebration of Afrobeat itself. Allen plays the opening of Meltdown on 12 June.
SIMON BROUGHTON

JAZZ
Diana Krall
Quiet Nights
(Verve)
****
Having married Elvis Costello and presented him with twin sons, the ever-stylish Diana Krall sounds a warmer and more fulfilled singer-pianist than the Canadian ice-maiden of old. Indeed this is her maiden bossa-nova album, a laid-back project she describes as “a love letter to my husband”. With Midas-touch producer Tommy LiPuma back in the booth, she takes to the gentle samba classics of Jobim and Gilberto like a duck to water, or, more accurately, a nightingale to Berkeley Square. Claus Ogerman's lush string arrangements might have swamped a lesser balladeer, but the sharp-witted touches of her piano and Anthony Wilson's guitar supply the necessary glint of steel.
JACK MASSARIK

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