ALBUM REVIEWS: MUSE and JAMIE T
 | | |
MuseThe Resistance
Warners
★★★★☆
No-one else quite nails intergalactic pomp while laying waste to entire cities with Exorcet-style guitar riffs as Devon's delightful demagogues Muse. Their self-produced fifth album is as ambitious, spectacular and ridiculous as ever - United States Of Eurasia, for example, chauffers Queen's theatrics through a Moroccan market while foretelling our nation's eventual submission to a continental mono-state - although the foursome rely more heavily on synth trickery than before. The Resistance should sate prog rock fans' thirsts the world over while levelling their nearest stadia. Remarkably, despite closing with a three-part mini rock opera, this manages to avoid disappearing up its own Black Hole to deal out yet more Revelations.
Jamie T
Kings & Queens
Pacemaker Records
★★★★☆
Plenty of water has passed under pop culture's bridge since Wimbledon-born Jamie Treays released his precocious, Mercury-nominated debut. But where Panic Prevention was a rattling, exciting and exuberant record, Kings & Queens has an air of sobriety and dark nights about it. 368 and Hocus Pocus, which open the album, reveal a more reflective, grown-up JT before Sticks'N'Stones dives back under his debut's duvet, all effervescence cut with street violence. But the singer-rapper's sunshine is merely a silver lining to troubling clouds and furrowed brows elsewhere, such as the cautionary acoustic tale of Emily's Heart. Whatever, this is packed with royally great hooks and rhythmic urbanite lyrics.
- STEPHEN MOORE
|
|
|
|
|
|