Music reviews...

Takk - Sigur Ros.

Let Sigur Ros take your hand and guide you to where the mock turtles live, where The Mad Hatter has tea with the sleepy dormouse and where Alice found that sometimes all is not as it seems. This album conjures up images in your mind of flight across barren Icelandic wastelands where deep fissures scar the earth, sulphurous pools form and molten rock bubbles to the surface. An ambient dreamscape made real, this album is a joy to listen to and should be in everyone's collection.

Grace. Jeff Buckley.

Possibly one of the best albums ever made. Containing lapel grabbing hard rock and mind blowing moments of melodic musemanship, Grace encapsulates the dichotomy of being human and makes it into music for the soul. Anger, joy, peace, hatred and love all play their part in this album. Leaves you feeling like you have been through the whole of human expression in a second spanning a lifetime. Gone too soon, like so many who deserved to live, Jeff Buckley lives on in this album.

Smile. Brian Wilson.

Supposedly thirty years ahead of his time, Brian Wilson seems to encapsulate the sixties when surfing went global, peace and love threatened the establishment and youth threatened to take charge from the order of old an oppressive. Full of melodies similar to the beach boys, this album is better than it should ever have been. Pull on a Hawaiian shirt, buy a VW Beetle, grow your hair long and take up surfing. Brian Wilson has finally arrived in the here and now. Welcome back Brian.

The Amazing Charlatans. The Charlatans. (USA)

Acid was certainly an influence in the making of this album. And it's great that it was. Without the influence of Lysergic acid diethylamide it's easy to imagine this group singing about moonshine, chewin' tobacco, dungarees, and inter-family marriages. Thanks to Albert Hoffmann however, this album isn't a tribute to troglodytes and instead is an album that has a similar sound to early Neil Young albums tinged with a little Jefferson Airplane. Well worth listening to.