‘How To Save A Life’ by The Fray

Every now and then, a song comes along that just gets everywhere. It’s all over the radio, it’s on every TV show’s climactic final moments, and it soundtracks every advert. ‘How To Save A Life’ was one of these tracks. Often, this sort of ubiquity is woefully undeserved, but just occasionally, you can live with it. ‘How To Save A Life’ was a good track. Listening back to it, it’s hard to say why.

I’m not trying to be over-critical, but what is it that makes this song work? It’s not the musical structure – the melody in the verse is all over the place, and when it drifts into the chorus (with no noticeable transition) it continues in much the same vein. The lyrics aren’t the key to its success – they’re not saying anything too profound, and at various points you can barely make out what they are as they’re drawled so indistinctly. The arrangement is quite good – the piano bounces along quite nicely, there are some fairly effective (if simple) harmonies towards the end, and the drum outro is a nice touch, but these things do not a great song make. Yet, somehow, the song succeeds in becoming much more than the sum of its parts – it sweeps you in, even though you know it shouldn’t, even now, four years after it was everywhere. Extraordinary.

For the sake of completion, I should point out that this album contains a further twelve songs. I won’t bore you with the details – suffice to say, they’re pleasant enough, but the world wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there.

'Holding Nothing Back' by Tim Hughes

A quirk of alphabetical filing takes me from one Tim Hughes album to another, skipping over ‘When Silence Falls’ (which I’m not going to get to for a long time at this rate). By the time of this, his third album, Hughes’ situation had changed significantly. No longer was he the new face on the scene, snapping at the heels of Matt Redman – he’d already become a major figure in Christian music, and not just in Britain.

The development in sound between ‘Here I Am To Worship’ and this are fairly obvious when you listen to them back to back. The arrangements are clearer and more muscular here, and Hughes’ voice – which had always been strong – is in very fine form. There is a sprinkling of new anthems throughout the album – the title track, and ‘Almighty God’ and ‘Happy Day’, for instance, and there other very strong moments – ‘Clinging To The Cross’ is lovely, and ‘God Of Justice’ is delicately arranged. There are other moments, especially towards the end of the album, where Hughes falls into the almost unavoidable trap of the worship songwriter – writing songs which wouldn’t quite work congregationally, but aren’t quite distinctive enough to make it on their own. The material is good enough to get through this problem, but it’s a problem never-the-less.

'Drastic Fantastic' by KT Tunstall

The second studio album from KT Tunstall, ‘Drastic Fantastic’ is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a follow up to ‘Eye To The Telescope’ – another set of well written pop songs with a dash of folk thrown in but struggling to be heard over the slightly too glossy production.

Starting an album with a recording of an old b-side demonstrates either a great confidence in your work, or a real desperation. Happily, ‘Little Favours’ is a decent, breezy opening, though ‘If Only’, which follows, is more interesting. ‘White Bird’ is a tricky one – write an acoustic based track and name it after a bird, and you will be compared to Paul McCartney, and you will come off worse – but it’s a nice enough song on its own merit. Actually, ‘nice enough’ sums up the album pretty well. It’s all pretty good, but it’s pretty safe, and there’s little in the way of progression from album number one. This is a shame, as the ‘Acoustic Extravaganza’ album released in the interim had been really good, but it’s perhaps inevitable – the record company would presumably have wanted another big seller, and most of the songs on this album were written before or around the time of her debut.

Things are most interesting when Tunstall experiments. ‘Hold On’ is a riotous clatter of elements that only just holds together, but it’s all the better for it, and ‘Beauty of Uncertainty’ uses a dream-like backing track and echoey vocal line to good effect. It’s just a shame that the record doesn’t have more of such things.

'Dark On Fire' by Turin Brakes

Funny one, this. 'Dark On Fire' is one of those albums that just won't work its way into my conciousness, however many chances I give it. It made little impression on me when it came out, and I've returned to it several times since, enjoying it each time, but for some reason, it just won't stick.

I like it, though. Lots of it is really good - 'Stalker', 'Something In My Eye', the title track (even if it does sound like 'Dog On Fire') are all great, and there are no particular weak spots. It just doesn't have enough distintiveness to sound out. I'm all for bands trying new approaches, so it seems harsh to criticise them for recording an album with a more 'live band' approach, but the downside is that they sound like a band rather than a duo quite a lot of the time. That isn't a bad thing in itself, but you get less of the harmonies, and less of the delicate nature of previous Turin Brakes albums.

I spent a couple of days listening to this album fairly solidly, and I did enjoy it. A couple of days on, and I find it hard to recall many of the tracks very clearly. However, I'll come back to it again - and eventually, I'll crack it.

‘Beyond The Neighbourhood’ by Athlete

Athlete’s third album, released in 2007, is a curious affair. When Athlete first album was released, it was a quirky indie type record, whereas their second album ironed out all these quirks, aiming for a more conventional Coldplay-esque sound. ‘Beyond The Neighbourhood’ fall somewhere between these two positions.

It starts with a fairly low key instrumental warm-up which segues into ‘Hurricane’, the lead single. As you’d expect from a first single, it’s a reasonably upbeat anthemic number, and certainly one of the stronger tracks from the album. The next couple of tracks continue in a reasonably similar vein, livened up by some great drumming. In the middle of the album comes ‘The Outsiders’, the core of the record. Again, it’s a fairly unassuming track, but nicely produced, with some good harmonies.

The trouble with this album, is that second half doesn’t really offer anything new. The first six tracks make a good lesson, the next five are all fine as they are, but there’s nothing that really stands out. As such, the album drifts to a vaguely unsatisfying end, which is shame after its promising beginning.

'A Weekend In The City' by Bloc Party

Second album by Bloc Party, and almost the most recent release listened to so far. Like their first album, this is essentially a slightly awkward sounding mix of spiky guitars, fast drums, and studio effects, though the studio effects are up a little on this one, and the lyrics are a little angrier and more angsty.

'Song For Clay' starts quietly with keyboard chords and falsetto vocals before launching into a relentless drum beat and a selection of layered guitars and angry vocal harmonies. 'Hunting For Witches' starts with a fantastic sound collage of voices before turning into an angry sounding rant about alienation and racial exlusion. It's fast, crunchy, and generally brilliant. 'Waiting For The 7:18' pretends to be quiet and gentle at the beginning, but guess what - it soon becomes loud, and fast, and a bit angr... I may have said this already.

And so it goes on. Only 'On', 'Kreuzberg' and the closer 'SRXT' lower the tempo, and even then, only just, and they're still pretty intense. 'I Still Remember' is the only song on the album that isn't hard work. But despite all this, 'A Weekend In The City' is still a really good album. Demanding, even exhausting, but worth the effort, and I'm sure that's how it was meant to be. I reaching out from standard guitar-band-land and embracing more experimental sounds, they created something very successful.