Author: Nils van der Linden

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Interviews Music

Bernard Binns: an outsider looking in


Wannabe drummer. Englishman in Vereeniging. ’80s pop star. Marketing-communications company boss. And now, over 20 years after breaking onto the South African music scene with his band The Helicopters, Bernard Binns is back with his second solo album.

Recorded in England, where he now lives following a brief French sojourn, ‘Outside Looking In’ finds the musician in a reflective mood, his new songs recapturing the indie-pop sensibilities of his ’80s calling card ‘Mysteries and Jealousy’, while evoking the melancholy Englishness of Tears For Fears or The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie.

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Interviews Music

Vusi Mahlasela lights the way

“I wish politicians would realise that they can change the world if they work together like musicians collaborating, the world would be very different place,” sighs the man who has teamed up with the likes of Dave Matthews, Josh Groban and now Soweto Gospel Choir.

Vusi Mahlasela should know — for the past 30 years, he has embraced political and social messages that celebrate the importance of reaching out to others. Themes of conciliation and forgiveness run through his songs like the proverbial river through the desert.

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Music Reviews

Tori Amos forms the ‘American Doll Posse’

Twenty-three songs. Four alter-egos. One batty musician. But for all its multiple personalities, bizarre high-brow concepts, and sheer overkill, the new Tori Amos effort adds up to one of the singer-songwriter’s best.

Staying true to the concept album format she’s favoured recently — so far we’ve had cover songs performed by different female personae, a woman’s journey through America, and something about bees and hives — ‘American Doll Posse’ finds the wacky woman getting political through four characters each representing different traits of her character.

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Cars

Honda CR-V: smooth cruiser

2007 Honda CR-V

Refined. It’s a word you’d use to describe afternoon tea at the Mount Nelson, a performance by the London Philharmonic, or one of those overly groomed men on the cover of GQ. Despite the recent technological advances, it’s still not really a word you’d even use in the same sentence as “diesel engine”. And yet there’s no better way to sum up Honda’s newly arrived 2.2-litre i-CTDi mill doing duty in the CR-V.

Gently pushing memories of noisy tractors, smoky Golden Arrow buses and smelly generators out of your mind, the oil burner surreptitiously gets on with its job: powering the SUV in such a way that you almost glide along. A refined engine for a refined vehicle.

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Interviews Music

Springbok Nude Girls break the peace

They were hard to ignore. Their buzz-saw guitars and frenzied trumpeting kicked you between the legs. The cocky singer had a thing for loud halers and goggle sunglasses, like Bono used to wear. Lines like “I’ve got bubblegum on my boots today” were as difficult to get out of your head as an axe.

They arrived with a bang. But by the end of 2001 Springbok Nude Girls went out with a fizzle. The band broke up. Maybe. Various line-ups got back together for periodic “final” shows. Followed by more “final” shows.

What the hell was going on?

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Music Reviews

It’s ‘The Best Of What’s Around’

Over the course of six albums, Dave Matthews has achieved so much more than success. The South African born singer has proved that an average-looking, everyday-kinda guy can compete with the image obsessed waifs on the charts. He’s brought back the improvisational jam band after the demise of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. He’s introduced the world to Vusi Mahlasela. And he’s given the flute its rightful place on the top 40.

But while the mainstream popularity of Matthews’ folk-jazz-blues-rock might still be surprising to some, ‘The Best Of What’s Around’ reveals just why the Durban boy has hit it so big: he and his band have produced some genuinely good songs — musically ambitious but irresistibly appealing.

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Interviews Music

Il Divo make it look effortless

Take one look at the four men in Il Divo and you’re almost guaranteed to think theirs must be a lifestyle of leisure – yachts, cognac, and lazy afternoons, occasionally interrupted by serenading some beautiful Italian ladies.

At the very least their Armani suits, dashing looks, impeccable grooming and opera training suggest a quartet of staid gentlemen who listen to Puccini in their drawing rooms.

But, in reality, American David Miller, Frenchman Sebastien Izambard, Swiss Urs Buhler, and Spaniard Carlos Marin have a slightly less refined taste in music.

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Interviews Music

Jose Gonzalez: quiet introspection

Born in Sweden to an Argentinian father who loves Latin American music and western pop classics, it would have been easy for Jose Gonzalez to suffer from some cultural confusion.

His first musical outings involved playing bass in a rock band, flirting with hardcore and dipping into indie rock — before pulling out the plug.

The 28-year-old’s stark solo album ‘Veneer’ is “an understated, moody collection” that’s all about “simple guitar, murmured vocals, and the subtlest of harmonies”, said our reviewer.

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Travel

Easy does it in Ireland

Package tours are great. That is, if you don’t mind feeling like an animal – herded like cattle, with all the free-will of a sheep; or hanging out the bus window like a dog as the world whooshes by in a blur.

Really, the only way to experience a country properly is on foot or bicycle. Ireland is no different – you need to squelch through the boggy fields, feel the rain on your skin, smell the freshly cut grass and cowpats, dodge the cars in Belfast, feel the sea breeze, and pedal your way alongside the greenest fields imaginable to truly appreciate Ireland in all its guises.

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Music Reviews

Depeche Mode at their best

Four weedy boys from Basildon (England’s answer to Poffadder) burst onto the charts — decked out in shirts, ties and suspenders — with a cheesy, irrepressibly bouncy synth-pop song about nothing really, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. Who’d have thought that a little over ten years later their band would be one of the biggest in the world; their tattooed, heroin-addicted lead singer would resemble an emaciated Jesus; and their dark songs would be about sex, death, religion.

It’s a transformation that can be heard on ‘The Best Of Volume 1’ and that began, gradually, after that first hit song back in 1981. Chief songwriter Vince Clarke left the group — to continue his brand of cheesy, irrepressibly bouncy synth-pop with Yazoo and Erasure — leaving the far more cynical, nihilistic Martin L. Gore to come up with the tunes.

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