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Music Reviews

Springsteen still ‘Working On A Dream’

Something’s wrong with Bruce Springsteen.

“Is there anybody alive out there?” he recently demanded on ‘Radio Nowhere’; now it’s a repeated “Can you hear me?” on ‘Outlaw Pete’.

The man must be going deaf, because it’s sure as hell not insecurity. Within two years of the chest-thumping ‘Magic’ he’s released the even ballsier ‘Working On A Dream’ which, despite its title, is no boring state of the nation address set to pomp and circumstance. Instead, The Boss’ 16th studio album is a muscular rock record that sidesteps politics to bask simply in the hope of the ‘yes we can’ generation.

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Music Reviews

340ml are sorry for the delay

There’s something undeniably depressing about the bleak apartheid architecture – the tatty Regent’s Park Hotel; Triompf’s faceless flats; Parktown’s cold concrete constructions – that comprises the artwork of ‘Sorry For The Delay’. And yet, in Ross Garrett’s striking photographs, the gloomy buildings have a haunting beauty.

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Interviews Music

OneRepublic are dreaming out loud

12 December 2008. The last show on OneRepublic’s 15-month world tour. Backstage at the Grand West Arena, minutes before his band go on, singer Ryan Tedder is clearly relieved.

“All I can say is I’m excited (A) that I’m in Cape Town and (B) that tonight is the last time I have to play these 12 songs together. We’ll always be playing some of them but we’ll never play this many songs off this album after tonight,” he grins a little wearily.

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Music Reviews

‘Day & Age’ comes in for the kill

The Killers are not from the Caribbean. Nor are they sadists. So what the hell are those steel drums doing on ‘I Can’t Stay’? A shuffling Calypso track that’s all pink cocktail umbrellas, palm fronds in the breeze, and the hangover from Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’, it just takes the band’s new “anything goes” approach too far.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of experimentation — elsewhere on their ’80s-obsessed third album, the Vegas quartet actually get away with ‘Careless Whisper’ saxophones and Howard Jones keyboard fills. But there’s real trouble when the song sounds best in an elevator or on call-waiting.

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Music Reviews

The Cure are living the ‘4:13 Dream’

Robert Smith was freaked out by turning 40. “So the fire is almost out and there’s nothing left to burn,” he lamented on the confessional ’39’, “I’ve run right out of thoughts and I’ve run right out of words.”

Ten years later, he’s still here. Unchanged are the bed-head approach to hairstyling, slashed-with-lipstick style of makeup application, and the music itself: upbeat pop songs, smouldering epics, and feedback-drenched psychedelic freakouts. What’s new though is the intensity; revitalised by guitarist Porl Thompson’s return, Smith and his band have forgotten their ’80s glory days are long gone.

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Music Reviews

U2 go back to the start

U2 go back to where it all began, with expanded reissues of their first three albums, ‘Boy’, ‘October’, and ‘War’, tracking their ascent from playing Dublin’s pubs to headlining Red Rocks Arena.

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Interviews Music

Finking man’s music

Fin Greenall is no fake, his visceral, impassioned songs are no cheap tricks.

“I’m not an actor, I’m a music guy,” says the man better known as Fink.

“A lot of these big, big stars they’re actors too, it’s part of the package that they have this song they didn’t write, about an experience they didn’t have, that was produced by someone they’ve never even met, and they’ve got to act like it’s from their heart.

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Interviews Music

Arrested Development’s Speech stays positive

“It feels like a homecoming to some extent,” Speech says of Arrested Development’s return to South Africa after 14 years.

“At that time there was a change going on — Nelson Mandela had become president — and now there’s another change, with you guys having a new president.”

Sounding supremely relaxed, with his dog barking excitedly in the background, it’s clear a lot has changed for the rapper and his group too.

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Interviews Music

For Prime Circle it’s all or nothing

“It’s time to not be so negative about everything in life,” offers Ross Learmonth. “It’s time to just rock ‘n roll.”

Prime Circle’s frontman has reason to feel amped. Backed by a new manager, fresh record deal and expanded line-up, his band have just released their third album.

Produced by Springbok Nude Girls guitarist Theo Crous (“He brought a lot to the party in the sense of making the guitar sound like a huge wall of guitars”), ‘All Or Nothing’ is easily their best work: more powerful, more accomplished, more melodic.

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Interviews Music

Zebra & Giraffe collect memories

Greg Carlin sighs. It’s the question he’s been asked most since galloping onto the South African music scene as Zebra & Giraffe: ‘What’s up with the name?’

“I have no decent story,” he relents, the easy-going guy next door sounding just a little exasperated. “I wish I had a cooler story but I don’t.”

A far better tale is his rise from “obsessed” pre-teen Dave Grohl fan to the one-man band behind South Africa’s debut album of the year.

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