This week in New Music: Grammy-nominated Glen Hansard is back with his third solo album, Yusuf/Cat Stevens is still quite franky amazing after 50 years, Hurts are still causing pain and just listen to Camille (above).
Glen Hansard – “Time Will Be the Healer”
Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard has announced the follow-up to 2015's Grammy nominated album Didn't He Ramble.
Album number three Two Shores will be released in January 2018.
Hansard is pretty much a legend on the Irish live circuit, first coming to attention in “The Commitments,” followed by a two-decade career with The Frames, one of the best live bands you'll ever see.
His international profile was raised with the Oscar winning soundtrack for “Once” and that formula hasn't changed much. If anything, Hansard has pared down the sound further. Didn't He Ramble was pretty much on man and a guitar. On Two Shores, Hansard is completely in charge, producing for the first time.
Have a listen to “Time Will Be a Healer” below.
Yusuf/Cat Stevens – The Laughing Apple
Fifty years after the release of his debut album, Yusuf/Cat Stevens has surprised probably everyone but himself with one of the best albums of the year so far.
With reinterpretations of some of his earliest work alongside some new material and older songs never before released somehow there is a cohesiveness.
Granted that whole sounds like it could have been released any time in the last half century. That's because Stevens is a legend and like Joni Mitchell his music remains pertinent and contemporary but forever timeless.
Pretty good then.
Hurts – Desire
It seems like decades since English synty pop duo Hurts emerged as the next-big-thing with their debut album Happiness in 2010.
All bright and shiny and young, they were expected to be huge. They were Pet Shop Boys meets Erasure meets Depeche Mode meets Take That but for some reason they were just not….magnificent.
It's hard to say what was missing. What ever happened to Sophie and Peter Johnson? Somehow it just didn't gel.
On their latest album Desire it appears that Adam Anderson and singer Theo Hutchcraft have decided to throw everything at it in an attempt to finally break through.
Sadly they probably won't. There are songs on Desire that could be Take That-level classics. There's “Ready to Go” and “People Like Us” which aim for Coldplay stadium heights but are…just lacking.
That's been the problem all along – a lot of style, not that much substance.
Camille – “Seeds”
If like me you're waiting impatiently for the next Christine and the Queens album, you might like to take a look at fellow French singer Camille.
She appeared last week on the 25th anniversary show of the BBC's Later With Jools Holland.
I'm just going to leave this here and throw in Christine on Jools as a bonus.
