S Club 7, a seven-piece collective of teenage boys and girls--Tina, Paul, Hannah, Jon, Bradley, Jo and Rachel--were pre-destined for the dizzy heights of pop stardom with their own personalised PR machine (a show on terrestrial television) and the shrewd management of former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller. Testimony to this, the band's debut single, the infectiously singalong "Bring It All Back" ...
Manufacturer: Commercial Marketing
Having taken three years off to have a baby, Jamelia--UK R&B's one-time most likely star--has a lot of catching up to do. Thankfully, Thank You extends way beyond where her self assured debut, Drama, left off. If anything, watching from the sidelines as R&B's taken over pop culture seems to have galvanised her. This is more rebirth than comeback--her determination to make up lost ...
Manufacturer: Parlophone
Invincible, the second offering from Five is, like the band's eponymous debut, a mixed bag. Featuring the utterly magnificent top-three single "If Ya Gettin' Down" (based around the hook from Indeep's hip disco classic "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life"), the band's only number one, the Motownesque "Keep On Movin'"(ironically one of their weakest singles), the odd cheesy ballad ("Invincible") ...
Manufacturer: RCA
By coincidence, the opening bars of Basement Jaxx's third album, Kish Kash, sample the intro to Jimi Hendrix's third album Electric Ladyland. Although the record doesn't have the ingenuity of the latter, there are similarities in the composition: layers of tweaks, beeps and found sounds create a soundscape backdrop for the music. Anyone searching for the Latin-styled "cut & paste" ...
Manufacturer: Xl
Manufacturer: Pointy
Great pop music is driven as much by raw emotion as it is classic textures. While this Scottish band excels in the latter trait, Texas has grappled with finding its own voice ever since making its 1988 debut. White on Blonde is the perfect example of an album that sounds right, but feels wrong. The band may borrow key traits from pop history in constructing its gentle blues style, but it ...
Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
Manufacturer: Capitol
Supergrass may be the unluckiest band to come out of the Britpop wave of the early 1990s. Their first album, I Should Coco, saw the trio typecast as a cartoon Indie boy band, propelled to stardom by the adolescent hi-jinks of "Feel Alright" and "Caught By The Fuzz". Unfortunately, this tag proved rather difficult to shake and as their music matured, their audience dwindled; their second ...
David Gray's A New Day at Midnight is darker than its mega-hit predecessor, and deeper, and all the better for that. Emotionally fuelled by the death of Gray's father and the birth of his son, it possesses much the same tone as White Ladder, being simultaneously celebratory and troubled. The album, though, is slow starting. "Caroline", with its rattling percussion and quasi-Celtic ...
Manufacturer: East West
If U2 hadn't used the title already, "A Sort Of Homecoming" might have suited this, their 10th studio album. All That You Can't Leave Behind sounds, at various points, like any or all of U2's previous albums, as if the band are sending postcards back from a protracted ramble through previously conquered territories. The euphoric first single, and opening track, "Beautiful Day", reintroduced ...
