What fun! This soundtrack of the film adaptation of the Broadway musical overflows with glossy, ol' fashioned '60s-style pep. It won't win any awards for innovation, but it may well be one of the most feel-good releases of the year. While not quite as super-energetic as the original Broadway cast, the new crew ain't too shabby: Nikki Blonsky delivers as Tracy Turnblad and Zac Efron (High School ...
After carving a somewhat lucrative niche as a classical crossover artist, award-winning Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins has seemingly gone "pop" for her fifth album, "Rejoice". Fans can relax, however. Far from attempting a Charlotte Church-style reinvention, Jenkins manages to slide gently and mellifluously into the world of popular music, retaining her trademark operatic vocal style and ...
The success of the Fron Male Voice Choir's debut album, Voices of the Valley, was so vast that a follow up was inevitable. Voices of the Valley Encore is actually much more than a lazy cash-in from the world's oldest boy-band (ages range from 16 to 60). Timed to coincide with the choir's 60th anniversary, the project features erudite direction from Ann Atkinson and instrumental ...
As Greatest Hits--and particularly the busking pavement jazz of "Lovecats"--reminds us, the best Cure singles were very often tangential exercises; halcyon playtime divergences offering a Goth-free contrast to some of the weightier studiousness of some of those early albums. Or, as smudged frontman Robert Smith says of this 18-track collection, "Songs that are sung with a smile." This ...
No one ever managed to nail aimless suburban alienation quite like The Cure, so sensitive yet so party-hearty, and 4:13 Dream, their thirteenth studio album and first in four years, lands in a musical landscape presently infested with their descendents. Yet Robert Smith and his old blokes can still show the young shavers how it's done even as they enter their fourth decade as a working ...