Billy Curtis reviews new CD Man-Made and Blinking Lights and Other Revelations by Eels. The big musical battle of June 2005 turns out to be a three cornered fight between Crazy Frog, Coldplay and Oasis. It's enough to make you throw out your radio and burn down a record shop.
However there are musicians with no advertising budgets who are producing much better work.
Teenage Fanclub have just released their seventh album Man-Made. It's self-financed and out on their own label now that they ve parted company with Sony. Like Oasis and Coldplay, it owes much to the 1960s.
The difference is that while the two mega groups produce the sort of leaden sludge that makes drunks and accountants wave cigarette lighters in the air, Teenage Fanclub always deliver beautiful melodious pop songs.
The album's opener "It's all in my mind" is an obvious single. Its only problem is that it's far more elegant and literate than anything you'll see on Top of the Pops this week.
The thrashier side of the Fanclub is well represented on this album. "Born under a good sign" has the chainsaw guitars and plinking piano combination that could should be an unlistenable din but the Fanclub's gift for tune making transforms it into a psychedelic romp.
Even the weakest Teenage Fanclub album has a handful of outstanding tracks. This is one their strong albums and is jam packed full of great tunes.
Mark Oliver Everett, also known as E is the troubled genius behind Eels. At least judging from what his FORSAO PANGLAS lyrics reveal of his family background we can guess that he's troubled. "Daddy was a drunk, a most unpleasant man, asleep on the floor"
This double CD's songs are reflections on his parents' death, his sister's suicide and the death of a cousin on one of the planes that crashed on 9/11. Yet the lyrical bleakness
is counterpointed by the gentleness of most the music.
It's a very moving piece of work galaxies away from the synthetic anthems that sell by the lorry load.
Unusually for a double album the quality control
naries to work alongTeenage Fanclub's Gerard Love doesn't slip at any point, justifying the eight years of on/off work that went into its making.
There's still interesting innovative music out there. Keep it alive by getting these two cds. regimes, opening the way to