Biggest Bluest HiFi

Wembley was a pleasant enough experience, but less said about the result the better. Prior to that though I had a commute and a CD to accompany that commute, it was the debut album by Scots band Camera Obscura, Biggest Bluest HiFi.
Its a cracker of an album but not the strongest that tey have produced, a band possibly that have got stronger and stronger on every release (time will tell as their latest album is to be played yet), certainly the two albums that followed this made me love the band more and more.
Stand out tracks are Happy New Year and the song that introduced the band to me, Eighties Fan. Spectorish in sound, gorgeous and utterly beautiful, this is what the band showed from the outset and that is how they carried on.
This is a really short write up for the album, its a very good album, but time has dictated that I havent been able to get any time to write this since Friday and can only hurry a few lines out now.
Incidentally there is a line in Happy New Year, "I'm softer than my face would suggest", that used to be a title of a blog I did. I am.
Biggest Bluest Hifi, 7 out of 10. Can I add that every time I give something 7 or review something badly and give it a 6 I think back to the early reviews and notably Ant Hardings music and am aware that one of those was a 6, now that things have settled a bit and I know what a 6 is, Ant is way better than 6. Camera Obscura, 7.



Happy New Year by Camera Obscura

Footprints Through The Snow

Alphabetically speaking it was the turn of ant today, Ant Harding and namely his last album, Footprints through the Snow, released on Homesleep records. Ant being a multi instrumentalist from the Isle of Wight that now resides in Malmo. Home Sleep I think is an Italian label.
I like Ant, and have effectively been following his career, its difficult to be subjective really but as I gave one of his other albums 6.5 I think I can and will be.
Todays journey through the midlands was a bleak one, the sky was black, torrential flooding was occurring, thunder, lightening and my soundtrack was Ant Harding, it was it has to be said a perfect soundtrack, the weather outside was frightful but the soundtrack was so de… you get the idea of that.
I personally think this album is the best piece of work he has recorded, he releases a reasonable amount of EP’s (he has just put one out recently, more details over at http://www.antpop.com/) and few albums, but I think personally this album is his best offering. Its love again, unless it is all metaphors and really he is speaking about Norwegian Swedish political relations and not about his life in Sweden, I will wager it’s the latter, its what he does well.
The songs on the album are better formed than any of his earlier works and his songwriting skill definitely kicked up a notch, you hear more of his influences breaking through as well, but not running all over the songs, Clifford T ward I know he is a fan of, similarly Drake, they are apparent, but not over bearing, Antony is his own man and the over riding voice is his. 9 out of 10.

Sad To See It's Morning

Spinning on the Donohoe in car CD player was the second offering so far from Ant, a compilation called Sad to See it’s Morning. Its an album of B-sides, demos and rarities, and to be honest it is perhaps the Ant album I have played the least, not as a reflection of its quality but maybe because it was a compilation. That’s neither here not there though as the whole point of me going through my CD’s in this fashion was to address the fact that I maybe haven’t listened to some albums as much as I should have, this album is a perfect example. Its not all great, it is all good though and there are few tracks that just blew me away, as the CD case is in the car and I am not very good with titles you will never know which ones, if you do own the album, and you should, it’s the one with the female vocal on it, track 2, Suzanne Rhatigan at a guess, that track in particular was just lovely. Of course it shouldn’t have been Ant today, it should have been The Ataris, but my CD player would not play that album so I pulled over and dashed back in the house for a different album. So, Sad to see its Morning, enjoyable, 6 out of 10.

A Long Way to Blow a Kiss

This mornings alphabetical CD was A Long Way to Blow a Kiss by Ant, if I was doing EP’s as well yesterday would have been him as well, but as I am not, just today. Ant used to be the drummer in Hefner and is probably the only member of the band I still listen to. This album, I can’t recall how old it is but I know I liked it a lot at the time and that hasn’t changed, really enjoyable, it alludes I think to the long distance relationship that Ant was having with his then girlfriend, its all rather sweet if not extremely personal. 8 out of 10