Coldplay
COVER ARTWORK COURTESY OF THE RECORD COMPANIES
A Rush of Blood to the Head
Capitol
While the manner in which Brit-pop act Coldplay's 2000 debut album, Parachutes, led to the band's unexpected rise to super-stardom has been compared to that of Brit-pop pioneers, Oasis, there the similarity thankfully ends. There is no trace of Beatles wannabe-ness surrounding Coldplay's brand of whiney hypnotic Brit-pop. Instead the four members seem contented to follow in the wake of less headline-making UK acts such as Travis and Echo and the Bunnymen.
Not that Coldplay is solely a UK phenomenon. After being nominated for the Mercury Music Prize for its debut album, Coldplay inadvertently went on to conquer the US after ABC opted to use the track Yellow as the theme tune for all of its promo spots.
After two years, countless rumors of a break-up and extensive tours of Europe and the US, Coldplay makes a welcome return to music store shelves this month with its second, and even more emotionally powerful piece of plastic, A Rush of Blood to the Head.
Picking up from where Parachutes left off, the new album and its 11 mellow and mesmerizing melodies is a wee bit rockier than their debut. The multitude of rumors surrounding a split appears to have encouraged the band to rediscover itself.
Be it the smooth flowing number In My Place., the piano-driven swell of The Scientist. or the mind-blowing number God Put a Smile upon Your Face, Coldplay might bare the scars of the post-punk indie scene but has somehow managed to distance itself from it in a most refreshing, melodic and moving manner.
With A Rush of Blood to the Head already entrenched in the UK album charts it won't be long before Coldplay are repeating this chart-topping success in the US.
Electric Soft Parade
Holes in the Wall
DB
There may only be two of them, but the Electric Soft Parade -- comprising of two late-teenage English brothers, Tom and Alex White -- has the clout and posses the songwriting abilities of an entire orchestra.
Although hailed as one of the greatest debut albums of all time by the ever-fickle music press, the Electric Soft Parade's Holes in the Wall is, while containing an earful of well-penned tunes, not on par with groundbreaking debuts such as The Clash's eponymous release or Oasis' Definitely Maybe.
Hailing from the UK's infamous southern beach resort city of Brighton, the two-piece band's music has been described as neo-psychedelic. Which, in layman's terms, makes the 12 tunes on the Electric Soft Parade's debut Weezer-ish with a bit of Grandaddy and a pinch of the Beach Boys thrown in and then blended with a few rock riffs ala Ash to appease the masses.
All this makes Holes in the Wall an album with two faces. Tunes such as Something's Got to Give as well as the title track ooze downbeat mellowness, while numbers like the scorching Silent in the Dark and Why Do Try so Hard to Hate Me see the band shifting up a couple of gears and hitting listeners with catchy rock-orientated choruses.
The Electric Soft Parade has produced a fine debut. While it may not be a masterpiece, it certainly creates anticipation for their next release.
Catatonia
Greatest Hits
Blanco Y Negro
When the Welsh five-piece gang of upstarts who once so eloquently threatened to come to Londinium and "storm the palace" split up late last year, the tiny nation lost one of its most underrated assets.
Led by vocalist Cerys Matthews and guitarist/vocalist, Mark Robots, Catatonia's blend of low-fi indie guitar rock and jingling anthem-esque late 80s alternative rock made its first impact on the release of the band's second album, 1998's International Velvet, the album that spawned the hits, I am the Mob and Mulder and Scully. The success of the band's 1998 album proved a one off, however. And while the band went on to play sellout tours of the UK and headline at some of Europe's leading outdoor festivals sales of 2000's Equally Caused and Blessed and last year's Paper, Scissors, Stone remained moderate at best.
The lack of Catatonia's album successes, however, doesn't tell the whole story and should by no means be misinterpreted. Catatonia was a great band that had a lot of original and tuneful ideas. The band simply weren't an album band. For every couple of corking tunes there was always a guaranteed dud, which, although sounding pretty negative, is actually what makes this Best Of such a gem.
There's no need to reach for the FF button. From the album's opening tune, the hit Mulder and Scully, to the very last, Bleed, Matthews' slightly off-key bubble voiced vocals and Robots' jangling guitar make the sound system hum.
The album also includes the band's lounge-loaded ode to Wales's first man of music, Ballad of Tom Jones, as well as the fantastic, almost kitsch disco tune Karaoke Queen. Also included are the mellow alternative rock-styled tunes Lost Cat, Dead from the Waist, Strange Glue and the rocking self-parody, Sweet Catatonia. All of which just goes to prove that while Catatonia was cursed, it thankfully blessed the rest of us with some great music in its short lifetime.
Urna
Hodood
TMCD
Though born into a family of peasant farmers in the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia, Urna and her voice have traveled far. Her haunting vocal and percussion-styled music has been allowing armchair travelers to conjure up images of the Mongolian Steppes from the sanctuary of their own homes since her debut album, Tal Nutag, hit record store shelves almost seven years ago.
Since then the Mongolian singer/songwriter has become one of the most in-demand world music artists around, performing at many of Europe's larger outdoor world music festivals as well appearing at some of the world's most renowned concert halls.
Local label Trees Music has recently re-released Hodood to coincide with the Mongolian songster's upcoming Taiwan gig set to take place at Taipei's Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in October.
She might have become somewhat of an international celebrity, but Urna remains lyrically close to home. All of her tunes tell of life on the Steppes with high-spirited shepherds, milking cattle, flowers of the Steppe and life beyond the Chiwga Hills just a few of the topics tackled by Mongolia's only new age star.
Although you may not understanding a word Urna is singing, the material on the album is absorbing. It's when the CD is played on a kick-ass stereo system, however, that the album's mind-blowing atmospherics really come into play.
April 14 to April 20 In March 1947, Sising Katadrepan urged the government to drop the “high mountain people” (高山族) designation for Indigenous Taiwanese and refer to them as “Taiwan people” (台灣族). He considered the term derogatory, arguing that it made them sound like animals. The Taiwan Provincial Government agreed to stop using the term, stating that Indigenous Taiwanese suffered all sorts of discrimination and oppression under the Japanese and were forced to live in the mountains as outsiders to society. Now, under the new regime, they would be seen as equals, thus they should be henceforth
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