No Roots
Faithless
Starting decade two, the collaboration that is Faithless, deliver album four and to quote a well-used phrase, if it's not broken, don't fix it. All of the components that make up their slinky and socially aware sound are firmly in place and wrapped around a strong set of tunes this time out.

The album is split into two sections, a wordy first half and a more instrumental second half, both lull you into a rather blissful state but beneath the blue haze is a strong indictment against the current state of apathy that exists in the world today. Faithless have always had much to say about government hypocrisy and the gulf between the disenfranchised and less fortunate and the ruling classes. In stark contrast to most protesters though, the band have always delivered the message wrapped up in one of the most sumptuous and smoothly funky beats out there.

Most of the crew is still around and Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss, LSK, P*Nut, Rollo and sister Dido fill the 14 tracks (plus a remix of Mass Destruction that’s making the rounds of radio at the moment) with a groove that gets under your skin as you find yourself returning to this disc time and time again.
Rob Hudson
official site



Addicted Romantic
Faker
Sounding like they originated from anywhere but Sydney, Australia, Faker produce music deep in darkness but bathed in melody so infectious it could raise a smile from a statue.

After a handful of EPs and singles, the band has delivered on a promise to transcend their obvious influences and make music that proves you can get a tan from standing in the English rain.

This is music with a burnished gleam that mixes flinty slashes of guitar with tales of those things real people do. The things we say we don’t but do anyway. With lines like “I slept with your best friend and think I’ll go again” from Bodies and “My loves for sale, I don’t need it anymore” from Love For Sale, the tunes here represent real truth in advertising.

So the next time you feel battered by the whims of the heart, pop on Addicted Romantic and know that you are not alone. Misery never sounded so good.
Rob Hudson
www.faker.com.au



Your Love Means Everything
Faultline
Your Love Means Everything doesn't have your typical backstory. David Kosten, the man behind Faultline doesn't have your typical backstory either. David was once with England's National Youth Orchestra on clarinet until one of his lungs exploded, apparently mid-recital, after this brush with the great unknown, he took up the zeros and ones and in 1999 released an album of electronica called Closer Colder. This dark but well-received work featured celebrity sound bites and even a death threat lifted from David's very own answering machine.

It's now 2002 and David releases the first version of Your Love Means Everything, a year later, a second version is released and features additional tracks including one of his most commercial songs to date, a version of the Rolling Stones' Wild Horses with guest vocals by Joseph Arthur. The rest of the album is a mixture of almost ambient instrumentals and songs powered by guest vocalists that include Chris Martin (Coldplay), Michael Stipe (REM), Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) and others. It's a testament to Kosten that even with such unique singers aboard, none on the songs here sound like those vocalists' day jobs.

Kosten's take on things is decidedly dark but there is beauty in all emotions including melancholy and while most of the music here tends to bled into the background, it does create a beautiful tapestry. It's also great to hear Stipe, Coyne, Martin and company part-time it.
Rob Hudson
official site



Communicate
The Feelers
New Zealand has a tradition of great pop bands. Groups that feature soaring vocals, earthy prose and majestic and often times raucous guitar. There must be something to all that clean air and clear water. With the album Communicate, Kiwi band, The Feelers can once again add their name to a very illustrious list.

The new album, a follow up to their debut hit Supersystem, features an amazingly high level of production and consistency. Rumour was that they had 50 songs in the bank when they started working on this album and that is easy to believe when you hear the finished work. There is not a weak song in the bunch. Lead man and main song writer James Reid has delivered songs that can comfortable sit beside the works of other Kiwi pop maestros like Don McGlashan of The Mutton Birds, Martin Phillipps of The Chills, Robert Scott of The Bats or even Neil Finn.

The band and producer Gil Norton, who has worked with the Foo Fighters, Pixies and Patti Smith among others, have sequenced the songs so the album has a flow that transcends most pop albums. It ebbs and flows, works up to peaks of grandeur and then mellows out with songs that sound like fireside chats before ascending to the heavens once again. Throughout these proceedings there is a sonic gleam that is mixed with odd arty sounds and clever arrangement ideas.

Pop music is as valid an art form as anything hung in the world's great art galleries when it is this intelligent, creative and moving.
Rob Hudson
www.thefeelers.com



Everyone Is Here
The Finn Brothers
At the moment, pop music is a bit of a wasteland for listeners with more mature tastes. Most of the music that passes for pop these days seems to be made by members of the Clearasil generation or machines. The new album by the Finn Brothers is a tuneful antidote to that situation.

The combined experience and vocal abilities of brothers Neil and Tim, was always going to create a project filled with rich harmonies and superb song craft and Everyone Is Here doesn’t disappoint. Following in the rich tradition of vocal teams like Lennon & McCartney and Auer & Stringfellow, it’s hard sometimes to tell where one beautiful voice stops and the other starts. The song content does personify happiness and family contentment but does the world really need anymore-teenage angst merchants?

Even with its high level of consistency, there are still a few moments that really stand out. The chorus in Homesick, the outro of Won’t Give In or the entire track, Disembodied Voices all raise the hairs on the back of the neck.

In an industry that caters more and more to a youth demographic, this is a rare treat and one not to be missed.
Rob Hudson
official site



The Bowery
Firekites
In a case of the end result transcending the individual parts, The Bowery by Newcastle, Australia band, Firekites combine disparate elements to sublime effect. And while describing the music within as coffee house folk or pop jazz goes someway towards giving listeners a clue as to the delights within, it falls way short of an apt description.

The album opens with an acoustic approach that draws the listener in like leaning in to hear a friend whisper secrets and then expands from there. The diversity of elements are cloaked under an umbrella of intent that puts the human voice at the forefront but packs the background with interesting transgressions of instrumentation.

By the end of the album’s ten tracks, it becomes no surprise to find that a rather large collective of individuals have had a hand in it’s creation. All the songs, including the instrumentals have an abundance of ideas that give the work depth without being obtrusive.

For those that need their muse overstated, The Bowery with all its subtle beauty will fly over head but for aficionados with a taste for the understated and richly detailed, Firekites have crafted a rare treat worthy of lengthy inspection.
Rob Hudson
www.myspace.com/firekites



Flyleaf
As we arrive at the downhill side of the first decade in this new century, a lot of music myths are continuing to be exploded. Firebrand front-person Lacey Mosley and her Texas band Flyleaf help to drive those final few nails into the heart of the misstatement that females can’t cut it in the world of heavy rock.

Mosley has the pipes and the angst to hold her own against the band’s loud dual guitar attack and even when things slow down (which isn’t that often on this self-titled debut) she never gets lost in the mix. Sultry or savage, her voice is always a powerful addition.

Lyrically the band follows the FU stance that’s prevalent to a lot of music in this genre but it somehow rings truer than most. It’s no surprise then to learn that Mosley came from a family with five other siblings. In a dynamic like that you have to put it out there or get lost in the shuffle.

Providing a 33-minute blast of energy and a message that ultimately proves positive in nature, Flyleaf have signaled the start of something hot and heavy and gender has nothing to do with it.
Rob Hudson
www.flyleafmusic.com



Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips
Our world needs people like Wayne Coyne and his cohorts in The Flaming Lips. We need more beauty, more self-expression; more art like Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. This album features a mad mix of fat and funky bass lines, weird burps of sound, emotions and vocals that soar above the heavens yet still crawl under your skin and a sense of infectious fun that is so lacking in our modern day programmed presence. It's infused with a child-like sense of wonderment that never goes away even after you understand the lyrical content of the songs and find emotions of loss, sorrow and struggle there.

The beauty here is sometimes stark, In The Morning Of The Magicians, sometimes lush, One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21, sometime fragile, All We Have Is Now and at times even whimsical, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 2. It's the kind of work that you put on, drift away to and then only return to earth when you realise that you have played the entire album front to back again.

This band is too good for the main stream but don't let that prevent you from experiencing one of the musical highlights of this or any other year. If you have a chance to hear Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and are unmoved; then maybe your brain is actually hard-wired and you really have hydraulic fluid running inside your veins instead of blood.
Rob Hudson
www.flaminglips.com



One By One
Foo Fighters

I've lived with One By One for some time now and have come to the conclusion that there is still room for a straightforward rock album. One without baggage and pretension and one that features strong performances and a sense of the exhilarating fun that rock can provide. The songs while not quite as memorable as the tracks on the self-titled debut album are a big improvement over the tunes that made up the band's second album, The Colour And The Shape.

The story goes that band leader Dave Grohl was unhappy with the original recordings for One By One, feeling that they were laboured and didn't catch the energy he was after. He changed their recording process and in a blaze of creativity recorded most of the songs that made the final cut in a few weeks. That sense of exuberance is all over the new record.

The song's topics are not as filled with angst as some would like but Grohl and company have always been their own men. The power of rock comes from many different places and even if enthusiasm and outgoing positive energy seem less fashionable than angst and nihilism, it's still a valid way to approach making music. You can still love the past and be open to the future.
Rob Hudson
www.foofighters.com



Out-Of-Sate Plates
Fountains Of Wayne
After almost a decade bubbling away in the indie underground, when Fountains Of Wayne finally broke into the bigger time with the completely infectious track Stacy’s Mom, it was inevitable that a odds and sods compilation would eventual come to light. That collection, Out-Of-State Plates is an expansive set with 28 songs running over two discs. It’s a testament to these US right coasters that even without a chronological running order and with no outright familiar songs for the masses, this set has continuity, consistency and a great sense of fun.

Songwriters Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger pen some of most clever lyrics in the land of pop and bath these wisenheimer words in melodies that stick to your ears like gum to the bottom of your shoe. They are also unafraid to dip into genres most pop stars fear to tread. So for an example, an outright country ditty can fit seamlessly next to a distortion drenched power popper.

With the number of songs on tap here, the set stops at many destinations. From covers of tracks by ELO, Jackson Browne, Gene Pitney, Aztec Camera and Bacharach/David to B-Sides to two brand new tracks (Maureen and The Girl I Can’t Forget), this set is filled with wonderful moments. There is even a take on the bubble gum classic Baby, One More Time made famous by a certain trailer-trash bimbette named Britney.

As an introduction to the band, their last album Welcome Interstate Managers would probably make a better starting point but for those in the know or for anyone with a healthy curiosity, these tracks are a real blast. And as a final note for those that wonder where the band got its name, just ask anyone that religiously watches The Sopranos.
Rob Hudson
www.fountainsofwayne.com



Traffic And Weather
Fountains Of Wayne
There is catchy pop music and then there is Fountains Of Wayne. During an off and on again band career lasting over eleven years, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood have created a back catalogue of some of the most insanely insistent pop music of all time. Their subject matter is never far from the concerns of everyday folk and their lyrics are littered with the names of girls, cars and places where girls, guys and cars get together.

The band’s third album Welcome Interstate Managers with its hit song Stacy’s Mom finally clued the world in on something the east coast locals have known for years, nobody writes and performs more infectious music than the boys in Fountains Of Wayne.

This isn’t rocket science but it takes a real skill to turn the mundane items from ordinary life into fantastic radio fodder. Who else could make even a visit to the DMV (that’s yank speak for Department of Motor Vehicles) sound like a delicious trip to the sweet shop for the lucky lad in Yolanda Hayes?

Elsewhere we visit people with cash flow problems (Strapped For Cash), girlfriend issues (This Better Be Good) and even the munchies (Planet Of Weed). These are tales that almost everyone can relate to, set amidst some of the most contagious two, three, and even four-part harmonies around.

Some have taken the band to task for their lack of sophistication but those on their high horses have obviously never closed down a bar where on the drive home your only friend was the car’s stereo. For those times only the most inclusive music will do and Traffic And Weather has something for everybody.
Rob Hudson
www.fountainsofwayne.com

The Cost
The Frames
One minute quiet and confessional, the next bold and bright, the music of The Frames is far from easy to categorise and that is indeed a good thing. Knowing that the band calls Ireland home and have been together since the early nineties gives a few clues towards their sound with its varied instrumentation and strong song-writing approach but the ingredient that gives their music such presence is that almost impossible to describe band unity.

The sound is one of friends gathering to share musical ideas, not the mechanical output of hired hands or studio aces with racks of the latest gear at their disposal. This music feels warm and lived in and creates a spell only broken when the last few notes of the last track fade off into the distance.

Pour yourself a tall glass of that fabulous brown syrup, throw this disc on and what you have is a nice little slice of the emerald isle. Also look out for The Frames as they tour Australia supporting his Bob-ness this winter. That’s a show sure to leave behind found memories.
Rob Hudson
www.theframes.ie



You Could Have it So Much Better
Franz Ferdinand
Lego man lock step burnished crown angst. Chambermaid whispers and edge press shouts of anything but indifference. Banquet table rebel cocktail napkin prose. Unit shifter simpatico.
RK
www.franzferdinand.co.uk



Going Inside
John Frusciante
This long playing single includes Going Insides, a track from Frusciante's latest solo album, To Record Only Water For Ten Days and four non-album tracks. These songs continue with that solo album's raw and emotional nature.

Going Inside tells of enlightenment through isolation while Time Is Nothing is a sombre instrumental that would not be out of place out on the open plains. So Would've I is a terse cry of acoustic regret and The Last Hymn rides on waves of church like keyboards. Beginning Again ends things with a more multi-tracked approach that features loopy electric guitars that bubble under a wash of folkie strums.

The confessional nature of these songs finds the guitarist still exorcising personal demons and once again makes one feel very fortunate to share in his recovery and the restorative nature of art.
Rob Hudson
www.johnfrusciante.com