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SINK YA TEETH SINK YA TEETH
Pavlis
Sink Ya Teeth consists of Maria of Girl In A Thunderbolt and Gemma of Kaito. Having got together three years ago, this self-titled debut has been recorded in their living rooms in Norwich. Despite the humble beginnings, SYT make BIG music. The sound has its roots in the best of 80s art-pop - think Soſt Cell, Heaven 17 or OMD – and leſtfield rock. The duo add dashes of classic disco, electronica, dub and 90s Bjork and then wrap it all up in a sheen of sparkling Giorgio Moroder sonics. In an alternate reality, the likes of Freak
4 The Kick, Glass or Petrol Blue would be dominating the airwaves, blasting out in pubs, clubs, chain stores and supermarkets. In this universe, the music is, perhaps, slightly too intelligent, a little too challenging and maybe a smidge too dark for that. That said, as questing and experimental as this is, at heart it is pop - instantly classic, timeless, danceable POP - and it is very, very fine indeed.
ANNA CALVI HUNTER
David Auckland
Anna Calvi's powerful and intense debut album was deservedly rewarded with a Mercury Music Prize nomination on its release in 2011. The stylish and personal One Breath, with its confrontations of fear and vulnerability, achieved the same in 2014. Now, four years later, Calvi's third offering arrives as an erotically charged statement of confidence, displaying a hunger to challenge the traditional spectra of gender, sexuality and desire. 'If I was a man, and opened up my body',
she muses on the opening before her trademark soaring vocals reach a climactic finale. 'I dress myself in leather, put flowers in my hair' she teases during Hunter, and then Don't Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy pleads for even more fluidity. As always, her guitar work is enigmatic,
almost virtuosic, and never more so than in the screeching solo that intersects the conundrum of Indies Or Paradise. Swimming Pool arrives as a hot, sultry cinematic beauty of a track that recalls Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier's performances in François Ozon's 2003 film of the same name. This is an album that rejects grey for at
least fiſty shades of red, black and gold, and will almost certainly become my album of 2018.
RAY DAVIES OUR COUNTRY
David Auckland
I had always appreciated that there was more to The Kinks than just Waterloo Sunset and Lola, and knew much of the band's back-story and rise to fame. But, until Ray Davies released his solo album Americana last year, I had not understood just how much the band considered by many as 'quintessentially English' had been shaped by the music of that country. Based on Davies' experiences in the United States the partly autobiographical album was recorded at Konk Studios, and appeared to offer a rounded and well produced musical memoir / homage. However, enough unreleased material
remained from those sessions to develop an Americana Act II, again featuring guitarist Bill Shanley and The Jayhawks, but this time with even more spoken word interludes between the songs. In Our Country, Davies recalls a groupie he met in the midwest, and dwells somewhat on his relationship with New Orleans, albeit a city where he was shot in 2004. There are re-workings of several songs
from previous albums – Oklahoma USA first appeared on Muswell Hilbillies, The Real World is plucked from Working Man's Café, and The Getaway escapes from Other Peoples Lives. But Our Country still stands as a legitimate opus in its own right. If you do not already own the prequel it may be worth hanging on for the inevitable two-album collector's edition that will soon surely follow.
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