Review: Rebekka Karijord – We Become Ourselves

Artist: Rebekka Karijord
Title: We Become Ourselves
Label: Control Freak Kitten
Review @ TLOBF
Score: 7.5/10

More wide-ranging thematically but also more consistent in tone than Karijord’s impressive last record, We Become Ourselves is a another strong statement of steady, continued development on the part of one of Scandinavia’s most reliable singer-songwriters. Heady and deep without being inaccessible, it is a set of songs which reward repeated listening and one which younger challengers would be right to envy.

Read the rest of the review at The Line of Best Fit

 

Review: Lucy Rose – Like I Used To

Artist: Lucy Rose
Title: Like I Used To
Label: Columbia
Review @ TLOBF
Score: 7.5/10

Lucy Rose’s “haste to state that she is neither ‘just a girl with a guitar singing about how she feels’ nor reliant on love songs is strange given that Like I Used To is, err, an album of love songs about feelings, by a girl. With a guitar, even. But Rose can rest easy – while her record is much closer to established models than she would have us believe, it remains a solid effort which stands up well on its own.”

Read the rest of the review at The Line of Best Fit

Review: The Japanese War Effort

Artist: The Japanese War Effort
Title: Surrender to Summer
Label: Song, By Toad
Review @ The Line of Best Fit
Score: N/A

Founded two years ago as an “ambient joke band”, Martin Moog AKA James Scott’s The Japanese War Effort has developed all the way to becoming a lo-fi joke band. The project is a DIY bedroom effort for Scott, who will continue to be better known as one half of Conquering Animal Sound. Apparently inspired by Edinburgh in May, the Surrender to Summer EP is a set of five instantly forgettable fuzzy “pop” tunes which flounder about trying to net both a summer atmosphere and our attention, but fail to capture either.

Read the rest of the review at The Line of Best Fit

Review: Back to the ’70s with Cliffie Swan

Artist: Cliffie Swan
Title: Memories Come True
Label: Drag City
Review @ The Line of Best Fit
Score: N/A

In what could be interpreted as a bid to get the issue of their influences out of the way early, Cliffie Swan draw the title of their record’s opening track from a combination of the names of two songs from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 opus Rumours. Crisp and laid back, ‘Dream Chain’ is a fine introduction to the sound of this band reborn, steeped in the the radio rock of the ’70s but borrowing also from a number of later trends.

Read the rest of the review at The Line of Best Fit