Parasol

Reviews

Fonda
The Strange And The Familiar (CD)
The rock theatricals which beset Fonda's 1999 album The Invisible Girl have thankfully been toned down a little here, allowing the songs to shine through. At times Fonda's pomp rock tendencies take over and leave them sounding a little too much like Manson, not least on the overblown but engaging The Sun Keeps Shining On Me, but greater restraint elsewhere produces such gems as Summer Land (Be My Love) and the utterly wonderful Close To Home.

Doleful Lions
Song Cyclops Volume One (CD)
Doleful Lions' Jonathon Scott rises to the challenge "How lo can you go?" with a recording so lo-fi that you can often hear the stop button being pressed on the tape recorder at the end of the songs. Of the twenty two tracks those which are based around acoustic guitars and vocals, such as My Summer With Ghosts, cope best within the signficant limitations of the sound quality. One thing that the constraints of such lo-fi recording can't obscure is the quality of the highly melodic, though deliberately quirky, songwriting. This quirkiness is best indicated by the comic book nature of song titles like Spacecraft Marooned In The Gorillaworld and Sparks Fly For Magnemite, indeed these two are amongst the album's finest moments, along with the unlikely Bob Dylan pastiche The Red Top Lounge Flesheaters.

Starlet
Stay On My Side (CD)
This is a very different sounding Starlet to the band last heard on From The One You Left Behind. Gone are the playful melodies, riffing bass lines, and occasional bursts of rock guitar that made their debut such a wonderfully unpredictable record. In their place is restrained acoustic pop more reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian, with the single Diary & Herself sounding more like If You're Feeling Sinister era Belle and Sebastian than even Belle and Sebastian do these days. Only on the more up tempo In The Disco do Starlet begin to sound like their better known compatriates the Acid House Kings, also of the ex-Red Sleeping Beauty stable.