A song from last autumn's new Beth Orton album, her first in six years. Not the Lynyrd Skynyrd tune.   6

noyoucmon 13 Sep 2013

The February 2013 covermount is titled "Marr and Friends" and accompanies the cover story on former Smiths guitarist and co-writer Johnny Marr. The disc features two songs by Marr as well as a slew of tunes that he guests on, and a handful by artists he'd worked with in the past. Despite several acts whose work I love (Robyn Hitchcock, Lisa Germano, Billy Bragg), there's something very difficult about this comp. For starters, it's mastered poorly (brickwalled to high heaven and victim to an outrageously high bass response on songs by the like of Kirsty MacColl, hardly a bass-thumpin' musician), which led to serious listener fatigue for me; second is there's just a bit too much mediocre material here. Entries by MacColl, Edwyn Collins, and Modest Mouse really aren't very memorable, and John Frusciante's and the Durutti Column's tunes fall flat altogether (the latter being a trying 10 minutes). The top pick is easy: a Marr-less highlight from Beth Orton's fifth album Sugaring Season.   5

covermount 3 Sep 2015