Green Day: Dookie
When Kurt Cobain took his own life in April 1994, it was feared that the mainstream recognition of alternative rock music had been struck a death-blow. Certainly, the industry was never the same again, but Green Day were one of the first bands to make a mark on the post-Nirvana world of rock. Dookie was their major label debut, and is packed wall-to-wall with memorable songs. Labelled, somewhat wrongly, as ’skate punk’, Dookie owes as much to the likes of the Who and the Ramones as their Californian contempararies such as NOFX and Rancid. The short, catchy songs are definitely in the punk style, with lyrics concerning everyday issues, held together with simple but effective melodies. Longview is an eloquent description of couch potato boredom, while Welcome to Paradise (rerecorded and a little more polished than the original Kerplunk! version) is a song any newcomer to university or college could relate to.
A follow-up to Alice In Chains’ full-length debut Facelift, Dirt builds on their angsty, stadium-sized sound that propelled them out of Seattle and onto the worldwide metal circuit. Although inevitably compared with their contemporaries and labelled as ‘grunge’, AIC’s style is heavier and has a more polished and proficient feel. The Seattle themes of Generation X disallusionment, emotional pain and excessive drug use are there in abundance, but Layne Staley’s distinctive vocals and Jerry Cantrell’s inticate soloing are the main reasons for this record being something out of the ordinary. Facelift gave ample evidence of this, but Dirt is a much darker record that takes this one step further and shows the cracks in both the rock ‘n’ roll dream and the band itself.
A summary of the Finnish goth rockers’ back catalogue, And Love Said No… sounds, at first listen, to be a soundtrack for embittered romantics who like to take a walk on the dark side. While there is some heavy metal material (It’s All Tears and Buried Alive by Love for example) on the album, there are also some mellow and tender songs which have more in common with blues and easy-listening artists. This mixture of styles is largely to do with the wide range of influences among the band’s members: the drummer is a Slayer fan, the guitarist and bassist are into Jimi Hendrix, the keyboard player owns Tchaikovsky records and chain-smoking frontman Ville Valo is a self-confessed Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison fan. The result is a refreshing blend of delicate melodies, metal riffs and heartfelt lyrics that can appeal to fans of power ballads as well as metalheads.
Building on the sound of their previous album, Unleashed Memories, Italian goth-metal band Lacuna Coil have pushed themselves to produce an album that proves to be more intense, inventive and varied than its predecessor. While Unleashed Memories had a tendancy to be somewhat plodding and samey, Comalies manages to be more interesting, atmospheric and heavy-sounding. The opening track, Swamped begins with a bizarre backwards guitar loop, followed by crashing guitars and Cristina Scabbia’s gorgeous, soulful vocals. The rest of the album is a carefully-crafted mixture of metal riffs, delicate melodies and stunning ambience. The contrasting vocals of Cristina and Andrea Ferro give an extra dimension to the sound, which undoubtedly benefits from the songwriting being handled by all of the band members.
The town of Wigan has something of an illustrious musical history for a small northern town whose only other claim to fame is a large Heinz Baked Beans factory. In recent years, the Wigan region has produced the excellent Starsailor and the mighty Verve, and inevitably when the little-known Witness emerged from their converted chip shop/rehearsal room in the late 1990s with their debut single Quarantine they were greeted with caution and even dismissed by some as being Verve clones. Certainly, Ray Chan, the main guitarist is a personal friend of the Verve’s Nick McCabe and also has an improvised style of slide guitar, but Witness sound more like REM or some other soft rock/folk outfit from the States. Before the Calm is a stunning debut album that manages to take vocalist Gerard Starkie’s weed-induced musings and present them as deep, profound and ultimately moving.
Set in a remote town in the forests of the US/Canadian border, the Twin Peaks story begins when the body of seventeen year-old Laura Palmer is discovered next to a lake, wrapped in plastic. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate, and his enquiries soon unearth countless dark secrets held by the town’s strange and varied inhabitants.
When Michael and his younger brother Sam move to the Californian town of Santa Carla with their mother, they expect to lead an uneventful and probably boring life. However, when Michael falls in with the wrong crowd it becomes clear that there is more to Santa Carla than meets the eye: the whole town is a haven for vampires. Before long, it is up to Sam to save his brother from the changes that have recently come over him.
Produced by comedy team Broken Lizard, Super Troopers tells the story of five US traffic cops from Vermont who, in between numerous juvenile and hilarious pranks, patrol the highways and attempt to outdo the local police department. The rivalry steps up a notch when a murder and a drugs smuggling operation are discovered, and the incompetant State Troopers set about solving the crimes before budget cuts shut their station down.
A sitcom with a difference, Spaced follows the lives of two twentysomethings: Tim Bisley, an aspiring comic book artist, and Daisy Steiner, a would-be writer. Both are drifting through life, with somewhat unsuccessful personal and professional lives. They share an ordinary-looking flat with a colourful collection of friends and neighbours, including the chain-smoking alcoholic landlady Marsha, military-obsessed friend Mike, fashion victim Twist and flatmate/modern artist Brian. Not to mention Colin the dog.
Shaun (Simon Pegg) is like many other 29-year-olds. He has a dead-end job, he is on bad terms with his stepfather and to cap it all his girlfriend Liz, tired of their boring existence which centres around the Winchester, their local pub, dumps him. He makes a drunken promise to get back with Liz, reconcile with his flatmate Pete and sort his life out. The only problem is, the dead are coming back to life to prey on the flesh of the living. Teaming up with his no-hoper slob of a flatmate/childhood friend Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun hatches a plan to rescue his mum, get back with Liz and escape to somewhere safe and familiar to wait for all this to blow over. But where to go? The Winchester!
