Editor's Pick of New Releases, March 2011
Post categories: 6 Music, Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Rock & Indie, album reviews, folk, jazz & blues, pop & chart
|11:59 UK time, Friday, 1 April 2011
March can usually be relied upon to deliver some quality long-players, several of which go on to rub shoulders with the year's best come December. And 2011's crop is of a very high standard indeed - expect to see some of the below picks featuring in many year-end equations.
My favourite of March 2011 is rather more leftfield than usual (perhaps), but despite excellent sets from heavyweight indie/rock acts like R.E.M., The Strokes and Peter Bjorn and John, and beautiful new sounds from Julianna Barwick and King Creosote/Jon Hopkins, FaltyDL's You Stand Uncertain really has stood out for me. It's an album that seems to revisit a wide variety of dance trends from the past 20 years, yet stitches everything together with such conviction and class that its maker, one Drew Lustman of New York, looks likely to be one of 2011's most-celebrated production talents.
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Editor's Album of the Month
FaltyDL - You Stand Uncertain
(Planet Mu, released 14 March)
Recommended by: Benji B
"A solid yet intricate wander through revived garage, house, rave and the ever-mutating, and increasingly ambiguous, dubstep niche, You Stand Uncertain is exceptional in today's hurried dance scene. You'd be hard pressed to find a better electronic album released recently that speaks so strongly to the future whilst nuzzling the neck of the past like a hungry lover."
FaltyDL - You Stand Uncertain (promo video) (CONTAINS FLASHING IMAGES)
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The Best of the Rest
Kit Downes Trio - Quiet Tiger
(Basho, released 7 March)
Recommended by: Jamie Cullum, Jazz on 3, Late Junction
"With Quiet Tiger, Kit Downes Trio have built on the success of their debut and moved on to explore new territory. On this showing, their future explorations will make fascinating listening."
R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now
(Warner Bros., released 7 March)
Recommended by: 6 Music Album of the Day, Radio 2 Album of the Week, Victoria Derbyshire
"Peter Buck reckons no R.E.M. album in 20 years has 12 songs as good as this. 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi may have something to say about that, but Collapse Into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event."
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo
(Matador, released 14 March)
Recommended by: Marc Riley, Lauren Laverne
"While bands are attaining genuine stardom while touting 'rootsiness' - Arcade Fire on Kurt Vile's side of the Atlantic, Mumford & Sons on this one - Smoke Ring for My Halo is about the personal and private, not the big picture. He is a decent bet to go from CD-Rs to CEOs in the near future."
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
(Asthmatic Kitty, released 14 March)
Recommended by: Tom Ravenscroft
"The Magic Place, splendidly, isolates the listener, cuts them off from the world around them. It does - pardon the cliché - exactly what is promised on the tin by that first track: it envelops, entirely. If it's a little disconnect from hullabaloo that you're needing, slide into Barwick's sublime soundworld."
The Unthanks - Last
(Rabble Rouser, released 14 March)
Recommended by: Mike Harding, Jarvis Cocker, 6 Music Album of the Day
"Self-confessed miserablists, The Unthanks revel in an emotional space that is doleful, downcast and frequently downhearted. Proving once again that sad songs are very often the best, their fourth album is brimming with material that is as haunting as it is beautiful."
John Foxx and the Maths - Interplay
(Metamatic, released 21 March)
Recommended by: Gideon Coe
"Of all the careworn analogue pioneers who find themselves back in demand again in 2011, it is clearly John Foxx who has made the most relevant and enjoyable recorded statement. Interplay is an album which easily equals the high points of his rich back catalogue."
The Strokes - Angles
(Rough Trade, released 21 March)
Recommended by: Zane Lowe, Fearne Cotton, Nick Grimshaw
"Truly, there's so much to love about Angles that picking it apart seems as ridiculous as dissecting an expensive tray of chocolates, setting fillings aside from their delicious casings. They, like this record, taste far better with everything properly combined. Prepare to be smitten anew."
King Creosote and Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine
(Double Six, released 28 March)
Recommended by: Bob Harris, World on 3, Gideon Coe
This is a collaboration that makes sense. Both share a taste for a rather languid tempo, that of small-town life and the more tender, bittersweet emotions; and theirs is a pairing that's complementary, Hopkins colouring in the spaces around Anderson's wearied voice, guitar and woozy accordion."
Peter Bjorn and John - Gimme Some
(Cooking Vinyl, released 28 March)
Recommended by: Dermot O'Leary
"Whilst Gimme More doesn't feature anything as catchy as Young Folks (few albums do, let's be honest), it's got a handful of tracks that will work brilliantly in a sun-dappled field come festival season. They've accepted what they do best, and for the most part it works a treat."
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