Various
The Rough Guide To
Psychedelic Cumbia
(World Music Network)
4/5

CUMBIA is the pulsating and imminently danceable music that reverberates through the working people’s dance halls in cities along the western coast of Peru and Colombia.

But it is in fact a unifying continental phenomenon. Ten years ago it breathtakingly expressed the angst of the poorest areas of Buenos Aires as “neighbourhood cumbia.”

Psychedelic cumbia turns the drug-fuelled musical indulgence of the Western rock that inspired it upside down. Instead, it’s a sound that animates body and soul.

Its guitar riffs would have made the likes of Hank Marvin or Duane Eddy green with envy.

And the seminal and riveting Inca-A-Delic by Sonido Gallo Negro, Colombia by Cumbia Cosmonauts or the beautifully sung Olvidate De Mi (Forget Me) by the legendary La Mermelada de JS Carballo will get you off the most comfy sofa in no time.

Review by Michal Boncza

Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting and Nancy Kerr
Murmurs (Topic Records)
5/5

SOME of the brightest lights of the current British folk scene have come together to produce something very
special.

On Murmurs, guitar legend Martin Simpson teams up with folk singer of the year Nancy Kerr and squeezebox virtuoso Andy Cutting to present new songs about politics, history and nature along with some traditional songs including The Plains of Waterloo.

Simpson, a great songwriter in his own right, delivers Dark Swift and Bright Swallow, a story which mixes bird-watching and wartime tragedy.

Those memorable tracks are matched by Kerr’s ballads, with Dark Honey a stand-out.

There are some fine instrumentals too, include Cutting’s melodic and elegant Seven Years, while the finale is a bluesy reworking of Lal Waterson’s Some Old Salty.

This is an album which will appear in next year’s folk awards in one guise or another.

Review by Brian Denny

Shannon and the Clams
Gone By The Dawn
(Hardly Art)
4/5

THOSE who love nostalgic US movies like Dirty Dancing, American Graffiti and Stand By Me will love the music of the Oakland-based Shannon and the Clams.

Mixing doo-wop, Buddy Holly-style rock’n’roll, bubble-gum pop and the sound of ’60s girl groups Gone By the Dawn, their fourth album is straight out of the 1950s or, at least, the innocent Back To The Future version of the ’50s of prom dates, cruising the strip, cheerleaders and sipping milkshakes at the diner that popular culture has clubbed us to death with.

The throaty vocals of My Man — “If you should die tonight I want you to know that you were my man” — echo soul great Etta James, while the latter half of the album leans more heavily on the band’s garage punk roots.

An interesting throwback to when pop wasn’t embarrassed to be pop.

Review by Ian Sinclair