THE ARTS: MUSIC CD REVIEWS

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Nov 11, 2007 | by Leon McDermott

FOXFACE 4/5

This Is What Makes Us (Gargle Blast)

FOXFACE are a Glasgow threepiece with an ear for melodies that contrast shadows and light, and an eye for the fancifully surreal (their gigs are often riots of colour, with models and props adorning the stage, not to mention a drummer sporting a vulpine mask). The band have skirted the margins between genres for a few years and their sound is, by turns, spooked and stirring.

There are points Winners/Losers, Monster Seas where guitars growl and buzz and the drums crack like whips. And then, on Honour And Promotion, everything is stripped back: Angus's rich baritone is backed up by Bell's spectral harmonies; when they sing "get away from the window, get away from the door/there is no hand to hold" it's every bit as eerie and chilling as the blackest of Smog or Bonnie Prince Billy lines.

An eldritch weirdness gives this album a sinister, nervous purpose, and makes it hard to avoid falling under its spell.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Honour And Promotion

RAY DAVIES Working Man's Cafe (V2) 3/5

GETTING shot appears to have been the best thing to happen to Ray Davies in years. In New Orleans three years ago, the former Kinks frontman was shot in the leg by a mugger; since then he has produced his first solo album since the mid 1990s, 2006's fine Other People's Lives, and now Working Man's Cafe, which, though it has its faults among them some lyrical clunkers that the young Davies would have shuddered at is another solid record.

Working Man's Cafe occasionally has the air of the grumbling Victor Meldrew about it. The title track bemoans the lack of decent greasy spoons amid Britain's bland high streets, and Vietnam Cowboys is a dull tract on globalism. But elsewhere, Davies is on form. You're Asking Me is a sprightly acoustic rocker; Morphine Song, meanwhile, documents the inside of a New Orleans hospital with sharp poignancy, and a dose of opiated melancholy; when the marching band kick in, it swings sweetly.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Morphine Song

LED ZEPPELIN 3/5

Mothership (Atlantic)

FOR anyone who's been sleeping under a rock for the last 40 years, this compilation two CDs and a DVD released to coincide with the band's much-touted reformation is a fine introduction to Led Zeppelin. It breezes through supercharged blues (Dazed And Confused), floor-shaking, priapic swagger (Whole Lotta Love) and mystic, brilliant nonsense (Stairway To Heaven), but rarely digs deeper into the band's expansive, arcane interests. They may have been rock gods, but they were also were four oddballs equally at home with much else: bucolic folk, chugging funk and deep, deep blues to name three.

Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones were a one-off, four musicians in total control of their art. No best of is ever going to capture all of that.

But buy Led Zeppelins I to IV, and the masterful Physical Graffiti, and arguably you have all you need.

DOWNLOAD THIS: When The Levee Breaks

VARIOUS ARTISTS 3/5

The Cake Sale (Oxfam)

RUM things, charity albums. Too often, they're the runty stepchild of the litter clothed in cast-offs and second-hand arrangements, given the scraps from the table that the big boys deemed not worthy for their own albums.

The Cake Sale, happily, is a little different. Black Winged Bird, sung by The Cardigans' Nina Persson, is a gentle, melancholic reverie, while Some Surprise, a downbeat, folky love song by Lisa Hannigan and Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, is the kind of thing Snow Patrol might have done had they not gone the way of lightersaloft blandness. Best, though, is Aliens, a lush bit of Bowie-esque weirdness from the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon. "I've been speaking with Aliens/they've agreed to abduct everyone but you/ so we can start again" he sings, over a drowsy string section and twilight guitars. That it sounds lovely rather than creepy is what makes it.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Aliens