Today i will say the first words about an album. Ginger Wildheart ( a real rock star name! WOW!!!) frontman of the well known rockpunx of the last ...30?...25? years have done it for several times all alone (nearly) in the last years. And often quite good. This is Albion, his 2014 album on cd a 9 track story, the vinyl release offers 15 tracks. Here we have the vinyl album. what is it? Rock, Pop, Punk, Prog rock, Bubblegum, Electronica, Folk? No, this is Ginger. He take what he think he need for a good song and put all these things together. And in my opinion he did it very well. Most of the songs are real good pop songs with a powerful arrangement and nice ideas. Maybe two or three weaker songs like in example the title track, in my opinion way too long (around ten and a half minute), are on the album. The other songs here make fun and to me it's a quite good pop album, ...yes a pop album...or Heavy Metal? I'm just kidding. Try it or leave it
SB1
Review by drowninsound.com:
Only a musician as innovative, mercurial, uncompromising, stubborn and erratic as
Ginger could suffer from Difficult Second Album Syndrome after countless records and a quarter of a century in the business.
To rate
Albion as just another solo effort in his extensive
curriculum vitae is only telling half of the story, if even that. The
odyssey starts in 2010, following the dissolution of his band The
Wildhearts – cult favourites and Nineties chart-botherers – when he
found himself playing guitar for Hanoi Rocks’ blond bombshell Michael
Monroe. Despite successful tours and a warmly-received co-written album
Sensory Overdrive,
creative differences and managerial issues cast him into the musical
wilderness alone. With no band, no direction and no means to provide for
a family, the towel was close to hitting the ring. It seemed that wild
hearts
could be broken.
Then, like a three-forked bolt of lightning, came the concept of a
triple album that would alter the course of Ginger’s career forever.
Funded purely by donations from a fanbase who showed a loyalty beyond
question (in an honest, warm and productive way, the sort often
overshadowed today by uncomfortable, commercial, hashtagged dedication
to people like Bieber and Cyrus), they broke the target within hours and
eventually reached just short of 600 per cent over it. The resulting
record – titled
555% in honour of the amount at which physical
copies became unavailable – comprised three discs brimming with newfound
hope, accepted happiness and soulful rejuvenation.
Hey! Hello!, was a pop-rock fiasco fronted by Victoria Liedtke with Ginger playing every instrument. The second was
Mutation,
a cathartic collaboration with other noisemongers that landed somewhere
between Cardiacs and Napalm Death. Ginger was unreserved in his
appreciation; the fans had come through in unprecedented ways, the
proverbial middleman had been shot in the back of the head, and the
light at the end of the tunnel was brighter than ever (and, fortunately,
not an approaching subway train).
Two more projects
were later borne of PledgeMusic. The first,
Albion, originally making like Mr J. Christ and arriving on a
Christmas night, now sees a general release outside of the loyal hands
of pledging fans fans (who, here, smashed the 400 per cent mark). Given
the events of the past few years, this first release under the usual
Ginger moniker since
555%, and the first featuring the house band
assembled during those sessions, has a fair amount to live up to.
Initial reaction was mixed – largely on the part of Ginger himself,
absent for the mastering and unhappy with the finished product.
Where the triple album was challenging not for its sound (pristine and precise) but its sheer magnitude,
Albion
is testing for its lesser production and less subtle amalgamation of
stylistic ideas. Ginger has never been one to be afraid of fucking
around in terms of genre and audience perception – 1997’s
Endless, Nameless
springs to mind – and experimentation is inherent in most efforts that
bear his insignia. Here, however, disparate components are often more
pronounced, or at least more noticeable where they were once fluidly put
together by the sonic seamster.
Still, the songwriting machine’s perennial ability to sculpt a moving
melody from the hardest rock and most abstract shapes continues.
Opening salvo ‘Drive’ is perhaps the best representative of this; tinny
tones could never wholly distract from the evocative life affirmation
buried in Stones-y grooves. Elsewhere there’s ‘Cambria’,
an oddly effective mash of
Hey! Hello! and
Mutation,
and ‘Grow A Pair’, an intense dance-rock affair haunted by Victoria’s
dreamy vocal presence and cut with Ginger’s tongue-in-cheek lyrical
banter (“
I don’t want to be a dickhead all my life”).
The more
abstract, ethereal moments like ‘Order Of The Dog’ and the sublime
voyage that is the self-titled finale track have their place, but
Wildheart has always been dabbest-handed when armed with a chorus and
bouncy riff. Thankfully, then, there’s the warm ‘Body Parts’ and dynamic
ode to wanderlust ‘The Beat Goes On (Caledonia)’.
And so ends another step on Ginger’s loveably tumultuous, often
volatile, refreshingly bittersweet and often transcendental musical
journey. While many of the tracks on
Albion require more
evaluative listens than past glories have done, all are a testament to
the singer’s creative inimitability, with a minimal amount of weaker
moments simply serving to emphasise the others – songs of enduring,
endearing quality.(drownedinsound.com)
Here the links for 'Albion':
mp3@320 &
Flac
Viel Spass
SB1