Reviewer Reviews... Palma Violets-180... A Music Review

You have to feel sorry for Palma(pronounced Parma) Violets. The Lambeth based band have been hyped up by the media (specifically the NME) to such an extent that this album is their attempt to show us that they are worth the hype, not that they are a fresh and exciting prospect, like what most bands experience when releasing their debuts.

So it was always going to be a challenge for Palma Violets, but they rose right up to it.

The album kicks off with the outstanding 'Best Of Friends'. The song brings exciting guitar music back with its quick and catchy riff, and the song thoroughly deserves all the praise it has received since its release in October 2012. What makes the track great is not that it does anything new, this kind of thing has been around for donkeys years, its because it comes at a time when music is about triangles and is generally quite unexciting. Palma Violets make music about having fun, not maths problems.

Best Of Friends is followed by 'Step Up For The Cool Cats', which is a jaunty keyboard driven section down the Palma's 11 track road. The song brings the bands unsung hero, keyboardist Peter Mayhew to prominence, as he drives the track along.  After that we are treated to 'All The Garden Birds', which was apparently written in Kew Gardens, adding the typical slower English indie ballad to the record-good thats over.

We are then treated to 'Rattlesnake Highway', a rip roaring track which stays in the same vein as the first two, again with the organ undertone, and is one of the albums best, as is 'Johnny Bagga Donuts'.

The record proceeds along the same vein, with other highlights including 'I Found Love', but the album ends on a poor note thanks to the 'Brand New Song' which just feels like an unfunny joke that goes on far to long.

It's quite an unfortunate way to end an otherwise good album, which I would rate at 8 and a half out of 10. If guitar music really is going to come back, I'm sure these boys will at least help the charge.

Reviewer Reviews... Before Sunrise/Before Sunset... A Film Review

Before Sunrise/ Before Sunset

   Richard Linklater remains to be one of the most thought provoking and fascinating directors out there. His masterpiece Waking Life, and his other brilliant films, particularly Slacker, are all reminiscent of his mind blowingly well scripted Before... series. Though the topics raised in both films are horrendously dated only 9 and 18 years on, they still have some relevance nowadays, mainly due to the brilliant performances and dialogue.
   The proposition is that through a sheer coincidence, the French student Celine (Julie Delpy), and the American student Jesse (Ethan Hawke), both meet on a train in Vienna. Both speak English and both are of the same intelligence. Jesse is headed for Vienna to go back home, while Celine is headed back to Paris. They strike a connection. Suddenly, at Vienna, in an act of impulse, Jesse convinces Celine to get off at Paris, and spend the day talking. She wildly agrees, and for the next hour and a half we are treated to some of the best dialogue in modern cinema, just pure conversation on existentialism, sex, eternity and life. There's really little I can say on it because it already talks itself.
   The performances are brilliant; Ethan Hawke stays on the right side of douche bag and Julie Delpy is charming and bouncy as Celine. And while the painful nineties disaffected youth quarter life crisis stereotypes can be annoying, they are very toned down, much more than the awful other quarter life crisis fable Reality Bites.
   Fast-forward 9 years and Celine has a chance encounter with Jesse in Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Again, they do the same thing; walk around Paris and talk, this one being much more about relationships. Both have shed the pretense and become much more honest with each other: Jesse has a kid but is stuck in an unfulfilling  relationship, and Celine cannot latch onto a man, having used up all her romance on that perfect night. It is interesting to see how Jesse, the hardened cynic in the previous film has traded personalities with Celine in the last film. Now Celine, bitter at not having had a proper relationship because of Jesse, is now the hardened cynic. The film ends on an infuriatingly blunt, rushed ambiguous note but considering there is the final film coming out this year, make of it what you will.
   These are some of the greatest romance films of all time, as well as some of the best writing in film, period. Please watch them.

Before Sunrise 10/10
Before Sunset 9/10