In the Middle
A LBU MS MACHINE
RÓ
ISÍ
N M URPHY
RÓ ISÍ N
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“I feel my story’s still untold... but I’ll make my own happy ending…“ Róisín Murphy’s bombastic new album, adequately named Róisín Machine, doesn’t take any prisoners. From out of the dregs of a seven-month-and-counting-in-and-out-lockdown enters this album and its opening manifesto: making one's own happy ending. The opening track ‘Simulation’ exudes an untouchable effortlessness, strutting around the mantra this is a simulation up and down the buildups and drops, landing itself resolutely in the icy cold swelling synths that bleed into the comparatively held-back and peninto the compartments and gizmos that make up the ‘machine’, but few live up to the coolness and vitality of the opening track, which I unabashedly could listen to on repeat for hours and hours. ‘We Got Together’ is Róisín at her most rambunctious and punconviction; we MOVE together, we STEP together... yes Róisín, I will move and step with you too! I was especially looking forward to how the penultimate track ‘Narcissus’ would be treated, it being the only Róisín song I was truly familiar with before the album dropped. The transition into it did not disappoint – swirly strings in a psychedelic-disco-maelstrom, that naughty, naughty bass line, the hissing echoes... Narcissus... Narcissus... Róisín – I am indebted to you for brightening this glummest of Octobers. Sure, some of the tracks drag out, but for the most part this record has more strong moments on it than weak. Just put your headphones in and the lights off – why, you can almost imagine life back to normal a gain.
Dany Bowen Image: Guardian
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Though summer is slipping away, some of us are sunny festival vibes; Greentea Peng provides all in her spiralling reggae-inspired number. Her lilting and silky this psychedelic music, with twinkling guitar weaving
still yearning for those new track ‘Revolution’, a sibilant vocals slide over through the dub sound.
Lyrically, it’s far from frivolous - the description for its music video reveals that this track is a response to the current social and political climate. “A result of recent turmoil: political, societal, and individual. 2020, a painfully transformative year for the collective. Revolution is a product of this pain and also the anger we’ve been struggling to move through, at the same time it represents the hope conjured.’“ Greentea Peng perfectly expresses her disillusionment through the yearning tone of this track, posing the question: ‘Feels like a revolution / But whose revolution?’ The track feels woefully short, leaving you wanting more perhaps this song, alongside its twin release ‘Hu Man’, is hinting at a Fern McErlane
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GREENTEA PENG - REVOLUTION
