Critical Ear

Album: The Ringing Bell
Artist: Derek Webb
Label: INO Records
Sounds like: The Beatles’ Revolver

Through his solo career to his masterful Mockingbird, Derek Webb seemed to be getting more quietly alt-folksy, so The Ringing Bell comes as a (not unpleasant) surprise, with its Revolver-like enthusiastic sound of grainy guitar, wobbly organ and tambourine (he openly admits that while making this record he was listening to a lot of Beatles and Bob Dylan — another obvious influence in the prophetic tone). If you’re going to imitate the Beatles and other 60s guitar-pop, you had better have the tunes to pull it off, and, as on Mockingbird, he excels. He also manages to deliver a sort-of concept album about violence and peace, so that the seemingly simple becomes a clever jeremiad*. Continuing to both castigate and encourage Christians, he has become indispensable listening.

4/5

Album: Theology
Artist: Sinead O’Connor
Label: Shock Records
Sounds like: Massive Attack meets Sons of Korah

Sinead, who has had a rocky relationship with the Catholic Church in the past, starts this new album by singing that she wants to make something beautiful for God with the Bible she stole, and then launches into a rather odd set consisting of psalms (mostly) set to her own music. (There are also Curtis Mayfield and Andrew Lloyd Webber covers.) It’s a double album, the first disc recorded with a band, and with the sound influenced as much by traditional Celtic music and reggae as Bristol-dark trip-hop, and the second disc consisting of stripped acoustic versions of the same songs. Because of the difficulty of fitting psalm rhythms to pop music, it can sound awkward at times, not to mention rambling and maudlin, but strangely intriguing, leading one to conclude that nothing compares 2 her.

3/5

Nick Mattiske

More reviews in the YAYA section of our website.

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* A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom. Through the French after Jeremiah, author of The Lamentations. (American Heritage Dictionary)