ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Hardship Starship by No Hot Ashes
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
No Hot Ashes
Hardship Starship
(Modern Sky UK)
NO HOT ASHES hail, like 10cc, from Stockport and although a generation apart they share an approach to music unbeholden to any genre in particular.
Intelligent and inventive arrangements deliver a studio sound that’s far richer and more complex than the band’s live act.
Isaac Taylor and Luigi Di Vuono’s guitars are intricate one minute and blasting their way through the next, while Jack Walsh on bass and Matthew Buckley on drums keep the adrenaline flowing.
There’s existential rather than political angst in their songs. “There’s not much more that I can take, Oh I’m sick of all these bellyaches,” sings Taylor in Bellyaches.
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