M&G reviewers once again pick a selection of CDs from a range of genres
Crashcarburn: Long Live Tonight (Sovereign Music)
For a band that has released an EP and a full-length album already, you would expect Crashcarburn to have developed their own style.
But listening to their second studio album, Long Live Tonight, you get the feeling the band is ticking the boxes rather than asserting their own identity.
Across the album you can’t escape the sneaking feeling that you have heard the music somewhere before, but just can’t put your finger on where.
The first single from the album, Twisted, has a killer chorus, something you are likely to remember. Unfortunately, the rest of the song fades into obscurity the moment the next song starts. That may be because the next song is Don’t Wait, probably one of the most memorable songs on the album.
Technically, Long Live Tonight is a good album — all the required parts of the music equation come together in the required ratios to produce music that will play well in a live environment.
More importantly, the album seems designed to appeal to those dark and shadowy individuals who decide what makes it on to the playlists of commercial radio stations in South Africa.
Just like any album by Nickleback, whose music you can’t seem to escape on South African commercial radio, Long Live Tonight is thoroughly inoffensive, has some nice head-nodding tunes and fills a spot on the airways between songs the names of which you actually can remember. — Ben Kelly
Maysa: A Woman in Love (Sheer Sound)
Maysa’s latest album, A Woman in Love, is an album for an older audience, perhaps something Eddie Zondie would play in his romantic ballads for older couples in love. There is no denying Maysa can sing and has a powerful voice but for some reason she hasn’t been able to get the recognition she deserves. The jazzy soul album is about a woman in love and the emotions she experiences. Maysa also presents her versions of songs originally sung by jazz divas Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone and she manages to hold her own. A Woman in Love is Maysa’s eighth solo album. Her sultry and textured voice makes it a CD worth getting to play on a Sunday afternoon. — Karabo Keepile
Meiway: M20 (Sheer Sound)
Meiway, with Ernesto Djedje and Alpha Blondy, is among the most popular musicians to come out of the Côte d’Ivoire. That’s quite an achievement because zoblazo, the genre he chose, is a relatively new kind of dance music that incorporates Caribbean zouk, funk, zoukouss, hip-hop and R&B. Meiway was instrumental in the genesis of this sound and M20 is a retrospective look at 20 years of zoblazo.
The CD is, predictably, unstable and deceptive, an album in which the tempo changes by the track. Take, for instance, the difference between the tracks Dedans and Mami. The former is reminiscent of Congolese music, somewhat fast-paced, with clangorous echoes, whereas Dedans uses an improvised R&B pattern, an emotionally effusive voice laid over a slow, melodious sound. M20 is a varied, interesting CD. — Percy Zvomuya