The Swell Season: Strict Joy Anti Shaking off nearly a decade of mid-life bloat, REM were a band with something to prove when they took to the Olympia stage for a five night run of working rehearsals in summer 2007. Ostensibly, they were in Dublin to road-test material from their forthcoming Accelerate album. But REM, cheered on by a hardcore audience, seemed just as interested in re-connecting with their younger selves songs from their pre- megastar 1980s incarnation dominate the set-list on this 39 track, two-disk live LP that brings together the best moments of all five shows. Fans of 1984s Reckoning, in particular, are in for a treat, as Stipe and company rip through such REM classics as Second Guessing, So Central Rain and Letter Never Sent. There are no crowd- pandering renditions of Losing My Religion or Man On The Moon and the album is all the better for it. EdP By all accounts, Glen Hansard, The Oscar-winning Swell Season frontman, has found success almost as hard to deal with as a lifetime of thankless struggle. In the two years since their Academy Award win, he and Swell Season partner Markta Irglov embarked on a short-lived romance and both that relationship and Hansards ambivalence about his commercial breakthrough cast a shadow over their second record. Named after a James Stephens poem, Strict Joy is, in fact, an unremittingly bleak affair. Singing in that familiar mumbled mewl, Hansard sounds like a busker who has just received some particularly bad news. Contributing piano and fragile vocals, Irglov provides some sorely required respite from the every-bloke brooding. Its all immaculately pieced together but, cumulatively, the effect is akin to be being dragged to the pub by a mate whos split from his girlfriend. You want to be there for him, but your gaze keeps straying to the clock on the wall. Eamon de Paor Recognise this woman? Of course you do even if youre not a Girls Aloud devotee, Cheryl Cole (ne Tweedy) has become ubiquitous as a prime-time pop saint, whether shes judging The X Factor or flogging us hair products. Coles sparkly-eyed charm is easy to appreciate, so why is it that her solo confidence wobbles when shes back on the mic? Perhaps because, as her debut single Fight For This Love attests, auto-tune just isnt an art form. Or it might be that solo album 3 Words confirms that she functions best as one of the Girls. The Taio Cruz- penned disco ditty, Stand Up, should be Coles big diva moment; GIVE IT A TWIST TO WIN Enjoy MILLER GENUINE DRAFT Sensibly. Visit FIVE QUESTIONS FOR... Richard Hawley Thursday, October 22, 2009 metrolife 13 stage where I was running down the road naked, but it was messy. Thankfully, Slater overcame these problems and refocused his energy on music production and started releasing as Planetary Assault Systems again, a guise that yielded classic techno tracks like Booster, In From The Night and Gated. Earlier this year, he issued an impressive album called Temporary Suspension, which lived up to the classic hard-edged, pulse-racing Planetary techno sound. The fact that the new material was released on Ostgut, the label run by notorious Berlin club Berghain, was no coincidence, as its resident DJs, Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann, cite Slater as a major influence. A few years back I made the decision to find one club in Berlin and to stick with it, he explains. There are so many clubs in that city, but I was looking for one with an anything goes policy Slater adds. With Slater touring the Planetary album heavily across Europe, including his first live show in Dublin this weekend, he has also found time to reactivate one of his other projects. In 2007, Luke wrote a piece of music as 7th Plain to accompany a modern dance performance by the Berlin Staatsballet. I ended up doing an hours worth of music to accompany one of their performances and it may get a commercial release, he says. My experiences have taught me that there isnt one direction in life, there are many aspects never have any regrets and never say never! Sun, Planetary Assault Systems, Earwiggle, Andrews Lane Theatre, Andrews Lane D2, 9pm, 18. Tel: (01) 679 5720. www.deafireland.com etary Staying In Music Reviews Album Choice Cheryl Cole: 3 Words Fascination REM: Live At The Olympia Warner If you saw the second series of cult HBO show Flight Of The Conchords, which follows the rags-to-rags travails of what was once New Zealands fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap- funk-comedy folk duo, then youll have heard these songs before. But if this second album proves anything, its that their music still entertains without the funny visual element TV provided. Theyre spoofing all sorts of genres with conviction here, from Sugalumps (their twist on Black Eyed Peas My Humps), to the snortingly funny electro-pop homage to posing that is Fashion Is Danger (which takes its cues from Visages Fade To Grey). Though the lyrics, vocal exchanges, harmonies and spirit are all gleefully absurd, these two Grammy-winning musicians havent scrimped on production quality: behind all the silliness, this is again music from the top drawer. Sharon Lougher Flight Of The Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky Warner Bros/Sub Pop instead, she comes across as the prettiest girl at the party, secretly fretting that she doesnt have any friends. Its telling that most of this collection sounds pitched at the US mainstream, but its also misguided. The whole point of Coles appeal is that shes Chezza, a Geordie lass made good; theres nothing particularly convincing about her romantic sentiments or revelations. Rain On Me and Make Me Cry are potential pop gems, but Heartbreaker, her hit with Will. i.am, is tagged onto the end of the album like a safety buffer, even though she only sings about three words on it. Pop is about extremes, not the half-hearted. 3 Words? Two stars. Arwa Haider The former Pulp guitarist talks about the unusual musical contraptions on Trueloves Gutter, his sixth studio album A musical saw is one of the instruments on the album. Explain. Ive always wanted to use the musical saw because of my grandfather. As well as being a steelworker my grandad was a concert violinist. But at family gatherings, he would get a saw and play it with a bow. It used to blow my mind as a kid, it made such an eerie sound. I said that one day Id write a song which would be perfect for that sound. How did you find someone able to play it? While I was doing my album at one end of the corridor at Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield, Jarvis was at the other end. He said he knew someone [David Coulter] who could play the saw, and he had a phone number for him. On one track you wanted to create the sound of a microphone being dropped into a car engine? I explained this sound to David and he gave me a CD. It was him and French classical musician, Thomas Bloch, playing the cristal baschet. It was exactly the sound Id heard. I could have kissed him. And what about the glass harmonica? It was invented by Benjamin Franklin and makes a high- pitched sound, like when you run a wet finger around a wine glass. Are you worried about how the saw will go down live? Not really. If people dont like the shows I can always use it to knock up a shed! Andy Coleman Tonight, Olympia Theatre, 72 Dame Street D2, 7.30pm, 29. 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