The debut from British band Chapel Club - Palace - seems designed for Eyewear's aural pleasure. Ricocheting from the dream-pop sounds of early Nick Heyward/Haircut 100, to the lighter side of Echo & The Bunnymen, with a bit of shoegazing thrown in for good measure, this is a moody, new romantic jangly-guitar indie circa 1981 album that makes a nonsense of the passing of three decades. The style holds up, and while this will either sound (to come-again ears such as mine) like immaculate retro, or simply good pop for first-timers too young to care about forebears, it won't win any prizes for moving music ahead one iota. Still, it joins Hurts, and the recent White Lies albums, as keeping the 80s sounds alive and kicking.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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