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| Contactmusic |
 David Rotheray is best known for playing guitar and being a co-songwriter with radio 2 favourites The Beautiful South. The Life of Birds is not a solo album per se, as Rotheray has enlisted the help of a number of vocalists to help realise what is a solid, if slightly uninspiring folk album. The Life of Birds is bookended with The Sparrow, The Thrush and The Nightingale parts one and two. This is a great song with a strong beat and an incredibly catchy whistling refrain. This, coupled with the brilliantly clever lyrics about music, greed and betrayal set the album off in fine form. Unfortunately the album struggles to reach such lofty heights elsewhere....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| Intended as a ‘modern folk concept album’, David Rotheray’s The Life of Birds pulls from all corners of Britain and Ireland to create a splendid ornithological affair, representative not just of modern folk, but also of the under acknowledged talent these shores have to offer. Born in Hull in 1963, Rotheray is best known as the lead guitarist of The Beautiful South, who after ten studio albums and seventeen years, called it a day in 2008. Together with figurehead Paul Heaton he wrote much of the group’s material; their signature sound is evident on The Life of Birds, which echoes their charm and kitchen sink wisdom. Folk troupe Homespun, whom Rotheray played with until their demise in 2003, are also an influence; their third and final album Short Stories From East Yorkshire is the first example of Rotheray collaborating with a set of guest vocalists, as he does here. Although this is the first time he has released under his own name, The Life of Birds is the result of decades of hard work in the music industry, and the experience he’s gained has certainly paid off; grounded and secure in its goals, his debut is cherishable, profound and laden with talent. While Rotheray is responsible for the arrangement, production and penmanship of the album, ten additional musicians have contributed their lungs to the record, each adding their own direction and style. Of those, Eliza Carthy is the most notable; born in North Yorkshire to Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, her voice is seeped in the traditional folk music that surrounded her during her childhood, and her own career has become a successful reflection of the genre. Other established folk singers to contribute include Devon’s Jim Causley, Cabra’s Eleanor McEvoy and Cork’s Camille O’Sullivan; Derbyshire’s Bella Hardy, Sheffield’s Nat Johnson and Athy’s Jack L all represent the comparatively ‘new’ movement, and put their more popular peers to shame....full text |
| Guardian |
| Formerly guitarist with the Beautiful South, Rotheray has recruited a veritable flock of vocalists to sing a solo debut strewn with jaunty ornithological conceits. Its best songs, however, are pensive chamber-pop. "Almost Beautiful", deftly delivered by Eleanor McEvoy, concerns Alzheimer's disease, while "The Best Excuse in the World (Is the Truth)", sung by Jack L, is about an exhausted love affair. More upbeat, folky flavours are supplied by the likes of Eliza Carthy, Kathryn Williams and Jim Causley, as Rotheray discourses on sparrows, swans, gardens, greed and life in Hull. It's a warm, collaborative affair tinged with the Beautiful South's droll humour....full text |
| Contactmusic |
| Wire's career started with a remarkable three year purple patch. It's not just that 1977's Pink Flag, 1978's Chairs Missing and 1979's 154 were great albums; they were also remarkably different albums. Pink Flag was a tense, tightly coiled punk record; Chairs Missing was slower, darker, deeper; the rambling, diverse 154 sounded almost gothic. Each record saw them master a particular sound, but not once did they stand around to admire their handiwork. They were too busy trying something new. In the circumstances, it's mildly disappointing that Red Barked Tree isn't a dubstep album or an exploration of recent hip-hip sounds. Instead it's an accomplished refinement of many of their pre-existing ideas and interests which should appeal to long-standing fans and anybody with an interest in off-kilter guitar music. The band's interest in texture is apparent throughout. They still want to paint intriguing landscapes using unusual colours and techniques; many of the songs here feature them wringing subtly strange sounds from their instruments. These sounds aren't used in quite the way they might once have been, however. Their songs now consistently possess as gracefulness and refinement which wasn't often a feature of their earlier work: the confrontational, alienating streak which ran through classic work like 'Reuters' and 'Practice Makes Perfect' is gone. Songs such as the title track and 'Adapt' unfold at a leisurely pace, giving the listener time to soak up the atmosphere created by Colin Newman's increasingly languid guitar playing. There are feints in different directions. 'Two Minutes' is a scuzzy, snotty punk blast which wouldn't sound out of place on Pink Flag, were it not for some distinctly ridiculous lyrics ('A dirty cartoon duck covers the village in shit/possibly signalling the end of western civilisation'). 'Please Take' bears a passing similarity to 154's 'Blessed State', and the gloomy, portentous 'Down To This' owes a debt to that album's colder moments. The impression left by most of Red Barked Tree, however, is of a band comfortable with themselves and their sound, gently playing around with the aesthetic they have developed, and occasionally coming across new ways of developing it. It's a subtle, interesting experience for band and listener alike....full text |
| Prefixmag |
| Red Barked Tree is the tenth studio album by post-punk pioneers Wire. It features the line-up of Colin Newman, Robert Grey, and Graham Lewis. As can be heard from the lead-off single "Two Minutes," the album is a further exploration of the territory mapped out by Wire's post-2000 albums Object 47 and Send: a louder, if less abstracted, return to the style of their late seventies output. The band released the album on their own Pink Flag Records imprint....full text |
| Limewire |
| Sure, you can still find some of the first-generation post-punk bands out there on the road, revving up their angular riffs and alienation-nation lyrics for the reunion-tour crowd (Hello, PiL!), but how many of the artists who turned rock upside down in the late ’70s are still making vital new music? If you’re making a list — which shouldn’t take too long — we’ll give you a little help; you can start with Wire. Red Barked Tree, due out January 11 on the band’s own Pink Flag label, is the third Wire album since the boys got back together about a decade ago. It’s also the second without founding guitarist Bruce Gilbert — the other three original members have definitively shown themselves capable of carrying on as a trio. In 2010, we’ve become so accustomed to hearing countless Wire-inspired bands that the pioneering group’s influence is as omnipresent as air. So it almost seems jarring each time we receive another reminder that the original article is still out there, and is in fact still ripping it up with a fervor that puts most of their followers to shame. And while you’ll have to wait until early 2011 to climb to the top of the Red Barked Tree, you can still get a sneak peek at the track “Two Minutes,” which has been made available as a teaser....full text |
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