Louise Aubrie

Album review

Time Honoured Alibi

added: 9 Mar 2013 // release date: 3 Jan 2013 // label:
reviewer: Daniel Davidson-Amadi

Printable version

This is the second album for the Londoner who travels back and forth between the British capital and New York in the hope of eventually taking the states by storm with a time honoured (believe it or not) and identifiable indie rock flair. It�s therefore apt then that this well-travelled Anglo-American rock Goddess strives so hard to revive the genre of post-punk; a style of music so heavily influenced by her home and her home away from home.

Time Honoured Alibi isn�t as gritty as punk records come, displaying a pop-rocky sensibility that is way out of ours and Aurbrie�s true time period. The singles have that nostalgic easy-listening convention of the early 80s blended with the slightly rebellious streak that was so necessary in the 70s with the rise of punk culture - like The Stranglers being fronted by Kirsty MacColl.

Listening to the album you can appreciate the various influences that blend together; dub Caribbean influences that see the bass guitar provide frontline melodies; instances of krautrock developing everything by adding those little intricate synthesised elements and so on. Each small addition makes a big difference to the songs, but many of the songs struggle to offer something recognisably diverse; something that you just didn't get in the last song you heard on the album.

But this doesn�t mean that the album only delivers speedy up-tempo numbers throughout; there are one or two acoustical masterpieces like �Circuit� and the outro track �Gold� which steady the album by slowing things down, taking a softer approach to proceedings that is more akin to folksong than punk.

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