Lake Of Dracula - Lake Of Dracula

Advantages: Excellent all round album with plenty to make you think !
Disadvantages: Dead Love, the last track, sounds too familiar and is a disappointing end

...WOW ! The Charlatans have done it again with their new album- Up at the Lake. I've been a Charlatans fan for a long time now and this album does not disappoint ! The opening title track is catchy and upbeat, setting the scene for much of the remainder of the album. There is a mix here for everyone, some tracks upbeat, others more sombre, eg. Apples and Oranges. if you liked the other Charlatans albums, you will adore this. The album seems to spin a web when you play it, drawing the listener in, unable to stop listening. The climax, in my opinion, is Track 8- I'll Sing A Hymn, with its self-reflective lyrics moulded onto a scaffold of dreamy melodies. Before you arrive at Track 8, you would have passed some of the most memorable opening lines that i think the Charlatans have written. The lyrics of "As i watch you in disbelief"( track 3... Read review

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Advantages: Great gothic score that is romantically very alluring
Disadvantages: Annie Lennox song at the end is totally unnecessary

...Coming out in 1992, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was touted to be the most faithful adaptation of the book yet, though even if it featured many details and even lines straight from the book, the film also took quite a lot of liberties with it source material, not least in giving Dracula and Mina a real love story not found from the book. More that that the film was a visualistic extravaganza and contained perhaps more diverse filming styles I have ever seen in any other film. Being the really sexually charged gothic horror drama that it is, it was only fitting that the music in the film would mirror this darkly gothic and romantic spirit. The Polish classical composer Wojciech Kilar accomplished this in flying colours, creating a score that is at times darkly gothic and at others romantically... Read review

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Advantages: Well-written, powerful rock
Disadvantages: If you don't like rock, you won't like this.

...RFTC- Scream, Dracula, Scream! Ah this album brings back memories! I got it just after I’d seen the band play live in October ‘96, and it didn’t leave my CD player for a month following that. For the uninitiated, Rocket From The Crypt (hereafter, RFTC), were (and still are) the coolest punk n’ roll band in the world. Attired in matching bowling shirts and quiffs and possessed of the best horn section this side of James Brown, they both looked and sounded impressive on stage. The question I had at that time was; would they live up to the same standard on record? I wasn’t disappointed. Each song is a party waiting to happen, the de rigeur pounding drums and snarling guitars topped off with call-and-response gang vocals and powerful horns. No one can claim that main man Speedo is the world’s... Read review

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