An ex-Disney star comes of age – and moves up a gear: ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Olivia Rodrigo's assured second album, Guts

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Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (Geffen)

Verdict: Assured second album

Rating:

The Coral: Sea of Mirrors (Run On)

Verdict: Reflects well on there

Rating:

Olivia Rodrigo’s bond with her UK fans has been pivotal in her astonishing rise over the past two years. The Californian’s performance of her chart-topping ballad Drivers License provided the ‘Adele moment’ of the BRITs in 2021. 

She then cemented her status with a Glastonbury debut in which she duetted with Lily Allen. The former Disney star’s UK devotees will find plenty more to delight them on her second album, Guts, a record that takes the confessional ‘bedroom pop’ strains of her 2021 debut, Sour, and amplifies them with fuller arrangements and added humour. There’s little sign of the dreaded sophomore slump.

Rodrigo, 20, made Guts with her regular collaborator Daniel Nigro, former frontman of indie-rock group As Tall As Lions, and many of these songs, most recorded with a live band in Nigro’s LA garage, have an energetic, punky-pop sheen. Ballad Of A Homeschooled Girl nods to the Pixies. Pretty Isn’t Pretty could be a Cure pastiche.

Olivia describes Guts as her coming-of-age record. If Sour, written on the piano in her bedroom in lockdown, focused on her first heartbreak, the material here is more varied. ‘I feel as if I grew ten years between 18 and 20,’ she says. 

She’s also prepared to take herself less seriously. Her tongue-in-cheek humour sometimes feels theatrical, an inevitable consequence of a Hollywood screen career that began when she was 12, but it helps to make Guts a happier, more rounded affair than the singer’s tear-stained debut.

There’s little sign of the dreaded sophomore slump in Olivia Rodrigo’s second album Guts, writes ADRIAN THRILLS

Her tongue-in-cheek humour sometimes feels theatrical, an inevitable consequence of a Hollywood screen career that began when she was 12, but it helps to make Guts a happier, more rounded affair than the singer's tear-stained debut

Her tongue-in-cheek humour sometimes feels theatrical, an inevitable consequence of a Hollywood screen career that began when she was 12, but it helps to make Guts a happier, more rounded affair than the singer’s tear-stained debut

On Bad Idea Right? she jokes about hooking up with an ex. ‘I only see him as a friend, I just tripped and fell into his bed,’ she sings drily. Her fondness for bad boys, first evident on Sour, resurfaces on Get Him Back!, with Rodrigo admitting to falling for a man with ‘an ego and a temper and a wandering eye’.

The angst that fuelled her 17 million-selling debut re-emerges on Vampire, a revenge track that opens with Gothic piano chords before picking up tempo to become a thunderous rocker, while Making The Bed, a song about the pitfalls of stardom, displays her ability to sing with conviction, whatever the tempo.

Guts loses momentum around the halfway mark, with Love Is Embarrassing a routine punk-pop number, before normal service resumes on the emotional piano ballads The Grudge and Teenage Dream, which hark back to Drivers License. Rodrigo’s lyrics might be aimed at her young fans, but there’s an artistry here that should appeal to everyone.

Few acts have carved out their own niche quite like The Coral. A school band in thrall to Oasis when they formed in the seaside resort of Hoylake in the 1990s, they have matured into one of the country’s most audacious guitar groups. They also seem to get better and bolder with each release.

Sea Of Mirrors is their second consecutive concept album. Designed as an evocative soundtrack to an imaginary Italian Spaghetti Western, it follows 2021’s Coral Island, a bittersweet celebration of the penny arcades and whirling waltzers of Britain’s neglected coastal towns.

Like its predecessor, the new LP shows the Merseyside quintet’s ability to create their own world. They made their mark by combining tunes worthy of local hero Paul McCartney with sun-kissed harmonies in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and they broaden their horizons even more here.

Designed as an evocative soundtrack to an imaginary Italian Spaghetti Western, Sea of Mirrors follows 2021’s Coral Island, a bittersweet celebration of the penny arcades and whirling waltzers of Britain’s neglected coastal towns.

Designed as an evocative soundtrack to an imaginary Italian Spaghetti Western, Sea of Mirrors follows 2021’s Coral Island, a bittersweet celebration of the penny arcades and whirling waltzers of Britain’s neglected coastal towns.

In keeping with its Western theme, Sea Of Mirrors features twanging guitars, clip-clop rhythms and elegant orchestrations. The latter, by Irish arranger Sean O’Hagan, are a throwback to the late Italian film composer Ennio Morricone, garnishing The Coral’s lean, three-minute pop songs with strings, harps and flutes. 

On Cycles Of The Seasons, the group add a Merseyside twist to the string-driven strain of Californian pop that inspired Bruce Springsteen on his 2019 album Western Stars. Faraway Worlds features intricate vocal harmonies and slide guitar.

Amid all this sophistication, the band retain a grasp of pop essentials. Wild Bird is a perfect folk-pop song and North Wind taps into the notion of the Wild West as a sanctuary for loners. There’s also, on Ocean’s Apart, a striking contribution by Irish actor, and Oppenheimer star, Cillian Murphy.

That’s not all, either . . . away from this main event, The Coral are also releasing a secondary album today. An extension of the Coral Island project and dominated by new country songs, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show is out only on vinyl, CD and cassette, with no streaming. Clearly a band on a creative roll.

 

The Chemical Brothers: For the Beautiful Feeling (Virgin)

Verdict: Back-to-basics beats

Rating:

Dance duo The Chemical Brothers avoid surprises and play to their strengths on For That Beautiful Feeling. 

For That Beautiful Feeling, duo The Chemical Brothers avoid surprises and play to their strengths

For That Beautiful Feeling, duo The Chemical Brothers avoid surprises and play to their strengths

As with 2019’s No Geography, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons keep guest vocalists to a minimum and focus on the chunky beats with which they reinvigorated UK clubland in the 1990s.

No Reason is powered by a euphoric hook and Fountains is dreamier and down-tempo.

The album’s three cameos are all the more effective for being judiciously chosen, with Beck shining on Skipping Like A Stone and French singer Halo Maud a spectral presence on Live Again and the title track.






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