Agnetha Faltskog

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A

Universal

The voice of ABBA is back with her first album of original material since the 80’s. The lead single ‘When You Really Loved Someone’ is a catchy mid tempo tune that’ll get stuck in your head and ‘Dance Your Pain Away’ is total camp disco, but most of this album is just sweet love songs that tend to just blend into each other. Take That’s Gary Barlow duets on ‘I Should Have Followed You Home’ and you can’t help but wonder that if Agnetha had followed him home, if Gary would have penned her a decent tune.   
Graeme Watson

Various

Psychemagik Presents Magik Cyrkles

Leng

As a band Psychemagik make chilled out folk tinged disco tunes and here they collate a great collection of rare cuts that are intriguingly interesting. King Kat’s ‘Down in California’ is gold, Miro’s ‘Safari of Love’ is quirky and ‘80s 80s’ by Malibu is sensational – it’s an instrumental track that makes you want to find some quad roller skates and a disco ball. Things chill out with the concluding track ‘House at the Sea’ by Goya. The collection comes with two discs, one a continuous mix and a second with individual tracks.

Graeme Watson

The Great Gatsby
Various
Warner Bros.

Combining rap and ragtime jazz, this collection produced by Sean ‘Jay Z’ Carter is a cohesive soundtrack for Baz Lurman’s film. Andre 3000 and Beyonce’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’ has been panned, but what’s the point of covering a track if you’re going to be a carbon copy? And quirky covers in what you find in Lurman’s films. So Emile Sande and the Bryan Ferry Orchestra jazz up Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’, Jack White gives his take on U2’s ‘Love Is Blind’, while Will.i.am updates Sonny and Cher’s ‘Bang Bang’.  Free of 1920’s jazz influences, Lana Del Ray’s ‘Young and Beautiful’ is sublime.
Graeme Watson

Demi Lovato
Demi

Hollywood Records

Child star Demi Lovato’s fourth album is one of those “take me seriously I’m a grown up now” releases. These steps have been treaded before by Britney and Miley and overall this isn’t a bad effort. You’ve probably heard the lead single ‘Heart Attack’ which is a solid tune. ‘Really Don’t Care’ is a collaboration with Cher Lloyd and the combination works well. There’s quite a few ballads on here for Lovato to show us that she really can sing, but they are not exceptional, so your finger will be on the forward button pretty fast.   Graeme Watson