Reviews 4

DrownedinSound.com 26th November 2001 (singles reviews) Andrew Thomas According to his press release Philip has not been a lucky man, loved by reviewers and signed to several labels, he's never got further than his bedroom in terms of being a star. And it's not all that surprising really. This is a man who writes okay songs about okay things. His skill is not in doubt, his inspiration is however questionable. Media Gurls is so bedroom rock indie it goes straight in one ear and out the other whilst the second tract is only notable for his vocal style swinging alarmingly between Jarvis Cocker and David Bowie, whilst backed by a half arsed jam session. One of these songs fades out at the end, for that alone I deduct marks.

Making Music May 2001 (demo review) Andrea Thorn Philip Kane: "Imagine a blue-eyed soul version of Leonard Cohen..." Ah, words to warm my heart. Anything that remotely involves Laughing Len is guaranteed to catch my attention. However, by the same token, you'd need to be pretty damn good to come anywhere close to the quality of that man. Has Philip got it? He's certainly got something, and it's an urbane, highly depressing take on the moody pop ballad. It's also intelligent, emotive and very smart in the 'use of melody' department, by which I mean the most gorgeous melodies duck and weave among the instrumentation. This certainly keeps the listener on their toes, and also keeps them fixated on the song. Which is something most acts aren't capable of.. Imagine standing outside a chip shop in Tottenham at midnight, pissed, watching the rain hammering down and waiting for a night bus that never shows up. That's Philip's sound in a rather disingenuous, hack-like nutshell. ****

Rhythm Magazine March 2001 (Out Now) Pat Reid Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) Welcome reappearance of this lost late-90's classic, a harrowing distillation of punk, soul and the poetry of despair.

Organart.com September 2000 (demo review) Sean Worrall Philip Kane - demo: Spooky things going on around here, we mention Ennui in a review and what should be in the very next package we open but a new demo from ex Ennui/Avalanche front man Philip Kane - we thought he'd drunk himself into another world under some table in some red light district somewhere in another time and another place. "I worry that the enclosed sounds like fucking Sting, please reassure me that there is the mere semblance of a crack habit whispering around its branches." - Well you know it does sound a little less fucked up and twisted and a little too produced and polite than usual - seems that Mr. Kane lost a couple of years of his life by falling in with some management company and so yeah this is more Sting than Gavin Friday - but hey Mr. Kane tells us he's taken control again, he's doing it himself and he's returning to the studio with members of Porcupine Tree.....and despite the musical politeness here there is that hint of filth underneath somewhere and we know how good Ennui were round here. Get back into the gutter with the scumbags and make a decent record, bollocks to this Sting coffee table crap. Mr Kane does have a ridiculously good voice though, last song sounds like Otis Redding.

The Mix April 1998 (Album review) Pat Reid
Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) Producer: Cathal Coughlan Engineer: Rob Keyloch Studio: The Sound Studio, London. A glamourous assemblage of artistic misfits and London low life, Avalanche are led by the charismatic Philip Kane, self confessed "Poet, raconteur and arsehole." Musically and lyrically, they are the anti-Oasis, peddling music that strives to be epic, lyrics that aspire towards poetry and a romantic, nihilistic world view that can just about make out the stars from the gutter. Small wonder then, that former Fatima Mansion and one-man bile industry Cathal Coughlan is credited as producer. From the booze-soaked cabaret blues of 'Spilling Whiskey' to the putrid closer 'Queen of Germs', this is dirty territory for sure. Rockers like 'Cultural Tourists' (about the Bangkok sex trade) and the Nick Cave-ish 'Sarah' keep up the pace, but it's the yearning ballads like 'Bleak Romance' that are truly outstanding. Kane may be a grizzled old dog, swimming in self-hatred, but he sings like an angel, albeit a cancerous one. Hangover Square is far from the easiest listening you'll hear in 1998 but, if your life isn't all sunshine, rainbows and "Brimful of Asha', you may well want to make some space in your heart for this filth. Verdict: Art of Darkness 8/10

Rhythm Magazine April 1998 (Album review) Pat Reid Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) A bunch of artistic misfits and London low life, Avalanche are led by the charismatic Philip Kane, self confessed "Poet, raconteur and arsehole." Musically and lyrically, they are the anti-Oasis, peddling music that strives to be epic, lyrics that aspire towards poetry and a romantic, nihilistic world view that can just about make out the stars from the gutter. From the booze-soaked cabaret blues of 'Spilling Whiskey' to the putrid closer 'Queen of Germs', this is dirty territory for sure.

Rockers like 'Cultural Tourists' (about the Bangkok sex trade) and the Nick Cave-ish 'Sarah' keep up the pace, but it's the yearning ballads, 'Bleak Romance' and 'Leaving Hangover Square' that are truly outstanding. Rating 8/10 It's a dirt job but.....

Evening Standard 31st March 1998 (Live preview) Tim Lusher Avalanche: Sounding like a cross between Nick Cave and Jeff Buckley, front man Philip Kane oozes bile in every line of the grouchy, gutter-glamour poetry this London quintet peddle on their impressive album, Hangover Square.

The Observer 29th March 1998 (Album Review) Neil Spencer Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida CDCOR198). This band display an unhealthy obsession with S & M, but their gothic visions and gloomy confessionals show a firmer grasp of rock dynamics than many more feted names, and in Philip Kane they have a vocalist of real force.

Melody Maker 28th March 1998 (Album Review) Mark Roland Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) TOILET sex, prostitutes in Bangkok and drugs are just a few of the lyrical concerns which Avalanche stare into with unflinching eyes, backing them with a messy blues backing and a heartfelt delivery. Self-loathing has rarely sounded so attractive. Excellent. ****

Evening Standard Hot Tickets 2th March 1998 (Album Review) Max Bell
Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) Western civilisation gets shafted with a vengeance by these mordant Londoners as they take the unwary listener on a sickening cultural tourism package through the vile fleshpots of south-eat Asia and more local dens of iniquity. The lurching country tones add an air of menace to the whore mongering, leaving one with a record that is the aural equivalent of a Henry Miller novel. Rubber gloves are recommended.

VOX Issue 90 March 1998 (Album Review) Jimmy Blackburn Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) London Quintet's intriguing debut. Produced by Cathal Coughlan, a man experienced in venting his bile, Avalanche's curious cross of Nick Cave and dadrock is surprisingly accomplished. While their use of traditional R & B structures recall the Afghan Whigs, the sad fact is that Philip Kane's impressively powerful voice is frequently reminiscent of Paul Weller, or the hateful grunting of Simon Fowler.

Nonetheless, if you can cope with that, this literate album has plenty to offer. "Queen of Germs' is a brutally honest take on Suede's obsession with gutter glamour which also manages to rock like Pearl Jam, 'Pour the Wine' is just dead catchy, and 'A Submissive's Tale' is a match for any of Greg Dulli's psychodramas. Sometimes just too "Down and Out in Paris and Camden" for its own good, this album could well be a sleeper. ***

Time Out 4th February 1998 (Album Review) Laura Lee Davies
Avalanche Hangover Square (Corrida) Nick Cavey stuff from a new bunch who give real meaning to the words moody and blues on an album of rumbling tunes and dark vocals. Oh, and it's produced by Cathal Coughlan, another reason why they're the most likeable oddballs in this week's grooves.

R*E*P*E*A*T Spring 1998 (demo review) An intelligent, emotional demo from London's Avalanche, with good tunes and very interesting lyrics dealing with the turmoil of everyday life.

Rhythm Magazine March 1998 (demo review) Pat Reid
Avalanche - Philip Kane walked the earth once before as leader of Ennui (think of the Divine Comedy fronted by Iggy Pop). Here he returns to bop you on the nose, steal your girl, wee on your front lawn...and quote poetry at you. "Now I am become a Skellington' sets the tone of these mini-epics of sleazy sex and death. Ugly punk guitars, Motown drums and a massed, drunken closing chorus. "They've got damn strange ways of making love in this town...." Kane rasps perversely.

'Hey, Priest! (Pour the Wine)' is a brilliantly lurid tale of clerical corruption, while 'Eight Stone, Tall and Handsome' revels in narcissistic flair, and is easily the best singer-meets-prostitute ditty since The The's 'Angels of Deception'. A beautifully restrained 'Je Suis Un Imbecile is he most poetic and poignant thing here. Kane might be a grizzled old dog with the voice of a cancerous angel, but he's in a gloriously sordid league of his own. 9/10

Metal Hammer January 1998 (demo review)
Avalanche - An eclectic bunch of musos who get kicks out of torturing old Leonard Cohen songs and drinking lots of old time whiskey, one presumes. Not for everyone, but definitely for people who like bad ass merchants like Groop Dogdrill and Speedurchin.

Organ (live Review) Splash Club - August 12th 1996 Sean Worrall
Morning after the night before yet again.....There was a massive queue when we turned up, Monday night at the Splash, what's going on? Yeh, 8.0pm on a Monday night and there's a big queue of preening people with their hair done up and.....we can't even get in in time to see the start of Ennui's set - Ennui is the real reason we're here, we never miss an Ennui gig if we can help it....we - me and the Wikked Kid Sister of Adam Ant, battle our way through to the front...Ennui get better every time I see them, and I must have been drawn back ten or fifteen times by now - the first time they were so messy and disjointed and falling apart but you could see it was going to blossom....now, twelve months later they've exploded in a lustful set of contradictions, a venomous bite, a self-loathing, self abusing riot of English campness, a singer who cavorts and minces and sings about being no good in bed because he's not a real man.....he's so strong on that stage, it's his, he rules it, he struts across his stage commanding his audience to listen, pirouetting like Mick Jagger fronting Gallon Drunk, and then he tells us how inadequate he is, how disappointed his lovers could be....and how he's the boy your mother warned you about...and the music? The music is My Life Story, Tindersticks, it's not that far from the dark seedy revealings of Dream City Film Club (Dream City build it around dark dragged out riffs, Ennui twist themselves in progressive brooding orchestration and intricate high wire interchanges.....), the campness of Tom Jones, Kurt Weill.....There's six of them on stage tonight (sometimes there's more of them, you never quite know), cellos, flutes, a mandolin. Phil Kane is the creature who sings, you can tell he finds the constraints of pop music irritating, the glamourous looking girl in the black dress and the cello mocks him....he in turn is part English dandy, part self-destructive Iggy Pop, part Scott Walker pouring his heart out....A singer and front man this good can't be ignored much longer, not while the world is celebrating the lesser talents of the admirable Jake Shillingford and Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy.....

Planet of Sound (live Review) Splash Club - August 12th 1996 Duncan Illing Ennui, fronted by a possessed Phil, deliver a cabaret of laments and ballads drenched in the strongest liquor. Very expressive, very entertaining. Best band all night.

Totally Wired (single review) Andy Hawthorne
Ennui: Two Sides of Sexual Cynicism (Corrupt) A double b-side that brings together the smouldering 'Bad Lover Blues', a hugely enjoyable male/female duet that's pitched between Jon Spencer and the Tindersticks; the male vocal all deep and resigned, the female high and tormentative as they narrate the story, then all of a sudden, just as you're getting cosy, a magnificent guitar burst in to tear the roof off the place and add a cruel raw-nerve chemical imbalance. 'Bad Lover Blues' has the same passionate embrace and knife's edge vitality of those early Sun recordings. Absolutely. 'Cultural Tourists' sees Phil almost bursting at the seams, like a Tom Jones from hell or Nick Cave with a grenade up his arse. A smouldering, sensual barfly tune that hints at 'Fever' and the Birthday Party as it bastardises the whole thing in a relentless pursuit of calamity. Ennui are a melting-pot of sexual tension. Genius. 9/10

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