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Review: CRYSTAL GRENADE: US Review
Review: BELGIAN REVIEW OF CRYSTAL GRENADE
https://www.roots-and-branches.com/record-reviews-december-2.html
When you’re a female singer with a swooping acrobatic voice, you play dramatic piano and sing torch song ballads with themes of emotional angst, isolation and self-examination, there’s every chance you’re going to get likened to Tori Amos. Especially if, as on Changed, you borrow the piano motif from Silent All These Years.
Seven-fingered Mancunian Carol Hodge wears her influences openly, but in addition to Amos she also ()like Hazel O’Connor) draws heavily on European cabaret, a touchstone also reflected in the album’s conceptual framework of life in an 1880s Freak Show, setting the scene with the brief Welcome to the Freakshow opener before plunging into the likes of You Could Have Lived, 19892 Man, Lost For Words, the jittery Take Aim!, a bluesy Go Round Twice and the death-shaded Shape of Things and a nihilistic Nothing To Do With Me.
Her lyrics are well worth spending time over, and you get the impression that she wrote with a view to theatrical production, something compounded by the musically thematic cues that connect the songs. Given the intensity and uniformity of tone, it doesn’t make for an immediate impact but repeated listens ensure it coils its way under the skin. The problem is, of course, that if you don’t like Tori Amos you probably won’t like this, and if you do you may wonder why you’d want a second copy. Believe me, pull the pin on this grenade and you’ll be blown away.
Review: BELGIAN CRYSTAL GRENADE REVIEW
The opening tune appears registered for the entrance of any tent with one of those human curiosities that from the ends of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, flourished in circuses and fairs and Festival. Tunes on "Welcome To The Freak Show 'was by Nick Zart, chief producer of' Lo! And Behold 'assembled in the now defunct, slightly legendary Southern Studios in London's Wood Green district. The illuminated with accompanying typography great cover photo shows one of the freaks from the Victorian era, or photo dates from that period is not entirely clear. Crystal Grenade is certainly the alter ego behind Carol Hodge is hidden. The talented singer and pianist from Manchester passed earlier in anarchist punk circles with Crass and Steve Ignorant and also sings at Wreck and Bad Taste Barbies.
Called Crystal Grenade she takes the listener into the dark world on the fringes of society in the Victorian London and unashamedly reveals her own dark side of her soul in gripping song work. Before suffice somewhat bizarre inflections and refined keyboard game pianist with the deformed hand, Crystal missing two fingers. For reasons obvious reasons, the operations of this eccentric soprano are sometimes compared to Amanda 'Fucking' Palmer and Tori Amos. The gloomy stories about criminals, murder and detachment heels deeper into the mind than the work and operations of the divas mentioned.
"Man of 1892" refers to Jack The Ripper while more explicit "Go Round Twice 'creates an oppressive atmosphere on dark piano tones screams desperate character that the ultimate redemption begs "give me just enough rope", a morbid mantra that ends in a seemingly sweet, fragile instrumental. The listener is constantly torn between seduction and repulsion. It is precisely this contrast that "Lo! And Behold 'becomes an intriguing piece.
http://www.keysandchords.com/6/post/2013/11/crystal-grenade-lo-and-behold.html
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Lo! And Behold CD - £9.99 |
Review: MISS CRYSTAL GRENADE: Review
https://getreadytorock.me.uk/blog/2013/11/album-review-crystal-grenade-lo-and-behold/

Review: DUTCH CRYSTAL GRENADE REVIEW
This is translated through Google Translate so a bit odd in translation: