ASH WEDNESDAY
Elvis Perkins
XL Recordings
****

ELEGIAC: The deaths of Perkins' parents - Psycho actor Anthony Perkins from Aids and Berry Berenson in the 9/11 attacks - haunt his songs.

PHOTO: XL RECORDINGS

HOW does one deal with ghosts of the past? By exorcising them in a brutally honest elegy - the approach taken by 31-year-old Californian singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins.

The guy's family history shadows this haunted, haunting debut. His father, Psycho actor Anthony Perkins, died of Aids-related illnesses in 1992, and his mother, actress-photographer Berry Berenson perished in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001.

Such macabre personal tragedy could well translate into morbid self-pity and gothic gore, but thankfully, this isn't the case here.

Ash Wednesday, a chronologically sequenced set of songs written before and after Berenson's death and alluding to the day after the WTC attacks, doesn't whine.

The songs, set in elegant downbeat-folk arrangements and augmented by jazzy blues and rollickin' rock touches, have the pluck and spirit of a young Johnny Cash record: tough, tender, smart, smarting and ultimately rewarding, as it searches for redemption in a universe of existential dread.

Just as in Cash's albums, the focus is on that voice of his: Perkins' warble - part Dylan-esque mumble and expressive Rufus Wainwright siphoned of pomp - is a thing of wonder.

Classically pretty it isn't, but his nasal, silky timbre is bruised with experience and, as a result, movingly unsentimental.

The lyrics, too, belie the sea of sadness that occasionally spills over the brim whenever his stalwart sanity gives way to unexpected emotion.

In the bare-bone guitar-only confessional It's Only Me, the words can chill with livid clarity: 'Sometimes I don't know why/tears come to my eyes/and what if I go blind/as they flow out of my mind... it worries me.'

Even the flagship single While You Were Sleeping, with its meandering fiddle-and-bass jaunt, tugs at the heartstrings with its surrealistic image: 'I made a death suit for life/For my father's ill-widowed wife.'

The gem, though, is the staggering title track imbued with a chamber of insinuating violins, cello and moody double bass that echoes his midnight state of mind.

His performance is brilliant - a vocal sigh that swings between phantom anger and grief, and, in mid-song, suddenly stretches the word 'ash' into a soprano so cathartic, you'd genuflect at such cleansing joy.

kaichai@sph.com.sg

ROOTS & ECHOES
The Coral
Deltasonic
***

THE album's rock solid, but where's the sonic adventure?

The Coral have been feted in the past for their oddball melange of psychedelia, classic pop, country twang and psych-folk, but all that is streamlined in their fourth studio album, Roots & Echoes.

The Mercury Prize-nominated English blokes have finessed a retro, pub-lovin' brew with sparkly melodies - they may well be Manic Street Preachers when they are not manic; or The Doors without Jim Morrison's acid thrill.

Roping in The Magic Numbers' producer Craig Silvey means that the album is fetchingly listenable.

An easy romp from the spaghetti western-meets-spy-thriller Fireflies to the toe-tapping closer Music At Night, all kinks are smoothed out blithely. Not bad, but no cigar still.

THIRST FOR ROMANCE
Cherry Ghost
Heavenly
***1/2

FROM Bolton, England, comes this quizzical alt-country collective which is essentially the pet project of a 31-year-old guy called Simon Aldred.

His well-received debut Thirst For Romance - recorded in a remote studio in north-western England with help from Jimi Goodwin of label mates Doves - is the kind of record for which epithets like 'ramshackle' are coined.

Filching his band's name from the title of a song by American band Wilco, it's clear the chap has imbibed enough American acts such as Sparklehorse, Ryan Adams and Calexico to deliver a Texas-load of cowboy blues and filigree guitar licks in songs like Here Come The Romans.

Still, there's a sad-eyed rock grandiosity that Cherry Ghost shares with fellow Brit acts like Keane and Coldplay: The rallying cry People Help The People and Dead Man's Suit are premium melancholy rockers everybody can sing along and sway gently to. Fortuitous.

ATTACK DECAY SUSTAIN RELEASE
Simian Mobile Disco
Wichita Recordings
***1/2

SIMIAN Mobile Disco - one half of the now-defunct British psychedelic-folk band Simian - revels in the sort of dance music indie-anoraks wouldn't mind moving their precious limbs to.

Re-inventing themselves as super-hot remixers and producers for hip bands like Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons, James Ford and James Shaw are shaping up to be worthy rivals to Chemical Brothers in dishing out killer grooves.

It's a synth city as they brandish sizzlers like I Believe, with former Simian buddy, vocalist Simon Lord, flaunting his falsetto over a deliciously serpentine syncopated riff.

Awash in fat, muscly beats, staccato Talking Heads-esque chops and techno rave blips, Attack Decay Sustain Release is a hedonistic trip that takes no prisoners from the get-go and relents only at the end of the last track, the chiller Scott.