Big Balloon

Another cracking Dutch Uncles album. I'm not normally moved to review stuff, but someone decided to give this 1 star below. Dutch Uncles are very much not Ed Sheeran, and this isn't going to get 100,000 reviews, so that 1 star means this appears to be a really poor album. It isn't. Its great.I do agree about the lyric sheet, though. It is 50% illegible. But my answer is to listen to it :-)

Superb Uncles. 'Combo Box' has a serious Bowie's 'Fashion' vibe going on. My own fave is 'Achameleon'. Glorious! The Uncles' time is bound to come, I'm sure of it. Some discerning filmmaker out there just has to use them. I miss this band so much. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO RELEASE A NEW ALBUM???

Yet again the Dutch Uncles show they are the best band around at the moment. If there was any justice in todays music world then these guys would be bigger than Coldplay and Ed Sheran.

excellent

The lonely star twinkling on top of this review has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of this album or the artists who created it. " Big Balloon" is a wonderful record and Dutch Uncles one of those great Manchester bands (so much to answer for musically, we know that).The lonely star twinkling on top of this review has instead a lot to do with the way the cd booklet of this album was printed. Well, to call it a booklet is already a gargantuan exaggeration, as it consists of a single piece of folded paper that should work as a lyric sheet. Now, the problem starts when you want to peruse it: five lyrics are printed white on black and are perfectly readable, while the remaining five are beautifully printed dark red on black with not enough colour contrast, making them therefore UTTERLY UNREADABLE, even magnifier resistant.We wonder: is this the way to present the work of an artist? Dutch Uncles lyrics are as dense and complex as a Marianne Moore poem and we were looking forward to READING ALL OF THEM in order to savour the music / words matching at best when listening to the record.Add to this pathetic situation that the missing lyrics are not available online (the band are not as big as Adele), and here we are, stranded with only half of the lyrical content of "Big Balloon".The last resort would be - of course - to buy the vInyl edition, where this tragic choice of colours might (might?) be less of a hindrance to lyrics reading, even if that would mean buying the album TWICE.And that begs an annoying question: is the GVR (Great Vinyl Revival) blossoming at the expense of ye olde cd buyer?March 21st UpdateAs many have shown interest in this review and have expressed strong moral support regarding the plague of badly- printed lyrics, we would now like to state the following: The vinyl edition of "Big Balloon" features perfectly readable words to ALL the songs on the album and yes, even the red-on-black ones can be enjoyed.Yet if you are one of those people who listen to music not just for the noise it makes but also to read lyrics and to have information about who played what and where, be warned: the vinyl edition of this record has no information whatsoever about who played what and where, it does not even feature the names of the band members. To obtain that, you will have to buy the cd.Which makes for a nice hide and seek game indeed.