Three Sisters

The Donut make a long overdue welcome return with some more twisted peans to wrap your sick little heads around. This albums a real grower so be patient and the rewards are high.Compared to other Donut albums, its a smoother sound but its business as usual. The sound is more 'Donut Comes Alive ' than 'Untidy Suicides'. The stand out tracks here are the slow moody psychedelic swirl of 'Farmers Almanac',the excellent 'Running Arms In The Phillipines' and the single 'Helsinki' (bonkers video with pigs bumholes included on the disc)which has the clasic verse 'Im A Hard Man,I need Cocaine,I have a hole like a woman & I have friends in Helsinki'. The whole thing leaves me wanting more, which is to their credit, good to have them back in these strange times.

Eight years in the making, following an extended hiatus, Alice Donut make a much anticipated return with a new album.. and well.. it's a bitter sweet affair.This version has a different tracklisting to the version you could purchase though their fanclub last year - and for some reason, is the much weaker of the two. The first 3 tracks on this running order are by far the 3 weakest of their whole career, and cannot fail to weaken the impact of the return of such an exciting, pioneering band. Plus the fact that this supposed reunion of the original lineup is actually missing guitarist Richard Marshall (whose unmistakeable guitar antics virtually 'made' the sound of Alice Donut) makes for quite a let down upon first listen. That's not to say that this cd is not without its highlights. 'Helsinki' holds its own alongside anything as strong as 'Magdelaine' or 'Mother of christ' from their back catalogue, and 'Kcick' is deliciously dark and compelling.By all accounts, 'Three Sisters' is the 1st of a loose trilogy. It's an interesting start, and by no means a bad album, but A.D. are capable of much much better. Hopefully they are just getting back into the swing of things, and are set to astound their listeners as the have done in the past.