Month: July 2003

With phrases like ‘back-to-basics’ and ‘old skool’ being ferried around as quickly as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ it’s a wonder that anyone has been doing anything but in the last 3 years. But let’s end the squibbling right here: the closest these girlz come to ‘old skool’ hip-hop is the downloading they’ve been doing free from WinMX. So yeah, the claims are excessive but then so are the unshakable grooves and tunes these girls are capable of spitting up. The Continue Reading

East Coast, West Coast, Clarkesville, Tennessee, Clarkesville, Birmingham. You simply don’t know where you’re at sometimes, and for all it’s glorious Technicolor philanderings, and widescreen drama neither does ‘The Half Chapter’. And yet, in spite of all this the album is still a freakish, if maudlin’ pleasure. Tall, blond and regrettably hansom, Michael Clarke has produced a debut that whilst nodding pleasingly in all the right directions – The Flaming Lips, Richard Ashcroft, Royskopp – it also pays lip service Continue Reading

All bands are tribute bands, essentially. And I suppose that in that case the only thing that separates one tribute band from the next is whether they’re ever likely to have their own tribute band, or fleet thereof, paying direct and shoddily named tributes to them. The Thrills will never, or should never, have their own tribute band (The Thrill-seekers, or The Trills? Anyone? No?). We’re not denying them the odd medley from a hapless Irish street-side busker, or even Continue Reading

Last year these boys had the massive hit that was their own doppleganger reworking of Prince’s ‘I Would Die For U’. This year it looks like they may have to suffer a more ignominous fate with the lesser reworking of Detroit Emerald’s ‘Feel The Need In Me’. Clearly still enamoured by the spangly, star shaped glitteriness of the Chemical Brothers’ ‘Star Guitar’, the Space Cowboys dish up some more of the same. Only this time, it just really doesn’t get going; Continue Reading

Most Americans must surely now be aware that ‘Fanny’ in Britain is to girls what ‘Todger’ is to boys, and so it’s perhaps doubly ironic that Fanny Pack have entered our lives with the wedge-shaped innuendo of ‘Cameltoe’ as their anthem. Ironic or intentional? Who knows? Who cares? Let’s tell it like it is. We’re all adults here; we’re talking pussies right? V-shaped for victory or heart-shaped for horny. We are not and never were talking about the wraparound devices Continue Reading

Following their highly successful sophomore release, 13 Ways To Bleed On Stage, Cold returns stronger than ever with Year Of The Spider.  With the chart success of the first single, “Stupid Girl”, on which Weezer’s River Cuomo lends his post punk guitar work to, the bands’ third album sold over 101,000 copies within the first week of its release.  Like Staind, Bush and Creed, Cold are technically complex with a brutal metal edge.  Discovered by a fellow Jacksonville, Florida band, Continue Reading

Sometimes shallow enough to judge a book by its cover, we liked this CD before it had even left its wrapper. We’d previously been seduced by distorted, buoyant, Sparklehorse-esque first single ‘Burning The Cow’, but at a time when copy controlled CDs are spreading like silicon wild-fire through a misinformed industry in a state of paranoid panic, infringing your right to self-govern your own listening habits (i.e. halting something as innocent as the copy of CD to minidisc), it’s a Continue Reading

Named in tribute to the Brian Eno produced New York rock scene compilation from 1978, ‘No New York’ (featuring 4 tracks each from the bands James Chance & The Contortions, Teenage Jesus And The Jerks Mars and D.N.A) comes ‘Yes New York’, and pretty predictably, it’s very, very good. Kicking off with a largely token but not unappealing live slice of The Strokes performing ‘New York City Cops’ in Iceland (the place as opposed to the exceptionally convenient Frozen Foods Continue Reading

The novelty value of Liam Lynch’s unexpected hit, ‘United States of Whatever’ may have been immense and have all but redirected any subsequent efforts to every bargain bin in town, regardless of merit, but listen up; beneath the heavy irony and the ‘loose canon’ mentality of the ‘Fake Songs’ beats a heart of genuine gold; albeit of the ‘fool’s’ variety. Brought to the attention of S-Curve Records by the Beatle-icious, Ringo Starr and his Pumpinkhead Records partner, Mark Hudson, Liam Continue Reading