Month: July 2005

Some bands – take Sigur Ros, Guns ‘N’ Roses, The Streets – are intrinsically bound to their birthplaces, handcuffed to their geography, like they lick the ground beneath their feet daily just so they don’t forget what it tastes like. Others – Mars Volta, the Magic Numbers, Absentee – sound more like they were just whipped up by the breeze (read electromagnetic intergalactic hurricane for Mars Volta) and gently displaced over international boundaries. Absentee are a London based collective, though Continue Reading

Why is it expected that rhyme and reason must accompany everything? There’s rarely a moment of the day that goes past where you don’t want the things that happen to and around you quantified. The sun pours through the open window and you’re probably as likely to query the weatherman’s shoddy wisdom than just peel off your top and bathe in it. Hear Chris Martin crooning unspecifically on the radio and you’ll likely question his motivation, not to mention that Continue Reading

A panda in a wood playing a trumpet. Not a hugely conclusive lead-in to the album, but neither is it misleading. The same, bright starry nature-loving, creature loving cuddliness and surrealism that earmarks the Michel Gondrey directed videos to Bjork’s Bachelorette, Hyperballad and Human Nature is a spirit that’s continued here. Grand orchestral sweepscapes, weeping strings, giddy and ever so slightly discordant sequencer noises, brooding ambient passages and the rasping vocal purr of Angela McCluskey – like Bjork – but Continue Reading

“The most fun that I ever had was the night the gypsies came to town!”. Eamon Hamilton has clearly lead a much more interesting life than I. But then that’s a given, it’s his job, he’s in a band, I’m writing about it. I know my place. But even by those standards, considering his previously established eccentricities, this record is extreme, showcasing a lunatic unleashed amid music. As keyboard-tinkler/beat-buffoon/general-spare-part in British Sea Power he established himself as a sturdy subsidiary, Continue Reading

Singer-songwriters, eh. As if it wasn’t hard enough to tell some of them apart, they’ve begun using the same names now too, which is one inventive way to invigorate record sales we suppose. In what could provide problems similar to those experienced by casual followers of Ryan and Bryan Adams, Damien and Jonathan Rice are bound to momentarily suffer/benefit either from mistaken identity or the presumption that they’re blood relatives. Which they’re not, metaphorically or actually. They do co-exist under Continue Reading