Johnny Cash is dead. Long live Johnny Cash. The man’s popularity is as high now as at any point in the past 20 years – yup, it really is still the best career move going. Bit of a fucker that he’s not around to soak it up, but what is his loss is undoubtedly the gain of bands like The Beauty Shop, a gruff Mid-West alt-country trio, who slide snugly into the imprint pressed by this renewed interest and strangely Continue Reading
The last few weeks have seen a good reimagining of what mixtapes are all about. First there was that peerless box of misshapes whittled by Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey. Next there was Joey Negro’s smooth little trickbag of soul, again for that very same ‘Trip’ series of anthologies. This time around it’s James Holden ‘At The Controls’, a 2 CD collection that flagrantly contradicts his natural pop aesthetic and draws a big, fat stonking highlighter pen around his love Continue Reading
Flaming Lips records always begin with a puff of fairy-dust and a bang. Take the gradual psychedelic bell-ringing delight ‘Abandoned Hospital Ship’ from ‘Clouds Taste Metallic’, the bouncy-rubber robotics of ‘Flight Test’ from ‘Yoshimi…’ and of course the unrivalled ‘Race For The Prize’ from their definitive ‘Soft Bulletin’. But even by those proven standards it feels like they’ve glued their goggles on and taken a calf-crunching run up this time. The ecstatic ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ is a teetering Continue Reading
Out of all the weeks in the year it is kind of funny that this Tennessee four-piece’s noisy debut sees light of day in the same week that Yeah Yeah Yeah’s more sophisticated sophomore effort hits the shops. If there was a single reason for Be Your Own PET’s existence (or at least their commercial existence, the fact that you know their name) then it is New York’s artiest rock trio – not necessarily because they are the only band Continue Reading
Do you think last time we fell more in love with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the idea of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? They were immediately exciting, weren’t they. A breath of fresh crackling electric, all angular studded riffs that sounded like they’d only just pierced Nick Zinner’s cranium like a lightening bolt seconds earlier, eccentric vocal outpourings going off like a faulty paintball pellet gun, arty poses struck like mannequins in rock’s window display, all wrapped up in clothes Continue Reading