Month: April 2010

Sitting through Dan Sartain’s entertainingly twangy and nourish new album, ‘Lives!’ is a little like watching someone put together a 15” replica of Joe Meek’s legendary Holloway Road studios made almost entirely out of matchsticks. You’d be hard pressed not be dazzled by how faithful the record is to all those fusty old analogue methods used by folks like Meek and how much mouldy, authentic dust the whole sound has acquired, but as loyal and ostensibly affectionate the record is Continue Reading

Where the f*ck do half of these people spring from eh? Big in their hometown of Portland, Oregon but rarely venturing beyond the city boundaries in terms of playing live, this boy-girl duo of ex-husband, ex-wife team, Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have acquired no shortage of cult admirers since their none too earth shattering inception in 1993 (Bright Eyes, Stephen Malkmus) but have managed to dodge commercial triumph with much the same success as George W Bush avoided the Continue Reading

To be perfectly frank, I’m not really one for instrumental music, in the same way I’m not fond of pictures that don’t have something big and obvious upfront. My attention span is such that I find myself lapsing into a coma after little more than five-minutes of nobody talking. So whilst I’m perfectly pleased to learn that Brighton DJ, Simon Green has been self-producing, self-playing and self-abusing since the tender age of eighteen, it still fails to lift what is Continue Reading

Whether it’s a sign we are not yet out of the recession, or an indication of a brand new thrifty logic by artists, it’s clear from many of the independent artists of late that a scaled-back acoustic approach scores a more pleasing response from their audience. The likes of Bat For Lashes, and her lavish production credits are a tad out of sync with the vaguely insolvent status of many a British soul, and whilst not obscene by any means, her Continue Reading

It’s a bit of a mish-mash, I suppose, but eight-albums in and the boundary pushing, ivory tickling, circuit blowing, kraut rocking Berlin-US trio continue to churn out static-charged instrumentals that whilst boring the shit out of the traditional X-factor demographic make the beard-stroking beat purists positively wet with appreciation. It’s occasionally a little flat, but there’s enough bubbling beneath the surface to make even most generic of riffs (‘Forwardness’) sound sophisticated. If you’ve come across the likes of Four Tet, Continue Reading

Whilst we anticipate the complex, whimsical and engagingly camp Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion to undergo as many time signature shifts and personality changes as the celebrated BBC One Timelord, it seems likely that the one constant in his constantly evolving solo-life will be a prodigious knack with a melody and a capacity for exuberance seldom seen outside of circus rings and bouncy-castles. So if you enjoyed the delicate and understated country drawl of his charming debut, ‘Falling Off the Continue Reading

It’s been a full ten years since 2000’s Mercury-nominated Little Black Numbers and in that time Kathryn Williams spun one wispy yet deceptively strong web after another. Sentiment heavy but often full of witty observations about love and the patently daft tapestries it weaves, her light scouse drawl curls around the hurdy-gurdy of life in the North. But something’s changed. The coy and callow girl who sang about loving John, Paul, George and Ringo and never having anyone to take Continue Reading

Tim Wheeler’s intentions were admirable enough: the record buying world has changed, demands are different now and the vast majority of albums are too long in the making and offer too little in the way of satisfaction. This is not necessarily the fault of the artist, it it’s the fault of an industry numbed by fear, marred by complacency and so grossly self-analytical of its craft that any joyous creative zeal shown by aspiring bands is stifled by marketing objectives. Continue Reading