Says Kweli of ‘Rush’, the second track on the album: “I wanted to call this song ‘Heroin’, but C. Smyth wouldn’t let me. He kept saying something about kids getting the wrong idea. Maybe he’s right. I would never use herion, but doesn’t it sound like a great name for a rock song?“ It’s an intriguing duality that sizeably sums up the ambitious nature of this record: it has all the allure and excitement of the street but with the Continue Reading
Bernard Sumner: “What’s that song? You know the one, the B-side to ‘1963’”. Rest of New Order in unison: “True Faith” Enough said. Just in case you were forgetting, Bernard, or forgetting Bernard — here’s a little something for the incompletist. And just when you thought the day would never come.02/01/2003 Released in the UK on 9 December and featuring a typically innovative and contentious tracklisting of ‘Pop’, ‘Fan’, ‘Remix’ and ‘Live’ selections by Manchester journalists Miranda Sawyer and John Continue Reading
Mad for it Manchester duo and big beat Northern soulsters, Martin Brew and Martin Desai make up the meat and one vege of J-Walk and though this album from the pair shows them as canny sample selectors and able tunesters, there’s a lack of any obvious or consistent character to last the generous length of the album. Commanding a range of styles and approaches that folks like Rae and Christian and Mr Scruff would be proud of the collection sometimes Continue Reading
Easy on the accolades and superlatives. Grizzily scouse skinna-ruppers, The Coral are about to NOT change history or the face of Rock n’ Roll. What they are about to do is release a very very fine EP. Assessing the potentially plump success of scouse, pirate band, The Coral, the NME wrote: “The best new band in the country: it’s one sentence we never tire of writing”. And never tire they do. And let’s face it, if you predict the best Continue Reading
Whilst the government health warnings are cute enough, the flagrant brandishing of negative quotes on the press sheet may be ill-advised: “I’m just glad I lived long enough to hear the shittiest band ever”, snarls Noel Gallagher of Oasis. “Another boy band with tattoos. Fuck ‘em.” offers an equally unrepentent Damon Albarn. The sad truth is, this would have been a rib-tickling concession of sorts by the band had it not been for the fact these sound bites are so Continue Reading
Produced by Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World collaborator, Mark Trombino, What It Is To Burn might just about fulfil the raucous punk/metal dream of the increasingly estimable, Drive Thru Records – home to teen sensations Something Corporate, Midtown, New Found Glory and The Bejamins amoungst others. Harder, grittier and far far noisier than many of their label brethren, the Californian quintet deliver a pretty exceptional punk-metal record that may provide a suitable competitor to the likes of At The Drive In Continue Reading
Following Dave Grohl’s appearances this year on the Tenacious D album and as drummer on the new Queen of the Stone Age album (as well pre orchestrating the scheduled metal-edge project, Probot) comes fourth ‘Foo’ studio disc, One By One. And though it’s not exactly unknown why it’s been so long coming about – it’s a miracle it’s been made at all. What with the almost slapstick debacle that was (and still is) the Kurt and Courtney show hovering like Continue Reading
It might have been four years in the making but the cool, cult karma-ranger and stand-up philosopher, Lewis Parker follows up 1998’s Melankolic’s release, Masquerades and Silhouettes EP with a Jedi-powered punch of a record. Light-sabre aloft and with a teeth-a-grinding Parker delivers his own gritty, idiosyncratic take on the world at large. Taking us on a tour of the British capital, with name checks of everything from Mr Kipling, Microsoft Windows to McDonalds, Parker squares up to all da Continue Reading
Bedroom songwriters. A breed loaded with connotations both endearing and all at the same time sneering and vile. That trapped image of the pale-faced adolescent outcast, greasy complexion, matted hair, narrow eyes and a volume of take-out menus that we are all prone to become at one point in our lives, given about any instrument and the correct balance of imagined disillusionment, is a little too much to suppress. Best Friend Records is a new Philadelphia label driven by the Continue Reading
First off, Joy Zipper is an actual person and whilst she’s not in the band, she does lend her rather comely moniker to album covers and press shots with and without baby daughter in arms. From Long Island, New York, Joy Zipper parade another fine lo-fi, pant swinging vehicle to herald the release of the album, American Whip in January of 2003. With vocals and production alike steeped heaps of glorious honey and sticky sunshine, ‘Christmas Song’ recalls the fey Continue Reading