Reviews

Last I heard of Cass McCombs was ‘Crick in My Neck’. Here was the perennially enigmatic and hard-to-nail Californian throbbing away like a persistent headache or the proverbial thorn in one’s side. It was a thrashing celebration of couldn’t-give-a-fuck vocals, swooning guitars and slippery organ fondling. Classy and upbeat miserablism that gave Morrisey and Leonard Cohen a run for their money. And if all you hear is the bruised gothic melancholy of  ‘Buried Alive’ and ‘Saturday Song’ with lines like Continue Reading

Reviews

Whether he’s doing crazy cat things with his wife, Laura Darlington as The Long Lost or unfurling his mighty muttonchops out from under some terrific Victoria notch-collar jacket, Daedelus is always interesting. Challenging, yes, eccentric certainly, but never dull. And that’s how it should be. As soon as a musician finds his hands wandering to the preset button his precious Bontempi keyboard, you know his creativity is as good as dead, which is a philosophy he extends to ‘Bespoke’ – Continue Reading

Reviews

An American noise pop band. I know what you’re thinking: these guys are just another in a long line of acts who want to have all the impact of the Velvet Underground but have none of the tunes, so what do they do? They throw together a jumble of vaguely familiar hooks, lather it in reverb, squeeze it threw a filter or two and set it against a background of jarring feedback and interminable drones. Sprinkle it with psychedelia, leave Continue Reading

Reviews

I was actually listening to Poly’s new album, ‘Generation Indigo’ when news came through that she’d lost her battle to cancer (or won her battle to go on to higher places – you decide). It wasn’t an entire surprise by any means in a life that was often ruled by surprises but it was no less galling to be honest – not when you have what amounts to her finest collection of material to date sitting there looking at you. Continue Reading

Reviews

‘Machinery’ – sexy, smouldering, monster pop, that’s what it is, making you feel a little uneasy and a little horny in equal measures. Take ‘Sweatshop’ – the aural equivalent of bondage gear – dark, relentless and about as uncompromising as a hammer coming down on your John Thomas. It arrives, it enters your head and it stays there. This is the steroid-enhanced follow-up to 2009’s debut, ‘Wait For The Revolution’ and described by the band as a ‘gut-inducing slab of Continue Reading

Reviews

The last time I listened to an Undertones record with any real malicious intent was when I was tearing around the estate where we lived on my Raleigh Chopper bike. ‘Here Comes Summer’ was in the charts and we had just broken up for the six-week summer holiday. I had a terrific pair of blue corduroy pants shrunk-wrapped to my legs, a blue, orange-lined Snorkel Parka gracing my back, a full packet of Spangles in my pocket and a half-bottle Continue Reading

Reviews

Diamond Mine – King Creosote and Jon Hopkins

King Creosote’s Kenny Anderson has called the collaboration a “soundtrack to a romanticised version of a life lived in a Scottish coastal village“ and without knowing what life in a Scottish coastal village is actually like, I’ll have to take his word for it. But if said life in a Scottish coastal village can be best defined by the occasional rattle of cups on saucer, a courteous exchange or two between waitress and customer and the tickling of piano string Continue Reading

Reviews

The Fall – Gorillaz

Gorillaz are at the top of their game. They were popular enough before but since Plastic Beach and the band’s subsequent and deliriously successful world tour – and the fact that Damon has all but ditched the exclusive (and almost apologetic) reliance on cartoon characters and animations to pitch his wares – the kids have gone Gorillaz crazy. Which probably explains this – The Fall – a fifteen track musical diary composed almost entirely on iPad during the band’s 19 Continue Reading

Reviews

The Wild Palms sound is reminiscent of late 80’s-early 90’s goth-tinged indie (think Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure circa Head on the Door.) Right now, this is not a commercially lucrative furrow to plough and nor is it particularly as ‘cool’ as it once was and so an album like ‘Until Spring’ exudes a sense of what-the-hell freedom and sincerity that makes it simultaneously an act of homage and of exploration. Songs idle, twist and sprawl just this Continue Reading

Reviews

The King Is Dead ~ The Decemberists

The Decemberists’ Colin Melloy describes ‘The King Is Dead’ as an exercise in restraint, and he ain’t whistling Dixie, not when you recall that the band’s 2009 release, ‘The Hazards of Love’ was by contrast an exercise in epic, high-concept, multi-layered, unfathomably compound, high-fulutin’ boreal forest romance craftin’, hewn out of the very rocks that line the banks of the Hudson River; a rock opera in the mould of Tam Lin and The Scarlet Letter – only with more random Continue Reading