Features

James Berry asks ADEM, ‘Where’s Your Head At?’18/08/2004 5 months on from its release, Adem’s barren ‘Homesongs’ still remains one of the most enduring, slight and altogether pretty albums of the year so far. We expect it to stay like that. And when we say pretty, we don’t mean 90 minutes of preparation, the right lights, expensive jewellery and well-applied foundation. We mean seconds after waking, bunched pigtails, freckles, an unknowing smile and a healthy glow. This ex-Fridge man’s debut Continue Reading

He’s compared to Beck, boasts the production credits of Beastie Boy producer Mario C and Midnite Vulture Mickey Petralia, is given mad love by Wyclef Jean, The Black Eyed Peas, Cannibal Ox and the Pharcyde and still you’re unlikely to have heard of him. That’s all about to change. Meet Sharkey.25/06/2004 Sharkey is under no illusions as to how he got the name Sharkey. He didn’t used to swim off the coast of Africa, wrestle sharks for fun and hand Continue Reading

Without words and without safety nets, Mogwai are can still pack the London Astoria two nights on the trot? How do they do it? James Berry has the answers …03/11/2003 We don’t like change. Only when there is none we inevitably lament its absence, as if the flipside is always worth aspiring to more. Long gone are times when these bullish Scottish post-rockers struck you between the eyes like a spitting Mount Vesuvius jutting crudely into a pastel mainstream. They Continue Reading

‘Thank You, Goodnight’ released in June in the US/ ‘Its Happening’ EP in the UK. With an album out in the USA already, an EP in the UK ready to burn and a stack of old ‘Zep, Stone Roses and MC5 re’cuds at the ready, Sid frisks the White Light Motorcade.05/04/2003 The debut EP by another guitar slinging new sensation hits the well stuffed racks of your local record stores this week. Nothing new there then, at the minute we Continue Reading

James Berry asks HOT HOT HEAT , ‘Where’s Your Head At?06/03/2003 Any US readers sensible enough to own a copy, or those in the UK with it on import, already know that it’ll take a number of seriously epoch defining albums to shift Hot Hot Heat’s ‘Make Up The Breakdown’ from the higher reaches of 2003’s retrospective lists when they arrive. Remember when the world and its extended family went stir-fry for The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ on the basis 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

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

First off we heard ‘Soldier Girl’, a throbbing mass of beautifully woven big love turning up out of the blue like a ray of sunlight for the damned. We were very happy to have it. Then we saw them jammed onto an already extended stage at London’s Camden Monarch, truly a vision of one-size-fits-all salvation in white robes, a cartoon caricature of all the good things you’ve done in life. We were sold. Then we saw them taking Leeds Festival Continue Reading