Reviews

In 1996, Arthur Lee was convicted of possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and grossly negligent discharge of a firearm for allegedly shooting a gun in the air during a dispute with a neighbour. The previous year, Lee was arrested after an altercation with a former girlfriend. The possession charge stuck, but a federal appeals court in California reversed the negligence charge. Lee served 6 years of a 12-year sentence. Since 1968 – when this album was first released Continue Reading

His first for Brighton’s Skint Records, Mr Nasty has timed his zombie flesh-eating breakbeat just nicely to coincide with the monster-mashing assault of the Jaxx’s hamma-house release, ‘Kish Kash’. And with Halloween just around the corner grabbing hold of a copy of the eerie and futuroid ‘Bring Me The Head Of…’ release at least makes a lot more sense than ducking for apples ever did. Whereas the Jaxx have anchored their own brand of horror within a faintly gothic and Germanic Continue Reading

There’s been so many pre-emptive strikes from this release, that listening to it is a little like listening to a compilation of all your favourite well lubricated chill-outs of the last two or three years: ‘Harry The Guitar’, ‘Latin Prayer’, ‘Step On It’, ‘Bossa For The Devil’ – they’re all there. Husky, dusky and finger-twiddling sharp, it’s a veritable funky fest of quim-quivering Latin and five-finger fidgeting flamenco. Jazzy, bluesy, soulful and as comfortable as a bathful of jelly, tracks Continue Reading

There are a few things I simply can’t get my head round when listening to this. First up is that Liz Phair has been touring the US in recent months with clown princes of alternative rock, the Flaming Lips – and try though I might, I just can’t equate this kind of bright, infectious pop with anything resembling bunny-suits and bloody-curdling puppet-shows. Ther’s bananas that are banana shaped and there’s bananas that are straight, and this is one perfectly straight Continue Reading

Another month and another naturally creative and prodigious talent is primed for the margins of mainstream success. Last month it was Clarkesville, this month is the turn of Butterfly Boucher. But what makes this a little different is that Butterfly not only writes her own music, she also performs it, produces it and mixes it. What also makes it a little different, is that recent single release, ‘I Can’t Make Me’ showed mucho promise in its audacious melding of Badly Continue Reading

Carina Round has to be the most vital, stimulating, fluent and inevitable singer in the country right now. Bar none. PJ Harvey, with whom Carina elicits a worthy likeness, may still be regularly whipping up our interest (most recently in association with Josh Holme and a heated stretch in the desert of course), but it wouldn’t be unfair to say that she doesn’t tear the floorboards from under your feet like she used to. You know Polly’s traits and can Continue Reading

“ We thought we were really punky. Even The Adverts had learned one chord. We didn’t even do that. We just got a machine and tuned it on till it sounded nice.” Such is the candour and refreshing honesty of Phil Oakey interviewed for this DVD compilation of hits from 1980 to 1995, that he has no qualms in announcing that the Human League were little more than a ‘consumer version of Kraftwerk’. They didn’t make their synths, they bought Continue Reading

With the amount of time it took to find all the hidden extras on this disc I could have developed a tumour, died and had most of entrails removed against my will and passed on to sad, tragic and alchoholic former footballing geniuses; but find them I did. Eventually. And what did I get for all my hard work? A bored Nick and Simon discussing the recording and production of Seven & The Ragged Tiger, a tortuous and similarly bored Continue Reading

It would be imprudent of me to try and better the description already put out by the press release: ‘tangled guitars, lounging organs’ and ‘brush-beats’. But imprudent I am, and for this I’d like to add ‘sonorous, comforting and melting three part harmonies basking in the dusky glow of twilight’. How’s that for imprudence? The Autumn Defense, consisting of multi-instrumentalists John Stirratt of Wilco and Pat Sansone provides the kind of lilting, cosy sunshine not heard since the likes of Continue Reading

The words Drawn, Badly and Boy have been freely bandied around in the company of this Mancunian folk troubadour more than once. But he really lacks the defining qualities that Mr Gough hitched a dim, trailblazing ride into the mainstream on, and is all the better for it. In fact strip all of that clutter away and you’re left with an acoustic guitar. Which isn’t all that much of a similarity, really. You might as well compare him to that Continue Reading