Reviews

That the irreverent trans-stylist Jarvis Cocker and the delightfully bonkers Fat Truckers have yet to concede defeat with their loose and eccentric DJ collective, the Desperate Sound System perhaps shows the sheer tenacity of character these daft Sheffield folk have in pursuing the fantastic and the bizarre in the most brutal of everyday places. Pulp charted this territory better than anyone with their priceless and eerie narratives on psychotic suburbia, but it’s apparent also in the volatile, monster-pop of Baby Continue Reading

Classy, modest, subtle and persistently engaging. So it may come as some surprise that ‘Fleshwounds’ is the debut album from former Skunk Anansie vocalist, Skin. More renowned for the hapless run-around the volatile Brit-Pop market gave them in ’97 and ’98 than for their icy (if manicured) peculiarity, Skunk Anansie unleashed their wiry political tracts to a soft-rock favouring audience to a fair degree of acclaim. However, any longevity was most certainly going to be scuppered by their awkward lack Continue Reading

Eponymous? It’s a lovely word, isn’t it? And so seldom used. But this is what you have here Duran’s Duran’s first album, Duran Duran. An album by Duran Duran, called Duran Duran. Neat eh? And not at all unimaginative. Perhaps pressing home their neo-romantic faithfulness to their sci-fi roots, Duran Duran released the shiny, bright and nimble wristed Duran Duran to a faintly suspecting public in 1981. Bouffed up nicely by pirate-shirts, jodphurs, cravats, bandanas and wonderfully silly haircuts, it Continue Reading

It’s almost a little churlish to have to compare and contrast new Super Furry releases with the old, not to mention being a pointless waste of energy. Inevitably we’ll end up doing so before the end of this review, but here they are, six proper albums on, nearly a decade down the line, tinkering with the boundaries of possibility like they’ve got the whole room to themselves, like they always have had. Like they’ve been hitching aboard the Weird Train Continue Reading

You could speculate that it’s something in the water up there, but surely not? Everyone in Oxford would then insist on walking sideways in odd time signatures, frowning and taking a frantic unmapped stroll around the suburbs at midnight in order to just get round the corner before midday. No, but there’s no denying the influence of that town’s most notable musical sons on Psychid. But like geographical neighbours The Young Knives are a rowdy step along from Supergrass’ solid Continue Reading

“Ghostly swirling pop“. That what it says on the box. And that’s just about what you get. If you like Interpol and Radio 4 and the whole current crop of fertile new wavers then as sure as eggs is eggs you’re going to like this. Currently in an undisclosed Montreal studio recording their debut album for a October 7, 2003 release with a full U.S. tour to follow. The extended remix of ‘Still In Love Song’ might demonstrate just how Continue Reading

The cream of Manchester? Well probably not, but at least that will allow these doleful miserabalists to pursue those heady twin glories of fame and longevity that have so far eluded much of what has come out of Manchester. Based for the most part around the spiralling Dove-like single, ‘Further’, Longview’s anonymously titled debut album is clearly NOT drawing inspiration (or indeed, perspiration) from the break-neck vibrancy of the garage rock scene. Serene, contemplative, insular and more autumnal and showery Continue Reading

Taken from the recently released album, Waiting for the Moon, new single ‘Sometimes It Hurts’ finds the crooning, treacle baritone of Stuart Staples lubricated by the equally oiled and moist, Lhasa De Sala – she of French-Canadian persuasion. Dour, anxious, morose, bleak and so painfully, painfully tender it could bleed at any moment, it’s everything that your average art-house loving chamber-goth would have wanted for Xmas. Accompanied by a faintly amusing short film by Martin Wallace, the release pretty much Continue Reading

Everything’s in its right place. But then it would be wouldn’t it, it’s screwed down. And The Rain Band don’t have a screwdriver. We have no evidence to say they’d know how to use it even if they did. This debut album only goes on to confirm what’s already been hinted at with their preceding singles and gigs. And that is that although they approach their victim (Manchester’s revered and danceable musical output of the ‘80s) with bulbous adrenaline coursing Continue Reading