Reviews

You’d think ringing endorsements from Gilles Peterson and The Thievery Corporation (who did a remix of the track ‘Quicksand’ – the second single from this album) would somehow make null and void any decision yours truly could arrive it, but if enough people add their own twopenneth, pretty soon you’ll have lots and lots of pennies. Enough for something, gold perhaps, even enough for something platinum. And if the penny hasn’t dropped already, then let me make this patently clear; Continue Reading

There are some things that come along that you don’t know how to best quantify. Is it Latin, is it Rock, is it Folk, is it Jazz? See? I’ve gotten nowhere. But that’s good isn’t it? When you have no idea what it is, you have none of those nasty expectations to go and ruin the experience – and whilst the core of it is ostensibly ‘Latin-flavoured’ or ‘Flamenco’, there’s something more solid, more deliberate and more blues-based than any Continue Reading

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but what exactly is all this sister chitter chatter about? Yes, yes, so we acknowledge that two thirds of the Rogers Sisters are in fact sisters, with a shared family name, Rogers. That’s Laura and Jennifer, drums and guitar (and vocals both) respectively. And yes, writing credits, lead voices and chiming, humming guitars clatter noisily across the record making reasonable claims for at least partial ownership, not to mention putting into Continue Reading

After exploding into life nine years ago, making an impact with DIY single, ‘IPC Sub Editors Dictate Our Youth’ the esoteric and prickly Liverpool four-piece, ‘Clinic’ build on the gothic malevolence and screaming, spooky voodoo of their Domino debut, ‘Internal Wrangler’ (2000) and albums like ‘Circle of Fifths’ (2004) with a similarly creepy and intimidating web of experimental spine-tinglers that includes the hall-of-mirror harmonies of ‘Animal/Human’, the charming, teeth-clenched grotesque of ‘Sunshine Superman’ doppelganger ‘Gideon’ and the Wicker Man horror of Continue Reading

Look, there are some things you just can’t blag, and there’s not a way in hell that I’m likely to convince you that I know Jack about Grime. And why should I? I’m in my early thirties, I have a young family, I have a nice house, I live in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands and I’ve spent about as much time on the street as a paraplegic hooker. It’s not in my soul and it’s not ‘where Continue Reading

It’s not that we ever saw faults in her, because we saw none, but we never really expected to experience the kind of expanding, open-ended consistency that Kathryn Williams has gone on to lay claim to with such natural grace as the years pass by. Her paeans of hushed folk prettiness were, back in the beginning, so tender, so delicate, so genuine, that we didn’t give a thought to that being upheld with any significance. To be consistent is one Continue Reading

To be honest, finding myself in possession of a copy of The Bluetones new album was a little like finding an old, sherbert-lemon in the inside pocket of a jacket I hadn’t worn since Brit-pop began its terminal slide into the archives during the back-end of ’96. A bit sticky, not unpleasant, sweet even, yet try though I might, I was still not quite able to put my finger on how it had come to be there or whether I Continue Reading

Collaborating with Faun Fables sweetheart, Dawn McCarthy, Will Oldham’s latest project under his ‘Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’ moniker may prompt you to recall the bittersweet partnership offered by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parson on the latter’s ‘Grievous Angel’ LP. But then again, it may prompt nothing of the sort; it depends on whether you’ve heard of any of them – which is indeed less likely than we’d care to admit. Why haven’t we heard of them? Well probably for the same Continue Reading

Oh dear, his blog seems a bit prickly: ‘Repeat Endtroducing over and over again? That was never, ever in the game plan. Fuck that. So I think it’s time for certain fans to decide if they are fans of the album, or the artist.’ And that’s the way it all starts. You build something up, you play with it a while, you do it all again, you bathe in the glory, you take the bows, you please your label and Continue Reading

Here we are on the second leg of a journey to dominate the music-buying world, as only Yanks know how: extending boundaries, swamping all sorts of cultures and generally making yourself as ubiquitous as a red and yellow burger chain. Worked for George Bush, why shouldn’t it work for the DFA who offer, let’s face it, an altogether less injury prone ‘Death From Above’ – one based on giddy, spiralling and amphetamine charged anthems rather than cluster bombs and heavy-artillery Continue Reading