Reviews

For all those who care Rocky, Diesel and Ashley Beedle are back. There might not be any David Byrne or ‘Lazy’ by way of shattering chart announcement but there is whimsical, wako-psycho in the making Tim DeLaughter of the Polyphonic Spree here to redraft Harpers Bizarre’s flower-waving ‘Witchi Tai To’ as a stomping, bell-tinkling psychedelic club anthem (bit like ‘Hole In My Shoe’ on uppers) and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner to add his own brand of hoarse gospel grammar to ‘interesting’ Continue Reading

The Devastations are a velvety-blue 3-piece from Melbourne, Australia, the bar band in the after-hours hovel of regret and confusion at the back of your mind. They have, without a shadow of a doubt, ingested more Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds than you have had take away dinners, you wasters. In fact, frontman Conrad Standish looks like the bastard progeny of Mr Cave and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, all pale chiselled features and aloof posture. And Karen Continue Reading

When I walked into town and went to cross a road last Saturday, I half-expected to be knocked down by a car it was so busy. Then something extraordinary happened: I wasn’t. No car came and knocked me over, no one was speeding, no one came careering onto the curb smashed out on booze and drugs. You see, even though I expected it to happen, it didn’t. Same thing with the lottery that day. I was all smiled-up and certain Continue Reading

There are three reasons why I don’t like ‘Nazi Girls’ by Poppy and the Jezebels (whose band members, the press release gleefully tells us, are all 14-15 years old). (i) I’m a humourless git with little appreciation of post-modern irony (ii) I can smell a third rate publicity campaign a mile off (iii) I actually remember too well the Nazi salutes I faced as a kid to be impressed by a bunch of pretentious wannabes trying on the whole fascist Continue Reading

It’s already been said that even the average Kool Keith album is peppered with bizarre, disjointed, delusional or disassociated themes, concepts, and references. So imagine an album where Keith Mathew Thornton is well and truly hyping up his hugely ironical claims of being a former mental patient of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, where he was treated for depression. Multiple personalities doesn’t even come into it. Have you any idea how many alter-egos this man has had? Keith Turbo, Keith Torg, Dr. Continue Reading

Kieran Hebden’s trademark is cheekily crafting the kinds of skewed-jazzy beats you simply have no way of second-guessing or remembering. He also has a rather tidy knack for creating sparkling, web-like musical threads of such magical peculiarity you could easily mistake them for the work of beat-boxing pixies. So just how long has he been sprinkling his fairy-dust over wares other than his own? Well, too long to remember. In his various and varied roles as artist, musician, live performer, Continue Reading

No ‘Show Me Heaven’ or ‘If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)’ and some frightfully uncomfortable moments in which Ms Mckee makes some none-too-successful attempts to warm and cajole a fairly square and unresponsive crowd. Not what you deserve. Not what she deserves. We do have a version of that sexy ‘Lone Justice’ number ‘Shelter’ but apart from this one fair-to-middling example, ‘ Acoustic Tour 2006 Live’ is by no means a ‘hits’ album. Not that it Continue Reading

Guess which decade of pop we’re looting today, kids? Alright, so the prize cupboard’s bare, there is no reward – but we had high hopes for this particular project. Though they’ve been kicking around over the pond for a few years now, we first became aware of Austin, Texas 6-piece Sound Team with their excellent ‘Work EP’ when it was given a UK release earlier this year. There was a synthetic mould holding the 4 tracks in place, but within Continue Reading

The trouble with ripping up the rulebook on your first release is that it leaves you with bugger all things to tear up and scrap with your second. Or so you’d think. Whilst the band’s blogger endorsed debut album, ‘Last Exit’ featured the crazy stuttering influence of Timbaland and UK garage pushed up against a wall of nerdy eighties synth-music, new album ‘So This Is Goodbye’ wrestles free of its urban grip and slips down an adjacent alleyway of dreamy, Continue Reading

Having emerged at the fag end of the 90s as an off-kilter production duo – all junk shop samples, wonky tracks and an infectious bonhomie – the Nottingham-based duo Bent are no strangers to stumbling out on the same breath as those jolly old spangly Jelly headz and those garlic-munching, ether producing chillsters, Air. In fact we’re now four albums into Bent’s career and we’re still drawing the same comparisons. Not because we’re lazy, but because these are da boyz Continue Reading