Reviews

Not a bad life. Not a bad career. And on this nifty and outrageously colourful ‘Very Best Of’ release we have heaps of the cap-headed beatnik’s finest moments: ‘Sunshine Superman’, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’, ‘Jennifer Juniper’, ‘Catch The Wind’, ‘Guinevere’, ‘Colours’. Unfortunately it’s for lyrics like these that we best remember Glasgow’s Donovan Philips Leitch: Electrical bananaIs gonna be a sudden craze.Electrical bananaIs bound to be the very next phase. But hat’s off the bloke, it was to be the very Continue Reading

Well, they certainly don’t get any worse. But this should surprise no one. Nashville, Tennessee’s inventive rolling orchestra of droll melancholy, led by the inimitably and charmingly authoritative Kurt Wagner, find themselves here on their eighth studio recording still upholding an enviably classic respect for one’s own standards. It’s a little old fashioned in a way, the attention to detail, like faithfully starching your collar for church on a Sunday, every Sunday, always, but it’s a characteristic full of virtue, Continue Reading

Personally I’ve been missing Malkmus and Albarn arsing around the lo-fi end of the quirky indie spectrum leafing through all manner of pasty hypochondriacs and eccentrics and telling us how it is with a bittersweet melody, a jangling raw guitar, a skewed dress code, a funny turn and bad posture. True, Blur 13 and Pavement are unlikely to sit as well with the style-over-substance subtext of our post-punk elite as they used to, and the Guided By Voices leaps of Continue Reading

I knew I was going to like this record when the first languorous, swarthy jazz measures of 4 Hero’s ‘Conception’ came loping out of the speaker like some deep and rich Mochacinno flowing across the table at café Mambo with a sitar hooked up to the orchestra somewhere in the background. I guess this is what you called chilled, Frappecinno style. Plain, low and slow, higher and lower, all those things hinted at in Afterlife’s ‘Half Time’. Which leads me Continue Reading

The Two-Headed Monster. It’s a neat title at least, beating hands down the usual tales of two cities we get from the likes of Ministry who balance their double-disc mixtapes with titles as dull and effortless as ‘Beach Disc’ and ‘Club Disc’. In the one corner we have Transparent Sound who have been leading the UK electro drill since forming in 1994, and in the other Craig Richards part-time photographer, designer and Tech House DJ and famed for his 24-hour Continue Reading

Whatever the actual motivation for playing up to full blown solo aspirations in between the now stock-quality Manics albums – and James Dean Bradfield certainly doesn’t have the air of a man desperately in need of alternative creative avenues, another cup of cranberry juice maybe, or a trouser press – this debut release from the frontman in comfortable slacks can claim at least one unexpected triumph. It is proof, if some were needed, that he is no Nicky Wire. His Continue Reading

If we were expecting anyone at all to out-Haines sullen English pop gentleman Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof, Black Box Recorder), we fully expected it to be Luke Haines. The man has after all made a career out of out-Hainesing himself on a fairly regular basis. But with this second long-due long-player, Australia’s the Sleepy Jackson (now for all intents and purposes the solo project of the increasingly and purposely enigmatic Luke Steele) adopts that mantle with a competitive Continue Reading

The Other Side, a joint venture between Time Out and Resist Music is an interactive guide to the bleeding edge of the world’s great cities. Utilizing the Dual-Disc format, each edition of The Other Side is comprised of two key elements: a mixed CD compiled by a native audio pioneer and a DVD guide to the “other side“ of the city – a visual handbook for both the frequent flyer and the armchair traveller. We’ve already had Fischerspooner direct us Continue Reading

My first thoughts upon hearing Miss King were ‘how long does this go on for?’ and ‘I wonder what the hamster is doing’. Initially, it really was that bad. Then I allowed myself to listen to ‘Yellowcake’, King’s opener and latest single, properly, and I realised it was not actually that bad at all. Dwelling upon ‘Yellowcake’ a little longer, I find it sums up King’s work entirely, in that her music isn’t for everyone and it is slightly strange, Continue Reading

Black has paid his dues as innovator, rebel, indie darling and whatever else critics (rightly) loved him for. Now, he’s padding through this stage of his career like a wayward dog on the scent of something pretty special but as yet, beyond our ken. ‘Fast Man Raider Man’ is a rich, uneven double album of songs recorded  in a series of mammoth sessions with a host of guesting musicians and will inevitably fall foul of some critics for, well, for Continue Reading