Evermore are a band with quite a CV. A platinum album, an MTV Award, songs being featured on the Australian version of the O.C, and having long-time Nirvana/Foo-Fighters recording partner, Barrette Jones jumping on board to produce the band’s debut album. Not bad for a bunch of young New Zealanders. With all these credits to their name, and the band still being only just fresh out of their teens as well, you would be forgiven for thinking that they really Continue Reading
I always equated the 12” extended remix with being handed a live grenade, depending on which way you looked at it, it was there to either end your suffering or prolong it – although variously it was the latter. In fact trying to describe the experience to any one of a thousand spotted hoodies today would be like explaining what pulling a tooth was all about and how paying £2.49 to extend the pleasure was cheap at half-the-price. Today’s youth Continue Reading
United by anything that’s silly and uses stupid noises, Psapp’s Galia Durant and Carim Clasmann bring their bonkers-anything-goes-gently-esoteric Psapp project to giddy fruition with the pot knocking, stick tapping, glass tinkling doll’s house of a record that stumbles, trips and falls at the feet of a waiting nation. ‘The Only Thing I Ever Wanted’ is exactly what you’ve been hoping for ever since you first heard the clutter skiffle magic brought about by debut single, ‘Tricycle’ or were indeed lucky Continue Reading
We always had PJ Harvey down as a terse madam, possibly a bit of a narcissist, difficult to be around certainly, challenging to work with probably, cold, guarded, fiercely creative, protective. Etcetera. She’s got a back catalogue of musical open wounds, gothic death-stares in photoshoots and less than forthcoming public image to thank for that. But she’s not, none of it! Not all of it anyway. She’s bloody lovely, so she is. In a when-are-they-bringing-out-the-PJ-edition-of-Barbie, put-her-in-your-pocket lovely. We watch her Continue Reading
Some band or other already copped ‘Funeral’ as the title for their own record the year before last, which is a shame. It sure would have fitted snug like a grave digger’s glove here. ‘The Spell’ is adequate enough though, if we’re talking black magic; darkness, cobwebs, potions, druid beats, the sudden onset of dense fog. That sort of thing. The pace is decidedly funereal, wrapped by the creeping inertia of chugging minor chords, and we’re not talking any old Continue Reading
At the very first strike of the sitar and the announcement of a thin, wiry, treated vocal I knew we were in for a bumpy ride. Billed as the ‘third wave in psychedelia’ (the first being the shit Harrison stuff on ‘Revolver’, the second being brought to a swift conclusion by Neil’s ‘Hole In My Shoe’) Northern Star Records have pooled some of the wackiest, tripped-out crack on their roster and come up with 70 odd minutes of swirling, spirally Continue Reading
We feel in oddly retro territory talking of rock/hip-hop cross-over, which should be a contradiction in terms in today’s eclectic musical climate, it should be something we take for granted, and perhaps on its fringes it is. But listening to the introductory portion of Akala’s intense, hook and bruise-laden debut we’re taken back to a time when Public Enemy were breaking boundaries hooking up with Anthrax, and of course lest we forget Aerosmith with Run DMC. And if that seems Continue Reading
You can admire Hard-Fi from afar, like they’re dots on a grainy screen – the devastatingly effective simplicity of the artwork, the straightforward identification you feel with the song content and the truths spoken therein, the innate unfussiness of the music, their lack of direct affiliation with any passing fad, that sort of thing. But get closer up and things become less than convincing. We realise that to be so very ordinary is perhaps the point here, triumph of the Continue Reading
‘Uninvited Like the Clouds’ is the ambiguous new album by 30 year-old, cult Australian four-piece, The Church. To be confronted with another band whose name begins with ‘The’, I was pleasantly surprised with this eclectic mix of music presented here. If you are looking for a summery, cheerful, ice cream and flip flops kind of album, then I am afraid you‘re likely to be sorely disappointed. The front man, Steve Kilbey has a lilt similar to that of Bono, and Continue Reading
Excuse me, but do you carry a licence for that voice, sir? Almost everything about Absentee has great weight to it, from their surefooted pace through to the maudlin gravity of the failure and black comic hopelessness informing the lyrics. But no aspect carries more clout than Dan Michaelson’s obscenely hefty vocal chords. It is possibly the eighth wonder of the indie world, they could handle the security duties of a medium-large category venue single handed and could certainly blow Continue Reading