Reviews

So what do we have here then? A public information film? Ahead of the Anger Management Tour pistol-whipping the UK in the autumn, no doubt amid a hail of predictable controversy, the Mary Whitehouses amongst us get a chance to draft their complaints. Look, a hoody! Suburban white kids waving their arms in hypnotic unison! Chanting obscenities on order! A man constantly changing his oversized t-shirts and booming “Detroyyyyiiiit!”. So, truth is, there’s little to get upset by here, surprisingly Continue Reading

Like Kasabian, who singularly lack the giddy eccentricities of the Happy Mondays, the silk-lined soul of The Stone Roses and the convincing future-anarchy of Prml Scrm, but nonetheless pack an efficient punch in their efforts to emulate, Editors are tied tightly to an influence but still come out seeming impressively bullet-proof. They should in theory be easy to write off, their spread of inspirations are even narrower than Kasabian’s, their own personality subtle, their ambitions unclear. But what ‘The Back Continue Reading

Breaking free from the creative freedom offered by pro-tools and samples is often a brave pursuit for those recently converted – but ex-Husker Du and Sugar frontman, Bob Mould manages to briefly elude his reckless stray into experimental territory and his equally reckless and ill-judged LoudBomb moniker to whittle a dozen or so loathful, self-probing and crunchy guitar-driven power-pop nuggets. Assisted by Brendan Canty (Fugazi) and David Barbe (Sugar) Mould rediscovers some form with the beefy and swelling ‘Circles’, the Continue Reading

That Hayseed Dixie have carved themselves a exceptional niche in music, performing bluegrass covers of classic rock tunes may seem a pitiful claim to posterity and hardly the stuff of genius but it works in the context of having a few too many beers, getting giddy and falling over. And having broadened their narrow set list of AC/DC and rock classic covers to include bluegrass takes on everyone from Outkast and Franz Ferdinand to Greenday they’ve done the impossible and Continue Reading

To be honest, I was already hooked on this album before the aching and faintly crackling ‘Sun Studios’ opener ‘The Heavens’ finished its sweet melancholy deluge of hopelessness. Why? Because I’m a complete sucker for anything ‘retro’. In fact I was pretty much born hankering mournfully for the past and the consoling familiarity of some pined for golden-period. Blame my mother. Blame the war. Blame the endless and preposterous reruns of Champion The Wonder Horse, ‘Whirlibirds’ and Casey Jones during Continue Reading

Winner of the 1999 L.A. Music Award in the category of Outstanding Guitarist, opening shows for Bonnie Raitt, Etta James and the only woman asked to audition for the post-Garcia version of the Grateful Dead, the Nashville based blues singer-songwriter, Lauren Ellis gets another opportunity to reveal her considerable wares on the new dual-disc album, ‘Feels Like Family’, recorded in her new hometown. Already aired on MTV’s reality shows The Real World, Road Blues and Extreme, songs from the album Continue Reading

Some bands – take Sigur Ros, Guns ‘N’ Roses, The Streets – are intrinsically bound to their birthplaces, handcuffed to their geography, like they lick the ground beneath their feet daily just so they don’t forget what it tastes like. Others – Mars Volta, the Magic Numbers, Absentee – sound more like they were just whipped up by the breeze (read electromagnetic intergalactic hurricane for Mars Volta) and gently displaced over international boundaries. Absentee are a London based collective, though Continue Reading

A panda in a wood playing a trumpet. Not a hugely conclusive lead-in to the album, but neither is it misleading. The same, bright starry nature-loving, creature loving cuddliness and surrealism that earmarks the Michel Gondrey directed videos to Bjork’s Bachelorette, Hyperballad and Human Nature is a spirit that’s continued here. Grand orchestral sweepscapes, weeping strings, giddy and ever so slightly discordant sequencer noises, brooding ambient passages and the rasping vocal purr of Angela McCluskey – like Bjork – but Continue Reading

Why is it expected that rhyme and reason must accompany everything? There’s rarely a moment of the day that goes past where you don’t want the things that happen to and around you quantified. The sun pours through the open window and you’re probably as likely to query the weatherman’s shoddy wisdom than just peel off your top and bathe in it. Hear Chris Martin crooning unspecifically on the radio and you’ll likely question his motivation, not to mention that Continue Reading

“The most fun that I ever had was the night the gypsies came to town!”. Eamon Hamilton has clearly lead a much more interesting life than I. But then that’s a given, it’s his job, he’s in a band, I’m writing about it. I know my place. But even by those standards, considering his previously established eccentricities, this record is extreme, showcasing a lunatic unleashed amid music. As keyboard-tinkler/beat-buffoon/general-spare-part in British Sea Power he established himself as a sturdy subsidiary, Continue Reading