Reviews

There’s a bittersweet irony in the fact that the last time we doffed our caps at Doves they were headlining Sunday night against Moby at the Glastonbury Festival 2003 – an eternity in music terms, giving that this was in some hazy, cautious period for the UK music industry, shortly before we really found our feet with the jerky, imponderable panache and swagger of the new breed of indie icons: the Franz Ferdinands, the Libertineses, the Keanes, the Snow Patrols; Continue Reading

A film that takes on The Beatles is always going to fail in one respect or another. They were too big for Hamburg. They were too big for Liverpool. And they were too big for the hand of even the most gifted of scriptwriters. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s also too slippery a creature to handle with any success, and even though this stroll through the early years of the Beatles is a thorough delight in it’s Continue Reading

As part of the 679 recordings mini mafia Death From Above 1979 have probably had it easier than most.  Sharing already acclaimed company such as The Streets, The Futureheads and The Secret Machines is the easy part, but making an album of the dominant primal intensity they have is totally different story, but one with which DFA 1979 have a panache for. Canadian duo Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler, one part bass and one part drums, you do the Continue Reading

Holed-up in a remote country landscape near Chapel Hill the Elliott Smith endorsed Kingsbury Manx began work on third release, ‘Aztec Discipline’ with producer Jerry Kee who had also produced the band’s cautiously taken debut album, ‘Kingsbury Manx’. With recording sessions spread over six-months and with as much attention given to getting drunk and hanging out with friends it seems inevitable that there would be a mighty volume of undisciplined sketching in addition to the flawlessly structured and well realised Continue Reading

There are often more cons than there are pros to having the love and support of some of music’s most respected back-office members when you’re just starting out in your career. The first disadvantage you’re likely to suffer is that the weight of expectation is often far too great to carry off respectably. From the Dave Fridmann produced Elf Power to the surprisingly able Minnie Driver, the load carried over from previous major critical successes leads to inevitable disappointment. And Continue Reading

It’s used, sometimes, as a kind of defense for the indefensible. Imagine, for instance, a hefty fellow in a ten gallon hat ordering his third main course at a faux-grillhouse in London, because they don’t make the portions gargantuan enough over here, while hurling questionable right-wing diatribes at all and sundry. You might approach him and say “but in these days of more fashionable headwear, lo carb options and political correctness, why do you act like you do in public, Continue Reading

So you’re stuck in a random truck stop in some two bit desert town.  A 300lb local takes exception to your ‘purdy’ clothes and ‘your one of them city folk’ accent.  So what do you do? You fight the bastard! And the soundtrack, well it’d be exactly like this.  Purveyors of the ‘less is more ethos’, The Kills return with a brooding indignation of an album.  It’s devotion and its necessity and although they’re still rocking the monkey on my Continue Reading

I’ve been living with this album, at time of writing, for three weeks. Those three weeks, incidentally, aren’t enough – it’s a comfort then to know that my future is open to their continued influence – but they were necessary. Reflecting on it before now might have been like giving directions around a city before I’d even got there, going by the outline I saw on the horizon. You’ll be aware that Bloc Party are they who are most likely Continue Reading

There’s certainly no doubting that you get your money’s worth with a Joshua Noteboom release. ‘Narrow Path’ comes equipped with not only a bonus DVD but with a bountiful loot of ROM material, mp3s, instrumental versions, videos it also plays host to the entire album in 5.1 Multichannel Surround Sound. That’s in addition to the CD version you get as standard. Even for the majority of major labels, a multi-media release often signals a rather feeble and half-hearted tendering of Continue Reading

Just exactly how long does an artist have to be considered a ‘newcomer’ before we are forced to accept defeat and acquiesce to the broader public consensus that they’re simply not that popular? Nick Drake was never popular. Ian Curtis was never popular; even Elliot Smith could have passed enough folks in the street to fill a liner without ever once courting recognition. The truth is, as intriguing, mysterious and downright obtuse an artist can be, it does not naturally Continue Reading