Reviews

You have expectations. You make certain presumptions. Chances are in this case they’re driven as much by morbid curiosity as anything more reasoned, that’s only natural. This first (and last?) posthumous release from Elliott Smith will undoubtedly shift big units to death tourists in search of a suicide note they can clap along to, coded allusions to a big exit or just a piece of rock memorabilia to file alongside ‘You Know You’re Right’ and the “legacy” edition of ‘Grace’.  Continue Reading

Proving Scotland has more to offer than a shit football team, heroin and the chocolate covered sounds of Snow Patrol, Biffy Clyro, kings of the unlikely time signature return.  Much like Idlewild remained a hidden gem for many until ‘The Remote Part’, ‘Infinity Land’ brims with ingenuity and character.  If it was a Disney film think Beauty and the Beast.  Taking churning hardcore, uncanny riffs and the articulate if unstable nature of Simon Neil, this is an album of elevated Continue Reading

The record I have no problem with. The sly feeding of misinformation and egocentric prima donna nuttiness I do. So let me start here.. Whilst Minnie’s press office would have us believe that Minnie was signed to Island Records by legendary record executive Denny Cordell as early as 1992 and had been writing songs since her mid-teens the truth of the matter seems to be somewhat less clear as Driver has confessed in other interviews that she started her singing Continue Reading

What do ex-girlfriends do? They screw you up, that’s what they do. They also take your stereo, the TV, the Video, the beds, the sheets, the pillow, leaving you feeling like an alien in your own skin and fishing where the ice is thin. Providing they haven’t already taken your fishing-rod, of course. And what do you do to them? You use a screwdriver to get into their head, you leave them while they’re sleeping, you take a friend of Continue Reading

Tell you what, the new release from the ferocious, tough talking Jedi Mind Tricks is unlikely to bridge the divide between those who love them and those who hate them. Vinnie Paz is still talking loud, still heaping on the religious rhetoric like some souped-up Osama Bin Laden and still making broad, sweeping, faintly ridiculous comments about ‘faggots’ (not that we could possibly defend every Camp David, of course) Oh, and by his own admission his appetite for blood is Continue Reading

The American High School. Let’s face it, much of what Western culture has learned about the yanks has been through the cinematic corridor of the high-school. From Breakfast Club, Porky’s, Animal House, Pretty In Pink, Scream right through to American Pie and Screwballs all we’ve accrued in apple pies, sneakers and pantyhose has been at the perennial behest of the now legendary ‘teen comedy’. And Mean Girls is a variant on the same: life’s a jungle and the cruelty of school is Continue Reading

In a strict linear universe where time was not problematized by the ad hoc release schedules of US and UK imports and exports, this would actually predate the release of March’s third album, Virginia Creepers and come just one year after the critically acclaimed ‘Mobilize’ release of 2001. And listening to it, it makes a whole lot more sense that way, than this. If March’s Virginia Creepers album was a bit of a slow-burner, this album has been practically taken Continue Reading

Maybe this is how it should have been all along. Out of the spotlight, unacquainted with fanfare, there to be discovered like the concealed gates to a secret walled garden. Perhaps though the case was that Mansun, and Paul Draper in particular, were such oddballs that they couldn’t help but become famous. Destiny is an abused concept, but it’s hard now to imagine a late 90s without the colour of ‘Attack Of The Grey Lantern’ cutting through the relative regularity Continue Reading

I know what you’re thinking. Truth is, we don’t always have full control over what it is we’re reviewing and this falls loosely into the category of ‘What the hell where they thinking when they popped it in the post’? Too many copies? Perhaps. Too little regard for readers? It’s possible. Too giddy with the stamps? For sure. So it comes with no small degree of surprise to find myself sliding this warily into the disc tray with the unsteadiest Continue Reading

‘The golden phosphorus of nostalgia.” Bill Nelson’s words, not mine, but they do sum up our faintly warm and glittery reaction to selection of recordings made nearly thirty years ago when Bill Nelson was the highly literate, sci-fi chewing axe-man/frontman to the belligerent art/prog rock ensemble that was Be Bop Deluxe. That EMI have chosen to release this bright and cheerful introduction to Wakefield’s finest off the back of the David Bowie and Brian Eno re-releases seems entirely unremarkable given Continue Reading