In the first instance we don’t know whether he’s warming up, or whether it’s us warming up to him. It’s not until the plains of track 3, ‘My Apartment’ and its upbeat alt-country tinkering, that we come face to face with the melodic chicanery we feel we know and feel thrilled by. But turns out we were unwise to worry.  Even by his jaunty debut album ‘Sha Sha’s standards, and especially its highlights ‘Wasted & Ready’, No Reason’ and ‘In Continue Reading

It’s not that I really expect Harry and Co. to be sounding as spectacularly cool, spunky and vital as they did in ’78 when little bombs of unearthly delight went off in my trousers on seeing the band perform ‘Denis’ on ‘Top Of The Pops’, just as I don’t expect the Beatles to be getting back together. You see, some things have their time and no amount of yearning is ever going to bring that time back. The success of Continue Reading

Seeing themselves initially as outsiders totally at odds with all the usual corporate bullshit going on seems to have allowed this Surrey-based band room enough to unravel their attractive brand of thoughtful and idiosyncratic ‘collegiate rock’ free from all the cloying anxieties of industry pressure. As Dylan put it, ‘when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose’.  And these self-styled ‘casual pilots exploring twilight noise seduction’ (their words, not mine, thankfully) have certainly got nothing to lose even Continue Reading

That Roger Waters was cutting-down bandmates and comrades at the kind of rate any self-regarding gunner would be proud of at the time of its original release in the early eighties will come as something of a surprise to those who consider ‘The Final Cut’ to be as philanthropic as its master would have us believe. Afterall, it is essentially a Roger Waters solo album. Staff Sergeants Dave Gilmour and Nick Mason were sidelined on wages, deployed only on an Continue Reading

Far from the DOA that a number of people in the industry imagined, Busface conjures up another abbreviated expression: AOA, or, as people in the know call it, Adult-Oriented-Acid. But that’s not a slight, it’s a compliment and it certainly beats the unlikely, wide-of-the-mark ‘Nu Funk Electro Breakbeat’ that Busface’s publicists are currently peddling. As it is, all this should come as no real surprise as one half of Busface, Hugh Brooker (the other half being React Records’ Seb Wronski) first cut Continue Reading

The basic gist of the story goes like this: I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. You know what? I did something wrong, I confess…you get the picture? It doesn’t take a justice department to work out that such persistent offenders of the heart like Usher may actually be taking perverse joy in all these little heart dramas and are about as capable of feeling genuine adult remorse as your average Continue Reading

Rarely can there have been such a terrifically staged entrance (excepting of course that of immaculate new-wave arch dukes Franz Ferdinand). As recently as a few months ago nobody would have seriously thrown Delays change outside Camden Town tube, let alone served them half a cider and black in the Good Mixer on a quiet weeknight. Then two singles, the blissed-out summer indie anthem ‘Nearer Than Heaven’ and the chewing-gum-in-the-sun summer indie anthem ‘Hey Girl’, dropped indie fairy-dust all over Continue Reading

If there were ever to be a biopic made about you, reader (which there probably won’t be – c’mon look in the mirror – but play along won’t you), Lambchop are just the kind of band you’d want scoring your true widescreen moments. Your more contemplative times, your graceful elder years especially, running in the park on a Sunday morning with your first love amongst the autumn leaves, in slow-mo, tinged in sepia. They have exuded gold-sealed class for nigh Continue Reading

From the fervent hand-claps and miss-hit chord at the very beginning of ‘Kissing the Lipless’ to the plucked, petering daydream guitar at the close of ‘Those To Come’, The Shins’ second album is pristine to the point of textbook near-perfection. The tradition they set themselves with their revered debut, ‘Oh, Inverted World’, remains – namely that the most concentrated melodies are intoxicating, and best served gently. This is sparkling West Coast pop of the vintage kind, but it’s adept enough Continue Reading

From the cover, a black and white  shot of a hut in woodland, you would be forgiven for thinking that “A Parade.“ was a Grandaddy-esque slice of alt country whimsy – the hut however, turns out to be ‘Angel Fetus’ studios and the music, produced by U.S. experimentalists ‘Random Touch’, emerges as a stretch of abstract electronica. The tracks are oblique, like a series of digitally remastered Bowie outtakes from Hansa studios. The album is a grower – minimalist, expansive, Continue Reading