Most people take music very seriously. Some take music to be the ultimate and only interest. Primal Scream as individuals and as a group have always been advocates with each passing record a highly-strung taste barometer for rock and pop. Whether by the recent proclamation by Bobby Gillespie whose listening habits over the past year has included The Von Bondies as well as the cellophane wrapped and pre-packaged Sugababes, or hanging out at Shoom the Primal’s inspiration is always checked Continue Reading

John Vanderslice is back at it again, at his San Francisco-located Tiny Telephone studio. With contributions and collaborations from members of Mates of State, Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie and Beulah, it’s no wonder this album came out as well as it did. With twelve 3-minute story-telling pop songs, Vanderslice manages to revive the epic “concept album.” He begins the story by setting the poetry of William Blake to music, introducing the listener to his traumatic birth. However, through the Continue Reading

‘Let A Good Thing Go’, is the second single from Gemma Hayes unusually well acclaimed album ‘Night On My Side’.A reasonably smooth mix of folksey rock, reminiscent of Belly and the frank, bare knuckle Garage crankiness of The Breeders, ‘Night On My Side’reveals a Sheryl Crow grasp of craft with a more angular, and more abstract feel for cookiness. Fragile yet feisty and with indisputably complex soul of a poet, Gemma has traded in the dry, acoustic timidity of her Continue Reading

In 1994 Nirvana wannabees, Silverchair entered a competition on Australians no. 1 radio station Triple J, the prize was a free recording at Triple J and a video that was all to be aired on SBS’s Nomad program. Of course, as history tells us, these spotty little droogs of 15 to 16 years won with their song, ‘Tomorrow’. After the clip and interview had been aired, record companies from all over Australia were ringing in wanting to know how they Continue Reading

Searching for inner-scouseness has not been fashionable for a long time. Thrown aside for the Saturday night jerks and exertions to House and ignored by the thrall of UK Garage, Liverpool has not looked inwards since tank tops and Panini stickers. Fair enough really, as all background noise for adolescents should be played out to match the times and not hark back to a previous incarnation of pop’s past, especially not to an era when we have to consider our Continue Reading

Despite the moderate success of the 1996 single ‘Guilty’, Gravity Kills has yet to make a splash compared to other contemporary metal/industrial acts such as Godsmack, Filter, or Stabbing Westward.  Perhaps it was the band’s overt admiration for Trent Reznor and company’s music that caused the backlash of comparisons and accusations of unoriginality.  While Superstarved might possess similar tones as the groups’ previous two records, Gravity Kills seems to have finally broken away from the obvious and expected to create Continue Reading

We may be backtracking into the last century a bit here, but you remember mix tapes. Don’t you? Throwing down your favourite tracks with primitive technology that back then seemed like the future had come to your bedroom and honing a knack for squeezing your choice cuts snugly onto one side of a C90 to suit your mood, or just to force your superior tastes that week onto a mate. And right now it is summer – c’mon, the sun’s Continue Reading

As soon as you play this album, you just know that The Warm Guns possess every Beatles record ever written. Their own album, ‘Blown Away’ contains the kind of upbeat pop psychedelica and ‘socially aware’ lyrics that are rarely produced on these shores anymore. It’s the memory of the original Britpop invasion filtered back through an American West Coast sensibility – shiny guitar stabs and soaring backing vocals singing about time travel and Mao Tse Tung, with a liberal sprinkling Continue Reading