It’s not that we ever saw faults in her, because we saw none, but we never really expected to experience the kind of expanding, open-ended consistency that Kathryn Williams has gone on to lay claim to with such natural grace as the years pass by. Her paeans of hushed folk prettiness were, back in the beginning, so tender, so delicate, so genuine, that we didn’t give a thought to that being upheld with any significance. To be consistent is one Continue Reading

To be honest, finding myself in possession of a copy of The Bluetones new album was a little like finding an old, sherbert-lemon in the inside pocket of a jacket I hadn’t worn since Brit-pop began its terminal slide into the archives during the back-end of ’96. A bit sticky, not unpleasant, sweet even, yet try though I might, I was still not quite able to put my finger on how it had come to be there or whether I Continue Reading

So, The Killers attempted to step it up recently. And it might have all worked out too was it not for the fact that a previously unknown side-effect of attempting to become the new U2 is that your creativity bloats, sprouts a lengthy, greasy mane and IMs Jim Steinman for counsel. How do you go from ‘Somebody Told Me’ to mimicking the vocal stylings of Meatloaf? Either way, that matters little now, because just in the nick of time L.A. Continue Reading

Here we are on the second leg of a journey to dominate the music-buying world, as only Yanks know how: extending boundaries, swamping all sorts of cultures and generally making yourself as ubiquitous as a red and yellow burger chain. Worked for George Bush, why shouldn’t it work for the DFA who offer, let’s face it, an altogether less injury prone ‘Death From Above’ – one based on giddy, spiralling and amphetamine charged anthems rather than cluster bombs and heavy-artillery Continue Reading

Oh dear, his blog seems a bit prickly: ‘Repeat Endtroducing over and over again? That was never, ever in the game plan. Fuck that. So I think it’s time for certain fans to decide if they are fans of the album, or the artist.’ And that’s the way it all starts. You build something up, you play with it a while, you do it all again, you bathe in the glory, you take the bows, you please your label and Continue Reading

Collaborating with Faun Fables sweetheart, Dawn McCarthy, Will Oldham’s latest project under his ‘Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’ moniker may prompt you to recall the bittersweet partnership offered by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parson on the latter’s ‘Grievous Angel’ LP. But then again, it may prompt nothing of the sort; it depends on whether you’ve heard of any of them – which is indeed less likely than we’d care to admit. Why haven’t we heard of them? Well probably for the same Continue Reading

Known to some as ‘Joey Brains’, to others as Brando Flux, ‘Braintax’ is the moniker of Leeds-born, London-lived Joseph Christie, thoughtful, peace-loving rapper Joseph Christie who appeared on the scene with 1992’s ‘Fat Head’ EP. So what else have we to learn? Well today, we’re going to be learning about illegal wars in the Middle East, the loss of freedom, text messages, the media, Bush and his evil claws, Blair and his smugness, Kuwait, Korea, the Falklands, the BNP, refugees, Continue Reading

Where do you actually begin with excess? Do you start with the 18 million albums sold with your second album proper? The mountains of cocaine? The Lear Jets? The pandemic of gossip and rumours spreading out from a spring of broken-hearts? Or do you start somewhere in-between all that, in the moments you catch yourself looking in the mirror first thing in the morning, when you’ve barely been able to tear yourself out of bed for fear that another day Continue Reading

Although I’ve never been entirely sold on ‘Live’ albums (why buy pasty approximations of things you already own on record?) occasionally, just occasionally, there’s one comes out that grips you in a way that the original album doesn’t. Sometimes this is down to something as simple as an alternative running order, sometimes it’s having songs extended beyond their natural running time, sometimes it’s because the band totally reworks them; sometimes its simply because you were there. With ‘Ononokos’ it’s none Continue Reading

I honestly thought I was going to detest this record like an itch I just couldn’t reach. Part of me deep down probably still does (I mean, come on. The stinking Caleigh Libertines? It would never get past the panel on Dragon’s Den). In spite of some fairly sweet singles, which showed willing and flowering potential, fleeting attendance at gigs of theirs saw little more than shapeless stabs at moving targets. They were a lurking anarchic act not realised, a Continue Reading