When Phil Spector built his Wall Of Sound in the early nineteen-sixties there was something there propping it up at the front: one bloody great big sparkling motherf***er of a tune. And although Beck and Elliott Smith producer Rob Schnapf and the boys have clearly mastered what Phil Spector failed to do on previous sour-fest, ‘Silence Is Easy’ and produced something of real bombast and pounding heartache, there’s one almighty flaw; in cranking the guitars up to eleven and adding Continue Reading

Simplicity is often its own reward; a fact almost certainly overlooked by the average nail biting, genre-straddling and button-busting thirty-something rock icon. But it’s not just them; it’s you and me also. As sure as eggs is eggs, you, like me, will probably take occasional refuge in complexity and obscurity, compiling anthologies of dubious intellectual merit rather than tackle the basic pangs of our ordinary and unremarkable lives where, contrary to our expectations, often lies a surfeit of practical material; Continue Reading

Inspired by the book of the same name by the now dead Winifred Ellerman Bryher archaeologist, film-maker, novelist and secretive lady-lover to poet and former sweetheart of Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, ‘The Days Of Mars’ is the first full length album from New York artists Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom and the first brave step into extending the visionary soundscape that took shape with the release of the pair’s hypnotic ‘El Monte’ single in 2004. Already firmly established in the Continue Reading

With a generous dose of imagination and suspended belief the experienced listener should be able to overcome the arse-over-tit sound production to bask in the presence of one of Scotland’s most testy and awkward beat combos, the Fire Engines. Revered and fondly replicated by the those tight-buttocked post-post-punk lotharios and fellow Scots, Franz Ferdinand, the Fire Engines tore along the same edgy strop-line as pop activists like Gang Of Four, the Mekons, Orange Juice and, believe it or not, the Continue Reading

Whilst you were in its throes, the punk-funk explosion of season 2002/3 could seduce you into feeling like you were amid some minor revolution. The Rapture and Radio 4 were certainly primed for takeover, always insurgent, always on message, always dancing, and while Hot Hot Heat were perhaps bubblegum compared to that movement you could just eat them whole they were so sweet. There is the concept of being fashionably late, but that goes out with the burnt vol-au-vents when Continue Reading

Bloodhound Gang are, in a way, from a certain angle (like behind a closed door), evidence of the cliché of the boy that’s too smart for his own surroundings and so instead collapses in on himself, channelling his surplus attention into puerile taunts and quick wit. Oh, and fart gags. Endless hours of fart gags. Just think, if they’d all (or at least obvious ringleader, Pop) been moved up a class 20 years ago we could have been spared all Continue Reading

Davey Crockett was the cross-wired dishevelled teenager with all the explosive at the top of The Crocketts’ rusty indie canon. Davey MacManus, leader of The Crimea, is that bug burst out of its cocoon, turned butterfly with singed wing tips. Welsh upstarts The Crocketts were a guilty pleasure back in the late 90s, scattering crude shrapnel far and wide with a begrudging magnetism to all things dramatic and ultimately anthemic. They were never meant to last though, their rough, impulsive Continue Reading

This is a mad wide world. All sorts of people, of allsorts of mindsets, with a chock-full knapsack of assorted motivations, tools and extroversions, are just beyond the ends of our fingertips. Achieving, sacrificing, progressing, being damn ridiculous, thinking outside the box. Take one girl, or this boy, or that one, or perhaps this fine example of ambitious delusion. And then there are those that step back, sink into their furrow and plough forwards on their knees. But then Ryan Continue Reading

The Jam were not only a seminal and slightly groovesome junction in the arching Mod family tree. Nor just a reckless reaction to and for an era. They were an investment too, for one man especially. The concept of saving for a rainy day can seem conservative, or a little bit vague at the flushest of times, especially when it rains more often than it doesn’t. But for what was a burst of zestful creativity and headstrong beliefs shaped by Continue Reading

In 1990 producer Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel) helped set singer-songwriter Chris Whitley up with a deal with Columbia Records and produced his first album. Fifteen years on, with a new label (Cooking Vinyl) and a new producer (Malcolm Burn) Whitley has produced a set of rich, dark 21st Century blues songs that seem the embodiment of Lanois production values: raw sounding acoustic instruments that drive along over layers and layers of electronic studio effects. The album ‘Soft Continue Reading