So you invite a few people round, you think maybe you’ll get some pizzas in, a few tins of beer, maybe it’ll be time to finally crack open that dusty bottle at the back of the cupboard, perhaps, if you’re feeling generous. With any luck a bottle or two will be brought along, just so there’s enough to go around. But then your guests arrive simultaneously with courses piled high on tiered plates, entire organic crops spilling out of carrier Continue Reading
“Just drift along with no focus or meaning,” utter they, maybe in partial self review, as their debut album slopes off to a stop. You can barely move at the moment without being thwacked between the eyes by a giddy globule of praise for this one particular example of London-centric new-wave. There can be no disputing that they would never have attained that without focus, without subscribing pointedly to a set of expectations, to what they directed themselves to become. Continue Reading
Having shared stages with such eminent indie mavericks as The Walkmen, The Futureheads, Kings Of Leon, Girls Vs Boys, French Kicks and Roger Sisters you’ll understand the Cleveland located Coffinberry stylistically more resemble the mature, idiosyncratic and feisty temperaments of bands like Superchunk and Spoon than their geographical brethren and label backers, Guided By Voices. The ‘From Now On Now’ EP is a seven-song selection of the band’s dazzling and moody live favourites. ‘Nightlife’ is a wasted, meandering, trashcan knockabout Continue Reading
For most of us the word ‘bookish’ invariably surrenders images of pale, wiry student types pressing the nose-piece on their spectacles more firmly on to their nose before scuttling off into garret-rooms with an armful of poetry and a handful of sleeping pills. They may be ugly, they may be guardedly appealing, but they’re always introspective. So when not one but several critics describe Laura Veirs as ‘bookish’ believe me when I say they’re really onto something. To what level Continue Reading
There surely has to be a point at which the throwing of a curveball ceases to be the surprising and high-impact field event one might expect and instead becomes obvious and predictable. Likewise, anyone expecting the unexpected with Frank Black is likely to be anything other than satisfied with ‘Honeycomb’. Just when you thought it was as inevitable as dirty bath water Black wrong foots you again, resists the temptation to provide the things you really, really want and continues Continue Reading
If a cook at your local restaurant prepared a meal that would only half-cooked and presented it to you on lukewarm platter you’d look at him perplexed. If your favourite football team failed to show up for the second half, chances are you’d reconsider your allegiance to the club. But when a successful and critically favoured artist like Ed Harcourt serves up 28 or so odds and sods of B-Sides, unreleased songs, rudimentary ideas, uneven rarities, rough mixes, rough sketches, Continue Reading
pic•a•resque (pĭk’ə-rĕsk’, pç’kə-) adj.1. Of or involving clever rogues or adventurers.2. Of or relating to a genre of usually satiric prose fiction originating in Spain and depicting in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society. Now would seem like an especially good time to make like The Arcade Fire, only marginally less so. The zesty Canadians have set the bar so damn high this year Continue Reading
Originally released in 1989, ‘Shakespeare Alabama’ was the debut album by Fanclub/U2/INXS wannabees and psychedelic guitar band Diesel Park West arriving at a place not dissimilar to that one occupied the equally indebted Cosmic Rough Riders and vacated just as quickly. Previously, only the band members themselves had an inkling of how the album should listen, the rest of us had to endure what was by and large a thoroughly b-list entity. This new special edition, however, has been tastefully Continue Reading
The Cowboy Junkies began their career with a compilation of songs made famous by other artists, whether or not they bow to the inevitable creeping of age and finish on one remains to be seen, but judging by this inspired if unenergetic selection of songs it seems unlikely that they’ve finished squeezing the juice from the mango of life’s rich melancholy. Off the road for months and with winter digging in deep the band decided that February 2005 might benefit Continue Reading
Continuing their exploration of the more experimental side of electronic music the Swindon-born-San Fransciso-perfected industrial dance duo release umpteenth studio record ‘At The Center’ – spelled, yes you got it, the good old American way. Why? Lord knows. But then it’s not unreasonable to forget your roots if you’re from Swindon – home to such vicarious talent as Diana Dors and XTC – although it does have an excellent bus service and robust council recovery plan by all accounts. What Continue Reading