A number of years ago I would have found it inconceivable that anybody but dodgy old university music boffins or people running the late show on Radio 4 could have spliced together thrift-store folk, jazz and funk without it sounding faintly ridiculous. But what’s ridiculous and ungainly one day can be pretty vital and peachy the next. Those are the laws of physics. So it comes as little surprise to learn that another little white darling of hip-hop is about Continue Reading

Now I’m not going to try and suggest for a moment that just to the right of middle of the road is an especially perilous place to be. It’s not. But it is still a wholly commendable feat to knock around there day in day out and then go and make a record as bracing in parts as ‘Hopes & Fears’. Though labelled “indie-without-guitars” by all and sundry who see them as a logical progression from Travis and specifically Coldplay, Continue Reading

Bordering on hilarity and possible insanity in equal measure, Mclusky’s latest offering is brimming with all the impact of a crash test dummy hitting a wall, whilst capturing sarcastic irony in their comic book caper lyrics.  With titles like ‘KK Kitchens, What Wre Yu Tinking? And ‘Forget Aout Hm I’m Mnt’, they should be designing t-shirts.  Album opener ‘Without MSG I A Nthing’ has a rhythmic capability that defies the wilting lo-i guitar riff and falsetto backing vocals whilst ‘Icarus Continue Reading

Tweaker, aka Chris Vrenna – former Nine Inch Nails drummer/programmer, a Grammy award winner and general sonic ironmonger – is back with a follow up to the lavishly praised debut, The Attraction to All Things Uncertain. And what’s more, all the usual Tweaker suspects are back in tow with him: David Sylvian on the trippy, disturbed beats of ‘Pure Genius’ and Will Oldham on the beutifully delivered and double-edged ‘Ruby’. This time round though, Vrenna has also brought in such Continue Reading

A reissue that brings the band’s second and fourth releases onto one disc, but for once, not in reverse chronological order. With a punk-funk unity prefiguring the likes of The Rapture and Franz Ferdinand, The Gang Of Four compounded sparse, elliptic riffing with radical politics that cited the then emerging entertainment media as yet another state apparatus. Darkly experimental and relying on the edgy, insistent clout of repetition as a means of driving home their intense anti-ideological statements, the band Continue Reading

Not quite Electronica. Not quite Indie. What is it about The Two Lone Swordsmen that makes them so bloody difficult to pin a tail on? The fact they’re on Warp Records – home of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Plaid and Vincent Gallo? You’d think that would be enough. But it’s not, although tracks like ‘Faux’, ‘Sick When We Kiss’ and ‘The Valve’ do go along way toward reclaiming the cold industrial pulse of Warp’s original Sheffield avante-pop heritage (early Human Continue Reading

I think it can be safely agreed that the only thing likely to be more of a slow-burner than Gram Parson this year has to be Marjorie Fair’s ‘Self Help Seranade’. Recorded in the Spring of 2002 with the help of Rob Schnapf (who produced tracks like Alcohol, Fuckin with My Head, MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack, Mutherfuker, Nitemare Hippy Girl, Pay No Mind and Ramshackle for Beck) and Jon Brion (just prior to his work on Grant Continue Reading

Bearing in mind that Duran Duran have been doing rather well with their far more recent tour with class acts like Goldfrapp, I’m at a loss as to why I’m sitting here listening to a fairly unremarkable 1984 US/Canadian ‘event’. It might have sold over 2 million copies the first time around, but only a fool would buy this when it’s inevitable that these erstwhile bandana boys have already scheduled a ‘live’ release to coincide with their more recent rebirth Continue Reading

After the release of last year’s ‘Worn Me Down’ EP and some recent shows with the crème de la crème of serious easy listening: Damien Rice, David Gray and Sondre Lerche, the smoky and husky Rachel Yamagata releases the eagerly awaited ‘Happenstance’ album. The beefed up, rocking by numbers re-take on EP show-stealer ‘Worn Me Down’ might gloriously disappoint – but aside from this one glaring error, ‘Happenstance’ still manages to offer moments of louche, drowsy soulfulness far surpassing the Continue Reading

 In their native Britain in the early Seventies, skinheads turned glam-rockers Slade notched up a mighty 17 Top 20 hits, including six at number 1. And it wasn’t enough to play comically misspelled songs like ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’, ‘Coz I Luv You’, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ and ‘Skweeze Me Pleeze Me’ on your brand new wireless portable stereo. You had to play it loud. And like pretty much every rock band before them (The Beatles, The Monkees, Continue Reading