While using as much reverb as Hendrix ever did and a jam band ease of Faces, the Black Keys play a minimalist style of bluesy-rock.  The duo – Dan Aurebach, vocals and guitar and Patrick Carney, drums and production- are another band rewriting the rules of blues for the 21st century.  Like the North Mississippi All-Stars, 20 Miles, or the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Black Keys draw from the influences of Junior Kimbrough, Fred McDowell and R.L. Burnside to Continue Reading

Laziness is clearly the catalyst to ultimate satisfaction. Or sumptuousness at least, lovely gorgeous lazy sumptuousness. The stuff Sunday afternoons, late nights in the company of cable TV and lifestyles punctuated by unwashed jeans, unpaid bills and mould growing in coffee-mugs are made of. It’s a beautiful thing. And despite what the battery-powered gym-addicted executive brigade may think it does feel great, and that they can’t take away from you. Reach your Zen and slob around a bit, it’s your Continue Reading

“THE GAY POLYPHONIC SPREE!” scream the giddy majority of press mentions of Toronto’s ever more gushed-over Hidden Cameras. Hell, look, we just did it too. We couldn’t help ourselves. And as frustrating as it may be for superficial similarities to be blown up millstone-esque, y’know, you need a starting point you can understand. And glance at the actual facts – a numerically unspecific morphing band of up to 15 musicians, a swelling backing choir and an excitable gaggle of male Continue Reading

When we said something new for the dancefloor was blossoming oop north when Grandadbob released their single ‘Mmmmnn’  in March, we weren’t whistling dixie, and whether or not that release really saw the pair get the kind of  attention they deserve, ‘City Approach’ could be just the right fix.   Supporting underground future heroes, Mint Royale on a tour in April, Grandadbob – Dave Johnson (music) and Vanessa Robinson (vocals) build on the frothy cream of pop-Bjorksters, ‘Frou Frou’ and the provocative schizo-chic of ‘Moloko’ that Continue Reading

What’s going on? Anyone? No us neither, but we’ll try and fill you in. It seems that 2 is the new 4 and metal (the ‘a’ is obviously to be pronounced ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ with a haemorrhaging falsetto, go back and try again) is the new electroclash. All of which makes hairy Oxford pair Winnebago Deal a Hoxton wet dream spread-eagled in an ‘ironic’ sawn-off Top Shop Motorhead t-shirt. Except there really is nothing ironic or high-street about them. Which is some Continue Reading

There’s part of me than wants to hate this record, and there’s a part of me that wants to hate it. Milking the success of gently amusing and sexually liberating power-pop single, ‘Take It Off’, Spend The Night lines up roughly ten or more shots of the same liquor. And when I say the same, I mean the same. Without any real discernible joins between the songs, it’s debatable whether there is in fact 14 songs or whether it’s just Continue Reading

With a hard and heavy drum sound akin to hammer kissing anvil and the vicious cut and thrust of what sound like literally dozens of cantankerous fuzz guitars, New Zealand’s D4 lead an amphetamine charged assault on your ears with their full-length debut release, 6 Twenty. Fronted by the unlikely named Jimmy Christmas and singer/guitarist Dion, it could be suggested the D4 are little more than a down and dirtier cousin of mock garage rock-tarts, The Hives : easier on Continue Reading

“Drive till sunrise / Fall asleep till sunset / Somewhere in-between, make the devil’s music”, is how the album’s second (and title) track ‘punkrockvampires’ begins. And what a way to begin your pitch. What a suitably fierce and just-stereotypical-enough epitaph to live by, huh? But delivered with such contravening moderation and calm – like a lightly applied prayer before bedtime, the first straggles of sunlight scarcely seeping over the dusty horizon – that it seems like little more than an Continue Reading

Not content with resting on both his laurels and the plaudits conferred upon him by the likes of naff UK press darlings, Coldplay, Echo & The Bunnymen frontman and founding member Ian McCulloch releases the robust but not entirely remarkable, ‘Slideling’ on April 28th. Interspersed with some sparkling minor gems: the widescreen, guns-a-blazing opener, ‘Love In Veins’, the gentle, Lennonesque retrospective and consolate celebration of life’s little ironies, ‘Playgrounds and City Parks’, the affectionate single ‘Sliding’ and the sexy and Continue Reading

Before you start thinking they’re some krautrock version of Air, just because the boys are from Germany and not France, spare a couple of quid and actually listen to it. Picking up where RoysKopp and Zero 7 leave off, DJ Koze, Cosmic DJ, Erobique and co. can be seen introducing some svelte, jazzy gyro rhythms into the mulch and sound checking the self-aggrandizing stance of hip hop as well as throwing the more androgynous approach of electroclash into the bargain. Continue Reading