It’s nice, at least, to hear her voice. Ever the contrary one, rather than properly following up ‘The Greatest’ and buoying her now slowly but steadily rising star, she chooses to put out her second full record of cover versions. This is not as a straight cop out as one might think though, rest assured we’re not even in the same hemisphere as that recent Radio 1 anniversary abomination; bands going through the motions, sapping life out of standards without Continue Reading

Let’s face it; if Amy Winehouse hadn’t been able to enlist the slinky Midas touch of marvellous man-of-the-moment Mark Robson, it’s entirely likely she would have disappeared into the ether of the pleasant yet awkwardly underwhelming ‘Frank’ album, such was the dangerously fragile nature of the ‘Chavette/Billie Holliday’ binary. She had the voice, no doubt about it, but she had only one decent song to her credit, and though she might be limping along her street of dreams like the Continue Reading

Some days you wake up and it’s raining. Some days you wake up on the right side of the bed. Sometimes in the middle. And sometimes you wake up and find that another album has been released by Frank Black in any one of his many, and increasingly unnecessary, disguises. In fact we are more likely to wake up and start rifling through the particulars of why Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV adopts one particular alias over another than we Continue Reading

Take British Sea Power’s second album, 2005’s ‘Open Season’, in isolation and it remains a sure-footed accomplishment from a never less than able-bodied group ruling indie’s fringes with an immaculate sense of creativity. With its clean lines, careful delivery, crisp licks pealing from Noble’s guitar like sheerings from an ironmonger’s lathe and unusual yet uncomplicated themes spoken with breathless wonder by Yan it was an easy record to get caught in a gentle spin with; palatable, dreamy, conscientious, waxed and Continue Reading

Think about the albums you’ve heard in the last year (it’s the end of December, we’re in a lethargic, nostalgic mood, no excuses necessary surely). There have been some good ones, no? Verging on vintage even. Now think about how many of those you didn’t have the measure of, that you didn’t have in a box by about track 3 or 4 – even the good ones. A mere handful, right? Christian Silva may not be the single most eclectic Continue Reading

For all the lush and reckless romanticism of his rich yet faintly stiff velvet baritone, there’s a noble misanthropy providing a much more granite-like seam on Anthony Reynold’s generously foppish debut album, ‘British Ballads’. Reclining on a sofa of idle sophistication and engaging in all manner of whimsy, the Cardiff-born Reynolds surveys his kingdom with a combination of wide-eyed wonder and awkward dislocation. He is of his world, but not in it, straddling a divide that threatens to fracture still further Continue Reading

To be without discernable shape or form would, you’d think, not be without its problems. But it can, as proven here by Le Loup’s assortment of musical resonances, still allow you to draw the most fascinating shapes. And in that sense it is the very embodiment of freedom in itself, which can have no form or constraint, lest it not actually be freedom rather just something with a bit of wiggle room. But we digress. The surely knowingly preposterously titled Continue Reading

Formed in 2001 by Chris Hathwell, Blake Miller, and Johan Boegli, the band had already opened for the likes of Blur, Hot Hot Heat and the Pixies by the time debut album, Dangerous Dreams finally arrived on the shelves in 2004. Since then this industrious little LA three-piece have offered the same kind of support to Bloc Party, Interpol and Nine Inch Nails. See a theme developing? Something a little bit indie? A little bit electro? A little bit me? Continue Reading

It is rare that we consider it necessary to talk of the pedigree of the artist we review, seeing as so few are in possession of it in any true weighty sense. Yet it was only yesterday that we spoke of PJ Harvey’s and so soon after it becomes a necessity that we reference it once more. And in the modern age perhaps nobody has it like Nick Cave, and indeed those he surrounds himself with. He and The Bad Continue Reading