A very genuine musical icon, few have the pedigree to match PJ Harvey; West Country singer, punk, diva, emoter, dizzyingly impassioned songcrafter. She has behind her a distinguished (and we do not use that word lightly) 16 year career split into distinct eras, defined and given longevity not by a prodigious mastery of a particular instrument or style, but rather through raw simmering desire, a high quality threshold and undimmed displays of etiquette, not to mention a true and ever Continue Reading

This is their story and they tell it very well. Sólrún, María, Edda and Hildur, four Icelandic women in their mid twenties collectively known as Amiina first decided they wanted to write music together in 2004. They gathered together every last instrument they could find and piled them into their car. They then filled every available bit of space with food. This, they maintain, was a very, very important part of the process. But it was also very nearly the Continue Reading

 “With my artist albums, I’m conveying emotion, I’m constructing beats and writing songs that represent me as an artist and a person, so it doesn’t necessarily come out as ‘dance heavy,’” says Kaskade. “A mix CD is about walking the line, and fitting my style in with the DJ side of things. This is a head bobbing mix, something to pop in your car and thump.” Walking the line? Head bobbing? Thumping? I’m assuming San Francisco House DJ Kaskade isn’t Continue Reading

Who ever thought Coventry had it in it, eh? The scabby Metropolitan Borough in the West Midlands of England, cornerstone of the British Motor Industry and popular with Luftwaffe and 11th century peeping toms alike finally gets it’s day in the sun with a scraggy indie-pop five-piece called The Sequins who build upon the unlikely success of a couple of low-key singles (‘Nobody Dreams About Me’ – 2005 & ‘Patients’ – 2006) with a violent debut recalling Pulp, The Libertines Continue Reading

“A lovely piece of front-parlour theatre, scripted by aliens, cast with shadows and accompanied by angels.” That’s what we said about ‘The Only Thing I Ever Wanted’ and since the continuity between albums is so demonstrably smooth and even, it seems an unnecessary expense to try and think of anything different. If your nearest and dearest got you a WH Smith voucher last Christmas and intends to repeat that same generosity this year, then why not get her in return Continue Reading

She doesn’t want us to read her biog, see her profile or wave to her in the street. She doesn’t want us to prevail on her upbringing on Long Island, New York as one of six children. She will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. She just wants her music to speak for itself. And it does, with no small amount of empathy either. Jaymay’s music is the uninhibited rush of whispers after midnight, the unpicking Continue Reading

They Might Be Giants have always reveled in surreal scattergun pop. For every chart friendly ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ there are ten willfully offbeat gems such as ‘Hotel Detective In The Future.’Their discography is like a vast accumulation of obscure souvenirs – you can’t think what to do with them all but somehow you can’t throw any out. And here, 25 years after they first began, comes ‘The Else’, a rare attempt to make a ‘normal’ album – that is, Continue Reading

On the Music Club’s last album, the tattered and weary blues of  ‘Love Songs For Patriots’ was offset with tunes that there scathing, wistful and confiding. It was dreamy and dislocated, barbed and bleeding. It tore into the Bush administration with literary abandon and did such equal measures of healing and violence to your heart you might have mistaken Eitzel for a surgeon. So what’s changed? Not a great deal – although the hellfire and the fury are largely absent, Continue Reading

This album is a decade late and doesn’t care. Like a lairy gatecrasher  to a low key party it swaggers up with its 90’s Madchester vibe and proceeds to get drunk before passing out in the middle of the front room. Big Arm are the Missing Link between the Stereo MC’s and Hard Fi – Paul Ryder, co-founder of The Happy Mondays has fashioned a noughties equivalent to his own Mondays, to Flowered Up,  Black Grape and all the other Continue Reading