There is an awful lot to dislike about Mumm-Ra, which we may as well be upfront about, clear the air. For a start, there’s the name, presumably a misguided stab at knowing retro kitsch, but coming off like the cheap novelty plastic figure with teeth-marks in that no-one plays with any more because it was and is just a bit rubbish. And they hardly convince in the evil nemesis role either, far too fresh-faced. Have they even had chance to Continue Reading

In my day ‘party music’ could only mean one of two things: Russ Abbott or Black Lace. ‘Course there was always The Nolans and a dash of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ by way of relief but nothing too noisy for the kiddies and for grandma. As sure as sausages were on sticks out came ‘Agadoo’ and ‘Atmosphere’ and everyone would be three sheets to the wind and happy as sandboys. But times have changed and the point that aims at party’s Continue Reading

Cambridge’s boomin’ house letharios, Andy Cato (real name Andrew Cocup) and Tom Findlay have to be the Troy McClures of popular music today. You may remember them from such successful TV commercials as Renault Mégane’s ‘I See You Baby/Shaking That Ass’ and 2001’s ‘If Everybody Looked The Same’ by Mercedez-Benz. You might also remember them from the hit movie ‘Collateral’, ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, previews for Channel 4’s ‘Lost’ and the video game Rayman 3. It’s a Lemon Jelly thing. Continue Reading

The initial and dominating impression you take away from this album, their eighth, is how very comfortable they sound. You’ll already be filling in the blanks there yourself, won’t you. But comfortable needn’t be a negative, it needn’t stand for all the things you presume it to. Granted, go back 15 years and the concept of the Manics being anything so sedate as ‘comfortable’ would have seemed an anomaly – they practically sold their whole shtick as an act of Continue Reading

Hardest game in the world, this male singer-songwriter lark. Well, it’s not, perhaps, but right at the moment in a genre saturated with man-and-his-guitar mediocrity, where the that bloody boy Blunt has both energised the market (well, the supermarket at least) sales wise and sapped any impression of innovation from it like a dehydrated vampire with his bewildering omnipresence, it can be hard to achieve any height above the mainstream parapet of inoffensive soft focus. The same mainstream that now Continue Reading

This is fun. But good it isn’t, and clean it ain’t. I mean, it’s good – audaciously so at points – but it’s not good. It’s really quite bad, if you know what we mean? It’s steal a milk float and churn up your neighbour’s rose garden in glorious slow motion fun, drink your grandma’s best rum and surf up and down the stairs on her Stanna-lift wearing a tea cosy on your head kind of larks. Proper “ooooph, you Continue Reading

The expectations on second albums are hardly what they were now, are they? An end-to-end schedule of ‘Sam’s Towns’,  ‘Winning Days’ and ‘Room On Fires’ have somewhat subdued our giddy abandon, our impossible hopes and dreams traded (perhaps quite understandably) for ‘more of the same’ or an album ‘with a few good tracks on it’; the risk of musical triumph falling in direct relation to the potential for disappointment. It’s a post ‘Be Here Now’ thing, a post ‘Kid A’ Continue Reading

A shaft of light arriving onto the darkness is always likely to tender the advent of a brand new world. It’s there at our birth and it’s rumoured to be there in the blinding flash of light at the end of a tunnel when we take our terminal breath. It’s there at the edge of salvation and it’s there at the first strike of inspiration. Written and conceived by Cowboy Junkies guitarist, Michael Timmins at the band’s Toronto studio, ‘At Continue Reading