Time’s a rodeo. Or so sayeth Dawn Landes – better half of crossover folk-country type, Josh Ritter and sometime member of Hem. And whilst I’m not sure exactly what it is she’s trying to say (I mean, I was reliably informed by Garth Brooks that it’s bulls and blood, dust and mud and the roar of a Sunday crowd – but I could be getting it mixed up with Sunday League football, so I don’t know). Whatever it is though, Continue Reading
As a dedicated ‘indie-kid’ I remember being round at my girlfriend’s flat in the equally dedicated bohemian quarter of Sheffield’s Broomhill district. It was late, we’d both been drinking and we were sitting down to share that inevitable post-pub spliff. And being a sort of club-sort she casually dismissed the ‘His n’Hers’ Pulp disc I pushed at her, and instead bunged into the CD player something that sounded as if we’d been surreptitiously lowered into a subterranean chamber in Tibet Continue Reading
You know, not so long ago, even the likes of Mike Oldfield had to lump on a bird’s vocal to even stand a chance of pushing of vinyl onto the average attention-deficit teen, but with the likes of Four Tet, M83 and a shitload of others turning out instrumentals as prodigious, ‘tubular’ and downright peculiar as lark tongues in aspic, the trade has become almost credible. So credible, in fact, that even Paul Smith of Maximo Park is down as Continue Reading
Not the most auspicious of starts – and certainly not the coolest. Loose collection of fiddle-packing blues and jazz misfits get invite from University lecturer to demonstrate recording trickery by taking a band into the studio and letting the rest of his students watch as they bang out a couple of the tunes they’ve been working on (but clearly not finished). Yes, there’s something faintly clinical about it, something fairly hokey, but when you learn that the producer they invite Continue Reading
If you were in any doubt as to the reach of Patti Smith’s influences as punk and poet, watch the concert scenes where luminaries such as Bono and Thom Yorke huddle on the sidelines and watch their hero with all the gauche admiration of teenagers. That’s the kind of devotion Smith has inspired in the great and the good and the misunderstood since the 70’s and this documentary, filmed over eleven years (from 1995) is a gently engrossing look at Continue Reading
From one of the most annoying songs in the history of music to one of its most annoying frontmen – neither are actually contained on this debut album from whopping 11-piece collective Edward Sharpe & The Magnificent Zeroes, but both are relevant. First up, ‘It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It’; not actually the song itself, but the sentiment inherent in its title. There’s nothing here that is especially remarkable, except for perhaps its spirit. Continue Reading
The xx don’t come at you with all guns blazing. They don’t shout. They don’t even play their instruments particularly loud. Instead, they kiss and caress, lulling you into an amorously comatose state. You could almost say they put you in the mood for loving. But the unrequited kind where you love, lose and thanklessly long. The xx even have the good grace to provide the disheartened dialogue for it all. From the aptly titled ‘Intro’ – a fleeting two Continue Reading
A follow-up to the band’s ever so slightly disappointing Domino debut, ‘Limbo Panto’, ‘Two Dancers’ sees the Leeds/Kendal four-piece exchange the ‘fascinating’ but frequently ‘fathomless’ and unruly afro-pop trickery that marred such blissfully tender paeans as ‘The Devils Crayon’ for a far less chaotic celebration of all that is eloquent and ugly about old Blighty – whether that’s the not unsubstantial charms of the girls in Whitby and Hounslow or the thrilling, appalling beauty of receiving a good kicking at Continue Reading
I’m not a huge soul/r&b fan so it means something for me to say that this documentary, out on DVD in September, is one of my films of the year. In the early seventies Billy Paul hit the charts both sides of the Atlantic with his archetypal fine-wine-and-leopard-skin-rug soul classic ‘Me and Mrs.Jones’. However, his follow up single ‘Am I Black Enough for You’ flopped. Was his material too contentious for mainstream audiences? The documentary – a mix of interviews Continue Reading
High hills, valleys, fields, stiles, white dogs, black dogs, yellow dogs, lame dogs, limping dogs, poachers, roaring gales, getting wet and endeavouring to procure lodgings for oneself with little more than eighteen pence. Not the kind of imagery apt to be thrown up by either Lily Allen or Little Boots admittedly (with the exception of poaching, perhaps) but in the context of James Yorkston, not entirely unpredictable, pretty much because Yorkston has been roaring the gospel, rolling the harr and Continue Reading