Reviews

Some people rest on their laurels whilst others lay the full 140 pounds of their own body weight upon them and press down enthusiastically. Former Cranberries banshee, Dolores O’Riordan sadly conforms to the latter. In fact she nor any of her co-fruits have managed to offer anything genuinely worthwhile since their jangling, spectral debut spat up a handful of worthy hits in the mid-90s. ‘Zombie’ was disappointing, ‘Salvation’ was more disappointing still and ‘Ridiculous Thoughts’ was just plain ridiculous. So Continue Reading

Singers who can’t sing are intensely subjective and tricky things for reviewers. Sometimes they work for you, and sometimes they don’t and it’s hard to say why either way. Singers who can’t sing usually crawl along the root note of a chord occasionally leaping up to something higher before ducking back down to the safety of the Dah-na-nah. It’s hard for me to imagine John Lydon screaming ‘Anger is an energy’ any other way than the way he does it Continue Reading

It’s ironic, isn’t it? The shorter the song, the more rhapsodic the review; the grittier the band, the more the write up becomes the literary equivalent of a Yes triple album. Well, Kong, are pretty punky so I don’t propose to bore you unduly with anything more than a few choice, spittle-flecked words… Music ->  more thrash than punk – loud and nasty but still (somehow) technically able.  Tight almost. Something like Fugazi. Vocals -> Yep, Johnny Rotten-esque. Everything from Continue Reading

You wouldn’t have thought Jon Thor Birgisson could get more grandiose as chief purveyor of Sigur Ros’s pensive majesty and sporter of occasionally baffling on stage regalia but he’s trying. Dispensing entirely with vocals, Riceboy Sleeps – consisting of Birgisson and partner Alex Somers – could cynically be viewed as an indulgent artistic sideline. Sharing much in common with the classical flourishes of Phelan Shepphard, Shearwater and, of course, the glacial splendour of Sigur Ros, it’s an album awash with Continue Reading

Personally I am not so sure that every successful songwriter and consummate session player is able to make the transition from accomplished hired-hand to accomplished man-of-the-match, and whilst Fin Greenall, aka Fink may have played alongside such soulful, melancholic thoroughbreds as Zero 7, Massive Attack, Camille and the Fratellis (to name just a few) there’s little here to suggest he can justify transferring his considerable talents as prodigious supporting cast member to leading man. Bluesy, introspective and creeping around your earphones Continue Reading

He came out with an album a few years ago under his own name, Michael Johnson and inevitably nothing really happened. This time, however, he’s gone to the trouble of putting a bit of a primates concept together, which is great, because without such concepts we’d have gone through our whole lives without the likes of Simian, Cornelius and the Arctic Monkeys to soothe our aching hominoid souls. How the whole idea works in the context of the music though, Continue Reading

Ooh eck, best keep this brief as it’s an album that combines the frustrating time-signatures and stop start malarkey of old progressive dinosaurs like Yes and King Crimson with the bonkers-pop antics of serial fruitcakes like Bjork. And frankly it’s all rather messy. For heaven’s sakes, it has song titles like ‘Temecula Sunrise’ and ‘Fluorescent Half Dome’, so what did you expect?  And if you thought the Polyphonic Spree were a pain in the arse, just check out ‘Cannibal Resource’ Continue Reading

I suppose Emily Eavis must be something of an old hippy at heart for personally inviting Nottingham’s ‘Swimming’ to perform at Glastonbury last year – not that the band’s debut album, ‘The Fireflow Trade’ is all deeply progressive dreamscapes and strung-out psychedelia – but much of it is. In fact, the whole mix sounds like it’s been squeezed through a wormhole into some future dimension on colonial Mars. And squeezed through no shortage of digital effects processors too. So cue Continue Reading

She might bang on to the likes of The Guardian about how ‘ard it’s been living on the fringes of society after a brutally middle-class Jamaican upbringing but hard-luck stories aside this has to be one of the best debut albums from a magically complex talent in a long time. Dripping with smart and sexy poetry and showcasing one of the finest oboe riffs on record, tracks like ‘The Key’ pack an emotional punch in an increasingly crude and superficial Continue Reading