Reviews

Sometimes shallow enough to judge a book by its cover, we liked this CD before it had even left its wrapper. We’d previously been seduced by distorted, buoyant, Sparklehorse-esque first single ‘Burning The Cow’, but at a time when copy controlled CDs are spreading like silicon wild-fire through a misinformed industry in a state of paranoid panic, infringing your right to self-govern your own listening habits (i.e. halting something as innocent as the copy of CD to minidisc), it’s a Continue Reading

Following their highly successful sophomore release, 13 Ways To Bleed On Stage, Cold returns stronger than ever with Year Of The Spider.  With the chart success of the first single, “Stupid Girl”, on which Weezer’s River Cuomo lends his post punk guitar work to, the bands’ third album sold over 101,000 copies within the first week of its release.  Like Staind, Bush and Creed, Cold are technically complex with a brutal metal edge.  Discovered by a fellow Jacksonville, Florida band, Continue Reading

Waiting for a revelation? Well, hand on heart, you’re unlikely to get it on Dakona’s debut album, ‘Perfect Change’. What you do get though is a perefectly consumate slice of light alternative rock. Signed up recently by cocky upstarts, Maverick Records, Vancouver based, Dakona peddle the sort of young, serious and intense brand of rock favoured by the likes of Nada Surf, Atticus Fault, White Light Motorcade, Dredg, and Audiovent. A departure, however, comes in the form of some faint Continue Reading

After gaining a loyal fan-base while touring with Weezer and The Strokes, the power pop quintet Rooney are making a major splash with the release of their self-titled debut.   The first single “Blueside” is receiving heavy airplay and the video is getting a regular spin on MTV who has dubbed the band ‘buzzworthy’.  Not bad for five kids from LA.  Like nerd rockers Weezer, Rooney play a form of punk pop which is aggressive yet has a jubilant vibe.  The Continue Reading

One person has already described this release as the musical equivalent of sucking champagne from a leper’s unwashed shoe. You might on the otherhand be more inclined to feel it is in fact like sucking leper juice from a champagne bottle. The choice is yours. It really depends on which side your bread is buttered. If, like me, you remember when Iron Maiden were here the first time around and not just some absurd and improbable blueprint for Spinal Tap, Continue Reading

If this was the worst record the world had yet to hear this year it would obviously still have half the globe’s pale-faced indie kids dribbling like limp geriatric canines in damp anticipation. Lounging in the deep-red leather producer’s chair is (*drum roll*) a man called  Jack White, while tinkering with knobs and the like behind the glass, in his own studio with a touch more modesty, is songwriting bud Brendan Benson. And then on the one day Brendan couldn’t Continue Reading

They like a bit of contradiction and confrontation do Mogwai.  At leastthat’s often the assumed persona they have always given out.  Since theyfirst set up their guitars too close to the amps back in the mid-90s theScots quintet have been a contrary bunch – at one turn scything down indiekids with walls of feedback, the next fondly creating Eno/Sigur Ros blissfulatmospherics.  They speak up and out in the press about whatever takes theirfancy, yet rarely feature vocals in the music.  Continue Reading

Singer-songwriter and swirling jazz lethario, Bruce Cockburn releases his first full-length studio since 1999’s well received “Breakfast In New Orleans Dinner In Timbuktu“ and with three decades of material now behind him, it was unlikely it was going to be anything less than a consumate and richly layered collection of bluesey and instinctive finger-lickin’ work tunes. With a lazy and humid feel not unlike that of 70’s jazz/folk beard master John Martyn, Cockburn (yes, an unfortunate name for a serious Continue Reading

They came, they conquered. They came again, they conquered. With more than just an air of predictability Metallica return with the fairly hefty and typically miserable and misanthropic, St Anger. And yes, it’s typically angry also. Let’s assess the itinerary: Vitriol? Check. Facial morphing technique? Check. Non-specific bestial elements? Check. Volume on 11? Check. Ludricous menacing growl? Check. Heaving, bristling testicles? Check. Improbable all round scowls? Check. Monstrously miscalculated orchestra? Wait a minute….just who was supposed to bring the monstrously Continue Reading

To some people there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever as to what something will sound like. These people are either shockingly decisive or drainingly unimaginative. To Le Neon a chorus will always sound a bit like ‘School’ by Nirvana and the verses will nearly always take lead from Sonic Youth’s ‘Daydream Nation’, with a bit of ‘Dirty’s feedback thrown about for good measure. Le Neon land somewhere slap-boom-clatter-screech-BANG in the middle of those two definitions. Or slightly and quite probably Continue Reading