Reviews

Plushgun is another one of those bedroom-studio-to-myspace-and-beyond stories. I can imagine writer/producer/arranger Daniel Ingala in another time wearing a paper general’s hat and sitting amidst the massed ranks of toy tin soldiers – it’s that sense of a self-created world in miniature that comes across, something that for better and for worse the internet has helped to flourish. Ingala’s world sounds a lot like The Postal Service, or perhaps a bookish OMD with soft but driving synths and vocals that Continue Reading

The last time we saw our intrepid anti-hero he was appearing, it has to be said, remarkably upbeat. Dan Michaelson, the baritone rudder of twee but firm-handed post-Britpoppers Absentee, had been somewhat befuddled by love and life and had dragged himself through acts cynical, trying and tongue in cheek on their debut album ‘Schmotime’ before climaxing with the ticker-tape parade of ‘Treacle’ and its repeated “love – it gets sweeter every day!” refrain. The sun came out, it was undoubtedly Continue Reading

Everybody will have their own story to tell about the boy who was the first in the class to buy (and even use as it was intended) a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer, but they’ll all roughly feature some boy who always sat at the front of the class, who always had their hand up and was inevitably the only person in school who had a dog that never chewed their homework. And whilst many of us were able to Continue Reading

The Walkmen have already earned their place in history by releasing the single most acerbic bout of unhinged brilliance to beat its way out of Strokes-era New York in ‘The Rat’, a lean couple of minutes of the most infectiously propulsive post-punk and a voice that sounded like it might snap at any given moment and send serotonin levels through the roof. Casablancas’ mob even had a go at emulating its raw power on their third album to a much Continue Reading

Short history lesson, coming up, so loosen your ties, tilt back your chair and wait for the wind rush. It’s June 22, 1948, and the SS Empire Windrush is docking at Tilbury in Essex. It’s an important moment in the history of modern England. The steamship has stopped in Jamaica to pick up some of the thousands of servicemen who had been recruited to serve in the armed forces during the Second World War. Also on board are some 500 Continue Reading

It would be unforgivably churlish and conceited of me to dismiss ‘Irish Jazz-a-Billy Sensation’ Imelda May simply on account of her being lauded by the terminally bland and increasingly irrelevant ivory tickler, Jools Holland – but that’s the kind of stock she comes from: those with one ear to the ground and one hand on their Starbucks Macchiato. It’s as if this slurring, sultry chanteuse with the fifties hair-do and the leopard skin vest has practically been invoked by sweaty Continue Reading

Don’t even begin to f**cking mention ‘You’re Gorgeous’, screams the joyfully impoverished lo-fi of Death of the Neighbourhood’s unruly buzzing title-track. Even the cheeky, free form scatting of lead-up up single, ‘Cokeholes’ offers a typically arsy thumb in your eye to all that mid-nineties crooning. Not that there was anything wrong with it, of course. In fact I don’t know why Mr Jones ever took so much offence to it. Me and the wife even had the swelling orchestral intro Continue Reading

It must be exhausting being so brilliant, really. Marc Bianchi has been recording as Her Space Holiday for the past 10 years, wearing reliable electronic impressions into indie rock’s veneer, a la Postal Service, and seasoning with tongue in cheek lyrical content, making him a Magnetic Fields or Mountain Goats driven by Daft Punk. Modern music with a real heart and an organic cotton shirt, basically. Which makes his sudden and unexpected hand break twist into the rough a bit Continue Reading

Unlike Beth Gibbons or Amy Winehouse, who continue to apply a skewed approach to their not unconsiderable talents, Nell Bryden lends her smoky and competent tonsils to a fairly under whelming anthology of tracks that cheerfully approximate the best and worst characteristics of blues, country and western and traditional Dixieland jazz. It’s not unpleasant by any means, but the intent seems squarely more focused on arousing the interest of record companies and moguls that it does the affections and curiosity of Continue Reading

It’s a tale of shaving cream and make up, swimming around and break-ups in an ultra-self conscious stylee. Most people balk at the first sign of self-reflexivity in music and I’m no different, so the clever clever winks and nods to organ fades, carousel stops, made-up screaming babies and notes and dots and rhymes pretty gets fairly tiresome and ingratiating by track five. The downside of shooting off one smirky and smarmy meta-strike after another is that the listener never Continue Reading