Reviews

‘I like to take you in the morning, when the day is fresh. When I can’t remember who you are, or what you’ve done to deserve my flesh’. And thus it begins. 50 minutes of broadly gothic, broadly neurotic, tomb–raiding agit-folk from Bristol’s crusty old sea-harpy, Rose Kemp, who in spite of her amusingly theatrical caterwauling occasionally dishes up a ballad or two of prodigious (if elusive) worth (‘Flawless’, ‘Nature’s Hymn’). Of course, as the daughter of Maddy Prior and Continue Reading

If Theresa Andersson’s new album, ‘Hummingbird, Go!’ album is anything to go by it’s a pity she didn’t discover her kitchen ten years earlier.  Mixed by Linus Larsson (Peter Bjorn and John, Mercury Rev) and played and produced almost entirely by the New Orleans based-Swede herself, the album effortlessly surpasses Andersson’s bland and uninspiring debut and it’s two subsequent straw clutching releases. Clearly this songbird never lacked ability, her five years as violinist for fellow Swede Anders Osborne was testament Continue Reading

So, where’s the old guy then?  Ben Folds is in his forties now and, hell, he was barely a day younger when he started banging out his AOR piano brouhahas 15 years ago. You’d have forgiven him a slide into sub-Elton mawkishness by now, it probably would have even suited him. And who knows, had his love life not suffered a spinal collapse recently that is what we could be reviewing here. But it did, and he’s hardly been off Continue Reading

The whole idea of a ‘prepared piano’ sounds a bit preposterous, and not least a little pompous, but what do you expect of a man who has studied classical piano for ten years, played ‘rapturous’ support to Iceland’s off-kilter experimentalists, Múm and lives in one of those secluded and darkly animated forests more traditionally associated with Bjork videos and the Brothers Grimm. So what is ‘prepared piano music’? Well it’s not the kind of thing your average Blue Peter presenter Continue Reading

Somewhat cruelly cast aside by the phenomenally successful XL Recordings in 2003 (one time home of Basement Jaxx, Lemon Jelly, White Stripes, Raconteurs, Prodigy, Tapes n Tapes et al), Dubai’s Christian Craig Robinson proves that the vast majority of ‘vital’ and ‘happening’ of things are not occurring in the most ‘vital’ and ‘happening’ of places. His third album release on his own ‘Faith and Industry’ records is a beautifully freaky jumble of shamelessly upbeat and effervescent electro-pop (‘Go Go Go’), Continue Reading

The shoegaze phenomenon has, if you could raise your retinas high enough to see, recently enjoyed somewhat of a re-birth, or at the very least a re-run, like a resident spirit still trudging the halls endlessly, gaze locked on his shackles – perhaps its actually just that we’ve all become perceptive mediums of late. Rising like an agoraphobic phoenix from the flames, started in the London club Sonic Cathedral and marked most recently by My Bloody Valentine’s reignited and victorious Continue Reading

You know when you’re up there, right up there, on the lip of elation? You daren’t think there could ever be a purer happiness, you’re like a dog with his head out the window of a pimped monster truck thundering down the north face of the Eiger, endorphins whistling through your whiskers like darts of pleasure. Thomas Tantrum look pitifully down on you and your stunted emotions. You make them sad. What are you, dead inside? This is a remarkably Continue Reading

On the basis of her classy debut album, ‘Words Came Back To Me’ we said the 15 year-old’s songs were of such precocious, able-bodied wisdom that she could qualify for a free bus-pass and help with her winter-fuel bills, and we haven’t changed our mind. Still only 16 and still rustling up note after note of silky, soft downtempo and feathery, astral jazz, ‘This Storm’ makes a marked, but not dramatic departure from the cosy sophistication and Starbucks froth of Continue Reading