Reviews

I think it would be no word of a lie to say that ex-Pavement frontman, Malkmus shook off other Pavement members largely because they found it difficult working outside the band’s cheerfully restrictive 3-chord capabilities and because Malkmus was pretty much doing the whole thing himself anyway by the time the Nigel Godrich produced, ‘Terror Twilight’ hit the shelves. Which is understandable, I suppose. Afterall, what use was Andrew Ridgely when George Michael came out the closet. What could he Continue Reading

Here come a bunch of screaming, scruffy rock n roll reprobates knocking seven bells of hell out of classic surf rock; an unlikely combination of outlaws, romantics and vintage guitar licks breaking out of the window, shinning down the drainpipe and tearing down the alley like some kind of wild cat. Shortly to support Richard Hawley on his February tour, the Bethnal Green villains release their brash, ebullient debut, ‘Gospel Bombs’ on March 10th – combining celebrated single, ‘On My Continue Reading

Bruce Sprinsteen had it. Will Oldham and Grant Lee Phillips have it still and folks like Willy Vlautin of Richmond Fontaine could practically cook by it. What do they have? That ability to kick up the dirt of American folklore and have it fall like magic dust on our hard, weary souls. They’re reanimators. Restorers. One hand strokes the course, taut wires of a bruised and battered six-string and the other hand applies CPR. Whatever respiratory problems we have, whatever Continue Reading

From one extreme to the other – a constant impression left by their droolingly-received debut ‘The Loon’ when it tore out of indie’s blind-spot in 2005 like a dogged bungee-tethered banshee dashing betwixt myriad angular approaches, kamikaze beats and delirious post-Black/Malkmus vocals. And in a way that observation does still apply today, though admittedly not with such positive implications. You see, that was then and this is now – and now those extremes have all but diffused, leaving an altogether Continue Reading

So this then, aside from other things, is part of the reason we won’t be seeing a new Pixies album anytime soon, if at all. Which is probably another reason to love it hard. While the spectacularly successful reunion tours have kept their credibility afloat, it is surely universally accepted that a new recording could do nothing but diminish their amber-trapped legend, which makes Kim Deal’s unwillingness to entertain such an idea encouraging. Hearing this, the fourth Breeders album, though Continue Reading

Antidotes? To what? Good question, but it probably doesn’t matter exactly, just that it is. Because indeed it is, to a number of probable ills, but the important thing here is that it feels in the most over-arching generic sense to be a proactive, punishing, propulsive experience – from 90 seconds in when ‘The French Open’ begins its taut onslaught it constantly feels like it is achieving. There is barely a moment on this debut from the Oxford uni drop-out Continue Reading

Fresh and funky. Tracks like ‘Woman To Womb’ happen to be the aural equivalent of opening several windows in some depraved smoky basement in Camberwell; flash brass stabs, the clatter of assorted percussion, some handclaps and some slinky funk-bass. Of course the psychedelic influence is square to the floor and there’s no end of tinkling jazz embellishments rippling beneath Philly’s sleepily skittish vocals. ‘Fish To Fry’ is a classic example: double-bass, a smattering of ivories, some slippery rhymes and flows Continue Reading

There are always two ways to approach a hangover: you can either stay in bed till noon and sleep it off sipping at a glass of water in an effort to baptise the pain, or you can drag yourself downstairs, immerse yourself in coffee and daytime television and make the occasional pass at both your housemate and sobriety. And this is pretty much what we have here: a lo-fi, slightly inexpert, slightly impaired plea bargain. Whether it’s the wine ‘validating Continue Reading

Bauhaus slid fully formed from punk rock’s womb in late 1978.  Over the course of four hot years, the unintentionally birthed a genre (Goth), moved on, moved forward and surged mercurial through the post-punk music scene, tearing into tense, stark, dub-bass driven new-wave, T-Rex-esque glam, and swirling, clattering, orchestral atmospherics, whilst churning it all into a grand velvet, Rimbaudian hallucination.  It was a wild, inspired, enthralling sound – thoroughly derivative of course – but marvellously so, especially for those who Continue Reading