Reviews

There’s a sense of comfortable dislocation that comes from listening to Serenaide’s ‘The Other End of the Receiver’. Over a decade ago my cold Sheffield bedsit would be filled with the thin white jangle of indie pop, and now here it comes again, only this time from a bunch of kids half a world away in the steam of Singapore and Indonesia, simultaneously incongruous and yet completely right. And it connects, and it makes sense, and I could be listening Continue Reading

I have never once lain on my back in a field of corn, avec lover, hand in hand, the tall golden stalks distorting the piercing afternoon sunlight, a warm breeze bringing slow life to everything around me, the world beyond unfolding like a cinefilm movie, just out of reach. But it would be lush, that, wouldn’t it. That’s what the track ‘It’s Close Up, Far Away’ from Denmark’s The Kissaway Trail feels like, or at least what we imagine it Continue Reading

Q Magazine is a shit old rag, isn’t it? Not only do they think they can reach out to the mainstream’s lucrative ‘yoof market’ by some lame inclusion of a pull-out poster (I f**king ask you) they describe the frazzled scores and beats of the inspired new record from Roll Deep as ‘hardcore stuff for Asbo’d teenagers in hoodies to stiff glue to’. I mean, where do you start with a statement like this, eh? Not only does it crassly Continue Reading

Look, we could pontificate about this release till the cows come home, and let’s face it, lest there’s a sudden culling of bovines everywhere, I damned suspect we might do. How important is Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army? Very. Very very important. Way ahead of their time in a time before time and the same is naturally true of that charming old miserablist, John Peel – both of whom feature here, courtesy of Cooking Vinyl’s brand spanking new Maida Continue Reading

Although the liner notes add a bit of spin to the proposition that Ziggy Stardust morphing into Blue (and Green) Eyed Soulboy was as wrong footing and unpredictable as Radiohead doing reggae, the comparison is not as crass as it looks. Anyone who remembers Radiohead mailing out the first promos of Kid A are likely to recall just how bloody inflexible the vast majority of us were at the proposition of the world’s finest guitar band downing their picks and Continue Reading

How to approach Fields? On horseback? In a pincer movement? Of course we don’t mean that literally, though it’s not as ridiculous as it might seem. There is a lot going on here you see, and it’s progressive to the extreme. There is no drought of ideas, you can define it by its movement, its constant rolling evolution, its resourcefulness, but what is there of material value? Is there anywhere to get a foothold? What is there that is so Continue Reading

They may have lacked the marketable quirks of some of their peers when they appeared from nowhere with ‘A Certain Trigger’, but they were spotless, nary a foot nor combed-over hair out of place. And they turned out to be more literate than The Rakes, more immediately accessible than The Futureheads and frankly more reliable than most. Their massive success, initially surprising, can probably be attributed to the fact that there was, and is, nothing much to dislike about them. Continue Reading

These are frenzied times and we are busy people. Very busy. Patience is a virtue requiring more intense magnification than ever before, and one so very rarely indulged. It’s almost more trouble than it’s worth trying to hold your attention from one. Moment to the next. See, I even had to split that last sentence to increase my chances of you actually making it to the end. The days of poring over one band emphatically to the point that it Continue Reading

If the swinging sixties-retro of the gas-guzzling ‘Setting Sun’ is anything to go by, The Aliens are throwing in more references than a final year dissertation on astro-physics, tipping more winks than a nodding dog and creating a kind of myspace traditionally reserved for aging hippies and zen-style motor mechanics. It’s like Dennis Hopper never got off his motorcycle. It’s like Jimi Hendrix never choked on his own vomit. It’s like The Doors went on to write folk records and Continue Reading

Remember the sixties? Of course you don’t, they were ages ago. Yes, before MySpace. Before there was even anything to play MySpace on. It wasn’t Betamax compatible, was it? I’d say ask your parents, but if the telly is to be believed they were probably dancing naked in a park in San Francisco, or wrapped around a tree (or a Rolling Stone) in swinging London, under the whale-numbing influence of an uninhibitedly creative cocktail of drugs unsoiled by the impending Continue Reading