Gonks. You remember them don’t you? Small, furry soft toys your sister used to collect. Like me, you probably never really got them, but at one time they were a ‘must have’ playground accessory. But unlike Rubiks Cubes, they couldn’t be used as a tool to dazzle your mates with how brainy you were and unlike conkers, they proved inadequate when trying to deal someone a really cruel blow on a wet-play in January. In fact it was impossible to Continue Reading
Whilst we’ve not been able to keep up with the constant line-up changes, the temporary break-ups or just who the feck is really running the thing, Crud were no less pleased to learn that cheerfully manufactured all-girl pop band, The Pipettes would be releasing their second album, ‘Earth Versus The Pipettes’ And naturally, in a world of such freakish infidelity, precious few constants remain. So what are we waving goodbye to? Well all three original members, Ani, Gwenno and Beth, the polka Continue Reading
Having never been a fan of funk, and even less a fan of thumb-thwacking helium funkrockers like Level 42, I’m not sure I am in the best position to judge Sunday Best sort, Max Sedgley’s new album, ‘Suddenly Everything’. However, if the musky, patent leather reek of a Ford Gran Torino and extraordinary, flapping flairs is all that you aspire to then tracks like ‘Hey Mr Superstar’ will have you spitting up a range of entirely suitable blaxploitation catchphrases in Continue Reading
Brendan Perry. Wow, this name takes me back a bit. Last time I caught ear of Brendan Perry’s lugubrious, unearthly baritone was when I was poncing around Sheffield Collegiate as an English undergraduate, a dog-eared copy of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Book of Hugely Precocious Smart Arse, All Knowing, All Trouble-Avoiding Verse’ hanging out of my back pocket and a lifetime subscription to 4AD records carved into my forearm (well written in red biro, to be fair). For all those who might Continue Reading
I am sure this must have sounded like a good idea at the time. Just how that trip to the Lakes in January must have sounded from the warm, cosy platform of your laptop in June. Mercury-Prize winning Northern folk-heroine, Kathryn Williams and her punky playmate, Anna Spencer put down their baking trays, cleared the table of a crazy accumulation of crayons, paints and handy-wipes and set about creating an album for kids that sailed beyond the usual limitations of Continue Reading
Coming as she does from a respected West End family, I suppose it was inevitable that Eliza Sophie Caird should adopt the name of the celebrated cockney flower girl whose crude, rough edges are famously smoothed out by top-hatted Edwardian gent, Henry Higgins, but given the current market demand for chirpy East End chicks whose privileged upbringings are routinely buried beneath two inches of lipgloss and more dropped aitches than a Chas n’ Dave Scrabble party, you have to assume Continue Reading
You can’t polish a turd. Whoever said that? Were they onto something or were they just talking shit? The reality was something we knew all along: the turd was quite happy feeling shit. When you’ve been unceremoniously squeezed out of someone’s arse and suffered the ignominy of being chewed up, absorbed and subjected to the usual slings and arrows of the exhausting digestive process, you’re unlikely to respond positively to the demands of civil society, style or no style. Turds Continue Reading
Dismissing the band as a pair of Berlin-based ‘electro-rockers’ might give the impression that what we have here on ‘Two In One’ is a pair of fairly camp, anodyne and inaccessible geeks with plenty in the way of vintage gear but little in the way of actual songs. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Whilst the chirpy and rather fidgety bubbles and squeaks of tracks like ‘Be Home Before Dinner’ and ‘I Like Holden Cauldfield’ might present them Continue Reading
I’m a rambling man’. Or so said Lemon Jelly on their deliciously tangy debut, ‘Lost Horizons’ – a similarly bizarre conflation of electronic astronautics and the quintessentially rural. In those days it was ‘ducks’ that grabbed our attention, but this time round it’s rocks, stones, meltwater, a bar of Kendal mint cake and more orienteering equipment that you can shake a stick at. Film and Tevevsion composer, Andrew Phillips and his erstwhile rambling buddy, Marcus O’Dair withstand the hurly burly Continue Reading
It’s been alleged that the six men charged with licensing offences following an illegal rave in a Pembrokeshire village over the bank holiday weekend had been spurred on by the release of Herve’s ‘Ghetto Bass 2’ – a riotous collection of buzz-saw beats, fidgety chopped up vocals and more sudden changes and surprises than an entire season of 24. It’s big, it’s bright, it’s fun it’s funky, and its totally tropical 34 tracks have been hammered into an exhausting 2 Continue Reading