Reviews

What compels an ordinarily unassuming man to wake up one morning, grab his ordinarily unassuming double-barrel shotgun and his .22 rifle with telescopic sight, go into town and fire randomly at innocent people, killing 12 and leaving umpteen others critically injured? By that same taken what compels Black Francis to grab an old guitar, finger some ‘interesting’ chord-shapes and promptly head into the studio in the mistaken belief he actually has something of worth to record? Both deeds are really quite Continue Reading

Sub Pop was always one of those ‘gateway’ American record labels, forever offering a tantalising glimpse of some fairly scruffy and unpredictable but no less thrilling US music. Peoples of deprived African regions or those overcoming natural disasters might find an adequate parallel in UN sponsored airdrops. There was something of a humanitarian feel about it all, like we would otherwise starve without it. Today it may have lost some of its mystique but little of its impact. Fleet Foxes, Continue Reading

If we were to exchange a few home truths here, we’d have to acknowledge that the rise of Pavement in the popular imaginations of us Brits stems squarely from the gamut of namechecks none too liberally sprinkled by Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon of Blur during their  1997-1999 period. At this time the band’s mouthpiece, Stephen Malkmus was chums with Albarn and Albarn’s then girlfriend Justin Frischmann. There’s no doubting they were a major influence on Blur, but just what Continue Reading

One minute Sweden’s sweeping pop sweethearts, Mixtapes and Cellmates were trading faintly awkward and tricksy electronic beats and bristling with more static than a balloon rubbed for several minutes on a woolly jumper and the next they’re trading the kind of licks from commonly associated with prickly guitar bands like Editors and foaming with the fury of a tempest-tossed British Sea Power. But it’s still implausibly gorgeous. January saw release of single, ‘Soon’ – a tumultuous and kinetic force of Continue Reading

This is something of a departure for Kaki King. Okay, it’s not a totally unexpected departure as the guitarist’s 2008 album, ‘Dreaming of Revenge’ provided enough road signs, but it is still no less surprising to hear all those desultory jazz signatures and fret-wobbling vagaries coalesce into actual songs, and rock songs, for that matter. Sure, there had always been the basic germ of an angry, misanthropic slacker type burrowing around in her gentle, and frustratingly instrumental ruminations about life Continue Reading

Sitting through Dan Sartain’s entertainingly twangy and nourish new album, ‘Lives!’ is a little like watching someone put together a 15” replica of Joe Meek’s legendary Holloway Road studios made almost entirely out of matchsticks. You’d be hard pressed not be dazzled by how faithful the record is to all those fusty old analogue methods used by folks like Meek and how much mouldy, authentic dust the whole sound has acquired, but as loyal and ostensibly affectionate the record is Continue Reading

Where the f*ck do half of these people spring from eh? Big in their hometown of Portland, Oregon but rarely venturing beyond the city boundaries in terms of playing live, this boy-girl duo of ex-husband, ex-wife team, Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have acquired no shortage of cult admirers since their none too earth shattering inception in 1993 (Bright Eyes, Stephen Malkmus) but have managed to dodge commercial triumph with much the same success as George W Bush avoided the Continue Reading

To be perfectly frank, I’m not really one for instrumental music, in the same way I’m not fond of pictures that don’t have something big and obvious upfront. My attention span is such that I find myself lapsing into a coma after little more than five-minutes of nobody talking. So whilst I’m perfectly pleased to learn that Brighton DJ, Simon Green has been self-producing, self-playing and self-abusing since the tender age of eighteen, it still fails to lift what is Continue Reading

Whether it’s a sign we are not yet out of the recession, or an indication of a brand new thrifty logic by artists, it’s clear from many of the independent artists of late that a scaled-back acoustic approach scores a more pleasing response from their audience. The likes of Bat For Lashes, and her lavish production credits are a tad out of sync with the vaguely insolvent status of many a British soul, and whilst not obscene by any means, her Continue Reading