Reviews

It’s been a prolific ride – eight albums recorded with the cult Green and Red, nine solo studio albums, and tours with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, Cake and Jonathon Richman. Chuck Prophet’s  latest album Let Freedom Ring! was written one summer in San Francisco and recorded in eight days in Estudio 19, Mexico, amidst an earthquake and a swine flu epidemic. There is, almost inevitably then, a grizzled swagger to proceedings, which is becoming the hallmark of Continue Reading

Warm, mellow, melancholy sounds rarely hit it off with the kids on the street with the exception of things like Bossa, and even then their interest rarely extends beyond the dreamy kitsch samba of Getz and Gilberto’s ‘Girl From Ipanema’. For British tastes at least, anything that so much threatens to level off those unruly mid-to-high frequencies, gets consigned to the AOR bin. And just to prove it, let’s time travel back to 1977 and ask spotty, spikey-haired teenager, Henri Continue Reading

Birdseye loved a dash of Levi so much they added him to their Chicken Chargrills and Sainsburys have him sitting alongside such luminaries as Daddies, Paul Newman and Linda McCartney. Yes, sauces make strange bedfellows of us all and there’s none stranger or more exotic than one-time James Brown and Maxi Priest cohort, Levi Roots who has enlisted some of the UK and Jamaica’s most treasured possessions to help him out with spicy new album, ‘Red Hot’. Co-producers and rhythm Continue Reading

Young, eager and with the kind of sweeping, handsome fringe that would give Vernon Kay a run for his money, singer-songwriter Greg Holden wraps his frothy, Lancastrian tonsils around a collection of tunes that furrow a comfortable plot within that Damien Rice/Teitur Lassen field of fragile troubadours travelling light and turning out their pockets along the avenues and alleyways of life’s unforgiving (and poorly lit) neighbourhoods. It’s a self-released affair, buoyed-up by his success on Youtube and with a scruffy, Continue Reading

I so wanted to begin this with something along the lines of ‘Her out of Ash in No-Prop Pop Shock’ or ‘Pouting Pop Princess Pulls No Punches in Punchy Rights of Passage Release’ but I thought I would leave that to the tabloids, who instead of opening doors on emerging complex talents like Ms H, are the first hands grappling for the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ on scary, aging reptiles like Whitney Houston. So in its place, you’ll just have to settle Continue Reading

He’s starred on national television (well, a fruit pastilles advert), penned a track for FIFA, and brought the world of beatboxing down on unsuspecting indie fans heads for the best part of a decade. And staggeringly, ‘Amplified’ marks his 9th studio release as Killa, aka Lee Potter, has marketed himself as much more than a man with a particularly adept mouth. In the same way a DMC champion might transcend the technicality of turntablism and turn party DJ, Killa Kela Continue Reading

I am sure you’ve all had your own share of ‘carpet madness’. I know I have. From knee-burns and wine-spills to toy soldiers that just won’t stand up straight on the pile, it’s been one mad moment after another – and it’s good to see that we finally have a band prepared to address the issue in such a serious and uncritical way. Not all carpets are magic, afterall, and although the album doesn’t really offer a ride as smooth Continue Reading

West Country boys The Heavy this time bury their deep and abiding love of Prince records with some equally possessed James Brown impersonations and lashings of monster, garage riffs. Let’s face it, guitarist Dan Taylor and Vocalist Kelvin Swaby are ostensibly music fans first and full-on wacky artists second. But as far as hierarchies go you could do far worse, given the sheer, crunchy belligerence of tracks like, ‘Oh, Not You Again’ – with it’s sexy, call and answer girlie-band Continue Reading

For those of us who were a little late in discovering that music existed outside the Billboard and Gallup Charts, Lou Barlow might best be remembered as the man who wasn’t in Dinosaur Jnr when they had their first big commercial hit with grizzled, slack-jawed stoner anthem, ‘Feel The Pain’. Lou Barlow was the guy who started the band and then got kicked out for one reason or another before doing weirder and even slacker stoner work with lo-fi pioneers Continue Reading

When asked by a Scottish newspaper if she had ever collaborated with any famous musicians, KT Tunstall cautiously offered the name, Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue and then laughed. Why did she laugh? Well, I can’t say for sure, but I guess it’s because sweet Katie was guarding against the cynical and derisory response she expected such a confession to collect. And perhaps she even quietly hoped to score some kudos off the back of her ever so slightly disingenuous Continue Reading