Reviews

A collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck saw the grossly hacked-off hip-hop aggressors, 7L and Esoteric release their debut album, The Soul Purpose in the summer of 2001 – some ten years after their inception at a college radio station north of Boston. A love of golden, old-skool hip-hop (1985-89) brought them together and on this evidence it’s what keeps them together, although it’s ostensibly more rap specific than it is the hop. That said, DJ / producer 7L supplies Continue Reading

Drawing upon the wispy fragile webs of alt-country psychedelia spun already by Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, and Giant Sand the Liverpool eight-piece are hardly what you’d expect if you were even half aware of the origins of their name – a steal from one of the most significant Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band tracks from Trout Mask Replica, no less. But not for them the madly eccentric art-house nonsense. No siree. Frontman John Yates leads his melancholy ensemble through a half Continue Reading

If, like me, you were under the impression that the roots music of Mexican-America kind of begun and ended with Los Lobos then it’s likely that you, like me, were unaware of Alejandro Escovedo. Eclipsed by thirty years of imperial rock history Escovedo’s body of work has thus far remained as painfully obscure but as well maintained as the sacred geography of Machu Picchu or Chichen Itza. The downside is that it has taken many of us thus far to Continue Reading

“Is it true what they say about it? They say it’s new but I have to doubt it” – ‘Walk Idiot Walk’ Say Oasis hadn’t put out ‘Be Here Now’. Say, for instance, they’d mixed the choice chunks from ‘Definitely Maybe’ and ‘Morning Glory’, repackaged them and named it ‘Yer Mad Fer Us, Y’Are’. How things could have been so different. And so The Hives crawled immaculately tailored out of the North Sea back in 2001, electrifying tunes clasped tightly Continue Reading

Interestingly enough, Screaming Trees and QOTSA muse, Mark Lenegan wrote the press release I have open on my computer. And what better endorsement for the grizzily, moth-eaten brand of pirate-rock taken up by the Burning Brides? Formed in 1996, by guitarist/singer/songwriter Dimitri Coats and bassist Melanie Campbell, The Burning Brides follow-up their hook laden debut album Fall of the Plastic Empire (2001) and difficult second album Fall of the Plastic Empire (2002) with a surprisingly fresh new album, Leave No Continue Reading

Never judge a book by its cover. The same too could be said of a record. The lime green backdrop with Ed sitting astride a stool like someone’s dad with a Father’s Day present and the luridly contrasting underpants blue title-art suggests this is not something your average music-lover is going to take to without first smiling. It’s not ‘awful’ in a cool, kitsch kind of way. It’s ‘awful’ in a truly – well ‘awful’ kind of way. In fact Continue Reading

It’s better to burn out than fade away – a phrase that immediately means oh so much (too much?) to this particular alt.rock generation, and one that’s been proved right or wrong depending on the subject of the metaphor and personal perspective. For one Sonic Youth must be wondering how lightening can strike twice, having their thunder stolen by the Pixies again, they who burnt out while the ‘Youth flickered, faded, reignited and waded on through the art-rock soup. Nobody Continue Reading

Sometimes you’d be better off just scanning a sleeve’s small print than reading the album review. And appropriately enough this third record (though it is officially an introduction for the UK) from San Diego’s The Album Leaf is a prime case in point. Recorded amid the famously expansive, volcanic tundra of Iceland? Collaborations with members of Sigur Rós and Múm? Yes, paints a vivid, pretty picture, all icy blues and subtle fiery tones, doesn’t it. We do though implore that Continue Reading

Like Weapons Of Mass Destruction, the story is a good one even if it’s not true: a half dozen or so good ol’ boys from the valley of Deer Lick Holler in America’s deep, deep south stumble upon a crash scene at the notorious Devil’s Elbow. Inside the stranger’s car they find a box of old vinyl records by a band called AC/DC. And it makes damn fine country music – a little different – but fine all the same. Continue Reading

They’re not exactly famous. They’re exactly not famous. They were however reputedly famous enough for Kurt Cobain to steel the riff from the band’s song, ‘Eighties’, slow it down and use it as the basis for ‘Come As You Are’. It’s not included here – and although that may pique many of us tawdry purveyors of musical steals – it’s hardly relevant. Not when you have the equally grunge ravished ’Primitive’ to kick off all those ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ Continue Reading