Reviews

Is it any wonder that this album is beautiful? Naturally it’s not. For many a year she’s provided fresh air to Neil Halstead’s dusty musings in Mojave 3, happy to hang around fairly unassumingly, keeping tabs on all that unfolds around her, nudging things along where necessary. And about a decade on it’s barely worth mentioning that she fronted lauded-by-some shoegazers Slowdive along with Halstead. Her first solo outing doesn’t evoke even a nostalgic pinch of deja-vu for that era Continue Reading

Sheffield’s Pink Grease are dirty. And this is not your off-brown ‘n’ black grime, these are pinks and yellows and flickering red neons. Based on ‘The Pink G.R.EASE’ they’re “gonna make you sweat” too. Promises promises. This is gutter-glammer rock ‘n’ roll at its gaudiest. And there are more promises too, like they’re flaunting their wares candidly in a wide-open window display as the light falls and night draws in. “Pump it up boys” comes the call in ‘Party Live’, Continue Reading

Gentle, if unevenly grave lyrical troubadours are not traditionally associated with Warp Records. Quite the contrary, it’s often only the grittiest, edgiest and obscurest acts that survive the label’s incomparable roster of maverick talent. Not that this whimsical Bristol trio are without edge or attitude, just that you have to look for it well beneath the placid romanticism and gossamer fretwork of songwriter Nick Talbot. ‘Tunnels’ is a case in point; spectral, sinister organ sounds and spine-tingling guitar-sounds prevail at Continue Reading

Sprouting the kind of fusty, precious mushrooms that only the moist warm conditions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel and Elliott Smith could possibly engender, spring North Carolina’s own pastoral anti-hooligans, Kingsbury Manx. And what a winsome and inoffensive little cluster of talents they are. Fronted by singers and guitarists Kenneth Stephenson and Bill Taylor, Kingsbury Manx are your above-average country, folk, psychedelic crossover. At times dark, at times wistful, at times caustic, at times surreal you’d be Continue Reading

Don’t talk to me about rap and rock hybrids – I just don’t wanna know. So let’s move on… Debut album ‘X-pressions’ and 2002’s ‘Built From Scratch’ proved beyond a reasonable doubt that turntabilists Roc Raida, Mista Sinista, Rob Swift were an innovative enough force. And although you got your fair share of Linkin Park fans grabbing a copy from the shelves, it has to be said that all three albums move way beyond the indelicate melding of rock and Continue Reading

The surprise with this album is how impressions garnered from the zesty electro-rock single with a punch ‘Assassinator 13’ and its squelching predecessor ‘Like It Or Leave It’ were so far off the ticket. We thought infuriating insistence, nagging computer-generated aural intrusions and a bratty flailing were order of the day. We liked their style but saw a short shelf life and were unsure of their capabilities. But what we get here, when taken in its entirety anyway, is actually Continue Reading

Viv’s new album ‘Flawed’ feels like the upside of a Dave Grohl mood swing – happy,earnest and direct. It’s a collection of tub thumping indie pop; four minute sing-a-longs infused with sensitivity and driven by crunching guitars and big choruses. Although the San Francisco five piece’s second album contains the occasional echoes of Blink 142 and Foo Fighters et al,  it never feels derivative, simply another (excellent) addition to the grunge-pop genre. We begin by tumbling into ‘Friends’, a celebration Continue Reading

Badly Drawn Boy has never changed, not once throughout his 3 album career (or 2 depending on where you’re counting from), not one little bit, no sir. He just writes more songs – when he has enough he puts a record out. And that’s that, no real fuss, or so it would seem. The artwork is about as close to a new concept as he gets, and yet again this record does have some fine imagery courtesy of partner-in-crime and Continue Reading

If 2004 is shaping up as a pop mirror to 1995, which increasingly it seems it is, then we’re still missing the top line equivalents of your Blurs, your Pulps and your Oasis’s. We’re pretty much sorted up to Supergrass/Elastica (Franz Ferdinand/The Libertines), and the lower sandpit filled with the likes of S*M*A*S*H, These Animal Man and 60ft Dolls back then is reaching capacity these days with the likes of The Ordinary Boys, Delays and now Razorlight. Hell, we’ve even Continue Reading

Sometimes it’s not enough to write great music. Sometimes you need something else; a statement, a sound bite, a fistful of anarchy, a remorseless desire to impress, a knack for crossing boundaries and a propensity for stirring the interests of the press with sheer, unapologetic awkwardness. In fact, it’s often what you are by accident that rewards you the most. And then there’s that propulsive belief within critical circles that music must always be new and exciting; that it must Continue Reading