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

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

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

Time’s a rodeo. Or so sayeth Dawn Landes – better half of crossover folk-country type, Josh Ritter and sometime member of Hem. And whilst I’m not sure exactly what it is she’s trying to say (I mean, I was reliably informed by Garth Brooks that it’s bulls and blood, dust and mud and the roar of a Sunday crowd – but I could be getting it mixed up with Sunday League football, so I don’t know). Whatever it is though, Continue Reading

As a dedicated ‘indie-kid’ I remember being round at my girlfriend’s flat in the equally dedicated bohemian quarter of Sheffield’s Broomhill district. It was late, we’d both been drinking and we were sitting down to share that inevitable post-pub spliff. And being a sort of club-sort she casually dismissed the ‘His n’Hers’ Pulp disc I pushed at her, and instead bunged into the CD player something that sounded as if we’d been surreptitiously lowered into a subterranean chamber in Tibet Continue Reading

You know, not so long ago, even the likes of Mike Oldfield had to lump on a bird’s vocal to even stand a chance of pushing of vinyl onto the average attention-deficit teen, but with the likes of Four Tet, M83 and a shitload of others turning out instrumentals as prodigious, ‘tubular’ and downright peculiar as lark tongues in aspic, the trade has become almost credible. So credible, in fact, that even Paul Smith of Maximo Park is down as Continue Reading

Not the most auspicious of starts – and certainly not the coolest. Loose collection of fiddle-packing blues and jazz misfits get invite from University lecturer to demonstrate recording trickery by taking a band into the studio and letting the rest of his students watch as they bang out a couple of the tunes they’ve been working on (but clearly not finished). Yes, there’s something faintly clinical about it, something fairly hokey, but when you learn that the producer they invite Continue Reading

If you were in any doubt as to the reach of Patti Smith’s influences as punk and poet, watch the concert scenes where luminaries such as Bono and Thom Yorke huddle on the sidelines and watch their hero with all the gauche admiration of teenagers. That’s the kind of devotion Smith has inspired in the great and the good and the misunderstood since the 70’s and this documentary, filmed over eleven years (from 1995) is a gently engrossing look at Continue Reading