Eerie, spectral lullabies of a warped, distrusting heart with songs inspired by everything from weird car crashes involving fleeing villains to the peevish manipulation of someone else’s emotions and senses. And with guest contributions from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, the Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne and REM’s Michael Stipe words like ‘fragile’, ‘surreal’ and ‘tender’ are not going to be far away either. And that’s what you have here. ‘Your Love Means Everything’ is the second album from Faultine writer, producer, arranger, Continue Reading

Imagine a lost weekend in Tijuana.  Tequila that burns the skin off the back of your throat, novelty sombrero’s that save you from the sun, and salsa to soothe or to make you stamp, depending on the tequila.  And a soundtrack for this auspicious event, look no further than Mexican band, Kinky’s second album, ‘Atlas’.  Perhaps the name was a premonition, as Kinky’s excessive touring (180 shows last year no less) and impending success see them emerge on both sides Continue Reading

In the first instance we don’t know whether he’s warming up, or whether it’s us warming up to him. It’s not until the plains of track 3, ‘My Apartment’ and its upbeat alt-country tinkering, that we come face to face with the melodic chicanery we feel we know and feel thrilled by. But turns out we were unwise to worry.  Even by his jaunty debut album ‘Sha Sha’s standards, and especially its highlights ‘Wasted & Ready’, No Reason’ and ‘In Continue Reading

It’s not that I really expect Harry and Co. to be sounding as spectacularly cool, spunky and vital as they did in ’78 when little bombs of unearthly delight went off in my trousers on seeing the band perform ‘Denis’ on ‘Top Of The Pops’, just as I don’t expect the Beatles to be getting back together. You see, some things have their time and no amount of yearning is ever going to bring that time back. The success of Continue Reading

Seeing themselves initially as outsiders totally at odds with all the usual corporate bullshit going on seems to have allowed this Surrey-based band room enough to unravel their attractive brand of thoughtful and idiosyncratic ‘collegiate rock’ free from all the cloying anxieties of industry pressure. As Dylan put it, ‘when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose’.  And these self-styled ‘casual pilots exploring twilight noise seduction’ (their words, not mine, thankfully) have certainly got nothing to lose even Continue Reading

That Roger Waters was cutting-down bandmates and comrades at the kind of rate any self-regarding gunner would be proud of at the time of its original release in the early eighties will come as something of a surprise to those who consider ‘The Final Cut’ to be as philanthropic as its master would have us believe. Afterall, it is essentially a Roger Waters solo album. Staff Sergeants Dave Gilmour and Nick Mason were sidelined on wages, deployed only on an Continue Reading

Far from the DOA that a number of people in the industry imagined, Busface conjures up another abbreviated expression: AOA, or, as people in the know call it, Adult-Oriented-Acid. But that’s not a slight, it’s a compliment and it certainly beats the unlikely, wide-of-the-mark ‘Nu Funk Electro Breakbeat’ that Busface’s publicists are currently peddling. As it is, all this should come as no real surprise as one half of Busface, Hugh Brooker (the other half being React Records’ Seb Wronski) first cut Continue Reading

The basic gist of the story goes like this: I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. You know what? I did something wrong, I confess…you get the picture? It doesn’t take a justice department to work out that such persistent offenders of the heart like Usher may actually be taking perverse joy in all these little heart dramas and are about as capable of feeling genuine adult remorse as your average Continue Reading

Rarely can there have been such a terrifically staged entrance (excepting of course that of immaculate new-wave arch dukes Franz Ferdinand). As recently as a few months ago nobody would have seriously thrown Delays change outside Camden Town tube, let alone served them half a cider and black in the Good Mixer on a quiet weeknight. Then two singles, the blissed-out summer indie anthem ‘Nearer Than Heaven’ and the chewing-gum-in-the-sun summer indie anthem ‘Hey Girl’, dropped indie fairy-dust all over Continue Reading

If there were ever to be a biopic made about you, reader (which there probably won’t be – c’mon look in the mirror – but play along won’t you), Lambchop are just the kind of band you’d want scoring your true widescreen moments. Your more contemplative times, your graceful elder years especially, running in the park on a Sunday morning with your first love amongst the autumn leaves, in slow-mo, tinged in sepia. They have exuded gold-sealed class for nigh Continue Reading