So, this album has its problems, as did its predecessor, 2007’s ‘Narcissus Road’, which slid from view with its arm extended but going largely unnoticed, like the indie world’s homeless man. It’s stock indie – melodramatic, comfortable, warm indie – played comfortably by competent men. Even if there is any pain in there, any attempt at poetic communication, and most probably there is a little, it’s hard to recognise with a surface so buffed and standard. Veterans of Britpop in Continue Reading

Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian commented that having Paul Weller as a patron was no guarantee of quality given that he backed London’s similarly non-specific Rifles with much the same passion. And she might also have added that those equally flattering sponsors, Oasis said exactly the same thing about Northern Uproar before they went to Spain and came back taxi-drivers. But we are not backing horses here. We could bang on all day about another punter’s form but if we Continue Reading

The man dreams of Dave Grohl tied up in chains and laughs like Vincent Price. Not the most promising of introductions but what it looks like on the surface is a poor indication of the lop-sided beauty of North Dakota’s Tom Brosseau and his new album, ‘Posthumous Success’. It might look wonky, it might sound wonky and it may be suffering from the kind of anxiety disorders more commonly associated with people handing out copies of ‘Big Issue’ but it Continue Reading

Just think of all the cool stuff you get, as children and now, in kit form. Cars, Meccano sets, chemistry sets, model aeroplanes that you always used to run out of patience with before you’d super-glued on every last fiddly detail and, erm, nowadays flat-pick furniture? Well, it’s cheap, we are in an end-of-days recession you know. Anyway, it’s more hands on and it’s fun to use your hands. Red Light Company are about the most realised embodiment of that Continue Reading

See pictures of Micachu – which you may well have done repeatedly over recent months – all tightly wound and intense of expression, acoustic guitar clutched intently to her chest, making an Oxfam mannequin look like the main draw at London Fashion Week, you accept that she’s clearly counter-mainstream, maybe pigeonhole her as a punk minstrel, an English Kimya Dawson, that kind of thing. The truth is actually far more disparate and frenetic than you might care to imagine. Her Continue Reading

Sometimes the shoe fits, but due to unforeseen swelling of the feet or to the flood and drain of fashion, it doesn’t seem fit for wearing, and so for much of the time it sits alone at the back of the wardrobe, tossed none too kindly between an old Christmas sweater and a pair of leather trousers. And it’s much the same with Iain Archer: for the most part he doesn’t fit. He sometimes pokes out of his hole in Continue Reading

For a band who were able to fill out clubs like the Koko and Scala without so much as breaking a sweat, and were still attracting the kindest of words from the UK’s critical masses, finding themselves without a label must have been like one of those occasions when fate seems squarely against you. Was it the unnecessary American drawl? The sneaky musical pilfering? The cheese as grating as a pound of gorgonzola? The incurable misanthropy of vocalist Stuart Adams? Continue Reading

The press train arrived well ahead of us, citing everyone from Syd Barrett, Beck, Robert Wyatt, Smog, Hood, Pram, Animal Collective and early wire wizards like Raymond Scott as influences. Naturally we are talking bedroom recordings; self-played, self-produced, self-mutilated and self-absorbed. That’s not a bad thing, of course, but there is a point at which scratchy, hand-to-mouth performances brought about by banging away on instruments that rarely see the light of day outside of museums and children’s nurseries, collapses into self-indulgence. Continue Reading