Sensual, fresh, breezy, cool and easy, jazzy – just about everything’s already been said about this album that could be said this briefly. Not that this comes as any real surprise. Released in 2000 to both commercial and critical acclaim in its hometown of Brazil as well as internationally, the full debut release by South America’s Bebel Gilberto is nothing if not romantic. But being daughter of the reverent bossa nova innovator, Joao Gilberto – and possibly the most loved Continue Reading

So we put this record on a couple of months back when it first dropped through the letter box and as ‘I Go Down’, ‘Silence’, ‘Deep Blue Day’ and the like ascended with a certain degree of pompous grandeur from our weathered speakers, we thought that we hadn’t heard anything with quite this measure of puffy chested bombast and silky-lined craftsmanship since McAlmont & Butler stopped pointing encrusted daggers at each other’s backs. Only more morose, obviously. Then McAlmont & Continue Reading

Fierce Panda: best indie label in the UK? It’s a title worth an argument or two over at least. So you’ll be wanting some evidence then I suppose? Alright, what about these 16 tracks culled from Panda releases over the last year (singles, b-sides, album tracks), thrown together onto a CD with some footballers on the front (no doubt  drawing a quaint but accurate analogy/cliché between the collective power of a team and that no signing should be hoisted above Continue Reading

Most people take music very seriously. Some take music to be the ultimate and only interest. Primal Scream as individuals and as a group have always been advocates with each passing record a highly-strung taste barometer for rock and pop. Whether by the recent proclamation by Bobby Gillespie whose listening habits over the past year has included The Von Bondies as well as the cellophane wrapped and pre-packaged Sugababes, or hanging out at Shoom the Primal’s inspiration is always checked Continue Reading

John Vanderslice is back at it again, at his San Francisco-located Tiny Telephone studio. With contributions and collaborations from members of Mates of State, Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie and Beulah, it’s no wonder this album came out as well as it did. With twelve 3-minute story-telling pop songs, Vanderslice manages to revive the epic “concept album.” He begins the story by setting the poetry of William Blake to music, introducing the listener to his traumatic birth. However, through the Continue Reading

‘Let A Good Thing Go’, is the second single from Gemma Hayes unusually well acclaimed album ‘Night On My Side’.A reasonably smooth mix of folksey rock, reminiscent of Belly and the frank, bare knuckle Garage crankiness of The Breeders, ‘Night On My Side’reveals a Sheryl Crow grasp of craft with a more angular, and more abstract feel for cookiness. Fragile yet feisty and with indisputably complex soul of a poet, Gemma has traded in the dry, acoustic timidity of her Continue Reading

In 1994 Nirvana wannabees, Silverchair entered a competition on Australians no. 1 radio station Triple J, the prize was a free recording at Triple J and a video that was all to be aired on SBS’s Nomad program. Of course, as history tells us, these spotty little droogs of 15 to 16 years won with their song, ‘Tomorrow’. After the clip and interview had been aired, record companies from all over Australia were ringing in wanting to know how they Continue Reading

Searching for inner-scouseness has not been fashionable for a long time. Thrown aside for the Saturday night jerks and exertions to House and ignored by the thrall of UK Garage, Liverpool has not looked inwards since tank tops and Panini stickers. Fair enough really, as all background noise for adolescents should be played out to match the times and not hark back to a previous incarnation of pop’s past, especially not to an era when we have to consider our Continue Reading