I was going to start this by saying something along the lines of ‘what looks good on paper doesn’t always sound good on a record’ and then toss in a few triumphant examples by way of explanation. You know the sort I mean, The Raconteurs, Velvet Revolver, Electronic, Band Aid, the Liberal Democrats, the United Nations – something where the sheer weight of expectation grossly off-balances the end product. Something that looks pretty good at first glance, but sounds shit Continue Reading

It is oft hazarded that your own tale is but one of at least 150,000 at Glastonbury. And by Glastonbury we mean the phenomenon that amasses itself as one of the biggest and certainly most far-fetched towns in the West Country for a week in June, rather than the more permanent (albeit slightly mystical) municipality and pointy hill a few miles down the road. But you knew that. Who doesn’t? You see? Which begs the question – what is the Continue Reading

It might just be me, but I get the impression that there are some folks quietly peeved that the proverbial Jaxx have wriggled free of pop’s noble underground and zoomed into an orbit that only whizzy, heaving masses like Robbie Williams and Kylie traditionally spin. We loved Remedy and Rooty, but only on the condition that it was for our ears and our ears only. It was a one on one relationship. It was monogamous. It was a blistering, all Continue Reading

This is all wrong, really. In a world where professional Geordie Lauren Laverne (formerly of giggling Britpop punkas Kenickie) has become the slinky-clobbered indie queen of all broadcast media, where Jacques Le Cont (formerly of Britpop era 80s-electro revivalists Les Rhythms Digitales) is Madonna’s musical pimp and where the Longpigs’ guitarist is a solo Mercury Music Prize nominee for an album full of 40s-era ballroom laments (yes, yes, Richard Hawley), Cerys Matthews should by rights be ripping Robbie Williams a Continue Reading

Not a bad pedigree. Simeon Lister, sometime boss of Twentythree Records and thrill-seeking horn player with Heights Of Abraham loosens his flairs with Fila Brazilia mainstay, Steve Cobby and builds upon the nu-jazz and latin improvisations that saw them ride a rich seam of soundtrack success (CSI, Sex In The City and cult cinema films like Dogtown and Riding Giants), with ‘Put Me On A Planet’, a spicy sci-fi hotch-potch of dancefloor grooves, comfortable vibes and kinky Blaxpolitation funkery, all Continue Reading

Talk is cheap. Talk is incessant, unremitting. Talk can often be like a splintered javelin rammed repeatedly down your ear canal. Silence is golden. But then there are rare voices – few and far between – that you could listen to for hours and hours, endlessly, without wearing. Like honey melting over a roasted hazelnut. John Darnielle, the face of and largely lone member of the plural Mountain Goats, is one of those voices. He has to be. He certainly Continue Reading

If being written on the back of old tube tickets, boarding cards and newspapers found abandoned in railway stations, means Chris Singleton’s ‘Twisted City’ is a concept album, then I have the perfect justification for talking shit; I prepare much of what I say whilst idling on the lavatory in the morning. Allegedly this is a record that was conceived as a tube journey through London with each song a stop on the line and each of the songs dealing Continue Reading

Discussing The Dear’s new album, ‘Gang Of Losers’ in terms of its departure from the lofty and orchestral cinematic sweeps of its immediate predecessor, ‘No Cities Lost’ is a bit like discussing the discrepancies between a galaxy 250-300 thousand light years away and one some 500 thousand light years away. Relative to the celestial equator they’re both still fucking huge bastards, partially eclipsed by stars and with the beryllium content of a thousand supernovas. Yes, they’ve ditched many of the Continue Reading

Before we head down another ‘DJ’s DJ’s’ or an ‘Axwell has been the figurehead of the Swedish dance scene for 350 years’ preamble, let’s assess what we know about him. No, what we really know about him. Not what the press-sheet says, but what facts we have at our own disposal, and that’s diddlysquat, if I was to be frank. Last time it was Mark Farina. He was the Chicago ‘DJ’s DJ’ who sessioned us some fairly tidy – if Continue Reading

Spooky, funky, crazy, twisted, capricious, eccentric, freakish and sparkling like the glitter ball in a disused and haunted disco. That’s ‘Trust Me’ by Trost – an album of such imponderable cult-chic that you could wrap it in a copy of American Psycho, throw it out of the window of a apartment block in Berlin, get a private detective to trail it, have Peter Lorre pick it up from a lake in Paris and hand it on to Marlene Dietrich as she Continue Reading