If Shelly Poole really has ‘confounded musicologists’ with an album that escapes ‘definition’ and  ‘logic’ then it’s likely that they’ve forgotten the phrase easy listening. Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Tony Bennett, Neil Sedaka, Boyce and Hart – all were once idolised for their unpretentious brand of sweet and tender tunesmithery. They weren’t always cool, they weren’t necessarily sexy and they didn’t require phone-in votes, text-messaging or ringtones to gain ground on Top Of The Pops. And they relied, surprisingly, not Continue Reading

The Beatles refashioned the overreaching falsettos of Roy Orbinson, the rainbow harmonies of the Everly Brothers and the shuffling jiggery-pokery of Buddy Holly and left an indelible mark on history as the four feted pioneers of modern pop. Bloomington Indiana trio The Post evoke the spiralling misanthropy and climactic primal therapy of ‘OK Computer’ and they’re dismissed as copyists. History is a difficult beast to tame and the pen of the critic often presses down upon history like the wiry Continue Reading

Son of a US airman brought up in territories as wide and contrasting as Turkey and Holland would suggest a man who knows no barriers, sound, cultural, sexual or otherwise, so when adoptive New Yorker, house practitioner and occasional star producer, Armand Van Helden strays into the traditionally hostile territory of ROCK and starts some serious landscaping, you can be pretty sure that it’s going to cover a greater terrain than spandex and leather-trousers. And whilst everyone from Goldfrapp to Continue Reading

Some two years after Mickey Finn and Special K handled the last edit, Mickey Finn and Aphrodite’s boundary crossing, gangsta sampling ‘Bad Ass’ gets another welcome airing on the Aphrodite’s tempo shifting, genre jumping and acid dropping new album, ‘Overdrive’ out soon on Feed Records. With this release, ‘King Of Beats’ and world-renowned drum ‘n’ bass master, Aphrodite this time turns the strobes on a mighty mixture of influences ranging from Hip Hop and Dub, to brass and bhangra, roping Continue Reading

If you were to believe the liner notes, Paul Morley would have us accept that Luke Haines comes somewhere between Colin Wilson, Peter Cook, Joe Orton, a bottle of Worcester Sauce and a good old Sunday roast, and though there’s no doubting the contribution the Auteurs made to the circulation of Britpop in the early nineties, it would be a mistake to suddenly render Haine’s peculiar and idiosyncratic talent in the likeness of ANY kind of movement. Believe this kind Continue Reading

Cesar Comanche – founding member of the well established North Caroilna hip-hop collective, the Justus League and home to the act Little Brother who helped put the collective on the underground map with the success of their debut album, The Listening (2002). Moving on from 2002’s ‘Paper Gods’, Jacksonville’s most judicious MC peeks into the life of a group of musicians on the road. Based on and dedicated to a band both Cesar’s father and mother were in the seventies Continue Reading

So you invite a few people round, you think maybe you’ll get some pizzas in, a few tins of beer, maybe it’ll be time to finally crack open that dusty bottle at the back of the cupboard, perhaps, if you’re feeling generous. With any luck a bottle or two will be brought along, just so there’s enough to go around. But then your guests arrive simultaneously with courses piled high on tiered plates, entire organic crops spilling out of carrier Continue Reading

“Just drift along with no focus or meaning,” utter they, maybe in partial self review, as their debut album slopes off to a stop. You can barely move at the moment without being thwacked between the eyes by a giddy globule of praise for this one particular example of London-centric new-wave. There can be no disputing that they would never have attained that without focus, without subscribing pointedly to a set of expectations, to what they directed themselves to become. Continue Reading

Having shared stages with such eminent indie mavericks as The Walkmen, The Futureheads, Kings Of Leon, Girls Vs Boys, French Kicks and Roger Sisters you’ll understand the Cleveland located Coffinberry stylistically more resemble the mature, idiosyncratic and feisty temperaments of bands like Superchunk and Spoon than their geographical brethren and label backers, Guided By Voices. The ‘From Now On Now’ EP is a seven-song selection of the band’s dazzling and moody live favourites. ‘Nightlife’ is a wasted, meandering, trashcan knockabout Continue Reading

For most of us the word ‘bookish’ invariably surrenders images of pale, wiry student types pressing the nose-piece on their spectacles more firmly on to their nose before scuttling off into garret-rooms with an armful of poetry and a handful of sleeping pills. They may be ugly, they may be guardedly appealing, but they’re always introspective. So when not one but several critics describe Laura Veirs as ‘bookish’ believe me when I say they’re really onto something. To what level Continue Reading