Not Forgotten – Mercury Rev – Deserter’s Songs
Like their sister-band The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev took the scenic route to success. After a messy debut album and an equally messy follow-up they ditched their front man and took a gentler and much more interesting career path, with the jazzy, dreamy and startling See You on the Other Side being a charmingly rough …
Not Forgotten: Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
It’s been well over a decade since Scissor Sisters rose to prominence as the perfect antidote to the type of dour faced guitar bands that were taking their music far too seriously at the time. While they enjoyed a string of sizeable hit singles, it was the group’s self titled debut album in particular that …
Not Forgotten: Tom Petty – Wildflowers
For his second ‘solo’ album Tom Petty did the smart thing and recruited Rick Rubin as the producer. Rubin’s organic and raw production methods were in sharp contrast to the synthetic and processed sounds that Petty’s albums (both solo, and with his celebrated backing band, The Heartbreakers) had suffered from since the lack-luster Southern Accents. …
Not Forgotten – Half Man Half Biscuit – Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral
It is the late 90s. The Britpop bubble has burst, its fans realising that the overwhelming majority of so called indie acts were now being dropped like stones through a wet paper bag by their major label paymasters, because their second or third albums haven’t sold in the same eye-watering numbers as their over-hyped debuts. …
Album Review: Deep Purple – Long Beach 1971
Since being the original form of recorded music, the live album continues to evolve. From the legendary live soul albums of the 60s, to the iconic double live albums released by innumerable rock bands during the 70s, then on to landmark live recordings in the 80s, and finding a new lease of life via MTV’s …
A beginners’ guide to Peter Gabriel
From progressive rock pioneer, to art rocker, to world music conduit, to pop star, to multi-media explorer, Peter Gabriel has covered a tremendous amount of ground in his four and a half decades in the music industry, ensuring him an unarguable place among popular music’s icons. Starting as frontman for Genesis, from 1969 onwards he …
Not Forgotten – Mull Historical Society – Loss
I’ve always found it difficult to put any kind of tag on Loss. Just what type of music is it? It has elements of self-produced indie, but it’s far too well produced for it to be classed as lo-fi. It has moments of pure pop genius, but I would hold back on pigeon-holing it as …
Not Forgotten – The Who – Tommy
After the witty, but flawed The Who Sell Out, The Who still hadn’t been really accepted as a serious album act. That was it, if they were going to conquer the world, they were going to have to use the big guns. It was time for the rock opera. While there had been concept albums …
Album Review: My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
After over a decade of following My Morning Jacket’s career, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll prefer some of their albums over others, and oddly enough that’s lead to me anticipating their new albums more keenly than I do most other acts. One of the thing’s I’ve always admired about MMJ is …
Not Forgotten – David Bowie – Station to Station
Station to Station is an odd album for me, in that I feel I would probably have a higher opinion of it than I do were it not for the album that immediately preceded it. It’s not that I prefer Young Americans, far from it, but I feel that if Bowie had been able to …