See: Telefís – ‘Falun Gong Dancer’: Cathal Coughlan leads us round the weary world in sparse, grandstanding piano
CATHAL COUGHLAN has always been the straight-As kid with the (slightly demonic) pearly white smile and the pocket of stinkbombs in the school hall of indie music; he can’t resist pulling things sideways, to see how they look from somewhere to left of where they might otherwise or properly be. But he does it with …
See: Alyssa Gengos shapes up for her 2022 album as a pretty awesome ‘Cheerleader Of The Universe’
LOS ANGELINO bedroom pop genius Alyssa Gengos is basically someone to completely watch in 2022. We’ve already nailed our colours to that mast on the back of her last single, the effortlessly excellent “Gothenburg English” – see our swooning coverage of that, here; and making us feel a whole lot more like we haven’t made …
See: C Duncan brings the hymnal delicacy of ‘The Wedding Song’ to end the year – watch the animated lyric video
DELICATE Glaswegian songsmith C Duncan has doubled down on the glitter of last month’s single, “Alluvium”, with just one more song to round off the year and to keep you abreast of happenings connected with his next album, due in the new year on Bella Union. The track is called “The Wedding Song” and it’s romantic, …
Track: NYC’s swoonsome The Shacks break out the tinsel on the double A, ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ / ‘Got To Be Christmas’
NEW YORK’S gorgeous psych-lite caressers The Shacks, the duo of guitarist-producer Max Shrager and singer-bassist Shannon Wise, who know a thing or two about Harpers Bizarre, The Free Design and that semi-mythical Valley of the Dolls, bring all their retro-pop chops – which, it should be noted, are considerable – to a double A release …
News: Sylph releases a new EP, ‘Ancient Hole’, featuring Regis, Terence Fixmer and others; watch a short film of three tracks
SYLPH, the new iteration and solo project of the former singer with South London post-punks S.C.U.M., Thomas Cohen, is rounding off his year with a final, four-track EP, Ancient Hole, to which he invited the musical aesthetics of big, cast-iron techno names such as Regis, Terence Fixmer and Nicolas Bougaïeff and composer and singer Anni Hogan. And as well as being …
See: Beans on Toast leads us in a celebration of what it means to be ‘Humans’; he’s on tour, too
WITH his new album of acoustic optimism, Survival Of The Friendliest, out as of Friday gone and the first leg of a tour crisscrossing the islands already under way, London troubadour Beans on Toast has brought us one final single of homespun warmth, with a video starring Beans, his wife Lizzy Bee and daughter Wren …
Live review: Alabaster dePlume, The Cornish Bank, Falmouth, December 4th, 2021, plus gallery: a unique and sweary odyssey to Planet dePlume
“I LOVE this. I fucking love doing this.” Be aware: Angus Fairbairn, the poet, positivist and saxophonist who transposes into the world of music as Alabaster dePlume, is a completely singular talent. Wearing his heart on his sleeve and cradling his sax in a spiritual embouchure, he grapples with this weird shit we call life; …
Album review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Bill Callahan – ‘Blind Date Party’: a rolling thunder lockdown revue of the Drag City stable, cast in cover versions
NOTHING at all, really. That, for a lifer musician with new songs in the back pocket, older ones to take out and share with fans on the road across the country and the world, no chance to get into a proper studio even, if it is only to kinda dick around and have a laugh …
News: Christian Death’s defining US goth debut ‘Only Theatre Of Pain’ receives an expanded, deluxe reissue in the new year
LOVERS of all things Eighties (read: proper) goth, your attention please; LA’s Frontier Records, in partnership with Cult Epics, has announced it is to reissue Christian Death’s defining debut album, Only Theatre Of Pain, to mark its 40th anniversary in January. And it’s not going to be any old repress, oh no: it’s gonna come …
Track: Joy Guidry explores their ‘Inner Child’ in throaty free jazz bassoon ahead of their February long-player
NEW YORK composer, bassoonist and Berlin Prize for Young Artists nominee Joy Guidry is an artist who likes to – nope, is compelled to – dive deep into the music they investigate, be that modern composition, the high flight of free jazz, the expanse of drone, or the articulation of spoken word pieces. The artist …