Not Forgotten: Pixies – Surfer Rosa
It’s the way Dave Lovering’s drums crash in. Then there’s that Kim Deal bass line that walks in just the wrong side of sexy, and the riff. My word, that riff. And the incessant rhythm guitar that just doesn’t stop. The Black Francis’s vocals come in delivering those weird lyrics. And the whole thing sounds …
Not Forgotten: Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Sometimes an album leaps out at me from an act’s discography and captures ‘the moment’ for me. The Seldom Seen Kid was that album through the first few months of 2009. It’s not like Elbow reinvented their sound to appeal to a wider audience, they had just honed their craft to a point where their …
A buyers’ guide to The Waterboys 1981-1990
The Waterboys are an act that for too long have laboured with being associated with just one song and one album, at least by the majority of people outside their fan base. What makes it even more baffling is the fact that that song is not even on that album. It’s probably fair to say …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Heavy Horses
Where to begin? The beginning I guess. My beginning. Or at least as far back as I can remember. You might be surprised to find out that I didn’t get into music until my early teens. Throughout my childhood, my parents, particularly my dad, were always playing albums, but none of them permeated into my …
Classic Album: Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon
Good old Dark Side Of The Moon, without its massive influence, would we have to put up with the legions of gloomy and pretentious rock bands that see every note they perform as a statement of loneliness and alienation? Probably not when you think about it. There’s no two ways about it, The Dark Side …
Album Review: Guided by Voices – Space Gun
What the hell is that noise? Oh never mind, here’s a very Guided by Voices by riff… and here’s another one overlaying it, and then we’re in to Space Gun. After just the blink of an eye, Guided by Voices are once again back and sounding in fine fettle, and “Space Gun” as a song …
Classic Album: Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies
Billion Dollar Babies is a prime example of what can be achieved if you strike while the iron is hot. The years in the run up to this album’s release saw Alice Cooper establish themselves as the great black hope of American rock and roll, with Love It to Death andKiller establishing them as an …
Not Forgotten: Kate Bush – The Kick Inside
A startling debut from one of the UK’s most unique talents, The Kick Inside has since been eclipsed by better received (and better selling) Kate Bush albums, but there is still a section of her audience that maintain that she never bettered her first album. The Kick Inside certainly has an abundance of whatever it …
A beginners’ guide to Deep Purple
Despite being one of the three great pillars of 70s hard rock and heavy metal, Deep Purple have not quite received the same level of retrospective love as either Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath in subsequent decades. Perhaps this is because they are so frequently associated with one single song. Or more accurately, one riff. …
Not Forgotten: World Party – Egyptology
Life can be strange. 1993’s Bang had flagged up World Party as a band to watch for the rest of the decade. An intelligent retro-pop act, with a frontman that was frequently capable of brilliance, and possessed the ability to stretch his music across genre boundaries, Karl Wallinger and his bandmates should have been held …