Album Reviews
Album Review: Jackie Leven – Straight Outta Caledonia…The Songs of Jackie Leven
I remember vividly the first time that I heard ‘The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ’ by outsider, Scottish troubadour Jackie Leven. It was 2001 and I was totally unprepared for and utterly mesmerised by the sheer audacity of Leven’s artistic reach and the epic sweep of his lyrics and music on that track. I couldn’t …
Album: Dim Gray – Flown
After an 8 year gestation period, Norwegian band Dim Gray have shared their debut full length ‘Flown’. A concept record with intertwining songs structured as one continuous story, the album relates a vivid tale of loss and loneliness that constantly twists and turns, with intimate and spatial moments offset with massive and colourful soundscapes. Describing …
EP Review: Dan Baker’s ‘From Corner’s Quiet’ is an elegant and beautiful collection of heartbreak, despair and hope.
Dan Baker‘s single ‘Freeze Dried Coffee’ last month indicated an enigmatic and visceral power. His new EP, ‘From Corner’s Quiet’ provides a broader and even more compelling collection of deeply evocative tracks that have an ethereal beauty and presence. There is a folk-infused air to the songs, but such a description is too reductive – …
Album Review: He’s still here – a refined and redefined Chet Faker checks us into ‘Hotel Surrender’- out now via Details Records/BMG
Five-time ARIA-award winning producer, songwriter and artist Chet Faker (aka Nick Murphy) has delivered his highly awaited sophomore album, Hotel Surrender via his own label Detail Records, in partnership with BMG. Six years after stepping away from the Chet Faker identity, Melbourne-raised, New York-based Murphy revived the project last October and created a reintroduction of …
Album Review: Joon – Dream Again
For the last few years it’s been the ladies who have owned the electronic music scene. Robyn switched things up with her electronic masterpiece Honey. The late, great Sophie broke new ground with her album oil of every pearl’s un-insides. Whilst Roisin Murphy and Annie returned triumphantly with brand new albums last year. But here’s …
Album Review: Ron S Peno and the Superstitions release the stupendous ‘Do The Understanding’, and announce launch gigs
The legendary and charismatic Ron S Peno fronted the iconic Died Pretty since the eighties, with time off for bad behaviour and a band hiatus. Having moved to Melbourne, he formed Ron S Peno and the Superstitions while his Died Pretty partner in crime, guitarist Brett Myers, stayed near Sydney, playing with Joey’s Coop. For Peno, 2019 …
Album Review: Descendents – 9th & Walnut
“It’s difficult to imagine there being that many collections of short, fast, fun, straight-ahead punk songs released this year that are as enjoyable as this.”
Album review: Neil Cowley – ‘Hall Of Mirrors (Reflected)’: ambient piano is tripped further into leftfield on this excellent remixes set
THE REMIX album is a really interesting thing, a gathering of the tribes in a meeting place that’s arisen from the sphere of dance music, in which like minds bring their aesthetics and splice it with another’s; a trading, the one overlaying, informing the other, creating a new offspring. When it comes off in the …
Album review: Merpire’s debut album ‘Simulation Ride’ is beautifully crafted rock serving to soothe the lost and lonely
Purveyor of sensitively insightful indie, Melbourne’s Merpire has just released her long-awaited debut album Simulation Ride via Warner’s ADA. The record is a heartening and satisfying culmination of the artist’s favourite songs, taken from the ‘video store of her mind’ and written over the course of the past few years. Merpire also co-produced with partner …
Album Review: Infinity Broke swagger out on to the streets with ‘Your Dream My Jail’: a brilliant and visceral coating of indulgent excess and cathartic chaos – plus tour news.
Infinity Broke are a band that does not go gently into the night: their new album ‘Your Dream My Jail’ is an excoriating, driven, thunderous slice of post-punk cake that is angular, studded and visceral. Guitars wail and caterwaul, drums crash like waves on an exposed coast and singer Jamie Hutchings (formerly of nineties indie …