Album Reviews
Say Psych: Album Review: Viagra Boys – Welfare Jazz
Viagra Boys’ Sebastian Murphy dreams about everyone hating his guts. A lot. “I kept having this recurring nightmare where my mom was crying and my friends were all pissed off at me,” he recalls, almost reverently. The band’s latest, Welfare Jazz out last week doesn’t bargain with the anxiety in that defeated feeling, but rather …
ALBUM REVIEW – MATTHEW SWEET – CATSPAW.
Those of us around a certain age may fondly remember the college rock movement of the early-to-mid ‘90s. Lord knows I do. For a period of time, power-pop became fused with bittersweet moments that reigned across college radio in the United States. Juliana Hatfield, Grant Lee Buffalo, Luscious Jackson, Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits; the …
News: The classic albums ‘Submarine Bells’ and ‘Soft Bomb’ by The Chills are now re-issued through Flying Nun Records
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the New Zealand indie music scene ever since the heady days of the eighties, with the Dunedin music scene, spearheaded by the legendary Flying Nun Records, the explosive ingredient. And, at the head of the vanguard was, of course, the delectable The Chills. Flying Nun Records have now …
ALBUM REVIEW: Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West – ‘Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West’
Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West is like a finely reduced sauce; it packs an awful lot of psychedelic flavour and fun into a fat half-hour. Afrobeat, surf rock, funk, straight psych, country psych, jazz, shoegaze, are all seep through a lovely record with three of four moments of proper excellence and a lot of red-eyed, 1am lava lamp big-grinned fun besides. It’s good to see him back.
ALBUM REVIEW: Jim Ghedi – ‘In The Furrows Of Common Place’: a bold, proud album of working class folk
In The Furrows Of Common Place is a bold and proud album of working class folk. It bears witness with an unflinching melodious anger – it’s the first essential album of 2021
ALBUM REVIEW: John Dwyer, Nick Murray, Brad Caulkins, Tom Dolas and Greg Coates – ‘Witch Egg’
There’s so many ideas in Witch Egg, from so many genres and eras: mod, krautrock, free jazz, even acid jazz; they’re arrived at, explored at once, captured, moved on from. It speaks much of the restless creativity at the heart of this, John Dwyer. It’s quite a journey for a fringe music head
EP: VayFlor – Too Far Gone
From the relatively young dance label ‘Somma’, comes their next EP ‘Too Far Gone’, from producer VayFlor and features two original tracks and a remix. Deep, Melodic or Progressive House, you can take your pick from the various genres used to label the music, but to me its all of these and more. The Title …
Album Review: Still Corners release the majestic album “The Last Exit”: a magical journey of mystery, romance and isolation.
In ‘The Last Exit’, Still Corners have perfectly captured a magical ethereal desert landscape in the spacious layers of their songs. Crystal sharp guitars, soaked in reverb and mystery, punctuate a bedrock of acoustic instruments and evocative, wild and unnatural sounds. Singer Tess Murray’s crooning, louche vocals smooth the path. There is an inherent a …
Album Review: Buck Meek – Two Saviors
Big Thief guitarist presents a new album of (mostly) quiet Americana lullabies
ALBUM REVIEW – POM POKO – CHEATER.
Pom Poko were first brought to Backseat Mafia’s attention early last year when they released their single “Praise” from their debut album Birthday released in 2019. Since then, they’ve been one of the bands from Bella Union’s spectrum of talent that have been a regular feature on the website and the release of “Like A …