Album Reviews
EP: Bryony Jarman-Pinto – Fish Factory Sessions
Out now on the ever brilliant Tru Thought label is the latest EP from songwriter and vocalist Bryony Jarman-Pinto, Fish Factory Sessions EP. They are as-live recordings of songs from her much lauded ‘Cage and Aviary’ album recorded at (unsurprisingly) London’s Fish Factory Studios. Of the sessions, Bryony says “The Fish Factory Sessions were meant …
Album Review: Guided By Voices – Mirrored Aztec
Having formed in Dayton, Ohio in 1983, Guided By Voices are nearly as old as the author of this album review. They were responsible for my favourite indie rock album of last year, ‘Sweating the Plague’, which they followed up earlier this year with the rather less impressive ‘Surrender Your Poppy Field’. The band have …
ALBUM REVIEW: Keys – ‘Home Schooling’: lo-fi Welsh powerpop gems
COMING at you out of the Welsh capital Cardiff, Keys are a quintet who, we can glean from their photograph, love a pair of shades. A listen to their new digital-only release Home Schooling, which is out on August 21st, will also show that behind those tinted lenses there are ten eyes with an absolute …
ALBUM REVIEW: Siv Jakobsen – ‘A Temporary Soothing’: fashioning a gem of folk delicacy from the lived experience
SIV JAKOBSEN, who grew up on the south-western edge of the wider Oslo conurbation, is a folk artist who is really is singing from the heart. Hailing from the fjordside community of Asker, she studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachussetts, honing and exploring. She took her first steps out there …
Album Review: SERA – When I Wake Up
Sera Zyborska, has written an 11-track album incorporating the best of folk, roots and Americana, to create a haunting work of creation. Working and writing with producer Andi Crutwell-Jones, the album focuses on real stories incorporating tales of love, loss, anxiety, relationships with the odd folk tale of witchery and ancestry thrown into this veritable …
ALBUM REVIEW: Less Bells – ‘Mourning Jewelry’: absolutely affecting drone-post classical forged in loss
JULIE CARPENTER, who records for Texas’ home of boundary-pushing out-rock and drone beauty Kranky, has journeyed from musical academia at the University of North Texas, through session work as a violinist for bands such as Eels, to finding her own musical self as Less Bells. She released a graceful and beautiful set, Solifuge, for the …
ALBUM REVIEW: Paul Molloy – ‘The Fifth Dandelion’: psych-pop sunshine beamed forward from ’68
SOMEONE put music journalist and band connections-mapper Pete Frame on speed dial, because the various groovy psych-pop iterations spiralling off from The Wirral’s The Coral are like a Mandelbrot set these days and more than worthy, surely, of one of his fantastic Rock Family Trees. Besides the sprawling, sea-shanty psych majesty of The Coral themselves, …
Album Review: Sons of Southern Ulster – Sinners and Lost Souls
It would be hard to talk about the new album from Sons of Southern Ulster and not to reference the currently exploding Fontaines D.C. – the same vein is gloriously plowed: Irish punk poetry wrapped in a visceral anger and melody. Given Sons of Southern Ulster’s debut album ‘Foundry Folk Songs) came out in 2016 …
EP: Johnny Hunter – Early Trauma plus tour news
‘Early Trauma’, the new EP from Sydney’s Johnny Hunter is quite simply brilliant. It is a sweeping, cinematic and statuesque release filled with five close to perfect pop songs that have theatricality and pomp and an elegance, leavened by a satisfying post-punk gothic darkness. Bowie-esque vocals swerve into a Joy Division sombreness and Bryan Ferry …
EP: Relay Tapes – Early Morning Abstract
Out now on Shore Dive Records is the ‘Early Morning Abstract’ ep from Australian Shoegaze/DreamPop act, Relay Tapes, aka Jade Tyers. This collection of songs is available to download from Bandcamp and includes tunes released individually throughout 2018-19. There’s five tracks, the first being, ‘Theme 42’ which starts with a building, wave-like crescendo of ethereal sound. …