Album Reviews
Say Psych: Album Review: The Lucid Dream – Actualisation
Carlisle’s The Lucid Dream are back with a new LP, Actualisation, which was released last week on Holy Are You Recordings, much to the delight of their fiercely loyal fan base. Having formed in 2008 they have a string of sold-out 7″s under their belt, as well as LP’s Songs Of Lies and Deceit released …
Album Review: An Early Bird – Of Ghosts and Marvels
Here at Backseat Mafia, we have been following the career of Stefano De Stefano since our very inception when he was the front man for Italian folk/rock band Pipers. He has now ventured out on his own under the moniker An Early Bird and released his first full length album ‘Of Ghosts and Marvels’. Of …
Box Set Review: Mott the Hoople – Mental Train (The Island Years 1969-71)
Before “All The Young Dudes”, before Top of the Pops appearances, before David Bowie, Mott The Hoople were a brilliant live act that arguably struggled to transfer the tremendous energy that they generated on stage to the studio. It’s not that they didn’t try, indeed, they recorded four solid albums that were met with mass …
Album Review: John Grant – Love is Magic
Sometimes you just have to accept your own limitations. For example, the last two months have seen me trying to desperately juggle being a father and halfway decent life partner, with selling a house, with no less than three separate roles in my day job as well. Pressure and stress levels have been predictably high, …
Not Forgotten: Genesis – Selling England By the Pound
Genesis may have not been the first, best or even the most original, but to many fans they are the archetypal progressive rock act. From distinctly unpromising beginnings, they had nevertheless evolved from cult favourites in Europe, to the point where in late 1973, they were on the cusp of sizeable commercial success. Much of …
Album Review: Matt Berry – Television Themes
When Acid Jazz Records announced earlier this year that Matt Berry’s next release would be an album of covers of Television Themes, I only momentarily considered if it was a spoof. The thing is, as much as a release like Television Themes may seem like a silly throwaway idea, whose only real reason to exist …
Album Review: Jim Clements – A Failure
Every so often Jim Clements puts out an album and not enough people cop on. It’s kind of understandable. There’s very much music to be heard and no shortage of downbeat blokes doing a broadly Americanaish thing with guitars, keys and strings. There’s definitely a temptation to think that life might be too short to …
Say Psych: Premiere: Medicine Boy – Lower
Berlin duo Medicine Boy release their second LP Lower on Fuzz Club Records tomorrow and BSM is honoured to bring you the premiere streaming. Originally hailing from Cape Town, South Africa, Andre Leo and Lucy Kruger founded the project back in 2014, self-releasing their debut EP to international acclaim. Debut LP Kinda Like Electricity was …
Album Review – Gregory Alan Isakov – Evening Machines
Charles Spano’s review of Damien Rice’s “O” on All Music Guide has a fantastic description of the ‘special sauce’ that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary and takes seemingly simply songs and makes them soar: “Rice is master of what critic/ranter Richard Meltzer called “the unknown tongue” – basically the musical equivalent of the “punctum” in …
Say Psych: Album Review: Death Valley Girls – Darkness Rains
Rock n’ roll has always served as a means to elevate the fringe of society, though it’s accentuated the plights of the outcasts and misfits in different ways throughout the years. Today we see it manifest in LA’s Death Valley Girls, who are more like a travelling caravan than a band in the traditional sense. At …