Album Reviews
Album Review: Nadine Khouri – The Salted Air
Nadine Khouri The Salted Air There is a delicate quality to Nadine Khouri’s voice when you are first introduced to her; a hushed, bewitching quality that is equally earnest as it is powerful. It’s a contradiction to read, that I am well aware, but it is such a juxtaposition which one would believe lead previous …
Album Review: Mark Eitzel – Hey Mr Ferryman
It’s always good to have Mark Eitzel back. There will always be some who hanker after the particular dimensions and textures that American Music Club brought to his songs. But his solo work has given him a chance to explore different sounds and collaborate around and about a pretty consistent songwriting style. Given that probably …
Album Review: Delicate Steve – This Is Steve
Delicate Steve is not what you’d think of as a guitar virtuoso when you listen to his records, but that’s exactly what he is. The reason you don’t think of him as a guitar great is because his albums are too catchy sounding to be considered as “virtuoso playing”. It’s like listening to the best …
Album Review: Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk – Passage
The newest collaboration between Ulrich Schnauss and Jonas Munk, titled simply Passage, is a heady mix of intellectual ambient and euphoric electronic. You get Schnauss’ synths layered with Munk’s liquid guitar lines, sometimes with drum programming and sometimes on their own. The result is a complex and engaging record that offers the best both musicians …
Album Review: Del Paxton – All Day, Every Day, All Night
All Day, Every Day, All Night is the debut album from emo/ math rockers Del Paxton. Combining influences from a whole multitude of genres the band have created a somewhat unique sound that will surely excite fans of alternative, math rock, emo and pop punk. The record is essentially a collection of previous material produced between …
Album Review: Japandroids – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life
It seems that Brian King and David Prowse have gone full Hooters(the band not the chain store.) They’ve turned their DIY, punk-inspired anthems into full-on roots rockers. From 2009s Post-Nothing clear through to 2012s breakout Celebration Rock, Japandroids have cultivated this caffeinated, punk-meets-Springsteen-meets-Replacements sweat and blood-stained love letters to getting drunk, falling in love, punching …
Album Review: The Flaming Lips – Oczy Mlody
It’s been a long strange trip, hasn’t it? The Flaming Lips have been a musical freak exhibit in a constant state of flux since the late 90s. Each record since 1997s Zaireeka has been a reinvention of the Lips. After the band became a three-piece(along with honorary member and long time producer Dave Fridmann), Wayne …
Album Review: Tycho – Epoch
Tycho, essentially the project of Berkley, CA producer Scott Hansen, have just released their new album,’Epoch’. There’s always question marks about music of this kind as to when it stops being music you concentrate on, and becomes background noise – music to cook to, or have dinner parties to, or soundtrack some creative or building …
Album Review: The Suncharms – The Suncharms
Sheffield five piece The Suncharms were one of those bands, in more ways than one. You know the sort I mean – we all have them. They made the sort of tracks that, if you knew them, you loved them, pestered your friends about them, included them on all the cassettes you made that probably …
Album Review: The Blue Aeroplanes – Welcome, Stranger!
The shotgun marriage between rock music and poetry is not always a happy one, but in the work of Bristol’s Blue Aeroplanes they have coexisted quite easily for over thirty years. Their unusual mix of REM meets Lou Reed, with jangly Peter Buck-style guitar backing mainly spoken word performances, was beloved among the indie and …