Album Reviews
Album Review: The Just Joans – You Might Be Smiling Now…
Discussing the newish (yeah, we missed it – sorry) album from Glasgow’s Just Joans, singer-songwriter David Pope says “You Might Be Smiling Now… could be considered a loose concept album. The songs detail the confusion in my teenage years, the horror of my twenties and the terror of my encroaching middle age. It’s somewhat self-indulgent, …
Album Review : Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Always Ascending’
The early 2000s. It was a magical time for music, wasn’t it? We were overwhelmed with a wave of new and exciting bands mining post-punk and new wave artists past that maybe never got the love and respect they deserved in their moment of awakening. Bands like The Strokes, Interpol, Art Brut, The Killers, Yeah …
Album Review: The Wombats – Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life
It’s a matter of fact that every budding indie fanatic was raised on a saccharine diet of The Wombats; the angst-ridden exuberance that pulsated from their debut album A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation was like a spoonful of sugar that became our Dark Fruits-drunk pop inauguration – a rite of passage, you might …
Album Review: Field Music – Open Here
With the release of their sixth album proper, Open Here, Field Music have firmly established themselves as mainstays of the dermis of UK music, IE where all the interesting stuff happens! For those already familiar with their output, then you’ll know what to expect – For newcomers, then this, an album as strong and worthy …
Album Review: Menagerie – The Arrow Of Time
Out today (February 9th_ on Freestyle Records is the new album from Menagerie, led by prolific Australian Lance Ferguson, the creative force behind projects such as The Bamboos, Cookin’ on 3 Burners, Lanu and Black Feeling. With this new album, The Arrow of Time, he has drawn inspiration from themes such as space exploration and …
Album Review: Ezra Furman – Transangelic Exodus
As a rallying cry for a generation of music fans with a notoriously short attention span, ”Suck the Blood From my Wound” is an attention grabbing opener. Transangelic Exodus has the unenviable task of maintaining the attention of fans that Ezra Furman gained with 2015’s Perpetual Motion People, and with a solid opener and an …
Album Review: Johnny Jewel – Digital Rain
Johnny Jewel is a musical Renaissance man: he owns a record label, he writes film scores, he collaborated with David Lynch on the recent Twin Peaks soundtrack and he’s a member of Chromatics and Glass Candy. And having grown up in Texas, he’s obsessed with the idea of rain, which is why he’s written this …
Album Review: The Orielles – Silver Dollar Moment
Backseat Mafia recently interviewed Halifax band The Orielles following the release of a couple excellent singles in anticipation of their debut album, “Silver Dollar Moment” due out on 16 February 2018. We’ve had a listen to the album and it really is an extraordinary debut. Sweet harmonies over a scuzzy layer of instruments is not …
Say Psych: Album Review: Dreamweapon – SOL
Rating: 8/10 Portugal’s Dreamweapon take their name from the 1990 Spacemen 3 live album Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music, who themselves took inspiration from the work of minimalist drone – or ‘Dream Music’ – visionary La Monte Young and a 1965 multimedia piece titled ‘Rites of The Dreamweapon’ by original The Velvet Underground drummer …
Album Review : The Soft Moon’s ‘Criminal’
Luis Vasquez seems like a guy with a lot of torment. He seems like a guy with a lot of existential turmoil to unpack. His work as The Soft Moon is a discography of pain, anger, and dark thoughts wrapped in a tattered post-punk bow. The music is always based in rhythm and percussive sway, …