Album Reviews
Not Forgotten – Mott the Hoople – Mott
Having established themselves in the late 60s as Dylan and Stones infused rockers, Mott the Hoople spent the next few years with a reputation of a storming live act whose studio material failed to capture the magic they routinely produced on stage. After four albums for Island Records in which they explored hard rock, country …
Album Review: San Cisco – ‘Gracetown’
I need to give full disclosure straight away here. I love San Cisco. My love affair began back in Barcelona last August when their infectious “Awkward” was on heavy rotation on my hotel music channel and it’s only grown stronger in the months between. I’d barely got to grips with enjoying their debut eponymous album …
Album Review: They Might Be Giants – Glean
Do you remember when music’s primary function was to provide fun entertainment? It’s something that has been increasingly overlooked in recent years, and the majority of attempts to remind us of it have been dismissed as disposable pop confectionary that it was impossible to take seriously. After all, proper musical statements demand to be taken …
Album Review: Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
Not since Seven Swans has Sufjan Stevens put out such a confessional, introspective, and heartfelt record. Even more, while Seven Swans was heartfelt and confessional, it was a generalization of those feelings of life, loss, and love. Carrie & Lowell is an album of grief pulled straight from Sufjan’s own life. The album is named after Stevens’ mom and stepdad, and …
Not Forgotten: Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery
‘Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends’ How’s that for a killer opening line? Read it again. It’s brilliant. It’s irresistable, pulling you in, promising a life-affirming musical experience and ramps up the anticipation for what can only be one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Except that it doesn’t …
Album Review: Stornoway – Bonxie
Oxford four-piece Stornoway are back with a new album called ‘Bonxie’, released on 13th April through Cooking Vinyl. It’s the first of Stornoway’s albums to take the services of a producer, their previous releases being very much DIY efforts, but not DIY in quality I hasten to add. The producer in question is none other …
Album Review: Hayden – Hey Love
Paul Hayden Desser is a Canadian singer-songwriter with a wide ranging style (folk, grunge, pop, rock, country) that has, over the years, been refined to what is probably best described as Alternative Indie Folk. He has just released his eight album called ‘Hey Love’, a set of songs about his muse – Love. Going by …
Reissue: Rush – All the World’s a Stage
For all Rush’s reputation as dazzling progressive rockers on their studio albums, they have an enviable parallell reputation as a thunderously hard rocking live act. While their 70s studio albums are heavy on meticulously played brainiac sci-fi / fantasy concepts, their first live offering, All the World’s a Stage, confirmed that when it came to …
Album Review: Mark Lanegan Band – A Thousand Miles of Midnight
Since forming the Screaming Trees in the mid-1980s Mark Lanegan has been viewed as a welcome figure on the alternative rock periphery. He has collaborated with everyone from Queens of the Stone Age and Greg Dulli (the Afghan Whigs/Gutter Twins) to Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell. For about thirty years, his prolific output has varied in …
Album Review: Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury – EX-MACHINA (Soundtrack)
Ex-Machina is a psychological thriller which follows the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) a 24-year-old Coder who wins a competition to spend a week at his CEOs retreat. Nathan (Oscar Isaac) plays the reclusive CEO who has planned to use Caleb in an experiment involving the first true artificial intelligence robot which comes in the shape of …