Album Reviews
Album Review: The Charlatans – Modern Nature
The Charlatans are an ageing Indie Holy Cow, the kind of band whose back catalogue xfm love to (very) selectively mine when they’re not heavily rotating the execrable Kasabian and the fading Kings of Leon. There are legions of fans, they’ve been around for over 25 years, and they have produced some decent tunes like ‘Just When You’re Thinking Things …
Reissues: Tyrannosaurus Rex
Marc Bolan’s reputation as one of the 20th Century’s greatest pop stars is forever tied to the material he released as the frontman of T.Rex, one of the finest glam rock bands of the 70s. Of course, much like his contemporary, David Bowie, Bolan’s journey to the crown prince of sequinned pop stardom had been …
Album Review: Viet Cong – Viet Cong
“Newspaper Spoons” opens like a distant canon firing into the abyss. An overblown kick drum beats like a death knell before Matt Flegel sings “Writhing violence essentially without distortion, Wired silent, vanishing into the boredom”. It’s a hell of a way to open a debut album, but that’s just the kind of album Viet Cong is. With every …
Not Forgotten – The Unicorns – Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?
Just from the pencil-crayon artwork of the CD cover, you sort of know that Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? is going to be a chaotically shambolic album, with lots of scratchy sounds, off-kilter keyboards, a generous serving of indie harmonies and an almost non-existent production job. Although firmly rooted in shabby indie territory, Who Will …
Not Forgotten – Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Arcade Fire’s debut Funeral was the sound of a band coming out of nowhere to claim their place as the next big thing in a manner no one had quite experienced before. Neon Bible was a doom-laden and apocalyptic state-of-the-modern-world address which affirmed that Arcade Fire were big on concepts but short on laughs. So where does The Suburbs take us? …
Album Review: Sumner – Sumner
Two years ago, there or there abouts Kristina Sarkisova arrived in London, via Moscow and Valencia with one suitcase and a guitar. Her intention, beyond seeing out the little money she had for a couple of months, was to give the ‘music thing’ a try. If she didn’t get a sign that it was worth …
News: Desperate Journalist launch debut LP.
Maybe it’s the 12 string Rickenbacker; maybe it’s the soaring heartfelt vocals, the slick drumming, or the subtle basslines. Whatever it is Desperate Journalist have it all, the beauty, the intensity, and the majesty, that turns good British indie music into Great British indie music. Their sound will fall easily on the ears of fans …
Not Forgotten – Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
The rules for being a successful prog rock act were seemingly set in stone. You had to be a band, predominantly male, you were not allowed to have hit singles after 1974 and the majority of your songs had to clock in at at least twice the length of the average pop single. …And then …
Not Forgotten: Julian Cope – Fried
Recorded at a point where the popular music press were largely of the opinion that Julian Cope was struggling to relocate his muse following the detonation of The Teardrop Explodes, Fried is the album that found the Arch-Drude at the mid-point between the music industry’s realisation that he wasn’t going to be the easily mouldable popstar that they wanted …
Album Review: Gov’t Mule – Dark Side of the Mule
“By the way, which one’s The Mule?” Recorded Halloween 2008, Dark Side of the Mule finds one of America’s greatest rock bands covering the material of one of the great English rock bands. On first hearing of this album, I at first wondered just who this archive release was aimed at, beyond fans that …