Album Reviews
Album Review: Black Tusk – Pillars of Ash
Pillars of Ash is the fifth album from Savannah, Georgia metal band Black Tusk. Released via Relapse Record the band’s latest effort combines elements of heavy metal, sludge and hard-core punk creating their own blend of what the band calls “Swamp metal”. Despite the filth encrusted sludge style of production this record has a real …
Album Review: Sunflower Bean – Human Ceremony
By Ryan Jameson Weaver Our music industry moves so fast that a band can come out with something so unique and amazing that it is relevant for a week and then bounces into waves anonymity right after. Take for example, the last My Bloody Valentine album, MBV, an album 20 years in the making, from …
Reissue: George Jones – Cold Hard Truth/Live With The Possum
Even people who hate country have heard of Dolly or Kenny, but ironically the late, great George Jones outsold the pair of them despite hardly anyone on this side of the pond having heard of him. Cold Hard Truth is late period Jones recorded after years of drunken hellraising that put him in the same …
Album Review: The Callas – Half Kiss Half Pain
Brothers Lakis and Aris lonas started The Callas in Athens, Greece back in 2005. Both filmmakers and musicians, the brothers lonas took a more dissonant and theatrical approach to their music by taking inspiration from both Sonic Youth and The Fall. The Callas, who also feature Chrysanthi Tsoukala (guitar, vocals) and Marilena Petridou (Drums) have recently …
Album Review: Field Music – Commontime
Sometime in the gloriously messed up late 80s I remember a friend playing me the ’25 ‘O Clock’ mini-album by ‘The Dukes of Stratosphear’, a blast of fabulous neo-psychedelia, that even in our stoned state, a few tracks in, we collectively began to realise was XTC getting their rocks off under an alter-ego. Their follow-up …
Box set review: Skeletal Family- Eternal: Singles, Albums, Rarities, BBC Sessions, Demos 1982-2015
The Skeletal Family were part of the Goth sub-culture that sprang up in the 1980s but they were never really in the movement’s first division like The Sisters of Mercy or The Mission. But their unique selling point was they had a female singer Anne-Marie Hurst and it is her powerful vocals, with more than …
Album Review: Lissie – My Wild West
Ultimately this is a decent effort, wearing a number of flaws on its sleeves. It’s an album whose pop landscape is broken up by howls of anguish, discordant laments and, ironically, trying too hard to be things other than itself. As well as disrupting its own coherence, there are other missteps. Not enough is made of the …
Album Review: Diiv – Is The Is Are
Diiv tapped into that wandering soul we all have buried deep down(some deeper than others) back in 2012 when they gave us their big and dreamy debut Oshin. Guitars swelled in waves of reverb, as did pretty much everything else, as Zachary Cole Smith sang songs like he was lost in thought while emoting into the …
Album Review: SIA – This Is Acting
There is an uneasy amount of hype surrounding Sia Furler’s forthcoming album, This Is Acting – Sia is seen as the new bastion of hope within a bloated pop music scene with her offbeat musical output lauding her to not only critics but more crucially the general populous (no pun intended) of mainstream audiences. You …
Album Review: Foxes – All I Need
In 2014 Foxes released her debut album ‘Glorious’. It took pop music, added in a whole bunch of quirks and an edge, and went on to be one of the best albums of the year. Her Kate Bush-esque dramatic sound, laid over huge pop hooks and dirty electronic beats separated her from so many others …