Album Reviews
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 …
Album Review: Motörhead – Overkill / Bomber / Ace of Spades vinyl reissues
Out today (March 30th) on Santuary / PIAS comes the first installment a mammoth nine album Motörhead vinyl reissue series. It starts with the bands second, third and fourth albums – Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades. They were the three albums that propelled the group into the peoples consciousness (and, lets not forgt, the …
Reissue: Rush – 2112
Over the last four decades Rush’s fusion of heavy metal and prog has seen them solidify their position as one of the most consistently popular rock bands on the planet. Their self-titled album had been a collection of straight ahead Led Zeppelin influenced rockers, however the departure of drummer John Rutsey and the recruitment of …
Say Psych: Album Review – Wicked Sun by Narco States
Narco States are one of those bands who, on the surface, sound like many others who you could safely file under ‘garage’. There are the MC5/ Stooges wails and lo-fi drums, and thrumming bass. There is the sort of wailing organ swirling in and out of the mix which is redolent of any number of …
Not Forgotten: David Byrne – Feelings
In retrospect Feelings is probably the last time that David Byrne made a conscious effort to make an album that might sell to an audience beyond his most obsessed fans. Where his previous self titled album had been a mature mix of material with a very definite adult feel about it, Feelings was partly a …