Album Reviews
NOT FORGOTTEN – TORI AMOS – STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS
I must have stood here, staring at my CD collection for half an hour or so. I had known I’d wanted to do an ongoing series of articles for Backseat Mafia that would build up to be an A to Z of unfairly overlooked and forgotten albums through the decades, but I just didn’t have …
Album Review: Sleigh Bells – Bitter Rivals
Far from being bitter rivals, Sleigh Bells third album actually shows they may be working towards more equality. The Brooklyn duo, singer Alexis Krauss and guitarist Derek Miller met when he served her and her mother at a restaurant. According to legend (admittedly not the most famous of legends, but a legend none the less) …
Album Review: Smoke Fairies – Ghosts
There’s something otherworldly about Smoke Fairies. Their name, taken from the Summer mist that collects in the hedgerows of the lanes in the duo’s, school friends Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies, home county of Sussex. But it’s their ghostly goth-folk, coupled with a healthy dose of Americana, and looked over by the shadow of 4AD …
NOT FORGOTTEN – PULP – WE LOVE LIFE
Of the Brit-pop bands Pulp were something of an anomaly because they had been around in one form or another since 1978 and had gained acceptance the hard way over fifteen years, rather than being the overnight sensations that so many other big bands of the era were. Jarvis Cocker was a perfect anti-star, a …
NOT FORGOTTEN – JOE COCKER – I CAN STAND A LITTLE RAIN
Throughout my childhood I grew up hearing Joe Cocker due to the fact that my dad is a huge fan of his. Cocker is Sheffield born and while he was attempting to establish a name for himself through the 60s, he lived barely a stones throw away from where my dad was growing up in …
NOT FORGOTTEN – HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT – THIS LEADEN PALL
With references to long distance haulage companies, pear drops and heavy metal groups of the 80s, it’s no surprise that lyrical diversity is a strength of This Leaden Pall. What is perhaps a little more surprising is all these references are squeezed into the opening number… Welcome to the obscure, unique, and yes, occasionally downright …
Album Review: The Polyphonic Spree-Yes, It’s True
The Polyphonic Spree has always had this air of overwhelming positivity. Even on their darkest album, 2007s The Fragile Army, despite the black jumpsuits and black eyeliner they came across as pensive, yet hopeful. I think that quality has always endeared me to them. Tim DeLaughter and Wayne Coyne are like the opposite sides of …
ALBUM REVIEW – NEKO CASE – THE WORSE THINGS GET, THE HARDER I FIGHT, THE HARDER I FIGHT, THE MORE I LOVE YOU
Its her voice that strikes you at first. It’s a clear voice, an honest voice, a strong voice. A voice that’s compelling whether you like alternative country music or not. The first song I heard her sing was “Margaret Vs. Pauline”, the stunning opener to her gorgeous Fox Confessor Brings the Flood album and since …
Meet: The Kitchens of Distinction, and news of their new album
Sometimes you have your head turned. By money, by people you find attractive, by a job offer. For me it was much more simplistic. It was by records. So when I saw something made by the impossibly named Kitchens of Distinction (named, unsurprisingly I suppose on thinking about it) after a shop the band drove …
Not Forgotten: XTC – Nonsuch
In the latter half of the 80s the combined successes of Skylarking and Oranges & Lemons had saved XTC and they had re-established themselves as mature and intelligent pop-rockers that could appeal to all ages. The conceptual grandeur of Skylarking had initially been a commercial failure, but a freak hit on American College Radio with …