album review
Album review: Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band – ‘Banned’: a fever dream of impressionistic acid-folk-soul for the jaded ear
BY THEIR name, they sound like they should be some great lost Moog-psych outfit from ’69, and weird and wonderful is definitely a touchstone for the Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band, be sure. It’s the musical mind-melding of Yves Jarvis, whose album from last autumn, Sundry Rock Song Stock, was a really clever and rather ace …
Album review: Paul Jacobs – ‘Pink Dogs On The Green Grass’: Pottery man breaks out with a low-slung, psych-boogie blur of brilliance
SPREADING his wings from his excellent mothership, the wiry post-punkers Pottery, Paul Jacobs is shortly to unveil a gently slackercore beauty of a full debut solo album, Pink Dogs On The Green Grass. Which is, y’know, the reason we’re all gathered here today. Stepping away from the dependable sticksman role which is propelled Pottery right …
Album Review: Gruff Rhys – Seeking New Gods
It’s a tricky thing, judging the solo work of an artist who has had such huge success at the head of a band. Should their albums be considered solely within the context of their solo endeavours or do they have to stand in the spotlight alongside the collective behemoths that preceded them? It’s even trickier …
Album Review: BSÍ’s doubled edged ‘Sometimes depressed…but always anti-fascist’ is a dream pop delight with some serrated edges.
There are two sides to this story: Icelandic duo BSÍ have released an album of two sides in ‘Sometimes depressed…but always antifascist’. Side one – sometimes depressed – is a collection of dream pop vignettes: restrained, delicate and eminently beautiful tracks that are reflective and melodic. Side two – always antifascist – presents some slightly …
Album Review: CLUSTERSUN’s Avalanche is a magnificent, mesmerising and eviscerating piece of gothic shoegaze magic
‘Avalanche’, the new album from Italian shoegaze behemoths, CLUSTERSUN, clearly sets out its sonic intent from the very beginning. ‘Desert Daze’ is an aural buzzsaw, tilting along a thundering rhythm section with sonorous, razor sharp guitars and impassioned vocals. It is a wall of sound filtered through by flange, reverb and feedback that leaves one …
Album: David Gray – Skellig
Folk troubadour Gray is on to his twelfth studio album titled ‘Skellig’. Which takes its name from a formation of precipitous rocky islands off the coast of Co. Kerry where in 600AD a group of monks set up a monastery, believing that leading such a merciful existence, they would leave the distraction of the human …
Album: Wilding introduces his impressive catalogue with ‘Hello…My Name is Wilding’ – a glorious compilation of his past, present and future music.
Melbournian troubadour Wilding blew us away last year with his concept album ‘The Death Of Foley’s Mall’ – one of the best Antipodean releases of 2020 in my humble opinion – and for many, well, let’s be honest, for me – it was the first taste of Justin Wilding Stokes’s incomparable songwriting skills. The thing …
Album review: Alfredito Linares – ‘Vol. 2: The Colombia Years’: packs a punch
NOW HERE’S a tidy little gem from those ever-reliable sound curators Rocafort Records, a second sparkling collection of treasures from the early 70s’ boogaloo explosion courtesy of the sharp-suited composer, band leader and pianist Alfredito Linares. This was a time of the Nuyorican wave, when salsa swept up some rock ‘n’ roll and broke out …
Album review: TEKE::TEKE – ‘Shirushi’: a deliciously wonky, delectably trippy psych debut
RULE one: Japanese bands do brilliant, brilliant things with guitars: this is just fact. From the mind-blowing chaos of Melt-Banana to the heavy psych stylings of Acid Mothers Temple and Bo Ningen, down through the garage-rawk of Guitar Wolf and the dreamy, trippy-hippy psych of Ghost, new and deeper appreciations of how to wield and …
Album Review: Merk’s ‘Infinite Youth’ is an exquisite exploration of the end of childhood innocence and the transience of life
New Zealand artist Merk is the moniker of Auckland, New Zealand artist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mark Perkins, who began his career as a touring member of Tom Lark and Fazerdaze. I reviewed his single ‘Laps Around The Sun’ earlier this year finding it to be yearning, raw and melodic, with a deep melancholia reflecting on …