album review
Album Review: Web Sheldon – Fingerprints
There’s no shortage of music falling into the Backseat Mafia mailbox from new male singer-songwriters. Ever since Ed Sheeran achieved world domination, there as been an influx of young male artists reaching for their guitars and trying to replicate the sound and success of their idol. And there’s a lot of talent out there, all …
ALBUM REVIEW: Arctic Monkeys – Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino
Before I say anything at all, I think it’s best you and I agree: nothing the Arctic Monkeys could have produced would have been enough. They are simply too loved – and for that, they are damned. We can take a look in that rose-tinted lens of retrospect, through each fleeting, transitory era: from ‘Whatever …
Album Review: Shinedown – Attention Attention
American anthemic rock titans Shinedown are back in 2018 with their pulsating new album, Attention Attention. It’s been a hot minute since the band released new music so fans and reviewers alike are desperate to hear what the intrepid, emotionally charged rockers have to say three years after 2015’s Threat To Survival. The first track …
Album Review: christian fitness – Nuance-the Musical
Andy Falkous seems to be immune to the law of diminishing returns. Nuance -The Musical is the fifth of his christian fitness outpourings. Interleaved with Future of the Left albums, that’s a lot of music in the last few years. Practice seems to be making perfect though -both of his guises have been going from …
Album Review: Adam Stafford – Fire Behind The Curtain
Oh bollocks. I lack the vocabulary to do justice to this record. Any knowledge of minimalism I have is, well, minimal. That BBC4 documentary a few weeks back was enough to whet the appetite and draw out the musical and historical threads between things instinctively liked over the years. From the more direct lines running …
Album Review: Band of Gold – Where’s the Magic
I’ve always had a quiet regard for Scandi-pop. Maybe it’s the to do with the enunciation, something which can give a sense of cool detachment from the lyrics. Whatever the case, Band of Gold’s second album, Where’s the Magic, comes across as well executed smart art pop. Band of Gold consist of Nina Mortvedt and …
Album Review: David Byrne – American Utopia
Can you hear the name David Byrne without thinking of the super-sized suit or humming ‘Once in a Lifetime?’ Me neither. The Talking- Head-in-Chief moved to New York years ago. Like so many of us in recent years, he felt the urge to despair and hide whenever he watched the news. But he made a …
Album Review: Tracey Thorn – Record
So here’s what we already knew. Firstly, that Tracey Thorn is the queen of cool. In the nineties when her band Everything But The Girl started hanging out with the likes of Massive Attack, Deep Dish and got the remix treatment by Todd Terry, they developed their own brand of laid back electronic pop. Both …
Album Review: Zed Penguin – A Ghost, A Beast
Edinburgh seems to be a bit of a breeding ground for slightly ravaged art rock eccentrics toting cellos. Zed Penguin have been around a while, ploughing not a dissimilar furrow to fellow citizens The Leg, who in turn have collaborated with Paul Vickers late of Dawn of the Replicants to similar effect. While Zed Penguin …
ALBUM REVIEW: Brian Fallon – Sleepwalkers
Label: Virgin EMI Released: 9th February 2018 More well-known initially as frontman of American rockers The Gaslight Anthem, Brian Fallon has offered his second solo album since he debuted with 2016’s Painkillers. Sleepwalkers perfectly combines raucous rock ‘n’ roll, dreamy acoustic folk and Motown rhythms, sounding as if Fallon has been writing music to this …