Alt-Rock
ALBUM REVIEW: Tamar Aphek – ‘All Bets Are Off’: superb opening salvo from Tel Aviv power trio
Tamar Aphek takes the power trio thing and moves it forward into new psych-blues-rock territories with elegance and so much fire. She also might just be the best new noisy guitar stylist since Joey Santiago and John Dwyer. She’s potent and has a voice of real elegance, and sonic firepower, and tunes, and the future is very, very bloody bright indeed
PREMIERE: Mute Swan – ‘Sedative Sun’: dazzling Tucson shoegaze tees up for their new album
THINK Arizona, think big, big skies; and maybe we just need to amend that a little, what with Citrus Clouds carving out an impressive shoegaze aesthetic over in Phoenix, and Mute Swan a hundred-odd clicks south-east down the Arizona Sun Corridor in Tucson also wielding massive, FX-laden six strings with potency – the state is …
TRACK: Neighbourhood Watch – ‘Focus Up’: Toronto quintet telling indie-rock tales of growing up
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH are a young five-piece outta Toronto with a really simple mission: they love making music about growing up. Clear, concise and ready in your ‘hood with melody and storytelling. Singer-guitarist Tristan Surman – who’s joined in the Neigbourhood Watch, keeping an eye on your endz, by pianist Tyler Moretti, bassist Thom Elgie, lead …
SEE: Tamar Aphek – ‘Russian Winter’: power trio scorcher will thaw your January
SHE’S pretty much already Tel Aviv’s favourite guitar-wielding daughter, Tamar Aphek; and if you like your power trios full of flame and energy and neo-psych atmospheres akin to the Jimi Hendrix Experience upon arrival in London – make no mistake, Tamar, bassist Uri Ketner and drummer Yuval Garin are hellish tight – then they will …
SEE: Drive-By Truckers share visuals for their cover of Ramones’ ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’
ATHENS, Georgia’s next most famous musical sons, Drive-By Truckers, have shared a lo-fi video for their cover of Ramones’ classic “The KKK Took My Baby Away”. Have a watch below. The cracking cover, in which they take Noo Yoik punk out for a spin way, waaaay past city limits and down south, is the knockabout closer …
SEE: Oya Paya – ‘Focus’: a slacker-pop winter warmer
IF YOU like a bit of bouncy slacker rock, all loose, chantalong lyrics primed for some Converse-meets-dancefloor action, with guitars scrappy and all about the downstroke and fun, then wrap that listening gear around the latest video from Liverpool’s loose-limbed Oya Paya, “Focus”. With just days to go in 2020, the three-piece – drawling singer-guitarist …
Track: Ghostpoet – I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep
Along with announcing a much anticipated UK live tour, Ghostpoet has also unveiled the haunting video to the title track of his critically latest album, “I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep” we reviewed here Now comes the beautifully strange and disorienting video, directed by Thomas James and featuring a funeral of sorts, from …
News: Kerbdog Announce The Re-issue Of Albums ‘Kerbdog’ And ‘On The Turn’
The cult Irish alt-rock quartet, Kerbdog, have today announced that they have teamed up with Hassle Hindsight, the recently launched re-issue label from the team at Hassle Records, to re-release their 1994 self-titled debut and its heralded 1997 follow-up “On The Turn”, their last full studio album before their first break-up in 1998. Despite a small handful of …
SEE: No Age – ‘Turned To String’: new video from low-slung noise rockers
SO LOOK, it’s not even news anymore: 2020, and the world is busy going to hell in a handcart. So just what is a scuzzily excellent, guitar-totin’ US alt.rock band to do? There ain’t no gigs; there no signing sessions. Hell now even the goddam pressing plants are backing up like bad plumbing. The answer? …
TRACK: Chappaqua Wrestling’s ‘Football’ shreds it like the Fannies
BORN into musical families, Brighton duo Chappaqua Wrestling – Charlie Woods and Jake Mac – knew exactly how to respond when the coronavirus swept a scheduled summer of festival appearances down the dumper: record, record, record. As appearances at fests such as The Great Escape and Truck Festival melted into infective impossibility, they cracked on …