indie albums
Album Review: Craig Finn – I Need a New War
Craig Finn’s solo career has been running parallel to the Hold Steady quite nicely over the last few years, with him being able to take a more introspective musical approach as opposed to the amped up bar band rock and roll of his band. Lyrically it’s much more difficult to find the line between what …
Album Review: Flight of the Conchords – Live in London
As a music fan there are few disappointments more acute than realising that an act you thought you would never get to see in a live environment are touring, but there’s no way you can attend the gig due to matters beyond your control. When me and my partner heard that Flight of the Conchords …
Album Review: Delicate Steve – Till I Burn Up
Over the past ten years Delicate Steve has been establishing a reputation as being a musicians musician. With a unique instrumental style Delicate Steve sounds as equally at home as a guest performing next to the likes of Built to Spill or Tune-Yards, or collaborating with Paul Simon. In addition to this he has been …
Album Review: Various – Harmony In My Head: Power Pop And New Wave Compilation
Cherry Red seem to be in the habit these days of releasing quality Box Sets and this new compilation see`s a natural follow up to the very successful Action Time Vision and Outside of Everything releases. Unlike the Action Time Vision 1976-79 and Outside Of Everything 1977-81 previous sets in this series HIMH gives us …
Album Review: John Grant – Love is Magic
Sometimes you just have to accept your own limitations. For example, the last two months have seen me trying to desperately juggle being a father and halfway decent life partner, with selling a house, with no less than three separate roles in my day job as well. Pressure and stress levels have been predictably high, …
Album Review: Matt Berry – Television Themes
When Acid Jazz Records announced earlier this year that Matt Berry’s next release would be an album of covers of Television Themes, I only momentarily considered if it was a spoof. The thing is, as much as a release like Television Themes may seem like a silly throwaway idea, whose only real reason to exist …
Album Review – Gregory Alan Isakov – Evening Machines
Charles Spano’s review of Damien Rice’s “O” on All Music Guide has a fantastic description of the ‘special sauce’ that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary and takes seemingly simply songs and makes them soar: “Rice is master of what critic/ranter Richard Meltzer called “the unknown tongue” – basically the musical equivalent of the “punctum” in …
Album Review: Steven Page – Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II
Sometimes the most unexpected thing can catch your attention and send you down an avenue and into a field of knowledge that you ever thought you’d end up in. A few weeks ago I heard the recent Steven Page single “White Noise” for the first time, and I really enjoyed it. Minimal research revealed that …
Album Review: B.C. Camplight – Deportation Blues
Quite why B.C. Camplight’s How to Die in the North didn’t capture the attention of the music buying public is something of a puzzle. Luxuriant in its arrangements, with a firm grasp of arrangements that recalled the classic pop of the past yet sounded utterly contemporary, and with distinct whiff of someone who understood and …
Album Review: Half Man Half Biscuit – No-One Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut
Fourteen albums in, and those who have not followed their thirty four year career might expect Half Man Half Biscuit to be showing signs of cultural irrelevancy. That is to miss the point of Half Man Half Biscuit though. For nearly three and a half decades Nigel Blackwell and his loyal opposite number Neil Crossley …