indie rewind
Not Forgotten: The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
It kicks off with a riff that screams “Rock and roll!”, and you’re either in or out. If you’re not sure who this is, then welcome to the world to the righteous rock and roll world of the Hold Steady, where choruses are singalong, riffs are massive, keyboard players are moustachioed, and narrative lyrics are …
Not Forgotten: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder
Second album syndrome that seems to have fallen out of fashion in the last twenty years. It seems that record labels have become wise to the phenomenon and ensure that new acts have at least enough material to fill two albums these days. Now second album syndrome doesn’t usually strike until the third album, and …
Not Forgotten: The Duckworth Lewis Method – Sticky Wickets
For those unfamiliar with them The Duckworth Lewis Method are a collaboration between Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of cult power pop act Pugwash. They’re a band boasting two top draw creative forces whose records just happen to be themed around cricket. Now, on the surface, many might assume that you …
Not Forgotten: Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
I discovered Sigur Rós, like many of us did, via the rapturously received Ágætis byrjun avant-garde psych-prog statement made even more exotic due to the band’s use of their native Icelandic language and their own bespoke language Vonlenska. It was a vast-sounding orchestrated album which made great use of their slow burning arrangements and it …
A Buyers Guide to Crowded House (1986-1996)
Few acts have ever managed the career trajectory that Crowded House managed to pull off during their initial decade-long run from 1986 to 1996. Their debut album did solid business in the USA with their debut album on the back of a pair of big hit singles, while they struggled to make much of an …
Not Forgotten: Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Rising slowly over the horizon of a fractured, but ever evolving modern music scene in 2008, The Fleet Foxes self-titled debut didn’t so much dazzle, as glow warmly, encouraging you to bask in its radiance as it did so. While all this had been done before (their enthusiastically reckless use of reverb recalls My Morning …
Not Forgotten: Smashing Pumpkins – Adore
Smashing Pumpkins were undoubtedly one of the key rock acts of the 1990s. Lumped in with the grunge movement, they stood apart from the Seattle trio of big hitters, and they were on a completely different level to the movement’s rank and file foot soldiers. Up to Adore’s release in 1998, each Smashing Pumpkins album …
Not Forgotten: Flight of the Conchords – Flight of the Conchords
As I have aged I have been slowly but surely reaching the conclusion that comedy, or more specifically, what the individual finds funny is a deeply personal thing, perhaps even more so than music. If you’re watching a film, television programme or stand up comedian who everyone around you is laughing at, yet it / …
Not Forgotten: Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel
In retrospect From The Choirgirl Hotel was an important album for Tori Amos. By 1998, despite a couple of medium sized hit singles earlier in the decade, she was in danger of being known in the mainstream for just the (admittedly enjoyable) dance remix of “Professional Widow”, at least by the wider record buying public. …
Not Forgotten: Billy Bragg – Life’s a Riot With Spy vs Spy
Is it an album? Is it an EP? To be honest Life’s a Riot With Spy vs Spy is 35 years old now, and still no one is entirely sure how to classify it. What is not up for the debate is that it heralded the arrival of Billy Bragg to a music scene that …