Records :: Album Review 05 Nov 2008
Nick Mitchell: We may not compete with Brazil on the football pitch, but the Scottish-Brazilian musical alliance is one built on rather more equal terms, and as the TrocaBrahma concerts of recent years demonstrated, capable of fruitful collaboration. The somewhat ten...
Records :: Album Review 04 Nov 2008
Milo McLaughlin: Amazing how someone with a voice as stunning as HMS Ginafore could lack faith in their abilities. However, Ginafore - real name Jenny Gordon - is infamously reluctant to perform live despite collaborating with most of the Fence collective at some time ...
Chris Buckle: Annika Line Trost is half of German digi-punks Cobra Killer, going it alone for the second time with new album Trust Me. She is a strikingly beautiful Berliner, making the kind of music you might expect a strikingly beautiful Berliner to make, but her ...
Chris Buckle: Originally from London before she immersed herself in New York café-folk culture, Essie Jain garnered favourable comparisons with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan and Cat Power when her debut album We Made This Ourselves was released la...
Records :: Album Review 03 Nov 2008
Chris Cusack: Eccentric stuff, this. Anyone remember Sparks? That sense of disbelief mixed with admiration they inspired? Wondering exactly what bizarre series of events and circumstances had hastened the creation of such people who had then birthed such sounds. Mir...
Records :: Album Review 31 Oct 2008
Chris Cusack: Post-rock is becoming an increasingly difficult genre for bands - especially those with fundamentally traditional guitar/bass/drum line-ups – to carve out a niche for themselves within. This album sees UpCdownC carefully trying to avoid treading ...
Records :: Album Review 30 Oct 2008
Dave Kerr: Brooklyn’s monopoly on harbouring some of the finest contemporary bands on the planet continues with this compelling curveball from noise-punk combo Parts & Labor. Daring though they’re known to be, the embryonic phase of their fourth album found them ...
Ally Brown: Don't make the mistake of putting Optimo's new mix CD on for a gym visit or before a night out - it'll slow your treadmill to a halt or stunt the momentum of that party mood. Sleepwalk is much more suited to headphone listening, and its lush sound can ...
Records :: Album Review 29 Oct 2008
Finbarr Bermingham: Occasionally, records come along that reflect perfectly the place from which they emerged. Adynamic duo Brightblack Morning Light are based in the New Mexican desert and appropriately, their music is mono-paced, self contained and unashamedly lethargic...
Chris Cusack: It's a stretch but imagine, if you will, a bored Tom Waits wearily mucking about in the Early Learning Centre. That at least is something approaching Pascal Comelade; barely tuned mandolins and toy pianos sit beside glockenspiels and trumpets on this ...
Ally Brown: Surely nobody was thinking of That's The Story Of My Life and After Hours when The Strokes and The Velvet Underground were being routinely compared back at the turn of the century. That's pretty much what Strokes' drummer Fabrizio Moretti's new side-p...
Dave Kerr: “Here it is!” says Adam Stafford on the wee postcard that arrived inside this DIY promo package, “two and a bit years in the making – No Ceremony.” He makes it sound as though Y’all Is Fantasy Island’s existenc...
Records :: Album Review 28 Oct 2008
Finbarr Bermingham: Through his work with Philadelphia's Espers and various solo collaborations, Greg Weeks is often conveniently lumped in with Devendra Banhart and his raggle-taggle bunch of freak folk nomads. His third solo album, The Hive, certainly won't estrange him...
Austin Tasseltine: With a less-than-subtle approach to guitar, Bright White Light starts thick and loud, the faintly distorted vocals and dense production reminiscent of Richard Patrick's Filter. Drained is a compelling second track, with a well-considered drum line prev...
Records :: Album Review 24 Oct 2008
Johnny Langlands: It's nothing more than a heinous coincidence that the introductory riff to Dead or American's second album should echo I Predict A Riot; they can't have taken much inspiration from anything recorded this side of 1994. And if you miss the cerebral punis...
Ewen Millar: Presumably sick of the comparisons of his previous band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci to the Super Furry Animals, Welsh crooner Euros Childs has quietly dropped the acoustic psychedelia that characterised his old outfit and instead opted for the sanctity and s...
Ewen Millar: Jeremy Warmsley has been building quite a name for himself, with high profile support gigs with Daniel Johnson, Regina Spektor, Iron and Wine, and The Shins. Rubbing shoulders with such indie royalty has undoubtedly had its perks, including the roping ...
Ewen Millar: Testicle-hugging jeans? Check. Converse trainers? Check. Angular guitar riffs? Check. Punchy name? Check. Die! Die! Die! certainly know how to tick the appropriate boxes, but their sound is a little less punk in sound than in spirit. The Kiwi trio have...
Records :: Album Review 23 Oct 2008
Ewen Millar: An undercurrent of nostalgia has always permeated the music of Swedish trio Peter, Bjorn and John. Their previous album Writer's Block (2006) positively revelled in it, wrapping their minimalist pop music in layers of reverb that aimed to promote ruefu...
Finbarr Bermingham: Alongside Everett True, Tenebrous Liar's lead singer Steve Gullick is widely acknowledged for his role in bringing underground American music to UK audiences in the early 1990s. We shouldn't be surprised, then, that his musical ventures are clandestine...
