Records :: Round Up 28 Oct 2008
Nick Mitchell: And November’s single of the month goes to... Razorlight. Sorry, wrong envelope. I meant to pick up the one for 'Most nauseous, mock-sincere rock ballad of the month'. That one goes to them for Wire to Wire (*, Out Now), Johnny Borrell’s la...
Music :: Feature 24 Sep 2008
Jason Morton: Back in the mid-80s - before III, before Sammy Hagar - Van Halen shot a video for a soon-to-be hit single entitled Hot for Teacher. In that clip, Eddie and Co. infiltrate an American primary school, allowing the kids - and the band members themselves ...
Music :: Live Review 21 Jul 2008
Ally Brown, Nick Mitchell, Dave Kerr, R.J Thomson, Finbarr Bermingham: After breaking the undercarriage of the Skinnymobile on its rocky exit from T in the Car Park last year, much to the peculiar amusement of an onlooking policeman, it's with caution that we roll up to Balado this year with a plan for all eventualities. ...
Records :: Album Review 07 Jul 2008
Finbarr Bermingham: How do you follow up an album bordering on canonization? With another classic, of course. After drawing united and unsparing critical praise for Boys and Girls in America (but curiously dividing public opinion on a scale rivalling that of Marmite), the...
Records :: Feature :: Round Up 01 Jul 2008
Nick Mitchell: To look at bespectacled Glaswegian Ross Clark, you might expect him to be a modest, sensitive, home-spun folkster. But, au contraire, Silversword (4stars, out now) is a raucous, joyous, full-band-with-horns blitzkrieg, taking the populist bent of The F...
Music :: Feature 11 May 2007
Finbarr Bermingham: Just when you thought the music press had exhausted its list of silly genre names with the particularly poor "new rave," another one rolls off the conveyor belt. Behold "blue collar rock," so called because of its traditional storytelling values and ho...
Records :: Album Review 11 Jan 2007
Dave Kerr: The title is pure 80s cheddar, and in an exaggerated spin on the jaded kids in Kim Wilde's hair-sprayed disco bop universe, these Boys and Girls In America are of course "always inconsolable, unhinged and uncontrollable." With all the lairy triumph of ...
Records :: Single Review 12 Nov 2006
Nine: Fast-paced from the beginning, The Hold Steady's debut UK single is a burst of energy combining classic 80s rock riffs with the spoken word of vocalist/narrator Craig Finn. Their music – like that of his previous band Lifter Puller – describe...
