Music :: Live Review 07 Nov 2008
Finbarr Bermingham: A night that pairs two of the best bands to come out of America this year was always going to be a big draw, as the battered floorboards of the Barrowlands Ballroom tomorrow morning will no doubt testify. The last time Ra Ra Riot (****) played in Scotl...
Music :: Feature 09 Jul 2008
Ally Brown: I'm not sure why Vampire Weekend's keys man is looking at me with a ruffled brow as we're introduced. Could it be because we crossed paths in Edinburgh's Bongo Club six months before, and he's struggling to place me 5000 miles away? Maybe he's just squ...
Music :: Feature 12 May 2008
Ally Brown: Los Angeles is a huge metropolis uneasily plonked onto a desert, a vast city built around the film-set for an old Wild West epic. Without the Pacific coast it would be inhospitably hot, and a few hours inland the less built-on desert explains the need ...
Music 25 Apr 2008
Adam Green, Finbarr Bermingham: New York will always be home to the coolest cats in music, but every so often (almost cyclically) a new wave of bands emerge to remind us where it's at. Over the past few months we've had another explosion. MGMT are certainly one of the leading lights,...
Records :: Album Review 05 Feb 2008
Billy Hamilton: When Colin, Edith and Whiley jump on a bandwagon it's often difficult to muster optimism over the rise of any new act. But with Vampire Weekend it seems this grizzly trio of nauseous DJ's have hit the button with uncharacteristic accuracy. The New York...
Records :: Single Review 07 Dec 2007
Heather Crumley: Vampire Weekend clearly have a lot of ideas, which is certainly to be commended. Squeezing them all into two and a half minutes, however, results in a big mess. Reggae-inspired vocals sit awkwardly atop offbeat synth stabs (which don't quite seem to kn...
Music :: Feature 07 Dec 2007
Sean Michaels: 1. Orillia Opry - I LiedA sweet Montreal pair, curtains drawn, sing about a relationship that's over, over, over, broken beyond all repair. "If you come back/come back with a heart attack." It has the aching want of Neil Young, the blithe shoulder-shru...
Music :: Feature 09 Aug 2007
Sean Michaels: 1. Vampire Weekend - Oxford CommaA song equal-parts spastic and mellow, its singer skating all over the understated drums and organ. "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" he asks, and he asks why you would lie, and then of course there's a guitar s...
