Album reviews

There’s a lot of staring into the bottom of a half empty glass, the opener and title track is some bucolic lament in an empty, echoing ballroom, very reminiscent of Pink Elephants by Mick Harvey.

It’s an energetic record too: full of arching choruses that vault and swoop. Like some desperate street trader looking to hold a crowd’s attention Opossom pitch these chorus lines at you without worrying about the result.

Moon Duo are great at taking hoary old riffs – long patented by the original masterworks - and long sucked dry by lesser artists - and restoring them, giving them a new lease of life.

As a listener you could – if you stick to the “script” too closely - run the danger of too quick a judgement on this LP: because as a piece of music, (like his previous work) and uninhibited by any conceit, it’s great fun.

...a quietly surprising and enervating listen: there are no trademark scathing guitar runs - you get the feeling that the discipline of making a record without an electric guitar has concentrated the mind on the job in hand. And as such the pieces, although intricately worked out, seem to allow other, previously unknown ideas and goals to bubble up to the surface.

What little this album might have dropped in terms of pure adrenalin, it more than makes up for in ideas, tunes, cleverness and, sod it, fun. Which is why it’s great.

Slightly easier on the ear than their earlier efforts, but still full of piss and vinegar - this is a thoroughly great album.

a mixed bag of Curtis Mayfield vocals, Carlos Santana guitar solos, Mariachi band trumpets, disco bass lines and more, so much more besides

There’s a more loveable, syrupy feel to Lindsay’s own offering; but Cheek Mountain Thief aren’t worlds away from Tunng. Let’s say, approximately 1,100 miles instead, or two and a half hours if you must know.

Newly nestled between fellow Sub Pop artists like Fleet Foxes and Iron and Wine, Husky are hardly outcasts on the label, they’re the weird kids, but I’m pretty sure they’ll get invited to more parties.

Volcano! make music that is unpredictable and by all stretches of the imagination explosive; listening to the LP is most likely to leave you with a feeling of; ‘it was good but I can’t remember why’.

Once you just allow the record some space – always a problem with a set of covers, you’re mining some gold in amongst the ore. Fucking good fun, playmates.

These songs still ultimately feel like snatches, film score pieces, confessionals, personal recitals, glimpses of the parts of a larger whole. Maybe that’s the point. But what the heck, it’s still bloody good. You should get this.

...given the songs are pretty much snatches of sound padded out by sky high attitude, it’s hard to define exactly why you like them or why you’re frustrated they’re not 3 times as long… Maybe that’s the whole point.

This is a big record, wide in scope and sound. You do have to stick with it at times as it’s over an hour but the beat is ever present, and at times you can wander off mentally but I think that’s more to do with the fact that this is a deeply satisfying, refreshing listen

It’s a wee bit saggy and one paced just at the points in the record’s lifespan when it needs to look from under its fringe and do something different, or give something that the listener can latch onto; it’s just too diffident for its own good.

If anything Silver Silver reminds me of one those crossover pastoral modern folk LPs, pastoral works like Iren Lovasz and Teagrass’s Wide is the Danube, say.

The sound veers between rock and roll, a rolling country (i’ll be rested) a messy sort of blues (Hear Me Calling) and a more arty, Clowns/Triffids sound in the aforementioned Play With Fire and curtains.

This is an LP of its time. And faces the same pitfalls. Just like all those “old” looking pictures that Gilded Youth delights to create using Instagram, it’s not always about the effect but ultimately about how to present good content.

One For Kenny sounds like a tourist Odyssey on dope, shumbling from coffee shop to coffee shop, more and more buggered off Nederweed whilst completely lost in a sea of tourist crocodiles, pimps and pissed up ex pats.