Month: April 2012

In some ways this is a band that is coming to terms riding their own genre and decade-hopping sound. The record’s restlessness can be both its strength and its weakness, and there are times where you are wondering what is coming next but just enjoying the music for the hell of it.
Continue reading “Shambok – Little Machines Inside”

So while it’s tempting to wonder what this back-to-basics rejection of innovation might mean, it makes far more sense to give in and simply enjoy what is almost certainly the best Magnetic Fields collection since… Bollocks. I thought I might be the first person this millennium to finish a review of a Magnetic Fields album without mentioning that record…
Continue reading “Magnetic Fields – Love At The Bottom Of The Sea”

There’s folk, there’s rock, there’s psychedelia, there’s beauty, there’s noise, there’s sex, there’s gloom, there’s humour, there’s fun. It’s often over-the-top but sometimes perfectly restrained. It’s totally, gloriously, fucking nuts. And I nearly missed it.
Continue reading “Trembling Bells and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Marble Downs”

While as an album it doesn’t quite sustain in the same way, it does make for a fascinating companion piece to its predecessor, marking out a man who could so easily settle into a grizzled cliché pointedly refusing to do so.
Continue reading “Mark Lanegan Band – Blues Funeral”

Classic assertive and literate pop… not sure why it reminds me of the Wedding Present or The Bodines but it does and that’s me just showing my age.
Continue reading “The Marionettes – The Rightness of Blindness EP”

In fact, if they’d have presented a less gauche vocal approach (I wish the vox were more assertive, frankly) then this disc would have been closer to the stuff on prime time talent shoes than the ideas espoused by Micachu or These New Puritans…
Continue reading “Breton – Other People’s Problems”

It’s pleasant and certainly toe-tapping but stuff like So Far Away is far too reminiscent of bands I listened to back in the mid ‘80s to make any sort of point to me as to why I should swap my old records for this.
Continue reading “A Place To Bury Strangers – Onwards to The Wall”

It’s all straight forward stuff on one level and believe me it’s incredibly difficult to write any sort of review (on a purely musical level) to a record like this without waffling on about side issues or history or personalities blah blah – simply because the songs are pretty much all straight down the line punk rockers. And because ebverything is over so quickly.
Continue reading “Dan Sartain – Too Tough To Live”

I’m sure if this got played a lot on the radio it’d do really well, it’s not far off Dandy Warhol territory to be honest and I’d certainly rather listen to this on my transistor radio during my shift. Or maybe I’m getting my knickers in a twist. I’ll just enjoy it and keep playing it for now.
Continue reading “Thee American Revolution – Buddha Electrostorm”