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| Live Reviews | Interviews & Other Music Articles |
Reivews A - F
A
Acid House Kings - Mondays are like Tuesdays and Tuesdays are like Wednesdays - Cd Lp
They think "Mondays are like Tuesdays and Tuesdays are like Wednesdays" is 'a bit like the Smiths, but for summer days instead of lonely autumn evenings you spent locked up in your room'. This is strangely accurate and funny at the same time.
Agent Blue - Snowhill - Cd single
Proof that not only do Agent Blue look rock and roll and sound rock and roll but they are rock and roll too!
Airliner - The last days of August - Cd Lp
If it had to remind me of something, it would be the Foxgloves, and the Montgolfier Brothers and J J Johanson - classy, guitar-orientated, quiet records to be played by sad, handsome boys on gloomy evenings while the ceiling changes colours as the sunligh
Airport Girl - Don't Dance Her Down
The eight piece band from Nottingham, have created a full sound, crammed full of all the magic of pop. The EP contains the ideal mix of songs: happy enough to lift your spirits but carefully balanced so it is not sickening sweet leaving you with the impre
Amsterdam - The Journey
The Glorious Day has the engine room going at it like a steam hammer whilst Johnny Barlow rips sonic shreds from his Les Paul before casting them casually to the breeze and watching them flutter to earth from the heavens.
Amsterdam / Ricky - Split single
I would be one of them that will square up to anyone and tell them that the British underground music scene has been in fine shape for years, you just have to scratch beneath the surface.
Ant - Ant - Footprints in the Snow - Album
Snapshots of heartache, and days spent with the one you love drawn in soft acoustic tunes. You sit listening as songs slide from happiness to heartache and then back again engulfed in a happy melancholy.
ANT/Airliner - Imprings of emotion - split 7" ep
I'm glad people still make records that sound like this. Tortured souls alone with sensitive, barely there, voices. Kristian Rosengren (Airliner) and Ant Harding (ANT) ply the same fragile bedroom acoustics on this split 7" ep.
At the close of every day - Zalig Zijn De Armen Van Geest - CD LP / vinyl 10"
I concur with that view up to a point- darkness aplenty pervades this, their debut collection
The Aislers Set - How I learned to write backwards
Just like the previous two Aislers Set records, this one has the ability to create a universe of its own. This time it's a slightly darker, more adult universe.
The Aphrodisiacs - This is a campaign
Significant steps have obviously been taken throughout the process of conceiving, arranging and recording this record, because the results suggest more than a bunch off kids playing with circuit boards in their bedrooms.
The Aphrodisiacs - The Aphrodisiacs - In the Name of the Father - Single
The three songs collated here all offer something different from the last, that’s true in many ways, but there is always, running right through the set that feeling of freshness, of youthful exuberance, of a semi cock sure swagger tempered with suggestion
B
Ballboy - A Europewide Search For Love - CD single
With the scene set the curtains open on those half dead hours when the earth expects some rest from prying watchful eyes of the waking world. The swish, swish, swish of the cymbal mirror the sleepless apathy of the hour.
ballboy - Past lovers cd single
The single finishes with The Angels and the storytelling side of the band really kicks in with a quirky tail accompanied by a lone guitar.
ballboy - the sash my father wore and other stories
the real power behind this comes from the songs about love. Each written with care and sung with conviction, captures every passion, confusion excitement that come from being in love.
Barry Gemso Experience - La vie vie - Cd Lp
... a place frozen in time and space. Your guide for the tour is a dandy but charming stranger.
Bearsuit - Chargr/What, you've never seen snow before?(single)
'Chargr' sounds like the best pop song, ltd edition vinyl, can't make its mind up, 'Fuck you' to marketed chart pop pap ever.
Beaumont - Tiara - Cd Lp
It exhibits a warmth slightly out of keeping with moody night time character that surrounds it.
Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastophe Waitress- CD Lp
The new album is different. It is happier, maybe slightly less personal, slightly more abstract than those which broke hearts so long ago.
BMX Bandits - Brighter - Singles 1989 – 1992 Broadcast - Haha Sound - Cd Lp The Bed - Soma Riot Wave Machine - Demo cd single The Blueskins - Magic Rd EP The Boyfriends - No Tomorrow/ I Love You The Boyfriends - Demo Recordings C
Camera Obscura - Underachievers, please try harder - Cd Lp Camera Obscura - Teenager - Cd Single Cannonball Jane - Cannonball Jane - Street Vernacular - Album Carina Round - Into my blood- CD single Celestial - Celestial - E.P. One - Single Charlotte Hatherley - Grey will fade Charlotte Hatherley - Bastardo Single Cinerama - It's Not You, It's Me Clayhill - Small Circle Clayhill - Acoustic Album Coastal - Halfway to you Cut - Torture - Ep Cd The Chalets - Nightrock The Chemistry Experiment - The Chemistry Experiment - Interstellar Autumn E.P. The Concretes - Licking Fingers The Cornerstones - Smack Me In The Face The Crimea - The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks - Album D
Dave Matthews - Dave Matthews - Live at Hammersmith Apollo Dayglo Superstars - Review of Action Hero - split 7" (B Side) Decoration - I tried it I liked it I loved it - single Decoration - Escape Routine Decoration - Decoration - Don't Disappoint Me Now – Album Decoration - Decoration - Pine - Single Decoration - Decoration - Candidate/Job in London - Single Degrassi - The form EP Desc - 4 Songs - Cd Ep Divine Comedy - Absent Friends Doves - Some Cities Dressy Bessy - A review of Little Music (CD LP / vinyl LP) The Diskettes - (s/t) The Donnas - Gold Medal E
Echelons - For Against The Essex Green - Everything is Green L.P. (with re-mastered bonus 'The Essex Green E.P.') F
Farrah - Me too Francis Albert Machine - I love you and I dont want you to die Frankie Machine - Re-unmelt my heart Frozen Fracture - The Thermal Sink [Mk II] - EP-CDr Further - Review of Punkrockvampires - Cd Lp The 55's - Height of Nashville The 55s - Before The Judge Turned Us To Shadow The Fairways - This is farewell The Fiery Furnaces - Don't Dance Her Down The Foxgloves - Lives you didn't lead - Cd Ep The French - Local Information - Cd Lp The Frenchmen - Sorry we ruined your party
Hurray! Surf's up! Run out, get your bushy bushy blonde hair-do, your surfboard and some beers, and get READY!
Of course the quiet beautiful strength of ‘Noah’s Ark’ perhaps deserves a special mention and then again ‘Hope Springs Eternal’ can not be left out but where do I stop?
Broadcast hail from Birmingham, and there's something of that city's newborn industrial beauty in this music. The album opens to scraping, hissing, banging noises as the Wurlitzer sounds of 'Colour Me In' swing and shimmer their way into being.
The second song on the demo, ‘Time Against The Tower’, leaves me baffled. Is this the same band whose mundane noise I had forced myself, out of a sense of fair play, to listen to?
Frenetic and jangly bluesy punk rockers
How do I convince you that the bunch of demo recordings that landed on my doormat the other week are the most refreshing, vital, invigorating recordings that I have heard in many a year? What can I say to make you believe me,
I am going to resist the urge to wax lyrical about just how brilliantly innovative, passionate, and hopefully optimistic they are.
We are taken on the Underachievers journey through failed fumblings, pleas for separation, vows to toughen up and a hundred attempts at self-deception that anyone with a trace of self-awareness will see mirrored in their own life. Alongside the sordid rea
Sweetly, gently she tells us oh for god's sake get over the girl, she's only going to hurt you, whilst somewhere in the West the cowboys gallop off into the sunset.
This is what kids can do in their own bedrooms now and it has more balls, style and skill than those age old rockers who are doing whatever it is they do in stadiums all around the world this weekend.
'Into My Blood' begins like so many rock songs - a guitar and Carina's voice, cool, insouciant, echoing Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde - but then it builds - the guitar picks up
It’s very C-86-ish and would sit well in a record collection built around the early days of Creation and Sarah Records, Bobby Wratten would kill for this.
The overall sound is sub-Buzzcockian pop rock, with overtones of the Undertones, and whilst there is an obvious Ash feel to it all it's hard to say whether Charlotte Hatherley has influenced them, of that they have influenced her.
It has all the qualities, intelligent, sophisticated, textured and infectious. It’s impossible to keep from hitting the repeat button as the tag line stamps then fades so eloquently.
It's like a tempestuous moment mid-argument where you temporarily lose control. That split second of madness when your real feelings emerge, only to be suppressed as you wipe away the tears and grasp hold of the reins again.
It's stunning, it's mesmerising, it's hypnotic, it's enchanting, it is purely and passionately beautiful.
On record they profess a certain delicate fragility that is wrapped up in a smooth, warm, all embracing intensity, in a bittersweet forcefulness that refuses to let the listener drift away.
The sound of your heart strings snapping, like the sound of a smile cracking, like the faint gasp of your last hopes dying, or the nervous sigh of your first love blooming...Coastal have captured it all.
sharply edged guitars, hi-octane rock tunes deeply blended with the original blues roots
The EP ends with the slow and sexy David Boring with lots of plinkedy-plonkedy xylophone.
It is in a way a more sensitive angle on the New Order songbook, but the driving percussion and synthesisation is all there in ample measure, and it’s a thrill from start to finish.
The Scandinavians have an element of mystery, they seem to kind of want to keep themselves to themselves - could it be that they don't trust the rest of the world, or could it be that they want to keep all the good stuff for themselves.
Instead what oozed from my stereo was more akin to Crowded House given a splash of prog rock and left to marinade nicely for 48 hours.
With a verve and a nerve, with swing and swagger, with melody and passion The Crimea show with this record that gritty drama need not be swathed in the cod stadium rock pomposity of their peers.
There can be no doubt, however, that he takes his music seriously – delivering every song with a rapt intensity worthy of his high-flying status in the hierarchy of American music.
It's yet another heavenly slice of 2 minute pop which, of course, sounds great on vinyl and should only be enjoyed on vinyl.
You may believe that nobody is penning these songs and committing them to tape, you may be turning into your parents with the belief that 'they don't write songs with a tune that you can dance to anymore' or worse still 'it's all just a noise these days'.
It’s a testament to the greatness of Decoration that all three tracks here are worthy title tracks for this record, song writing of this calibre is few and far between, and when it comes along it’s got to be grabbed with both hands and cherished.
Like a broken heart, or a first drunken kiss in the rain, like a sudden death or the first spark of romance across a midnight dance floor in a provincial nightclub, like a motorway pile up or an unexpected declaration of love; we never expect these things
With a verve and a thrust and an uncompromising swagger they have presented us with perhaps the most exciting, invigorating and fresh sounding record of the year and the recognition is slowly starting to stand up and be counted, be sure, this is a band of
...it breaks and falters, it sidesteps and sways, and ultimately prettiness is swept aside by the raw out and out power and passion of music that quite rightly steals the show.
Feel you mind explode with the force of the crashing guitars interspaced with gentle lulls. But this is just a gentle stroll in the park in comparison to the eponymous third track.
The minimalist feel of both the cover and the title is reflected strongly in the music where lyrics and melodies are repeated almost mantra style giving the feel of a tribal war dance.
The new single Come Home Billy Bird is pretty good too. There is nothing to rival the catchiness of National Express, but there was always more to The Divine Comedy than catchy tunes, and all that is apparent here.
'Some Cities' is a thrillingly metronomic, hypnotic, impulsive record that casts a disparaging glare over the decimation of urban communities. It's no holds barred, hand on heart and heart on sleeve documentation of the bands time spent in and around Manc
You could easily dismiss Dressy Bessy as throwaway bubblegum pop- nice but losing its flavour after a while- but in this critics honest opinion, you would be totally wrong to do so.
Imagine a boy and a girl with a couple of guitars trying to sound like a sixties girl group and like Jonathan Richman
Right from the outset, 'Gold Medal' is a lesson in strictly controlled aggression, it’s forever poised on the brink of explosion, it’s edgy and noisy, yet vibrant and melodious.
Far flung from either cultural centre on the east and west coasts of the nation they naturally crafted wide open soundscapes that reflect the isolation, vastness and loneliness of the heartland of a nation.
There is the obvious British pop Vs. United States psychedelia sparring, the definite hippy against the mod rebellion; but then there are more subtle strains of country, pop and folk.
Time after time the music infectiously kicks in and astuteness of the lyrics then completely hook your full attention. Cleverly the first two tracks, 'Tongue Tied' and 'Daytime TV' are totally addictive.
Francis Albert Machine sees the world in a way that not many others do so, and that in itself is thoroughly refreshing and certainly something to be cherished.
Each note is like a tiny sparkling bubble: beautiful, rainbow coloured but ready to burst at any second. It gently twists and turns.
The guitars are complex and beautiful and like a snow storm - although they seem heavy at first, after a while they seem to fade into the background and drift away into the winter.
To me, this make them even more Sonic Youth like.
The new single races helter-skelter from start of the first song to finish of the last. Bass line explodes and you can almost feel the sweat dripping from the band as they pour all their energy into "rocking out".
The hyperactive Ep is filled with guitar driven riffs and off key harmonies which shriek riotously.
This album could quite easily, and indeed, should be the soundtrack to a movie, after all, it is already the soundtrack to the lives of The Fairways.
I've name-checked a few genres, but none of them say it on their own. Its some bizarre, uplifting, entertaining combination of them all.
The Foxgloves seem to be the sort of people who believe that poetry can save your life, if not the world and that's quite enough to make me love them.
It is as if someone had taken one of those real life TV video diaries where nothing really happens but there is drama nonetheless and given it to a young John Shuttleworth to perform.
The Frenchmen sing songs about love and the weather. They pack the world into five-word phrases and deliver it (occasionally racing to meet the drumbeat) in a way that makes your heart beat faster.