News
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GUIDED BY VOICES - Let's Go Eat The Factory
It’s fair to say that Guided By Voices were always known for their scattershot approach, their albums typically comprising a handful of 'core' tracks in the style for which the band is best known – a melody-led variant of the early Who’s proto-hard rock – padded out with a larger, if cumulatively ... [more...]
posted on Friday 20th January, 2012
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Duncan Wheat
Duncan Wheat, who was a good friend and regular musical collaborator from 1989 and through most of the following decade, is dead. He was 46. I don’t yet know what caused it. Duncan was never what you’d call a happy bunny, and a forced move back to the ... [more...]posted on Wednesday 18th January, 2012
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M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in the post-YouTube world of everything-all-the-time access to popular culture the concept of “cool” – as opposed to “fashionable”, which is another thing entirely – is all but redundant. This is not always the unequivocal Good Thing it might at first appear to ... [more...]
posted on Thursday 13th October, 2011
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CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH - Hysterical
There’s this fellow I talk to occasionally on the internets for whose opinion I have a good deal of respect. He believes the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album to be the greatest American guitar band recording of the last decade. I just can’t see it. I mean, it’s okay and ... [more...]
posted on Thursday 29th September, 2011
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THE WHIP - Wired Together
A couple of years ago I used The Whip as my exemplar for a short piece about how even the most dowdy of contemporary B-list acts is considerably better than Shed Seven. So, um, I must have liked their first album a little bit. They’re back with the follow-up. I like this ... [more...]
posted on Tuesday 20th September, 2011
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KATHRYN CALDER - Are You My Mother?
Given the 'supergroup' nature of the mothership, it was only a matter of time before youngest and least ginger New Pornographer Kathryn Calder became a solo act in her own right. And with Are You My Mother? she’s arrived in style. The album was written over a two year period ... [more...]
posted on Monday 29th August, 2011
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HOLLY THROSBY - Team
Faced with one of those typical August release schedules that contains nothing by any act you’ve heard of and nobody whose press release suggests you’d have any particular interest in making their acquaintance, I girded up my professional loins and set about pinning the tail on the YouTube donkey. It ... [more...]
posted on Monday 29th August, 2011
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INDIAN RED LOPEZ - Empty Your Lungs And Breathe
Well. I’d have started by saying that this debut from Aberdeen’s Indian Red Lopez is competently executed enough but isn’t really the kind of thing I like. But on reflection, does anybody actually have a 'kind of thing' they like any more? Watching Beyoncé’s all-fur-coat-and-no-knickers Glastonbury extravaganza it occurred to ... [more...]
posted on Monday 29th August, 2011
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SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH L - Beautiful Ground
Commentators bemoaning the alleged lack of originality in contemporary 'indie' in terms of the absence of supposedly era-defining 'movements' might wish to note that each of the movements foisted upon us by the British music press during the appalling Nineties consisted of one or two half-decent acts trailing a motley ... [more...]
posted on Monday 29th August, 2011
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THE BLOOD ARM - Turn And Face Me
The first rule of rules, of course, is that there will be exceptions, but in general an album that sounds great on first listen will tend to lose its flavour more quickly on the bed-post overnight than one which yields up its charms more reluctantly. Similar terms and conditions apply ... [more...]
posted on Monday 29th August, 2011