Live: Dark Mofo Festival – Sharon Van Etten
In the creaky, weary, glorious old Odeon Theatre in Hobart, Tasmania, Sharon van Etten made an explosive, incandescent start to the one of the most brilliant festivals in the world today. Her voice, incredible on record, is extraordinary live: ranging from operatic, soaring highs in ‘No-one’s Easy to Love’ to growling exhortations in ‘Seventeen’ where …
Track: Pixies – On Graveyard Hill plus Album and Tour News
One of the most influential and inspiring bands of the past few decades, the Pixies, have announced a new album – “Beneath the Eyrie’ – to be released on Friday, 13 September, a world tour and a taste of what’s to come in the single ‘On Graveyard Hill’. And the single is the same delicious …
News: The Dandy Warhols announce 25th Anniversary Tour Downunder
Legendary if not slightly wild and mercurial, psych-pop funsters, The Dandy Warhols, have announced a tour of Australia to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Live, the Dandies can always be relied on to produce wild, exuberant shows and they have an extraordinarily good back catalog to explore, with gems such as Bohemian Like You, Every Day …
Track: Gena Rose Bruce – Rearview plus album news
We’ve long been a fan of Melbourne’s Gena Rose Bruce’s style of fuzzy, raw emotion and studied cool, melding a Hope Sandoval vocal style with a low fi Jesus and Mary Chain-attitude. This was no more evident than in last year’s spectacular single ‘The Way You Make Love’. Bruce has just released a new single, …
Album Review: Gary Daly – Gone From Here
Gary Daly is one half of the duo (along with Eddie Lundon) behind Liverpool’s magnificent pop purveyors, China Crisis – an eighties phenomenon that continues to play today. Known for their social conscience and highly attuned pop sensibilities, China Crisis were never afraid to experiment or expand their musical horizons, working closely with the late …
Track: jade imagine – Big Old House
Signed to Courtney Barnett’s label, Milk! Records in Australia and more recently adding to London’s Marathon Artists, three piece jade imagine have just released their new single ‘Big Old House’. It’s louche, laid back and as cool as cool can be. Simple, low-fi and with the poise of Velvet Underground meeting Mazzy Star. Singer, Jade …
Album Review: The Raft – Abloom
Backseat Mafia has been following with great delight the prolific releases of The Raft for the last few years – a series of brilliant EPs that somehow capture an unique Liverpudlian pop sensibility. The Raft have released a full album, containing the previously released single ‘Xanadu’, and it represents a glorious evolution and development of …
Track: Imperial Daze – People are Animals
Following a brilliant debut last year with one of my favourite singles of last year, ‘Always Settling’, Peckham’s Imperial Daze are back with another fantastic single ‘People are Animals’. Of the release, the band says it “hints at the glaring contradiction that, although we are ever more digitally connected, these digital connections can ultimately be …
Track: Ummagma – Caravan
Dreamy dream pop duo Ummagma take a surprising direction in their new single, ‘Caravan’. It’s a thumpingly percussive missile, tilted forward and racing like a sprinter in a 100m run. With a slight arabic air that is almost reminiscent of Remain in Light-era Talking Heads, there is a sparkling arpeggio with the intertwined vocals of …
Album Review: Japan Suicide – Ki
A year and a half after the release of their magnificent album ‘Sante Sangré’, Italy’s goth maestros Japan Suicide are back with ‘Ki’, a masterful and complex album that further evolves Japan Suicide’s glorious oeuvre. Single ‘Mishima’ is inspired by the Japanese writer’s second novel ‘Confessions of a Mask’. According to the band, “The book …