New Track: The Raft – Xanadu plus album news
Xanadu, the new single from Liverpool’s highly talented The Raft is absolute shoegaze gold with a scouse glint that recalls all the pure pop glories of Ian Broudie’s The Lightning Seeds and an alumni of merseyside pop. The brainchild of Phil Wilson, The Raft has been an incredibly prolific source of shimmering glory – see …
New Tracks: Barrie – Clovers/Darjeeling plus album and tour news
Barrie produced, for me, one of the stand out singles of 2018, Tal Uno – a perfect slice of pop heaven from the EP ‘Singles’. They have now announced a much anticipated album – ‘Happy to be Here’ due for release on 3 May 2019 as well as a tour that will take them across …
New Track: The Double Happiness – There’s No Place Like Nundah
Cloaked with the faded robes of nostalgia, a peon to the glories of an old forgotten Brisbane, the new single from the quite frankly glorious The Double Happiness is a crystalline reverb-soaked wash of melancholia. It captures the remembrance of the past over a clickety-clack spine that echoes the trams so missed in the lyrics. …
New Track: Fontaines D.C. – Big, Plus Album and tour news
The stupendous Fontaines D.C. are back with a blistering new single, “Big”. It may clock in at a warp speed of 1 minute and forty-five seconds yet it is, no exaggeration, safeguarding the future of intelligent, dirty rock’n’roll. “Big” is swaggering punk poetry at its best, continuing a line of brilliant singles released by the …
New Track: Greta Stanley – Kick
Last year we reviewed a single from Queensland’s Greta Stanley off her marvelous debut album ‘Fully Grown” and now she’s back with a new gorgeous single, “Kick”. Stanley’s vocals are languorous, velvety and smooth as she croons over a surprisingly electronic thumping spine.”Kick” is an extremely seductive pop song about surviving dark times. Stanley says …
New Track: Thomas Keating – Today, I’m Staying Home
‘Today, I’m Staying Home’ is a glorious, anthemic paean to cocooning from a prodigious new talent, Thomas Keating. A rippling acoustic bedrock underpins Keatings open heartfelt singing and chorus as wide and open as the Simpson Desert. This is a catchy, jaunty pop song whose lyrics are contrastingly tinged with a hint of regret and …
New Music: Idle Kyle – Twisted Attention (EP)
The brittle, delicate arpeggiated piano of ‘Grounded’, the first track off Philadelphia’s Idle Kyle‘s EP “Twisted Attention”, serves notice that there is something quite unique ahead. It is a track that flirts with jazz tropes – time signature changes, delicate and subtle layers that change direction and shuffles and grooves. Yet somewhat antithetically, the song …
New Music: Edith Thomas Furey – Sleep Well, My Love (EP)
Dark, brooding, gothic and mysterious. Music to my ears and music indeed from the latest treasure uncovered by the prestigious and productive Valley Heat Records in the form of Edith Thomas Furey‘s new EP, “Sleep Well My Love” and the single “Wednesday”. That something so wintery could emanate from a place as bright and bouncy …
Live: Conversations with Nick Cave (Odeon Theatre, Hobart)
Many people have two phases in their lives, according to Nick Cave. The first phase represents self-centered assuredness and an even keel: the path they assume they will take that is the fruition of their own choices and desires. This phase can be ‘obliterated’ for some by external events beyond their control. This inevitably, leads …
Album Review: Manic Street Preachers – This Is My Truth: Tell Me Yours (20th Year Collectors Edition)
I remember moving to London during the peak of the Brit Pop years in the midst of the Blur versus Oasis hyperbole. But the albums from that era that really struck me were Pulp’s “Different Class”, The Verve’s “Urban Hymns” and most of all, “This is My Truth Tell Me Yours” from The Manic Street …