SEE: Slow Pulp – ‘At It Again’: a Chicago fuzzpop cracker
SLOW PULP are a band who’ve been around the block – in a really, dreadfully short space of time. Don’t wish for the kinda year singer Emily Massey’s had. No, really: don’t. Things were very much on the upward curve for the young band, outta Wisconsin and Chicago-based – on tour with Alex G, gaining …
NEWS: Slowdive back in the studio for their fifth, Insta photos reveal
NOW here’s some news to cheer any autumnally affected, guitar-lovin’ heart: Rachel Goswell of first-generation shoegaze luminaries has published a couple of pictures over on her Instagram account strongly suggesting that the much-loved band, who reformed in 2014 and who released their brilliant, self-titled fourth album in 2017, are back in the studio and beginning …
SEE: The Green Child’s ‘Fashion Light’: woozy and intelligent psych-synth melodies
RAVEN MAHON and Mikey Young began making beautiful music together after a chance encounter at a gig in her home state of California; at the time they were both in other bands, Raven in Grass Widow, who had an LP out on the koool Kill Rock Stars; Mikey as a member of Australian post-punk synthers …
ALBUM REVIEW: Big Bill Broonzy – ‘The Midnight Special: Live In Nottingham 1957’: music of truth delivered with power
BIG BILL BROONZY – he’s one of those names you hear in hallowed tones, whispered and discussed on forums and in the music press, alongside such company as Robert Johnson, Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as being right in there at the roots of modern black music; in the blues, the devil’s music, which of course …
TRACK: Steph Richards – ‘Underbelly’: marvellous free jazz trails LP – with accompanying scents …
STEPH RICHARDS – the composer, free jazz trumpeter and bandleader who’s worked with artists as diverse as St Vincent, Yoko Ono and Anthony Braxton, knows a thing or two about how to envelop the senses. But for her new album, Supersense, she’s taking a step further into the multi-sensory, even the synaesthesic – working alongside …
SEE: the video for Kinbote’s ‘Hiemalis’: pretty, sampledelic glitch-pop teases December debut
A PRETTY, chopping, sampled sound source lays the foundation stone; a soft shuffle of percussion dovetails, and we see Matt Gibb, aka Kinbote, walking wistfully through the dunes; he’s very well turned out in trad tweed and tie “I’ll go walking in the winter, I’ll go walking in the winter / If you want I’ll …
SEE: the video for Adam Beattie’s ‘Somewhere Round The Bend’: dark songwriting for witching-hour whisky
ADAM BEATTIE is an Aberdeenshire balladeer with a dark, twangy musical beauty and an unflinching way with a starkly observed lyric. You may not know him as a solo artist, but he’s been busy in a collaborative sense if you follow the folk world; he’s one quarter of the band Pica Pica, alongside Josienne Clarke, …
NEWS: The Lathums cover ‘The Snake’ – there’s only one vinyl copy!
WIGAN’S upcoming indie popsters The Lathums, who reached no.14 in the UK Album Chart in July with their yellow-vinyl compilation The Memories We Make, have decided to give something back to the town where they grew up. With hometown football club Wigan Athletic entering the troubled waters of administration – those glory days of beating …
TRACK: HMS Morris – ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’: intelligent artpop asks we all look outwards
HMS MORRIS are a rather fine art-rock collective operating out of the Welsh capital; the project of former Emmy the Great bassist Heledd Watkins, they’ve since developed a whole ethos, aesthetic, sweetly harmonious life of their own. Following the release of two pre-covid era singles, “Babanod” and “Poetry”, they’ve dusted off the rime of lockdown and …
PREMIERE: Free Country – ‘The Life Of Riley’: wistful, essential lofi from his hometown basement
FREE COUNTRY is the indie pop project of LA’s Jason Ribadeneyra, a man with an ear for a wistful, low-key melody delivered with weary truth in his voice. Tomorrow he releases his latest six-tracker, the introverted, pretty-as, guitar and piano indie pop stylings of The Life of Riley; but tomorrow, as Annie sings so famously, …