EP Review: Runaway June – Backstory
When I picked this up I realised I’d been away from Country for quite a while. Too long as it turns out. I needed a kick of something different. I’ve got the same levels of lyrical heartbreak and heartache, less queer and feminist protest. But I’ve traded noise, rage, hush, understatement, for harmonies and hooks …
News: Shame to release ‘Live in the Flesh’ for Record Store Day
Having given it a couple of months to ferment on the internet, Shame are releasing the audio from their performance film ‘Live in the Flesh’ for Record Store Day (albeit that you can stream it now). The vinyl will be available on 12 June, if you can find it. You can also catch them on …
See: Dinosaur Jr. in snowbound video for ‘Garden’ from forthcoming LP ‘Sweep It Into Space’
It was in that cavernous bedroom of yours that you played me “Start Choppin’” and something fundamental changed. Sure, I’d heard guitars already. Rob had introduced me to Hendrix the summer before and I’d fallen in love with the groove of Crosstown Traffic, the insouciance of Stone Free and the volume of Voodoo Chile. But …
See: John Grant releases new video for the incredible ‘Boy From Michigan’
It’s A Mindfuck. Total Head Explosion. Grant Roams Eerie Alien Territories. Each Second There’s Madness, Obscenity, Terror. Here, Everything Radiates Fear, Unease. Cartoon Kallikantzaroi Eviscerate Reality. It’s Stephen King in song. Childhood distilled into essential sights and sounds and smells. Everyday cautionary tales, neighbourhood characters, the things kids get up to when time is no object and everything can …
EP Review: Pictish Trail – Dream Wall
Pictish Trail, the one man band of Johnny Lynch, release new EP – Dream Wall, on 1st April, featuring the title track (original and remix) plus three remixes of tracks from 2020’s Thumb World. The name was familiar, and I guess if Green Man 2020 had gone ahead, I would have seen him live, given …
Album Review: Ezra Furman – Twelve Nudes
So, if you’re going into this, you need to prepare yourselves. You need to brace yourselves for the rawness, the thunder, the desperation, the tenderness, the rage, the love, the abyss, the hope. Don’t expect to be comfortable when you listen to this. Furman gives us one break – the remarkable lovesong ‘I wanna be …
Album Review: Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars
Let’s not beat about the bush: this is … alright. It’s got all the elements of a Bruce Springsteen: well-worn faces and expressions, like favourite jeans; stories that are going to ring burnished bells; characters who will make listeners smile and sigh. But they don’t get beyond that; their impact is, for the most part, …
Album Review: House and Land – Across the Field
It’s always this way for me, with music like this. Everything about it evokes the country; but not the country seen from far away of slow rolling slopes, soft meadows, trees whose green is bright and joyful seen from above and outside. Not this country. This is the country up close. The grass is stone-ridden …
Album Review: Tall Tree 6Ft Man – Boundaries
It’s amazing what potluck it can be picking up a reviewing assignment. Sometimes it’s an artist you know, sometimes someone you’ve asked for or hunted down desperately over the years. Other times it’s a leap in the dark: you open the email, click on the soundcloud link, start listening and pick through the bio and …
Album Review: Lisa Hannigan and Stargaze – Live In Dublin
The amount I love music is sometimes overwhelming. I want it pretty much everywhere, all the time. Given that, I have a pretty weird relationship with seeing and hearing it live. I’ve never been to a festival, I can’t reel off an impressive list of all the acts I’ve seen or all the iconic venues …