Album Reviews
Album Review: The Callas – Half Kiss Half Pain
Brothers Lakis and Aris lonas started The Callas in Athens, Greece back in 2005. Both filmmakers and musicians, the brothers lonas took a more dissonant and theatrical approach to their music by taking inspiration from both Sonic Youth and The Fall. The Callas, who also feature Chrysanthi Tsoukala (guitar, vocals) and Marilena Petridou (Drums) have recently …
Album Review: Field Music – Commontime
Sometime in the gloriously messed up late 80s I remember a friend playing me the ’25 ‘O Clock’ mini-album by ‘The Dukes of Stratosphear’, a blast of fabulous neo-psychedelia, that even in our stoned state, a few tracks in, we collectively began to realise was XTC getting their rocks off under an alter-ego. Their follow-up …
Box set review: Skeletal Family- Eternal: Singles, Albums, Rarities, BBC Sessions, Demos 1982-2015
The Skeletal Family were part of the Goth sub-culture that sprang up in the 1980s but they were never really in the movement’s first division like The Sisters of Mercy or The Mission. But their unique selling point was they had a female singer Anne-Marie Hurst and it is her powerful vocals, with more than …
Album Review: Lissie – My Wild West
Ultimately this is a decent effort, wearing a number of flaws on its sleeves. It’s an album whose pop landscape is broken up by howls of anguish, discordant laments and, ironically, trying too hard to be things other than itself. As well as disrupting its own coherence, there are other missteps. Not enough is made of the …
Album Review: Diiv – Is The Is Are
Diiv tapped into that wandering soul we all have buried deep down(some deeper than others) back in 2012 when they gave us their big and dreamy debut Oshin. Guitars swelled in waves of reverb, as did pretty much everything else, as Zachary Cole Smith sang songs like he was lost in thought while emoting into the …
Album Review: SIA – This Is Acting
There is an uneasy amount of hype surrounding Sia Furler’s forthcoming album, This Is Acting – Sia is seen as the new bastion of hope within a bloated pop music scene with her offbeat musical output lauding her to not only critics but more crucially the general populous (no pun intended) of mainstream audiences. You …
Album Review: Foxes – All I Need
In 2014 Foxes released her debut album ‘Glorious’. It took pop music, added in a whole bunch of quirks and an edge, and went on to be one of the best albums of the year. Her Kate Bush-esque dramatic sound, laid over huge pop hooks and dirty electronic beats separated her from so many others …
Say Psych: Album Review, Magnetic Seasons by Mugstar
Normally when I review an album I sit down with it and really think about how it makes me feel, and generally just go with the flow. If I don’t like it, I don’t write about it…there’s enough cynicism in the world…right? When this new album from Mugstar popped into my in box I was …
Reissue: Julia Fordham – Julia Fordham
God, if this album was any more 1980s it would come with a free Ra Ra skirt and fluorescent leg warmers. But despite the overproduced tinny guitars, hideous fretless bass and synthesised keyboards, that are so redolent of the time, it is saved by Julia Fordham’s gorgeous smoky jazz tinged voice. Fordham was one of …
Album Review: Dr. Dog – The Psychedelic Swamp
Over the last couple years or so every time Dr. Dog have released a new album I’ve worried it would be the last album of theirs I’d like. While every record they’ve put out has had three or four real gems, there seems to have been a good number of songs that seem to just …