Album Reviews
Album Review: Martin Austwick – Through Intermittent Rain
Martin Austwick is a man of many talents. Not only is he a supremely talented singer and songwriter, but he’s a physicist and university lecturer, and is also known as “Martin the Sound Man” on the hugely popular comedy podcast Answer Me This!, as well as the Brain Train, Global Lab and The Sound of …
Album Review: U2 – Songs of Innocence
It’s not even 72 hours since its (surprise) release, but already U2’s latest album has become one of the most widely distributed, most talked about and oddly controversial albums in living memory. Which is odd, because it’s just a U2 album. Okay, so beyond the music itself, there’s a few talking points here – It …
Not Forgotten: Humble Pie – Smokin’
Humble Pie are a band I had certainly heard of, but beyond knowing that they were the band that post-Small Faces Steve Marriott formed with pre-Frampton Comes Alive! Peter Frampton and that they were a harder-rocking proposition than both, I knew very little, beyond the fact that Smokin’ was reputedly their best studio album. Within …
Not Forgotten: Cheap Trick – At Budokan
You know something, it’s taken me years to come to terms with it and stop being bitter about the fact that I wasn’t blessed in the looks department, but I’m actually quite content that I’m not one of the beautiful people. You see, the beautiful people get attention without ever having to try, whereas those …
Album Review: Ashrae Fax – Never Really Been Into It
Every once in a while you happen across an album that surprises you. Maybe it doesn’t change your life or blow your mind, but it stops your brain from that constant run of streaming real-world problems. You momentarily just shut the cranial machine down for a half hour or so and allow yourself to enjoy …
Not Forgotten: Tom Waits – Rain Dogs
Sinister, mad and disturbing old Tom. By the mid 80s he was ploughing a furrow that nobody could follow, not because they didn’t want to, but because they weren’t sure how stable the earth was that Tom was ploughing. But on he ploughed, churning out sea shantys, burnt out blues and insane polkas. He just …
Album Review: Rustie – Green Language
Maybe it was the superlative nature of his debut, Glass Swords, that led to the expectation surrounding Rustie’s second long player for Warp Records, Green Language, being so monumental. The Glaswegian producer, aka Russell Whyte, has made a follow up that, in his words (or at least those of the press release) “reflects his early …
Not Forgotten: Sparklehorse – It’s a Wonderful Life
It must have been mid-2003 that Nibbsy first recommended Sparklehorse to me, but it was in the middle of a period of musical exploration for me, so they just got added to the list of acts that I had to take time out and listen to in the future. As time went on more and …
Album Review: Pete Fij / Terry Bickers – Broken Heart Surgery
Old rockers, it seems, don’t necessarily have to grow old disgracefully. Former Creation labelmates Pete Fij and Terry Bickers made noiser, more aggressive records in their guises in Adorable and Polak (Fij) and in particular Bickers in his role in The House of Love and Levitation. Here they’ve made a record that is funny poignant …
Not Forgotten: Neil Young – On the Beach
Some albums become legendary because of the huge amounts they sold (The Joshua Tree, The Dark Side of the Moon), some because they made a distinct cultural impact, (Revolver, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars) and some just because they contained utterly brilliant music (Blood on the Tracks, Catch …