Album Reviews
Album Review: Justin Currie – Lower Reaches
It’s an inevitable result of the relentless passage of time that our social circles change as we grow older. As jobs evolve into careers and relationships develop into families, your life shuffles into a new shape and you inevitably lose touch with some of the people that, in your younger days, you felt would always …
ALBUM REVIEW: THE POLYPHONIC SPREE – YES, IT’S TRUE
Ten years ago I got hugely into what was being referred to as the ‘Cosmic Americana’ scene, a loose sub-category of American alt-rock that had given us such instant classics as Deserter’s Songs, The Soft Bulletin and The Sophtware Slump. An act I had initially lumped in with the likes of Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips …
Album Review: Medicine – To The Happy Few
When you hear a song like “Long As The Sun” -the opener on Medicine’s excellent new album To The Happy Few– you don’t think that this is a band that has essentially been stored in moth balls for 18 years. You think you’re hearing The Beach Boys ran through the Jesus and Mary Chain warpulator. …
Album Review: Whirr-Around
Whirr are lumped into that genre we Generation X oldsters affectionately call “shoegaze”. And while some of my favorite music is lumped into this category, I have to say it’s getting used way too much. It’s become this generic term used to describe anyone that looks at the floor more than ten seconds in order …
Album Review: Speedy Ortiz – Major Arcana
You know, I try to be “with it”, and “in the know”. I want to be “up to date” on all the relevant music of today. Even as a kid in short pants growing up in rural Hoosierville I was always buying cassettes at my local record store. If there was some new band everyone …
ALBUM REVIEW: VUVUVULTURES – PUSH / PULL
In the next few weeks I’ll be transitioning from my ‘early 30s’ to my ‘late 30s’. It’s not the end of the world, and 35 isn’t traditionally seen as being a landmark birthday, however I find myself oddly preoccupied with a wistful nostalgia for my youth, lamenting the long-missed opportunities that just passed me by. …
ALBUM REVIEW: MATT BERRY – KILL THE WOLF
I came to Matt Berry later than a lot of people. I must have first become aware of him when a friend of mine gave me the DVD of Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, then over the years I repeatedly noticed him in comedy shows like The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd. Pretty much whatever …
Album Review: Daniel Wohl-Corps Exquis
Do you ever have those really strange dreams where you wake up from them and you still hear noise ringing in your ear from it? Like, you can’t quite recall what just went down in your subconscious but you know something big did. You can recall colors, places familiar but where you’ve never stepped foot …
Album Review: Eleanor Friedberger – Personal Record
Eleanor Friedberger’s first words to us on her new long player Personal Record are “I don’t want to bother you”, and I believe her. She seems like the type of gal that would rather keep her business to herself. She seems like more the listening type than the talking type. Yet, when she gets going on this …
Album Review: Editors – The Weight of your Love Track By Track
Birmingham based five piece Editors have just released their fourth album, The Weight of your love. Not a great deal to talk about then except for that their looking for their third consecutive number one album. The band, Tom Smith on lead vocals, guitar, piano, Russell Leetch on bass guitar, synthesizer, and backing vocals, Ed Lay …