Music
Meet: The Scaffold’s Mike McCartney on the reissue of the McGough & McGear album
Most novelty number ones are rubbish but a notable exception to this rule is The Scaffold’s flower power classic Lily The Pink which still raises a happy smile five decades on. The Scaffold’s nucleus of comedian John Gorman, poet Roger McGough and songwriter Mike McGear emerged from the fertile early 1960s Liverpool theatre scene before …
Live: Bowling For Soup, Leeds O2 Academy, 3.2.16
‘Hey, we’re Bowling For Soup, the band you can wave at!’ As the time gets to about February, the excitement of Christmas has subsided somewhat and spring is just around the corner- yet winter still seems to be going on forever. So what better to take your mind off those winter blues, than spending the …
Track: Alfred Hall – Safe and Sound
Norwegian duo Alfred Hall might be a new name to some of us here in the UK, but the that’ll more than likely change very soon with the release of their Safe & Sound EP on March 25th, the first time their music has come out here. The pair, engineering undergrad Hans Thomas, and medical …
Track: Dear Tatiana – Staycaytion
Orlando, Florida quartet Dear Tatiana mix things up with their rhymes and raps working in tandem with their pop-punk attitude. With their new single Staycation, they’ve mixed up some warm, summery synths, with a good helping of RnB infused pop to make something that floats into your senses. One of the quartet, Thayne explains the …
Track: Witching Waves – Pitiless
Taken from their forthcoming album ‘Crystal Cafe’, out on February 26th via HHBTM Records (US)/Soft Power (UK), London trio Witching Waves have released a second single, Pitiless – aka Emma Wigham, Mark Jasper, and Ed Shellard. Opening with this twisting guitar line, it soon unfurls into this driving indie rock gem, mixing up elements of …
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 …
Meet: Bowling For Soup interview, Leeds, 3.2.16
Bowling For Soup have become somewhat of a household name in terms of the rock scene in the past two decades; if pop-punk were a food chain, Bowling For Soup would most definitely be at the top, sporting a dick joke or two with a plethora of catchy hooks in tow. It’s not long since …