Music
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 …
Interview: The Dollyrots, Leeds, 3/2/16
Throughout over fifeen years of being in a band, Kelly and Luis of the Dollyrots seem to have developed quite the interesting and unique way of doing things. It’s Wednesday evening and we sit in their dressing room before the third show on the Bowling For Soup tour- we sit with their drummer Rikki, their …
See: Heavy Heart Release video for Time will stand still
From the smoggy streets of Southeast London comes a scintillating new sound which in no way reflects the location of their inception. After releasing their initial EP, winning a competition to perform at a festival in Spain and playing shows in New York for CMJ Music Marathon 2015, the newly founded band Heavy Heart have …
Live : Cadillac Three, Birmingham Institute 04.02.16
The Cadillac Three visit Birmingham in the midst of a steady stream of major country gigs at the Institute, in the last few months, this venue has also played host to the Band Perry, Kacey Musgraves and Hunter Hayes. Country is clearly a popular draw too, almost a sell out. Later, the Cadillac 3 will claim …
See: The Dumplings release video for Technicolor Yawn
Let’s get this straight, The Dumplings are not a (completely) new band. The Polish duo’s protagonists, Justyna Święs and Kuba Karaś first met at a song competition in 2011, and have released a couple of albums, No Bad Days and Sea you later, through Warner Music Poland. It’s just the rest of the world (including …
Track: Lila Rose – All the beauty
California based rising singer songwriter Lila Rose has just released her new single, All the Beauty. Apparently cursed with ‘ultrasound sensitivity’ but drawn to spend her life making music, she describes it (or at least her press people do) as being both a curse and a gift. All the Beauty is part Florence Welsh, with …