album review
Album Review: Billy F Gibbons – Hardware
What to say about the Reverend Billy F Gibbons, one third of boogie-rock legends ZZ Top and with a career at the forefront of Texas Blues for over fifty years? With a vocal growl as distinctive as the tone of Pearly Gates, his legendary ’59 Les Paul, and an otherworldly feel for the Texas shuffle, …
Album Review: John Myrtle’s debut ‘Myrtle Soup’ brings the sunshine even when it rains.
In the week that John Myrtle’s debut album Myrtle Soup has released, the weather has shifted from blistering sun to pouring rain. There are drops tapping on my window as I hear Myrtle’s soft voice, promising me better days in his glittering ‘Ballad of the Rain’. After playing it a few more times, I can …
Album review: Birds of Maya – ‘Valdez’: Philly stoners come back for your greasy, sexy soul after eight long years
PHILADELPHIA is a city that knows how to properly rock, dirt under its nails, filthy fuckin’ fuzz in its heart. With the news that Philly headz Bardo Pond are getting a silver jubilee expanded repress for their ’96 psychotropic masterpiece Amanita, comes news from more of the city’s favourite prodigally noisy sons, Birds of Maya; …
Album review: Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band – ‘Banned’: a fever dream of impressionistic acid-folk-soul for the jaded ear
BY THEIR name, they sound like they should be some great lost Moog-psych outfit from ’69, and weird and wonderful is definitely a touchstone for the Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band, be sure. It’s the musical mind-melding of Yves Jarvis, whose album from last autumn, Sundry Rock Song Stock, was a really clever and rather ace …
Album review: Paul Jacobs – ‘Pink Dogs On The Green Grass’: Pottery man breaks out with a low-slung, psych-boogie blur of brilliance
SPREADING his wings from his excellent mothership, the wiry post-punkers Pottery, Paul Jacobs is shortly to unveil a gently slackercore beauty of a full debut solo album, Pink Dogs On The Green Grass. Which is, y’know, the reason we’re all gathered here today. Stepping away from the dependable sticksman role which is propelled Pottery right …
Album Review: Gruff Rhys – Seeking New Gods
It’s a tricky thing, judging the solo work of an artist who has had such huge success at the head of a band. Should their albums be considered solely within the context of their solo endeavours or do they have to stand in the spotlight alongside the collective behemoths that preceded them? It’s even trickier …
Album Review: BSÍ’s doubled edged ‘Sometimes depressed…but always anti-fascist’ is a dream pop delight with some serrated edges.
There are two sides to this story: Icelandic duo BSÍ have released an album of two sides in ‘Sometimes depressed…but always antifascist’. Side one – sometimes depressed – is a collection of dream pop vignettes: restrained, delicate and eminently beautiful tracks that are reflective and melodic. Side two – always antifascist – presents some slightly …
Album Review: CLUSTERSUN’s Avalanche is a magnificent, mesmerising and eviscerating piece of gothic shoegaze magic
‘Avalanche’, the new album from Italian shoegaze behemoths, CLUSTERSUN, clearly sets out its sonic intent from the very beginning. ‘Desert Daze’ is an aural buzzsaw, tilting along a thundering rhythm section with sonorous, razor sharp guitars and impassioned vocals. It is a wall of sound filtered through by flange, reverb and feedback that leaves one …
Album: David Gray – Skellig
Folk troubadour Gray is on to his twelfth studio album titled ‘Skellig’. Which takes its name from a formation of precipitous rocky islands off the coast of Co. Kerry where in 600AD a group of monks set up a monastery, believing that leading such a merciful existence, they would leave the distraction of the human …
Album: Wilding introduces his impressive catalogue with ‘Hello…My Name is Wilding’ – a glorious compilation of his past, present and future music.
Melbournian troubadour Wilding blew us away last year with his concept album ‘The Death Of Foley’s Mall’ – one of the best Antipodean releases of 2020 in my humble opinion – and for many, well, let’s be honest, for me – it was the first taste of Justin Wilding Stokes’s incomparable songwriting skills. The thing …