album review
Album Review: David Byrne – American Utopia
Can you hear the name David Byrne without thinking of the super-sized suit or humming ‘Once in a Lifetime?’ Me neither. The Talking- Head-in-Chief moved to New York years ago. Like so many of us in recent years, he felt the urge to despair and hide whenever he watched the news. But he made a …
Album Review: Tracey Thorn – Record
So here’s what we already knew. Firstly, that Tracey Thorn is the queen of cool. In the nineties when her band Everything But The Girl started hanging out with the likes of Massive Attack, Deep Dish and got the remix treatment by Todd Terry, they developed their own brand of laid back electronic pop. Both …
Album Review: Zed Penguin – A Ghost, A Beast
Edinburgh seems to be a bit of a breeding ground for slightly ravaged art rock eccentrics toting cellos. Zed Penguin have been around a while, ploughing not a dissimilar furrow to fellow citizens The Leg, who in turn have collaborated with Paul Vickers late of Dawn of the Replicants to similar effect. While Zed Penguin …
ALBUM REVIEW: Brian Fallon – Sleepwalkers
Label: Virgin EMI Released: 9th February 2018 More well-known initially as frontman of American rockers The Gaslight Anthem, Brian Fallon has offered his second solo album since he debuted with 2016’s Painkillers. Sleepwalkers perfectly combines raucous rock ‘n’ roll, dreamy acoustic folk and Motown rhythms, sounding as if Fallon has been writing music to this …
Album Review: The Go! Team – Semicircle
We music writers are a strange bunch. Whenever we get new music to listen to and review, we always try to fit it into a certain box, letting the world know what genre the listener can expect from an album. So it’s bands like The Go! Team that really throw us into disarray. Why? Because …
Album Review: First Aid Kit “Ruins”
It’s amazing to find Swedish country folk duo First Aid Kit already releasing their fourth album and between releasing fascinatingly authentic Americana-drenched albums, they’ve conquered the world, cracking the US market and even appearing as regular guests on Graham Norton’s A-list chat show. “Ruins” finds them in a reflective mood, opening with moody “Behind Blue …
ALBUM REVIEW: Dead! – The Golden Age of Not Even Trying
Label: Infectious, BMG Released: 26 January 2018 After such a long wait for this album, I really thought I would be deceased before hearing The Golden Age of Not Even Trying. But, nevertheless, this record is certainly one that has been worth waiting for. Dead! are representing the new era of genre-crossing alternative music. There’s a …
The Lovely Eggs – This Is Eggland
Eggland then. A place where the Lovely Eggs have got a producer in (Dave Fridmann no less) and gone full Hawkwind. Which means that my friend Julie, though she doesn’t know it yet, has a new favourite album. Cos that’s really how a love of the Eggs should be passed on – rocking up to …
Album Review: Meursault – Fuck Off Back To Art School & other stories
Having returned to releasing as Meursault last year with the often downbeat but lovely I WIll Kill Again, Neil Pennycook hasn’t been resting on his laurels. The new year has seen him sneaking out this digital album in a relatively unheralded way, suggesting that the material will develop through future performances and other media. As …
Classic Compilation: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Anthology: Through the Years
Tom Petty – a Dylan disciple, a Byrds with harder-wearing tunes, a Bruce Springsteen for the rest of us. Few artists have defined approachable Middle-American rock and roll radio quite like Petty and his loyal band, and no one has made such a consistently good job of it for as long as he did. Anthology: …