indie rewind
A Buyers Guide to XTC
For reasons I’ve never been able to adequately explain, the majority of my favourite musicians have never achieved the level of success that their talent deserved, instead achieving artistic integrity while other, lesser talents, enjoyed far bigger commercial success and radio play. Super Furry Animals, Eels, Cud, are all bands that deserved to be much …
Not Forgotten: Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born Ten Years Later
I don’t think there’s a more divisive Wilco record than A Ghost Is Born(maybe Wilco(The Album)). It was a record filled with claustrophobic silence, whispered musical intentions, and the sound of numbed pain. It was the record where people asked “What’s going on with Jeff Tweedy’s voice?” Well I asked it, anyways. It felt both pared down …
Not Forgotten – My Morning Jacket – Z
The first time I heard about My Morning Jacket was when Mojo Magazine got themselves into a fizzle of excitement about them a few years back. Apparently they’d already released a couple of albums which had crept in under the radar, but Mojo had them tipped as the next big thing on no better authority …
A Buyers Guide to Supergrass
Fizzy, fun and yet still possessing surprisingly more depth than their singles would suggest, Supergrass was that rare thing in Britpop, a band that was worth the hype at the time, whose material still stands up to scrutiny today. I Should CoCo finds the band as callow youths, still juggling style and substance and yet …
Not Forgotten – The Divine Comedy – Fin de Siècle
Neil Hannon (the man who effectively is The Divine Comedy), cut a unique dash through the British music in the mid 90s, as his almost imperceptible rise to near-fame ran parallel to the Brit-pop movement, meant that he sometimes got lumped in with the unwashed masses. Foppish, louche and possessing a more sophisticated musical mind …
A Buyers Guide to Pixies
Just imagine what rock music over the last 25 years would have been without the influence of Pixies. Few bands have had the all-infusing influence that Pixies have demonstrated and fewer can claim to have had a direct impact on two of the biggest rock acts of a generation. Indeed, both Nirvana and Radiohead are/were …
Not Forgotten: Bernard Butler – People Move On
When former Suede guitar botherer Bernard Butler announced he was going solo after a short but troubled collaboration with Soul singer David McAlmont, I barely blinked. I was actually pretty ignorant of his career up to then actually. I had heard that he had quit Suede just before the epic and gloriously overblown Dog Man …
Feature: Britpop – A music fan remembers…
I don’t know when I became aware of Britpop as a ‘scene’. In late 1994 I had read a few articles on a hotly-tipped band called Suede, and then watching Top of the Pops one Thursday evening it featured a band called Blur playing a slightly annoying song called “Girls and Boys”. Personally I was …
Not Forgotten: Bob – Leave the Straight Life Behind Reissue, plus interview
It might be unjustified, but I’ve always North London indie band BOB were in debt to me. I’d discovered them, as I did most things back then (then being the cusp of the 1990’s) by listening to John Peel, and there, shoehorned in between experimental electronica and dub reggae (probably) was this gorgeous, uplifting, glistening …
Not Forgotten – Sparks – Exotic Creatures of the Deep
Following up the undisputed best album of your career must be an unenviable task. There was no way that Oranges & Lemons was ever going to be a match for Skylarking, Desire was no Blood on the Tracks, i, as brilliant as it is, will always suffer in comparison to 69 Love Songs, Guerrilla would …