Indie

Meet: Gerard Langley of The Blue Aeroplanes, plus new reissue / tour dates
I suppose I would have been about 18. I’d gone along to the Trent Polytechnic (in those days we had such things) to watch my then favourites, The Darling Buds. When I came away, I’d fallen for this band of Bristol artisans, who made this sort of jagged art-sunk indie, with this front man constantly …

New Music: Lost Ghosts – Tunnels
I remember my debut quite clearly. The first concert I ever played in I was (just) eight years old. Even by eight year old standards I was rather a runt of the litter, my young body ravaged by asthma and suffering from being incredibly skinny and fairly small. That first concert was in a local …

Not Forgotten: John Grant – Queen of Denmark
It took three years but I finally found the proper follow-up to Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther in John Grant’s Queen of Denmark. Man, I can’t believe I’d never listened to this album. It’s filled with Midlake’s penchant for creating these wooded landscapes and D&D-lite atmosphere, but since it’s NOT their album the melancholy …

See: Vampire Weekend – Diane Young Video, Plus Tour News
How did it happen? You know that four regular guys, Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson firstly met, and then formed Vampire Weekend in 2006 while attending Columbia University. How did it happen that this sort of indie band, admittedly with killer songs, but mix in this African style guitar playing, and …

Track: I set the Sea on Fire release new single, W.A.K.E.
I set the sea on fire are a five piece outfit from the city of Sheffield. It consists of Billy Washington on vocals and guitar, Peter Jenkins, vocals and bass, drummer Josh Knight, Joss Allsopp , vocals and trumpet, and Megan Washington on vocals, percussion and keyboard. They formed in 2011, and after starting out …

Meet: Drenge
Drenge are made up of two brothers, Eoin and Rory Loveless who hail from the Peak District, not far from us (well, me) in Sheffield. They are a duo in the Black Keys / White Stripes way (as opposed to the Pet Shop Boys sort of way I suppose) with no bass, instead this raw, …

See: Lewis Watson releases new video for single, Calling
Coming out on Warner Bros. on July 1st is the latest EP from Lewis Watson ‘Four More Songs’. You may have already heard title track ‘Calling’ over the airwaves, as Zane Lowe made it his ‘Hottest record in the world’ not so long back. But there again, Lewis Watson himself is quickly going beyond …

Track: Dead Leaf Echo – Kingmaker
I almost missed this. Such is the state of my inbox at the moment that I’m desperately trying to keep somewhere in touch with, that this for several days, passed me by. Until last night when I listened to the single Kingmaker. And listened again. and then again. I’m still listening to it now in …

Track: The Marble Man – single, album and London date news
Been in our thoughts a bit this week, Munich has. Even before Robben sealed it for Bayern just before the end of the Champions League Final. And that was mainly down to a singer-songwriter based in that city, Josef Wirnshofer, who writes and records under the name The Marble Man. Releasing his first album in …

New Music: Cotton Mount – In Blue Colour
There’s this sort of rule that when you talk about Switzerland, you have to mention things like mountains and Cuckoo clocks, watches and chocolate and the like. Musically, there is sort of Alp horns and yodeling and things. I’m sure that if I were Swiss, I would be thoroughly sick of these sort of lazy …