punk/post-punk albums
Album Review: Lonelady – Hinterland
Manchester’s Julie Ann Campbell, aka LoneLady, piqued listeners’ interest with her debut album five years ago and has now returned with the remarkable Hinterland, an incredible hat tip to early ‘80s dance music. In a city with such a strong male-dominated mod rock tradition, LoneLady stands out a mile with classic Roland riffs and Nile …
Album Review: Viet Cong – Viet Cong
“Newspaper Spoons” opens like a distant canon firing into the abyss. An overblown kick drum beats like a death knell before Matt Flegel sings “Writhing violence essentially without distortion, Wired silent, vanishing into the boredom”. It’s a hell of a way to open a debut album, but that’s just the kind of album Viet Cong is. With every …
Album Review: The Krayons – Ready, Steady, Nuke!
The original ‘angry young men’ were, as you may well know, a group of lower middle/working class writers from the 1950’s. Disillusioned by society, they weren’t afraid, and in fact went out of their way, to make criticise and attack the establishment. In more recent times, the term has been applied, for much the …
Album Review: Dead Leaf Echo – Thought & Language
Technically it’s not new out, but it’s pretty new to us. Brooklyn quartet Dead Leaf Echo released Thought and Language back in the spring, but we were only alerted to their brilliance a short time ago. The group, Ana B. on Guitar, Keys and Vocals, LG on Guitar and Vocals, Bassist Steve S, and Kevin …
New Music: Braxton Hicks – The Bench EP
Yeah, I know, you’ve heard the name. I’m not saying we don’t have history, or at least I don’t have history with Braxton Hicks. I’ve known lead singer Joe Hovis (think about it) for years, and recently he write a couple of things for us about punk for Backseat Mafia. But this is no kiss-ass …
Album Review: Killing Joke – Singles Collection 1979-2012
First up I need to declare an interest. I think Killing Joke are an amazing band. I loved them when they first emerged as part of that morass of styles that has been termed ‘post-punk’, and they are probably currently my favourite band. In between times I have lost touch with them, found them, and …
Album Review: White People and the Damage Done by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
I first came across The Dead Kennedys when I was in my early teens, I was obsessed with the singles chart at the time and they were a band who, somehow, did not get their records played so much on the chart rundown on BBC Radio 1 on Sundays. I guess if Frankie’s Relax got …