ALBUM REVIEW: SLEAFORD MODS – ETON ALIVE

It’s the constant dilemma for bands when they become successful and maybe have a bit more dosh, how to revive that impulse that drew you into making music in the first place. How do you keep your songs as meaningful to you, and hopefully your audience, as you did when you first started? In the […]

Hippies running wild with far away glazed eyes, flowers being handed out on every street corner and a sniff of revolution in the air, if that’s what San Francisco psychedelia used to conjure up, then Cellar Doors are here to give it a bit of a kick up the arse. This Californian trio have created […]

ALBUM REVIEW: CELLAR DOORS – CELLAR DOORS

ALBUM: METHYL ETHEL – TRIAGE

2019 could not be off to a better start than with the release of one the most anticipated Australian albums of the year, Methyl Ethel’s ‘Triage’. Fresh off the success of 2017’s ‘Everything is Forgotten’ which reached #16 on the Australian charts and #28 on NME’s Albums of the Year awards, big things are expected […]

The Lake District has inspired many artists over the years, the most surprising recent convert being Californian garage rocker Tim Presley. After relocating from LA to San Francisco, he then upped sticks again and ended up in Stavelely, in the Lakes, in the depths of winter, with fellow songwriter Cate Le Bon. While she was […]

ALBUM: WHITE FENCE – I HAVE TO FEED LARRY’S HAWK

ALBUM: BEIRUT – GALLIPOLI

A confession: ‘The Rip Tide’ was my last Beirut album. I’m not sure how I missed ‘No No No’ (so good they named it thrice) but…I did. Look. I’m sorry, okay? It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. For the keenest of Zach Condon and co. fans, it’s been a few years since the Francophile Americans […]

Being in a band with your other half can often be hard work, but then keeping the band together after a split takes some doing, and that’s the scenario Brooklyn’s Pavo Pavo found themselves in before the recording of their second album ‘Mystery Hour’. Pavo Pavo’s two members, Oliver Hill and Eliza Bagg, have done […]

ALBUM: PAVO PAVO – MYSTERY HOUR

ALBUM: VARIOUS ARTISTS – I’M A FREAK 2 BABY – A Further Journey Through The British Heavy Psych and Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-73

With the ability to discover previously released tunes, in all genres, from the last forty odd years online where do you start? Thankfully compilations like this exist often covering the lesser known areas of a particular genre, and in this case the UK psychedelic and hard rock scene of the late 60s goes under the […]

I can distinctly remember where I was the first time I ever heard ‘Dry The Rain’ by Steve Mason’s former outfit The Beta Band, I was off work with a cold, and on the radio during the day, as some sort of listener request, this subliminal piece of melodic slow building pop came wafting out […]

ALBUM: STEVE MASON – ABOUT THE LIGHT

ALBUM: THE RESIDENTS – ESKIMO / COMMERCIAL ALBUM

A friend of mine works at the BBC and from time to time, she has to review historic children’s TV shows before they are re-released, just to check for inappropriate storylines, jokes, politically incorrect content and sinister special guest appearances by those on the wrong side of Operation Yewtree. I couldn’t help but think of […]

In 2001 long before we were waking up checking our smart phones every morning to see who cares about what we did last night. Brandon Flowers, The Killers frontman, was grooving in the Hard Rock Café in down town Las Vegas to the band Oasis. Here he realised the calling for a new sound leading […]