ALBUM REVIEW: 2:54 – The Other I

2:54’s ‘Scarlet’ EP instantly caught my attention a couple of years ago, prompting me to sign up for their 2012 Deaf Institute gig. The London based alternative rock band’s self titled debut long player shortly followed, and didn’t disappoint – their broody, understated, infectious melodies hit all the right spots. Sisters Colette and Hannah Thurlow front the four-piece, […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – Lamb were arguably at their peak when I was most impressionable, blending genres that I was immersed in at the time – trip-hop and drum & bass. 22 years ago, Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow agreed to start a band, in a bar on Manchester’s Oldham street – they made […]

LIVE: LAMB – 01/11/2014

Album Review: Aldous Harding – Aldous Harding

The plain unadorned picture of Aldous Harding (actual name Hannah) looking back at you on the cover of her début, eponymously titled album, in many ways hints at the subtle pleasures hidden within. It’s an album of stark beauty, an album which could have been made any time in the last fifty, if not a […]
Hello, Wonkites! Occasionally I get to review a new release from a band that I really like. Occasionally I get something to review which I really don’t connect with. Today, the Candyman has brought me both of these at once. Primus & the Chocolate Factory is more-or-less a track-for-track re-make of the soundtrack of the […]

Album Review: Primus – Primus & the Chocolate Factory

Album Review: The Flaming Lips – With A Little Help From My Fwends

While the Beatles are remembered as a band that recorded staggeringly good albums, it is in the live arena that the Flaming Lips truly excel. Their shows are magical and euphoric, whereas even their best albums – The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) – are patchy. In short, they are […]
Seven years and four studio albums have been punctured by shape-shifting releases in between. …Killed my Parents and Hit the Road was a stripped back b-side to the critically acclaimed Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, as was often the case with companion E.P. Here, It Never Snowed, Afterwards It Did. No One Can Ever Know […]

Album Review: The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave

Album Review: Trojan Horse – World Turned Upside Down

Prog, eh? Apparently it’s not a dirty word any more, but it’s still an ugly one isn’t it? That horrible image of men in capes making bloated pseudo-classical music that my dad listens to still comes to mind. Fortunately, Manchester heroes Trojan Horse have been challenging that preconception for the past few years now with […]
Thurston Moore’s new album The Best Day sees the US singer back on more familiar territory after 2011’s acoustic album Demolished Thoughts.  Performed by a newly formed Thurston Moore Band and running at 8 tracks across 51 minutes (double LP on Vinyl) this is on first listening very much an “album” in the classic sense, […]

Album Review: Thurston Moore – The Best Day

Album Review: Mark Lanegan Band – Phantom Radio

In my review of Mark Lanegan’s recent No Bells On Sunday EP I predicted that the subsequent album, Phantom Radio, Lanegan’s third as the Mark Lanegan Band, would be a good one. Assuming he hadn’t used up all his best songs on the EP that is. Well, it does seem he used up quite a […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – It was Christmas day of 1996 when I first heard the distinctive vocals of Mark Morriss. I had just received my first CD player and the only CD I had to play on it was Now 35. One of that compilation’s highlights was The Bluetones’s ‘Marblehead Johnson’. Some 18 […]

LIVE: MARK MORRISS – 12/10/2014