ALBUM: Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can

Laura Marling’s first album, “Alas I Cannot Swim” was an impossibly brilliant debut. Released just after she turned 18 her lyrics combined a delicate shyness with a world-weary maturity that spoke of things with a level of understanding that few people reach in their lifetime, let alone while they are still in their teens. The […]
Boe Weaver is the physical manifestation of one of Stuart Maconie’s wet dreams. It’s as if they make sounds specifically for the Freak Zone (and let me take this opportunity to say save BBC 6 Music). This stuff is so far left of leftfield; it’s off the field, outside the stadium, and taking tea in […]

ALBUM: Boe Weaver – Boe Weaver

ALBUM: Dag For Dag – Boo

Dag for Dag, who have just released their debut album ‘BOO’, are a Swedish-American brother and sister combination. Over the years, Swedish and American genes have combined to produce such visual delights as Kim Bassinger, Uma Thurman and Scarlet Johansson; such high-fliers as Charles Lindeburg and Buzz Aldrin; and every politician in Minnesota. In addition to […]
I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that opening track ‘Scissor’ from Liars latest release ‘Sisterworld’ is nothing short of genius. In fact I could probably write a review of this track alone but I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, this is an album review after all. The track […]

ALBUM: Liars – Sisterworld

ALBUM: Broken Bells – Broken Bells

Too many collaborations sound like a match made in heaven, but end up in purgatory. They disappoint because the individual musician owes more to his band than he or she (or we) might think, and they have to compromise their own artistic vision to fit in with someone else’s leading to a product that is […]
Along with loss and love, unrequited love has long been one of the great themes of literature and music.  Unrequited love lacks any of the beauty or purity of real love. It is dark, obsessive and can destroy those who dwell in it.  In music, however, many songs about this love are often poignantly beautiful […]

ALBUM: Lemar – The Hits

ALBUM: New Young Pony Club – The Optimist

New Young Pony Club, who play Manchester’s Mojo Live on Saturday 20th March as part of a tour of several Euopean countries, have just released their second album – the optimistically-titled ‘The Optimist’. When you live in the middle of a recession in a United Kingdom whose Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have not spoken […]
For those of you that didn’t know, Seth Troxler started out DJing at 16 years old in Detroit (alongside working in a local record store) when he developed what he now likes to coin as, “A preternatural understanding of rave, and dance music history, that now allows him to conjures up mixes and tracks like […]

ALBUM: Boogybytes Vol. 5 – Mixed by Seth Troxler

ALBUM: The Smoking Hearts – Pride of Nowhere

This first full release by the Smoking Hearts is bad, it is very bad, and it is quite possibly the worst music I have ever heard. It is so bad it even fails to be laughable. Its only possible use is as an aide to interrogators of terror suspects, but it is most likely forbidden by […]
In the inlay, Kris Drever thanks, ‘All the people I play with in my day job’. And it’s true – despite the critical acclaim heaped on Kris Drever’s first album, Black Water – mainstream audiences will know Kris as the quieter one who plays with Idlewild’s frontman in their acoustic project, Drever McCusker Woomble, and the folkies will be more acquainted with Lau, […]

ALBUM: Kris Drever – Mark The Hard Earth