EP Review: Flyying Colours – ROYGBIV

Shoegaze is back! Grow that fringe (I only wish I could)! Not everyone will be doing cartwheels at the return of the ‘scene that celebrates itself’, but I have to admit to becoming quite giddy at the prospect of seeing Ride later this month at the beautiful Albert Hall. Club AC30 are no strangers to the […]
It is hard to be objective about a band’s long (three years is far too much) awaited upcoming release, when you personally feel they were robbed with their début. It was the boffin rock intro-spectacles that eclipsed their début’s success. Alt-J’s Mercury win with An Awesome Wave led to headline slots at Leeds and platinum […]

Album Review: Django Django – Born Under Saturn

Album Review: Bernard + Edith – Jem

Bernard + Edith are distinct, first and foremost, in that they buck that trend completely. The latest in an eclectic line of bands affiliated with Salford label SWAYS RECORDS to sign with independent stalwart Bella Union, Bernard + Edith, like predecessors PINS and MONEY, prove that the minds at work behind both labels have real […]
The Leisure Society are the Brighton band that are likely to always be remembered as the band that, against all the odds, secured two consecutive Ivor Novello Award nominations, the first of which for ‘The Last of the Melting Snow’, a modern pop masterpiece. That is a claim to fame for anybody to be proud […]

Album Review: The Leisure Society – The Fine Art of Hanging On

Album Review: Calexico – Edge of the Sun

Edge of the Sun is Calexico’s ninth studio album. For those who don’t know them, Calexico is formed by core founding members Joey Burns and John Convertino plus a varying line-up of musicians for recordings and tours. Burns and Convertino met in Los Angeles in the 1990s and started playing together in Giant Sand with […]
English rock band WIRE probably have the strongest début ever conceived. Their 1977 album, Pink Flag, is an absolute fucking classic and has garnered much praise and respect from music fans and artists alike. It’s a shame then that their latest collection of songs simply entitled, WIRE, is nowhere near the standard set so high […]

Album Review: Wire – Wire

LIVE: DEMOB HAPPY – 30/03/2015

– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – It’s a stormy Monday night, but shelter and warmth from the high winds and incessant rain has kindly been provided tonight by Manchester’s renowned basement rock venue. Intrepid, die hard music fans huddle around the stage, eager to hear the next big thing, while trying to shake off their weekend hangovers. […]
With only a couple of brushes with the charts over the course of a 35-year career, Stephen Duffy is no stranger to commercial failure. Yet so disheartened was he with the non-impact of his last album, 2007’s Runout Groove, and the state of the music industry that he decided not to release any more records. […]

Album Review: The Lilac Time – No Sad Songs

Album Review: Fawn Spots – From Safer Place

From Safer Place, the début album from York-based punk trio Fawn Spots, rests on a tipping point: written, recorded and self-produced at the bands own rehearsal space, it captures them in ferocious form, a band at the threshold of the familiar and about to slash and burn their way into unknown territory. Having built a fearsome […]
Public Service Broadcasting is a band that ought not to be able to release more than one album. The formula of putting music to samples of archive footage is something at first arresting; it’s the sort of simple-but-effective idea you can’t believe nobody has exploited properly before. However, having heard the band’s fascinating debut record […]

Album Review: Public Service Broadcasting – The Race for Space