ALBUM: Amplifier – The Octopus

Amplifier’s third album is a gargantuan piece of work. Stunning in its scale, over the course of a two-hour opus, Sel Balamir, Neil Mahony and Matt Brobin ramp up the bombast to galactic proportions, somehow doing so without leaving the light of their earthly observatory. Self-financed and three years in the making, The Octopus is not merely […]
– LIKE NO ENGLISH – Unusually in these times saturated with the minutiae of celebrity life, there is no superlative press release issued with this EP and little information available on the internet. This paucity of background detail is a predicament faced by those reviewing this EP before me, if the scant online critiques are […]

ALBUM – THE DARK SKY SINGERS

ALBUM: The Chemistry Set – This Day Will Never Happen Again

The UK has a long, illustrious line of gently psychedelic guitar pop bands going right back to the likes of The Moody Blues (you better believe it), through XTC, Shack and The Coral, proponents all of sweet, sweet melodies and lush, pastoral arrangements. The Chemistry Set can – and should – count themselves as part […]
With its crisply crafted songwriting – reminiscent of Leonard Cohen and The Lilac Time – sophisticatedly interspersed with lush orchestration, and lashings of distortion, Excerpts impresses immediately. The resulting (and desired) effect of such interplay is of an album amorphously going in and out of focus. The title, Excerpts, and track 2’s name, ‘Things I Forgot’, […]

ALBUM: Ensemble – Excerpts

ALBUM: Hannah Peel – The Broken Wave

I like “wonky”. I like “folk”. Man, truth be told, I even like “pop”. So Hannah Peel’s description of her style as Wonky Folk Pop right away pitches her 100% centre-stage on my radar. Hannah’s star is definitely on the rise, with reviewers blanketing pretty much everything she turns her hand to with praise (and that […]
Hats off to any band who call their own debut album The Decline of British Sea Power – although you’d imagine they were really referring to the waterborne capability of our nation, rather than their own musical fortunes. Which brings us to 2011.  Somehow strange to realise that Valhalla Dancehall is the band’s fifth long player; they seem somehow fresh […]

ALBUM: British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall

ALBUM: Plain White T’s – Wonders of the Younger

You call your band Plain White T’s, you’re asking for trouble. I mean, it’s almost like sticking your head above the parapet and saying, “We’re bland. Bland, bland, bland.” They’ve been around a deceptively long time though – here come Plain White T’s, the band that gave the world the Grammy nominated frat-party anthem ‘Hey […]
Musically, Christmas is horrible. Each year a massive corporate free-for-all where whatever hermaphrodite boy band/pop act is currently in vogue infects the airwaves with whatever shit excuse for a song they pull out their arses. And just when you think non-industry types have fought a successful campaign against Santa, as with Rage Against The Machine […]

ALBUM: The Puppini Sisters – Christmas with The Puppini Sisters

ALBUM: Bruce Springsteen – The Promise

To start with a cliché, when I was young Bruce Springsteen was so ubiquitous, so well-established that the only thing I could do, as an angst-y sixteen-year-old, was to disregard him. To me he was nothing more than a crusty, jingoistic, cheese-peddler who clashed badly with my nascent nihilism. But time changes everything, and ten […]
“I came into this world as nothing, I ain’t gonna leave that way,” sings Zack Lopez on ‘I guess You Could Say’, the track which, on 10 March 2009, Zane Lowe damningly named his Hottest Record in the World. In a world of 6 billion people, Zane Lowe is a waste of human matter, and a […]

ALBUM: MIDDLE CLASS RUT – NO NAME NO COLOR