ALBUM: Port-Royal – 2000-2010: The Golden Age of Consumerism

Truly great music, be it critically acclaimed, commercially successful or both, has to fit a certain purpose at a certain time or be the best at what it does. As Port-Royal are not (to my knowledge) a fresh-faced young boy band like One Direction filling the void left in the teenage dreamboat demographic, we can  […]
The church was the driving force behind the development of early classical music; nowadays, it’s the film industry and (unfortunately) advertising which pay the classical composer’s way. Modern ‘popular classical’ music has taken on a dance-music character, with shorter chord progressions, less of a tendency towards quirky melody lines, and an avoidance of the highly-emphasised, […]

ALBUM: Dustin O’Halloran – Lumiere

ALBUM: Radiohead – The King of Limbs

Am I alone in this? In, when news breaks of a new Radiohead release, not crossing fingers behind my back that it’s a return to “OK Computer Radiohead”? I like ‘Kid A’. I love ‘Hail To The Thief’. Whisper it quietly, ‘In Rainbows’ is probably my favourite Radiohead album. So, when news broke earlier this week, that Radiohead’s new […]
Ironically, when I got the review list for this month, I asked if I could do Fleet Foxes and instead, I got Treefight for Sunlight – who want to be Fleet Foxes. That’s mean of me, I suppose – the truth is that both of them want to be the Beach Boys. What really sparked […]

ALBUM: Treefight For Sunlight – Treefight For Sunlight

ALBUM: The Megaphonic Thrift – Decay Decoy

Come on an imaginary road trip with me. We’re in a ’61 Thunderbird, top down, wind in our hair. We’re hurtling headlong down a never ending bolt-straight Mojave Desert road. The midday sun beats relentlessly down, the heat haze shimmers. Our arms are draped languidly over the side of the car. The occasional cactus is […]
Pete Yorn’s self titled 6th studio album is the result of an impromptu 5 day recording session with Pixies frontman and indie rock legend Frank Black. Recorded in a makeshift studio over the summer of 2008 whilst the prolific songsmith was in the middle of making his 4th LP Back & Fourth, this record perhaps demonstrates […]

ALBUM: PETE YORN – PETE YORN

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