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

ALBUM: Gregory and The Hawk – Leche

Gregory and The Hawk, it sounds like a children’s book does it not? Indeed, singer songwriter, Meredith Godreau, took the name from her brother, Gregory, and his imaginary childhood hawk in a George Eliot-esque move – wearing the mask of someone/something else to gain credibility and avoid being pigeonholed. In Godreau’s case it was to […]
Ray Davies is without doubt one of the UK’s very best rock & rollers – a saint amongst songwriters.  The Kinks were to north London, what The Beatles were to Liverpool and their output was equally varied – from the distorted rock & roll of “You Really Got Me” to the gorgeous mellowness of “Waterloo Sunset”. Kinky Ray […]

ALBUM: Ray Davies – See My Friends

ALBUM: Seal Cub Clubbing Club – Royal Variety

Seal Cub Clubbing Club’s ‘Royal Variety’ sounds like a mix of Radiohead, Terrorvision, Hot Chip, Arctic Monkeys, Oceansize, blah, blah, blah, blah… If you want to read a review about who this album sounds like, then go elsewhere – because although it’s easy to compare SCCC to Radiohead, especially when listening to songs like ‘The Borough’, the comparison […]
If Liars are, “…interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like L.A. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society,” then Proud Evolution marks the point where a dysfunctional relationship with society becomes pathological. Amidst the extended (and demented) periods of ambient wastelands, inhabited with single repetitive notes, […]

ALBUM: Liars – Proud Evolution