ALBUM: Violens – Amoral

Whenever you hear of another band from NYC, you have to think, are they really from NYC or have they just relocated there and adopted the NYC brand name because it’s ‘cool’?  Violens are one of the latest acts to come out of the city peddling their debut album, Amoral, which is due to be released shortly. Maybe, […]
An idiot once said to me: “All the best trilogies come in threes”.  I thought about it, and realised the idiot had a point.  This came to mind upon hearing what Damon Gough was planning to do next, for the bearded behatted one has cut quite the elusive figure of late.  Aside from the soundtrack to […]

ALBUM: Badly Drawn Boy – It’s What I’m Thinking Part 1: Photographing Snowflakes

Fast-Forward – The World Cup Goes Indie – Final Knock-out Stages

I can’t contain it, the excitement is reaching fever-pitch: I am going to a music festival on a Mediterranean beach in July. On an unrelated and much less exciting note, I am also going to find out which one of 32 plinky little indie tunes I dislike the least. But to make it interesting, and […]
The knock-out stages are ready to begin. The rules are simple – I think most of these tunes are the musical equivalent of those horrible world cup flavoured crisps, so I don’t want to listen to them any more than I have to. It’s a simple contest – two songs play, the best one goes […]

Fast Forward – The World Cup Goes Indie [Round of 16]

Fast Forward: The World Cup Goes Indie

Fast Forward: An Indie Music Companion To World Cup 2010 [The Group Stages] Yes folks – now is the time – the time to be excited about the World Cup. Now is the time for hope, before the inevitability of England bowing out (on penalties) in the Quarter Finals, and Brazil narrowly overcoming Spain and […]
‘They don’t feel,’ Exit Calm’s Nicky Smith calls out at the emotional climax of their eponymous debut album’s ‘Hearts and Minds’ — something that could never be said about his band. Indeed, their soaring first full-length is a work of undeniable majesty. It’s best to get mention of the overtones of The Verve out of […]

ALBUM: Exit Calm – Exit Calm

ALBUM: Sandi Thom –Merchants and Thieves

Eric Clapton, BB King, Peter Green, even Seasick Steve . . . there is a hint of all these blues legends in Sandi Thom’s third album, Merchants and Thieves. The harsh truth is that if a man had made this album it would have been instantly derided as a rip-off, yet Sandi’s undoubted feminine charms […]
I try not to let a band’s image or history get in the way of the music – Bowie’s alleged Nazi salutes don’t make Changes any less of a tune – and Bono’s charity do-gooding can’t rescue anything that U2 released after 1995. However, I find it hard not to sympathise a little more with […]

ALBUM: The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster – Blood and Fire

ALBUM: MGMT – Congratulations

You have to admire MGMT’s bloody mindedness. They release what were arguably the three finest singles of the noughties (honestly, who can resist the pop euphoria of “Kids”?), and record one of the finest albums in recent memory. A large number of their fans don’t get, skip over, or simply disregard as self-indulgent noodling most […]
William Fitzsimmons has a remarkable story to tell. Born the youngest son of a blind couple in Pittsburgh, he grew up to be a psychotherapist. The eventual break up of his parents’ marriage proved so traumatic that he wrote an album, the recording of which proved so difficult that Fitzsimmons’ own marriage flew off the […]

ALBUM: William Fitzsimmons – Derivatives