ALBUM: Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago

For those of you who weren’t cool enough to be in the Young Ornithologists Club (YOC for short), Shearwaters are medium-sized long-winged seabirds with over thirty species; and for those of you not familiar with tectonic geography, an archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands. Together they create a sense of something remote, wild and pristine […]
I hate Greatest Hits compilations for their soullessness, but on the other hand, I like The Who – especially for their soul – so this review might genuinely tear me in two, like a piece of Doublemint. ‘Tear me in two, like this album’ might have been a better analogy – the box-set comprises two discs, one […]

ALBUM: The Who – Greatest Hits and More

ALBUM: Musée Méchanique – Hold This Ghost

Conceived in and named after a museum of antique arcade machines, this Portland quintet have mastered the technique of transforming melancholic resignation into an art form and the result is wholly deserving of admiration. Like Home fades in with computer generated orchestration, arpeggio acoustic guitar notes, and a synth part that later morphs into something from […]
One thing that struck me when watching the Brits is how much of this awful pop-pap-r&b gunk we are spoon fed is not so much sung as shouted by whatever latest overdressed, overhyped bint some major has so delightfully delivered unto us.  And then you putThe Sea into your CD player, hit play, and you realise there […]

ALBUM: Corinne Bailey Rae -The Sea

ALBUM: Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM

Charlotte Gainsbourg may very nearly share a surname with a hill-town in darkest Lincolnshire, but in fact she shares more in common with Jared Leto than arable land and sausages. This is because she an actress (a good one, best actress at Cannes Film Festival 2009 anyone?) and also a musician. So not like Jared […]
It’s always strange when hype focuses its attention on the young age of the artists in question: the press, the industry, need musicians to be young. They need to believe in youth, to keep the hype – the legend – alive. If The Big Black And The Blue had been made by two middle-aged, rather […]

ALBUM: First Aid Kit – The Big Black And The Blue

ALBUM: JESCA HOOP – HUNTING MY DRESS

Plucked from obscurity over in the US by Elbow, a band recently and famously plucked from the gallows by last gasp blaster The Seldom Seen Kid, Jesca Hoop has come to our shores backed by Britain’s newest favourite band. But it seems to me that she’s been plucked from somewhere far less familiar than the […]
There’s a festival feel here. I’m not sure which one either. Whether it’s the easy informality of Leicester’s Summer Sundae or something more profound like echoes of Woodstock. But I am sure that the songs are wonderful. They’re uplifting, skipping along with a deftness of touch which makes them comfortably familiar and yet still fresh […]

ALBUM: Mumford and Sons – Sign No More

ALBUM: Joe Pernice – It Feels So Good When I Stop (Novel Soundtrack)

The problem With It Feels So Good When I Stop is that it was recorded as an accompaniment to his novel of the same name, and though I know it would infinitely augment the quality of this review I can’t be bothered to read it. However, if I was to take a wild stab at […]
Gracenotes only gives you one option – Nice, Nice, Very Nice is folk it solemnly declares. But don’t let that mislead you, as it most certainly isn’t. Acoustic singer-songwriter… OK, so those are misnomers too. Whatever it is or whatever it isn’t, Dan Mangan’s got an earnest voice, wrapping his vocals around decisive lyrics – these aren’t […]

ALBUM: Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice