ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 10 JANUARY 2025

A week of tentatively lowering a toe into the waters of 2025 albums before the ensuing flood of new releases coming later this month. Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions           Cold Blows The Rain               The reinterpreted traditional folk songs that make up Cold Blows the Rain are shaped by the land and the weather. Wrapped in […]
Anyone for some ‘Pale Vegan Hip Pain’, or a ‘Fanzine Made Of Flesh’? Yes, it’s the return of those brilliant Scots post rock pioneers Mogwai, complete with another dazzling array of utter genius song titles. It’s hard to believe that they’re celebrating their thirty-year anniversary, with that milestone arriving on the back of their last […]

ALBUM REVIEW: MOGWAI – THE BAD FIRE

ALBUM REVIEW – PARCHMAN PRISON PRAYER: ANOTHER MISSISSIPPI SUNDAY MORNING

It already seems certain that in 2025 Glitterbeat Records will maintain their reputation for having the most wonderfully eclectic selection of releases. For the first two months of the year, they have releases lined-up from Malian desert blues artist Samba Toure, Korean composer and multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha, and Polish post-punk group Trupa Trupa. First up, […]
I’m sure that Duster’s career trajectory will be studied by PRs for years to come. The now somewhat commonplace phenomenon of the ‘relatively obscure 90s alternative band to TikTok darlings’ upswing is exemplified by this band. With a consistent output of lo-fi, lowkey slowcore in the 90s, Duster, in another universe, would’ve been a small […]

ALBUM REVIEW – DUSTER: IN DREAMS

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2024

    Our album of 2024 comes from Kim Deal. Her solo debut, ‘Nobody Loves You More’ is quintessentially Kim with her distinctive vocals and bass sounds, yet the songs here manage to incorporate electronic beats, strings and brass sections, and range from beautifully warped indie lounge tunes to pounding electronica with plenty of melodic […]
As new releases dwindle at year end, we have bundled together all the December releases in one monthly package. Saint Etienne                The Night         Their twelfth album delivers an ambient escape from the chaos of daily life, capturing the essence of the after-hours. The album takes listeners through layered tranquillity, offering calm to restless minds and […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP DECEMBER 2024

ALBUM REVIEW – BEN FOLDS: SLEIGHER

‘Sleigher’ must surely be the best title ever for a Christmas album. While it provokes mischievous ideas as to what a festive album by the thrash metal titans might sound like (try to imagine pummelling versions of ‘White Christmas’), Ben Folds’ take on the genre is more traditional but well thought through. It is a […]
In a small alternative universe populated by erudite pop classicists, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan are revered alongside Lennon and McCartney as songwriters of the highest order. For unfathomable reasons, the songs they wrote as The Go-Betweens never entered the public consciousness in the way that their champions anticipated. Since McLennon’s tragic sudden death in […]

ALBUM REVIEW: THE GO-BETWEENS – G STANDS FOR GO-BETWEENS: VOLUME 3 2000-2006

ALBUM REVIEW – FULL OF HELL + ANDREW NOLAN: SCRAPING THE DEVINE

If there’s one thing you know going into a Full of Hell record, it’s that the bar has been set high for extremity. As one of the most formidable extreme metal outfits out there, the band has consistently been the standard bearers for putrid, gnarly extremity for the better part of 15 years. Scraping The […]
The Crying Out of Things is the newest offspring of experimental metal/noise rock outfit The Body’s mammoth catalogue. It’s their eighth studio LP, though that’s not counting sixteen collaborative albums, nine EPs, four splits and two standalone singles, bringing their total number of releases to 39 since 2004. Through these releases they have toured various […]

ALBUM REVIEW – THE BODY: THE CRYING OUT OF THINGS