ALBUM: BELLE AND SEBASTIAN – HOW TO SOLVE OUR HUMAN PROBLEMS

Belle and Sebastian have always produced the kind of music which is delicate on the eardrums, yet with a feisty rock n roll streak tearing through its core. They’re one of those bands who you think you’ve got figured out, then they go off and do something unexpected. Live, their gigs transform into a communal […]
The advent of using synths in Indie Rock is nothing new, its popularity seemed to rise in conjunction with skinny jeans and I often wonder if there’s a correlation between the amount of bands like Everything Everything and Friendly Fires who howl their lyrics and the ‘close crotch’ of tight jeans. With that in mind, […]

ALBUM: HOOKWORMS- MICROSHIFT

ALBUM: TY SEGALL – FREEDOM’S GOBLIN

Keeping up with Ty Segall can be hard work! Over the last few years he’s taken garage rock to a whole new level, constantly releasing albums, (around twenty in his own name at the last count), and that doesn’t include the numerous collaborations, or singles and EPs. Then there are the live gigs all over […]
Ever since they burst onto the music scene in 2004, The Go! Team have been on my gym playlist, and that’s in no way meant as an insult. Although if The Go! Team could see me red faced, sweaty and jumping around to the throws of Bottle Rocket and Junior Kickstart, they might disagree. Yet […]

ALBUM: THE GO! TEAM – SEMICIRCLE

ALBUM: BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB – WRONG CREATURES

BRMC aren’t a band who like to make it easy for themselves, they seem like the kind of band who throw their entire existence into making music and giving it their all at every live gig, as this writer witnessed a few years ago in Manchester, where they played for almost 3 hours! Yep, BRMC […]
Nika Roza Danilova, better known as Zola Jesus, returned to her native woods of Wisconsin, built a house mere steps away from her semi-dilapidated childhood tree-fort and watched it slowly give itself back to the earth while raising her sixth offering in ‘Okovi’. Over the course of what she describes as “a profound meditation on […]

ALBUM REVIEW: ZOLA JESUS – OKOVI

ALBUM REVIEW: TURNOVER – GOOD NATURE

“I always remember things better than they were and miss people more than I should,” explains Austin Getz, frontman of  amber-drunk sun-seekers Turnover, when speaking of the mournful thinking behind the band’s fractured, Will Yip-produced breakthrough ‘Peripheral Vision’. Hyper-confessional meditations on sex, obsession, and loss ran through the self-crucifying offering, but where Turnover sourced ‘Peripheral […]
Los Angeles three-piece LA Witch’s initial aspirations were humble: “We never really thought we would or could release an album, we were really just finding each other and finding our sound.” But following touring non-stop for the last three-years and a slew of singles on underground labels, their eponymous debut has now arrived and a […]

ALBUM: L.A. WITCH – L.A. WITCH

ALBUM REVIEW: GHOSTPOET ‘DARK DAYS AND CANAPES’

Often, despite writing poetry, I don’t know where the line is between poetry and song lyrics. Thankfully the mumbled spoken word of Ghostpoet stops the questions and starts the listening as he oscillates between the depth and meaning of poetry and experimental electronic sounds. I don’t know what the genre tag is for his music […]
“We as a band went from worrying about the record to worrying about the person,” speaks The War on Drugs bassist Dave Hartley of Adam Granduciel during the making of ‘Lost In The Dream’, the band’s critic-aligning breakthrough – birthed in the grip of a mountainous, sleep-fearing depression. However, sourcing its strength from obsessive insularity, the […]

ALBUM: THE WAR ON DRUGS – A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING