LIVE: HIGH WYRE / MADA CRAM / LUKE STEINMAN – 28/07/2017

-THE CASTLE HOTEL, MANCHESTER- The midsummer months are pretty barren ground for us gig-aholics, with bands spending most of their time on the festival circuit. But in the absence of the established names, this time of year provides a perfect chance to explore some of the local artists plying their trade, hoping for their lucky […]
The heartbroken patience of ‘Red Plantet’ closed Alvvays’ self-titled debut – spinning a web of waiting, and gesturing towards endless cycles of temporary distraction and emptiness. Although a fitting end to an album littered with semi-mid-life beginnings and endings, the final act of the starry-eyed darling’s exploration of the “pathetic perspective” offered more of a […]

SINGLE: ALVVAYS – IN UNDERTOW

SINGLE: KATIE VON SCHLEICHER – LIFE’S A LIE

“I felt really good writing the music,” speaks Katie Von Schleicher of gloom-laden lead single ‘Life’s A Lie’ – taken from her self-produced and co-engineered debut that was recorded on Tascan 488 tape-machine in her childhood home. The Brooklynite and Ba Da Bing Records signee is infamous for her own brand of bleak, lo-fi piano […]
For almost two-decades, the Toronto-hailing army-of-indie that is Broken Social Scene have been traversing their counter-cultural anxieties with visions of familial community and refreshing doses of celebratory sound-collage – ushering in some of our darkest political hours with defiant, unabashed joy. 2010’s ‘Forgiveness Rock Record’ closed with a two-minute ode to the loneliness found in […]

ALBUM: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE – HUG OF THUNDER

LIVE: SHEER MAG / TV CRIME – 23/07/2017

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- What’s going on here, then? It’s not even 8pm and the merch table is 4 deep with t-shirts and records flying from one side of the counter to the other at a sweatshop pace; this isn’t normal. Then again, neither are Sheer Mag. A quintet formed in upstate New York (in Purchase, […]
Combining the words ‘fog’ and ‘lake’ paint that of a tranquil scene – muddied with spirits and demons that quest and cloud. It’s hard to imagine Aaron Powell, Canadian downer-pop veteran, releasing music under a guise that conjures any other image, as Fog Lake is just that: peace-of-mind sitting dormant under a ceiling of head-fuck […]

ALBUM: FOG LAKE – DRAGONCHASER

SINGLE: THE WAR ON DRUGS – STRANGEST THING

Sleepless, flame-out anxiety ivies the narrative of Adam Ganduciel – front-man of Philadelphia-hailing sonic-sculptors The War on Drugs. The obsessive architect has openly touched on how a sudden personal downfall – flanked by isolation and paranoia, inspired elemental crusher ‘Lost in the Dream’, but has also alluded to how he’s still figuring out what happened […]
-PAVILION THEATRE, MANCHESTER- Stepping from a bright Manchester afternoon into a blacked-out tent in the middle of Albert Square, I am soon joining the gathered crowd in applauding the on-stage arrival of the two young Norfolk musicians in Let’s Eat Grandma. The claps give way to complete silence as Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth take […]

LIVE: LET’S EAT GRANDMA – 16/07/2017

SINGLE: TURNOVER – SUPER NATURAL

Austin Getz, vocalist and guitarist of Virginia Beach darlings Turnover, demystifies ‘Super Natural’, the first cut from the band’s third studio album ‘Good Nature’, by describing a meditative, yet colossal love as influencing the weightless cut. Getz paints scenes that speak to the indescribable qualities that can be found in the meeting of memory and […]
The angular, Leeds-based plague that is Forever Cult set broken horses free on the wire-wrapped ‘Codeine’ – surfing the fine line between melody and cacophony. Singer Kieran Clarke barks through fuzz and blurs the razor-sharp edges of the unpredictable 2-minutes of hyper-death – cutting any kind of complacency in half and hanging it from the […]

SINGLE: FOREVER CULT – CODEINE