ALBUM: Kathryn Williams – The Quickening

It is ten years now since Kathryn Williams’s second album Little Black Numbers garnered a Mercury Prize nomination. For a select few, including the likes of Dizzy Rascal – touted as Britain’s answer to the likes of Jay-Z but in reality rather more like our answer to MC Hammer – Mercury recognition has been the […]
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 […]

ALBUM: Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago

ALBUM: The Who – Greatest Hits and More

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 […]
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 […]

ALBUM: Musée Méchanique – Hold This Ghost

LIVE: OCEANSIZE/VESSELS/AS I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR – 02/02/2010

– ACADEMY 3, MANCHESTER – Attendance is deservedly good for the first support: As I Watch You From Afar. Use of super-heavy riffs and interesting time signatures is done in a good way, not just for the sake of it, yet they do go all 4/4 and melodic from time to time. The shirtless, beefcake […]
– Deaf Institute, Manchester – Pronounced “Dog for Dog”, Dag For Dag are a brother and sister songwriting duo originate from “San Francisco, Sweden” according to lead singer and guitarist Sarah Snavely. The Deaf Institute’s crowd is undeservedly low in numbers and the between songs conversation from the band is met with embarrassed silence. Undeterred, […]

LIVE: DAG FOR DAG/THAO with THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN – 02/02/2010

LIVE: JOHNNY FOREIGNER / TALONS – 02/02/2010

– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – There are some venues which can make even the most unknown acts come alive such as Manchester’s Academy; there are others which are seeped in so much history that the band are bolstered into putting on a spectacular show even if they are usually mediocre. Venues like Night and […]
– CLUB ACADEMY, MANCHESTER – I am so excited about seeing Adam Green this evening that I turn up to the gig an hour early to grab a beverage and soak up the atmosphere before heading down to the basement. The above, could very well have been the entirety of my review of three acts, […]

LIVE: ADAM GREEN – 01/02/2010

SINGLE: Placebo – Bright Lights

Since I last heard Placebo, Brian Molko has been to the Des’Ree school of lyric writing and may have read two entire books. I find the lyrics of ‘Bright Lights’ to be nothing short of atrocious. His voice sounds like a parody of its former self, with little power or emotion, and the song relies […]
If you’ve ever thought that no one could be so preposterously immature as to actually write a song like Lick My Love Pump, think again. Ginuwine wrote a song called Pony, which features the following lines (please note that these words are delivered without the slightest hint of irony): If you’re horny, Let’s do it […]

SINGLE: Far – Pony